Better All-Time: Peter Forsberg Or Evgeni Malkin?

[eXile3]

Malkin and it’s not as close as people making it seem. Not to say Forsberg wasn’t great but Malkin is criminally underrated.

 

[sr edler]

Forsberg is the fish your grandpa caught 20 years ago that has been getting larger with each retelling of the story.

Some people also like to act as if Forsberg wasn't an elite C in the latter half of the 90s, citing his 02–03 season as some type of 'outlier' peak season due to mere trophy counting. Forsberg was a back-to-back 1st team all-star in both 98 and 99 (meaning best C in the league) and in 97 he finished 3rd behind these two obscure players named W. Gretzky and M. Lemieux.

 

[Video Nasty]

Yeah, that's fair. That was also the year Pens traded Kovalev to the Rangers, forgot about that. But like, to the other poster's point, Mario wasn't the best player that year. And ok, arguably due to injury, but if you're like, "oh Mario was better that year but he was injured" it's like... "ok, we're talking the career of Peter Forsberg the guy never played close to 82 games after the age of 30." Can't have it both ways that's all I'm saying.

Very close for me too, funny enough I went with Malkin bc of Forsberg's injuries ha. But no wrong answer here

To add on to what @JackSlater said, consider perusing this thread: 2002-2003 Super Mario

Lemieux was the best player for the first half of the season no question.

Naslund began constructing his case around 30 games in and kept it up for about 40 games until slowing down a bit in the final weeks of the season.

Forsberg put together a terrific second half and was hot enough to overtake Naslund as the scoring leader on the final day of the season. Of course, Forsberg’s efforts propelled Colorado to a great second half record after a lackluster first half. Meanwhile, Vancouver was mediocre in those final weeks and lost the division on that final day too.

The Hart voting results that you look at in retrospect were heavily influenced by a lot of things flipping on the final day of the season and the culmination of a long comeback by both Forsberg and the Avs. If he and the Avs don’t pluck away a number of things from them directly, if they don’t take the division and Art Ross away, surely the voting would look differently. Absolutely deserved victories, just pointing out that Mario was electric on a bad team at 37 years old and killed the league in the first half before injuries and a husk of a team remained in the second half.

So we have a clear cut best player in the first 41 games and then two other players dueling throughout the second half until one of them pulled away in the final weeks.

 

[DitchMarner]

Being injured is a negative mark against any athlete in any sport. It isn’t a neutral event, let alone a positive.

They were both consistently injured throughout their primes, to be fair. I was actually shocked when I saw that Malkin played all 82 games last season on NHL.com the other day.

 

[EXTRAS]

As a Canucks fan, I feared forsberg being on the ice more than Sakic.

 

[wasunder]

Malkin is better, but it’s strange to be comparing a player like Malkin to a back up goaltender.

 

[66-30-33]

Homer pick.

Malkin!!

 

[MessierII]

I agree with you but you almost have to take Mario/Wayne out of the convo for it to be fair to anyone else. They were human cheat codes. lol

Even on his own team. Forsberg was never the guy. Sakic and Roy were both better. He was never more than the 3rd most important player.

Forsberg played 8 games more and scored 15 points more than Lemieux. Defensively it wasn't even a contest between them.

I love how in forsbergs HF legends he’s like Datsyuk defensively. He was a solid two way guy don’t get me wrong but he wasn’t Datsyuk or Patrice Bergeron. His primary role was still to create goals.

 

[Albatros]

I love how in forsbergs HF legends he’s like Datsyuk defensively. He was a solid two way guy don’t get me wrong but he wasn’t Datsyuk or Patrice Bergeron. His primary role was still to create goals.

Forsberg was 4th in the Selke vote that year, as the league's top scorer. Absolutely Jere Lehtinen was another level, but he didn't score 100+ points while doing his thing.

 

[LightningStorm]

Forsberg is the fish your grandpa caught 20 years ago that has been getting larger with each retelling of the story.

Most accurate description of Forsberg I've seen, especially on this forum.

