Bossy vs Brett Hull
- Thread starter Sentinel
- Start date
Actually lots of people here disagree with you, including myself
Michael Farkas
Celebrate 68
Yeah, no, I can read headers haha. Tough to figure out the line of logic. Other than the top two are just counts.
Mike C
Registered User
Can I be 11th??
I played defense. I scored 29 plus from the backline 6 straight seasons. For those years, I was 10th overall in league one season where the next highest guy at my position was 34th
Then 9th in league, next highest D was 102nd
Then 11th in league next highest D 35th
Then 34th in league next highest D 86th
Then 17th in league next highest D 43rd
Then 6th in league next highest D 45th
No I never led league in scoring but from the position I played I was pretty freaking good eh?
Imagine how I would have done had I had 2 healthy wheels.
Or if I played forward
You sure win the internet today. Dissing both bossy and Orr (who when healthy was the definition of the games superstar)
The Panther
Registered User
I believe @Sentinel was ranking the top goal-scorers, which is why Orr was not mentioned. Hardly controversial.
His list seemed quite reasonable to me, though like most I would rate Mario higher.
The thing is, these subjective lists reflect less who we each rate as goal scorers (I think we all think all the guys listed were pretty darn good) than they reflect what we choose to value in ranking players -- i.e., longevity, peak, prime, peer-domination, playoffs, international, awards, etc., etc. People value different kinds of achievements.
You are not being compared to other defensemen. You are being compared to other goalscorers. If your highest position was 10th, you have no business being anywhere near Top 10 goalscorers of all time.
You will be lucky to make it to Top 30.Oh, and I know you are the "King of If." Bye, Bobby. This topic is not for you or about you.
That's more than some people.
Why, though? What's "illogical" here? Lemieux only led the league in goals three times. Sure, his peak is up with the best of them but he falls below others in prime, consistency, and longevity.
Michael Farkas
Celebrate 68
To be honest, I don't really understand how you process information so I don't know how to interact with you. It's hard to communicate if you don't understand the audience haha.
My only really shot at this is using your boy Fedorov. Who you probably see as about a top ~25 or 30 player in the history of the sport. Sources: 30 Greatest Hockey Players according to Sentinel | Voting Record - Sentinel, Hockey Outsider, ChiTownPhilly
But you have the unshakeable reputation of being an extremely binary poster. The winner or 1st place of something is miles better/more important/whatever than 2nd place.
The big exception is Fedorov. Who, on paper, didn't do **** in the NHL relatively speaking. He has 1994 where he mopped up. But without that, he has a 9th place assists finish and a 9th place points finish (both in '96). He's got one Selke ('96) and a "pathetic" 2nd place Selke finish in '92.
Now, I'm obviously not here to debate the merits of Fedorov. But I want to use the logic to illustrate the point...
You have Fedorov high because you watched him. You knew he could do anything. He could play any position better than most. Center, wing, defense, whatever he was terrific at it. I'm sure if he wasn't "held back" (or whatever) by having to play defense, by being in Bowman's system for so long, by taking regular seasons off, etc. he would have done [amazing things on paper here].
So with Mario, you have a guy that could also do whatever he wanted. He could score every which way. Devastating shot - wrist, snap, one-timer. Forehand, backhand. Breakaway, penalty shot. In the open 80's, in the DPE, historically amazing playoffs (not super unlikely that he has a 20 goal playoff in 92 if some jerk didn't break his wrist). He could score from distance, in tight, he was the first to really perfect banking it off of goalies - expanding the scoring zone for, really, just him for a while. Led the league in goals per game in half of his seasons despite a career bookended by being on expansion-level rosters.
At 1, you have Ovechkin...that's fine. Devasting wrist shot, one timer. Possibly the best of all time in those two areas of scoring. Is that enough to make up for the rest of those categories? Maybe. He certainly bares it out in the numbers. He's led the league a thousand times. He's the all time leader now. There's a good case.
For me, the best goal scorer of all time (not just by count) can score most/all of the different ways. That's not logic that everyone has to abide by, certainly. But it's like having the best baseball player of all time that can't field very well (maybe that's too strong, maybe it's "can't hit certain pitches"). Or a quarterback without a useful deep ball.
Then you have Gretzky, I think that's been debated here to death recently. But while he's great, you look at how he scored goals and the caliber of shot that he had. Even if you just look at the goal sample, it's not nearly as impressive as the other players on the list. Could he have scored more if he wanted to be selfish? Probably. But I don't necessarily think that would have worked long term. Meaning, selfish Gretzky probably scores 100 goals in a season in some of those early 80's dog**** league scenarios because he was 10x smarter than everyone else. He had very good shooting, but not necessarily elite goal scoring traits for me. I don't think that selfish Gretzky would have improved his goal scoring exploits in the later parts of his career as much.
Hull Sr. that makes sense. That's a guy with elite goal scoring traits. Shooting ability. Distance scoring, can score in close. He did a lot of damage himself because of the team around him at times. We see that guys that have to start the rush AND end the rush themselves often don't get very far in the playoffs (Ovechkin, even Lemieux in the non-super-team years). But relative to his peers, this is an all time scorer. Certainly better than 99 for my tastes.
Esposito being here is probably a product of the "if Orr was so good, how come Orr didn't win all the Harts" noise. Esposito had a relatively limited scoring range. How many different ways was he able to score? How large was the area in which he could score from and what were the circumstances? You look at him in the O6 when things were much tighter and the league was way better from top to bottom, he wasn't super effective from a goal scoring perspective relative to his own team. You can clearly see the talent on tape, but we're talking about goal scoring, we're talking about the 4th best goal scorer of all time? The guy who couldn't outscore Kenny Wharram until he was 25 (or whatever)? He took full advantage of Orr, the offensive Bruins, the league deterioration as we got further and further away from the sponsorship era, etc. but he's a little too situation dependent to be that high.
Richard. Sure. Probably relative to his peers, there's few better answers. I think that's the most technically skilled player before 1960. He was so good that he could start rushes and end them, especially early in his career because the War and all that. But like a lot of guys on this list, Richard is someone who had one task and played a relatively straightforward game. So, he likely maxed out his goal scoring exploits (like Esposito and Ovechkin) because he didn't have to worry about too much else. Some folks aren't interested in that, but I think it's part of the equation a bit. If I said, "all you have to worry about is hitting homeruns, I don't care if you strike out, I don't care if you get on base at all...just hit dingers." And then for another player, I go, "you gotta play situational baseball. Take your swings when you can, but play it straight. Try to get on base, advance runners, etc." There's two different green lights there, so to speak. Watching Richard, I don't get the sense that he had much else on his mind than putting the puck in the net. Beliveau, on the other hand, had the entire game on his mind.
I think this post has already over-stayed its welcome and I don't think you'll give it much consideration. But if you gave other players the Fedorov treatment and actually dug in on them, I think it might change your view. Fedorov (or Yzerman or whoever) get the nuanced treatment, everyone else competes in binary world. It creates some very preventable inconsistencies I think.
I will ignore the Fedorov discussion as irrelevant.
It doesn't matter how. It matters how many. Ovechkin scored way more goals than Lemieux, led the league in goals more times than Lemieux, and even has the higher peak season in adjusted goals than Lemieux. Ovechkin >> Lemieux.
I don't know what any of these things mean, so I'll skip.
TL;DR
There are certain criteria I use and they are all pretty consistent.