As for the poll, give me Malkin. Similar peaks but I thought Malkin was better overall. His 2008-2012 stretch was the best version of either player, as was his 2009 playoffs for any postseason among the 2. But the biggest reason I choose Malkin is due to health. Forsberg's style of play made injuries a feature, not a bug when it came to him. Malkin also missed plenty of games in his prime, but I don't think injuries were as inherent to his play style as Forsberg's.

 

[Dog]

I went with Malkin because he still is playing and his career was not cut short because of injuries.

 

[BLNY]

I have them very close (around 20th top centre all time), but I do have Malkin ahead.

I have Malkin just ahead too. Peak Forsberg was certainly fun to watch, but Malkin has had a much longer peak and been more durable.

 

[Sidney the Kidney]

He has the regular season offensive edge, but that edge is lost in the playoffs where they were more or less equal offensively. Slight peak edge for Malkin but slight prime and career edge for Forsberg. Bringing their overall games into the equation only puts Forsberg on top for me if we're strictly talking about who the better player was.



The fact that you don't think it's close explains why you think Forsberg is an HF deity. The reason is fairly simple and you don't have to look much further than his career stats in the regular season and playoffs in a mostly low scoring era.

So in this case, goals don't trump all else? Weird how suddenly the better goal scorer isn't automatically the better player for you.

 

[Albatros]

Similar peaks but I thought Malkin was better overall. His 2008-2012 stretch was the best version of either player

...a quarter of which he was below ppg and always mediocre defensively.

 

[LightningStorm]

...a quarter of which he was below ppg and always mediocre defensively.

5 seasons, from 07/08-11/12. 10/11 was an outlier during that stretch due to injuries.

 

[PainForShane]

To add on to what @JackSlater said, consider perusing this thread: 2002-2003 Super Mario

Lemieux was the best player for the first half of the season no question.

Naslund began constructing his case around 30 games in and kept it up for about 40 games until slowing down a bit in the final weeks of the season.

Forsberg put together a terrific second half and was hot enough to overtake Naslund as the scoring leader on the final day of the season. Of course, Forsberg’s efforts propelled Colorado to a great second half record after a lackluster first half. Meanwhile, Vancouver was mediocre in those final weeks and lost the division on that final day too.

The Hart voting results that you look at in retrospect were heavily influenced by a lot of things flipping on the final day of the season and the culmination of a long comeback by both Forsberg and the Avs. If he and the Avs don’t pluck away a number of things from them directly, if they don’t take the division and Art Ross away, surely the voting would look differently. Absolutely deserved victories, just pointing out that Mario was electric on a bad team at 37 years old and killed the league in the first half before injuries and a husk of a team remained in the second half.

So we have a clear cut best player in the first 41 games and then two other players dueling throughout the second half until one of them pulled away in the final weeks.

Hmm...

First of all thx for letting me know about Mario's performance that year, I didn't remember / maybe didn't know as I was in college at the time and not following the league as closely on a day to day basis. I'll most likely take a look at the thread you mentioned at some point (thx for that), in the meantime multiple ppl are saying Lemieux had a dominant first half of that season, a quick look at NHL.com's stats seem to bear this out.

So ok, Lemieux had a good first half, obviously he is good at hockey, this surprises no one. It is fun / funny to look at historical stats, though, that was the year Todd Bertuzzi scored 46 goals and 97 points, finished 5th in league scoring (?!), that is so crazy.

***

But like... the intricacies of that year's Hart race was never the point. If you go back a page and look at the post I replied to, the guy said "Forsberg's only Art Ross and Hart only happened because Mario got hurt not because he was ever actually the best player" basically implying Forsberg wasn't any good (he's since continued this opinion in later posts), he argues Forsberg's his lone Hart / Art Ross was undeserved because of Mario's injury.

And to that, the only sane reply is, "ok well Forsberg was injured a lot. So if you're going to say something like, 'Forsberg didn't deserve trophies that year bc Mario was injured,' you also have to project out how much Forsberg would've scored / won in the future if he wasn't injured." So like... do you give Forsberg credit for a few top-3 Hart finishes that likely would've happened in his later career? Do you say, "oh look there is Peter Forsberg 400G / 1200P NHL player if only he'd been healthy?" Of course not. Well, I guess you could but to me it doesn't make sense to give someone credit for games he didn't play.

Anyway in the same way you can't give Forsberg credit for the goals / Hart nominations he didn't get later in his career because he was injured, you can't give Mario credit for the Hart that year because Mario was injured. That was the point in the context of the overall discussion, especially relevant because we're discussing the entirety of Forsberg's career (not just that one year).

***

Either way thx for letting me know about that year's Hart race (and thread), I'll take a look at it when I have time. Much appreciated from over here

 

[Sports2]

Malkin has carried his productivity into 1000+ games. Maybe you can’t hold it against Forsberg for not having a longer career but Malkin gets the credit here.

 

[BraveCanadian]

Brutal brutal take.

I mean, they were half right.

 

[Albatros]

5 seasons, from 07/08-11/12. 10/11 was an outlier during that stretch due to injuries.

Only a curiosity perhaps, but both peak Malkin and retirement edition Forsberg were 1.27 ppg within that time frame.

 

[TheStatican]

What about Forsberg's 200-foot game?

If we want to say that Malkin was superior offensively, I can get on board with that, but Forsberg was very scary to go up against on the defensive end as well.

Bringing their overall games into the equation only puts Forsberg on top for me if we're strictly talking about who the better player was.

Absolutely, Foppa was unquestionably better defensively and that's why I agree this is a debatable topic. Where as it's not when it comes to say the other Malkin vs Kane, despite Kane's career stats being much closer to Malkin's than Forsberg's are. However even if we agree that the difference between Forsberg and Malkin defensively is greater than the difference in their offensive game, that doesn't necessarily mean it makes up for that smaller difference in offense.

Star forwards exist to produce offensively, there is no one ahead of forwards to play this role but when it comes to defense there both defensemen and goalies behind forwards to prevent offense against. Let's look at two equally regarded players in both aspects of the game; Patrice Bergeron and Jaromir Jagr. Patrice Bergeron is more or less universally recognized as the best defensive forward of his era. Jaromir Jagr meanwhile is likewise recognized as the best offensive player of his era(the post Lemieux pre-Cosby/Ovechkin period). Now how do they respectively compare at their lesser strengths? Bergeron would certainly not be mistaken as one of the elite scorers of his time, however solely based on his offence alone he would still be productive enough to be ranked as either a lower-tier 1st line center on an average NHL team or a higher-end 2nd line center on nearly all of them save for an exceptional team like the Pens with Crosby and Malkin. Either way he was clearly an above average player on offense. Not much needs to be said about Jagr and defense, he was largely disinterested in that aspect of the game and overall below average at it.

So, Bergeron's defense and Jagr's offense were both elite compared to his peers, while Bergeron's offense was better than Jagr's defense and yet... he ranks far below Jagr on the list of all time NHL greats.

Most people rank Bergeron around 60 to 200 all time, there's a debate going on about that right now in fact; Patrice Bergeron has retired - where do you rank him all-time? Does he crack the top 100? Is he close?
Jaromir Jagr meanwhile is pretty much universally seen as a top 20 player all time, some even have him in their top 10. The HOH top 100 ranked him as the 16th greatest player in NHL history;

Top-100 Hockey Players of All-Time

The following is the final list of the top hockey players of all-time as determined by 32 voting members of the History of Hockey community. RankPlayerPositionBornNationBirth City 1Wayne GretzkyC1961CanadaBrantford, Ontario 2Gordie...

forums.hfboards.com

Yes Jagr also had a much longer career but lets be real, while it was physically impressive that he continue to play for so long his legacy had already been set by the time he had played the same number of games as Bergeron did. You can take away every single game that he played after '08 and I doubt his ranking change at all.

My point is, elite offense always trumps elite defense for forwards. A top scorer who is 10% better offensively, but 10% worse defensively than another top forward should always be considered the better player. The difference in defensive play would have to be much more significant, approaching say 25, 30 or even more percentage-wise to make up that 10% difference in offence. Does Malkin's slightly better offense trump Forsberg's greater difference in defense? That's hard to say, but there are a couple other factors for which we do have absolute clarity for;

- Longevity.
While there's an argument for Peak and Prime there is absolutely no debate about longevity. Malkin has provided far more overall career value. If the choice is having Forsberg for 708 games or Malkin for 1063 games(and counting) you can't possibly say you would take the former over the latter. The 'and counting' part could also add further value as Malkin is not simply playing out the string of a HOF career. While he's no longer one of the games best he's still producing at a rate at or at lesst close to the average first line NHL center.

- Malkin's prime was longer and he was available for more of it.
Malkin's prime lasted for 13 seasons imo (2007 to 2020) though he didn't perform at prime levels in 3 seasons during that span, two due to injuries; 10-11, 12-13 and 18-19 either due to injuries or perhaps natural decline but he rebounded in 19-20. I see Forsberg's prime as lasting for 11 seasons (1996 to 2007) but likewise we didn't see him perform at prime levels for 3 of those years; one lost through no fault of his own; the '04-05 strike and two due to injury, including an entire missed season; 99-00 & 01-02. This gives Malkin has two more prime seasons overall 10 to 8. However despite his reputation for being injury prone, a deserved one to be sure when compared to the average NHL'er, Malkin actually missed less time during the 13 year span than Forsberg did in his 10 year prime; 225 vs 190 lost games. Forsberg only suited up 595 of 820 games of his prime, 72.5% Malkin played in 829 of 1019 of his, 81.4% When someone's availability to play is so low it's hard not to detract that from one's ranking of them as a player.

- Forsberg's supposed playoff advantage.
Yes it's true Foppa's overall career numbers are better, but his numbers are helped by a couple of factors. For one had a long playoff run in his absolute peak season while Malkin did not. You can't exactly fault Malkin for an entire team playing so poorly. Furthermore if you only include long playoff runs, literally the most important time of a players career, the numbers compare as such;

​	gms​	G​	A​	PT​	GPG​	PPG​
Forsberg​	113​	47​	129​	124​	0.41​	1.13​
Malkin​	133​	55​	145​	142​	0.42​	1.08​

Basically they are neck in neck when their teams needed them the most. The fact that Forsberg showed up more for token first round exits than Malkin did should hardly have much say on anything. Nor should Malkin's naturally expected decline in playoff production later in his career, obviously Forsberg's scoring rates would have like-wise declined had he actually played more playoff games outside of his prime.

- The HF's top 100 player list.
That list was made during or after the 2018-19 season and Malkin came in exactly 1 spot below Forsberg 51 to 52. The season that followed was a pretty good one for Malkin; scoring 74 points in 55 games. He produced at the same rate as one of the leagues best young stars; Nathan Mackinnon. If the HOH-100 voting was done after that season the consensus almost certainly would have swayed towards Malkin and they would have likely swapped places in the ranking.

 

[Video Nasty]

Only a curiosity perhaps, but both peak Malkin and retirement edition Forsberg were 1.27 ppg within that time frame.

I’d wager it’s even less than a curiosity. Forsberg played 11 games over the course of 4 seasons real time passing in that time frame, aka 300 games less than Malkin.

Realistically, retirement edition Forsberg is the player who was 0.00 PPG before calling it quits.

A true statement is that Malkin has blasted Forsberg apart as a worthwhile contributor in their 30s.

 

[BigBadBruins7708]

I'm sure the Forsberg Army will come for me, but for my money Malkin was the better playoff performer

 

[Albatros]

I’d wager it’s even less than a curiosity. Forsberg played 11 games over the course of 4 seasons real time passing in that time frame, aka 300 games less than Malkin.

Realistically, retirement edition Forsberg is the player who was 0.00 PPG before calling it quits.

A true statement is that Malkin has blasted Forsberg apart as a worthwhile contributor in their 30s.

Looking at players who retired in the 2000s, the only one with a better ppg than Forsberg in their 30s is Mario Lemieux. Pretty worthwhile if you ask me. Despite injuries, Forsberg did retire from the NHL only shortly before his 35th birthday for the first time, and older than Malkin is now finally. Malkin has 419 vs. 167 games which is a substantial quantitative difference of course, but qualitatively Forsberg definitely was better in the games that he did play.

 

[SkeeterPumpkinEater]

Malkin is the NHL game Paul Pierce. Underrated but the real ones know bish.

 

[Love]

Malkin but both are great. However for me Malkin’s vastly superior goal scoring tips the scale.