Can Connor McDavid break up the "big 4"?

[PrimumHockeyist]

He's the only player since 1918 to arguably be the best defensively and best offensively at the same time.

Even after 1973 with his knee injuries he was still elite defensively.

He was a Hart finalist 7 times. Only Gretzky, Howe, and Hull exceeded that ever. He's second only to Gretzky for Hart votes recieved in first 8 years.

Gretzky is great, but I would pick Orr or Lemieux, if it came down to not knowing which players would be healthy for their careers.

Does that 'forward' thinking come up in these conversations, or are they always based on hindsight?

 

[MadLuke]

The people who were there watching Orr's peak thought he was - for extended periods - the second most valuable player on his own team, and the third most valuable player in the NHL

People watching Matthews and McDavid last year said Matthews > McDavid...

I am not sure Lidstrom broke in the Top 5 in Hart more than once, even when he was playing 29 minutes a night.

Voting is quite flawed, specially once you go goaltender vs defenceman vs forward

 

[Dennis Bonvie]

You make a fair point that he was Hart finalist in 7 healthy seasons.

The people who were there watching Orr's peak thought he was - for extended periods - the second most valuable player on his own team, and the third most valuable player in the NHL during a heavily watered down era with two professional leagues, expansion, and pre baby boom. Of course we, 50 years removed, somehow know better, eh?

Can't say that I've heard that before.

Being a Bruins fan living in New England at that time, don't recall anyone having that opinion.

Orr also had a 6th place finish for the Hart trophy as an 18-year-old playing in the last season of the original 06.

And a 4th place finish the next season when he only played 46 games.

 

[Dennis Bonvie]

A defenseman racking up huge points hinges on their assignments. If they are green lighted nearly 100% of the time, it's really not all that different from a forward racking up those kind of points. Opposing teams used Orr's unique deployment against the Bruins in the playoffs.

The points he put up also don't tell the story in the regard.

In the playoffs Orr had 26-66-92 in 74 games and was +60. Won the Conn Smythe twice.

For his career he was +582 in only 657 games.

 

[MadLuke]

The points he put up also don't tell the story in the regard.

Has any player titled the ice more in the favor of his team than prime Orr, R-on/R-off, +/- in any way we can think of ?

Argument can be made than others that did it less did it far longer or against better opposition, but against who they had to face, isn't Orr the one that made a team outscore the opposition the most ? It helped him that he could play a lot too.

 

[jigglysquishy]

In the playoffs Orr had 26-66-92 in 74 games and was +60. Won the Conn Smythe twice.

For his career he was +582 in only 657 games.

For comparison. Between 1968-1975

Orr: +535
Esposito: +289

Orr: 489 EVP
Esposito: 559 EVP

The gap between teammates is insane on the +- front. Esposito averaged an extra minus every second game. Gretzky near doubled Kurri in EVP in his best 7 year stretch, but doesn't approach the +- gap of Orr.

Do we have any proper R on/R off numbers?

 

[MadLuke]

Do we have any proper R on/R off numbers?

Before the server change I remember one message board user here did what looked quite the nice job and extensive, not sure of the method use.

Orr was by itself for prime per game from memory, something like a 2.2 ratio, legion of doom member were also quite high. Career wise was Bourque ?

Some can come with an Asterix, R-off Gretzky was Messier line, a bit like Sakic numbers looking weak when the R-off was Forsberg, while a D like Orr will not have a clear Esposito always on the ice when I am not there going against him.

 

[JackSlater]

This is missing the forest for the trees, in regards to anti defensemen voting.

He's the only d man to ever win the Pearson. And we know the Pearson voting is wonky with conflicting criteria until the 80s.

Orr 3 peated the Hart, then was injured. If he plays every game he likely wins 1973. 74 and 75 are oddities, 1975 in particular. Winning the Art Ross as a defenseman, but losing the Hart says more about the voters than Orr.

If we actually read from contemporaries, the broad opinion is that Orr in the early 70s was the best player of all time. Bowman (in Dryden's book) is very clear about Orr being the best. The newspaper sources are endless. I just finished the 1972 book, and there are lots of players who are firm in Orr being a clear tier to himself as the best player in the world. Players, journalists, fans, Soviets. It's just so evident.

We can pull up Bruins footage from 1969-1975. How can anyone watch this is and not see Orr is just a complete tier onto himself?

Award voting isn't everything, especially with such a clearly established and long lasting bias in place.

Yeah I think people don't bother considering how the Hart is voted for and just blindly look at the data as proof of something that is quite different. Esposito being better than Orr was always a very fringe opinion. Matthews won the Hart and the Lindsay last year even though McDavid was better/more valuable and pretty much no one would actually claim that Matthews was the better player. It's not uncommon at all. I found the NHL player poll results for 2019 both funny and obvious when Kucherov won the Hart and Lindsay, but no one really considered him actually the best player in hockey, not that it's a slight to Kucherov.

I do think that actually watching the players when possible is important, Esposito and Orr in particular.

For comparison. Between 1968-1975

Orr: +535
Esposito: +289

Orr: 489 EVP
Esposito: 559 EVP

The gap between teammates is insane on the +- front. Esposito averaged an extra minus every second game. Gretzky near doubled Kurri in EVP in his best 7 year stretch, but doesn't approach the +- gap of Orr.

Do we have any proper R on/R off numbers?

I believe this is the data from their time together.

Year	Esposito R On	Esposito R Off	Esposito Ratio	Orr R On	Orr R Off	Orr Ratio
1968	1.37	1.21	+13%	1.76	1.10	+60%
1969	2.00	1.11	+80%	2.22	1.06	+109%
1970	1.63	1.26	+29%	1.93	0.99	+95%
1971	2.17	1.82	+19%	3.23	1.30	+148%
1972	1.91	1.37	+39%	2.49	1.09	+128%
1973	1.14	1.49	-23%	1.90	1.08	+76%
1974	1.56	1.62	-4%	1.96	1.25	+57%
1975	1.28	1.46	-12%	2.04	0.90	+127%

The data isn't the be all and end all but Orr blows Esposito away every single year, sometimes drastically, and that's even when Esposito was given the Hart. I do not think that looking at special teams data or team factors would help Esposito bridge the gap at all, and probably it would make Orr even more impressive. This isn't a shot at Esposito by any stretch either, it's just very clear that he had a teammate that was on a whole other level.

 

[Hockey Outsider]

From @overpass's spreadsheet:

YEAR	R-ON	R-OFF	CHANGE
1967​	0.99​	0.58​	72%​
1968​	1.76​	1.10​	60%​
1969​	2.22​	1.06​	109%​
1970​	1.93​	0.99​	94%​
1971​	3.23​	1.30​	148%​
1972​	2.49​	1.09​	129%​
1973​	1.90​	1.08​	75%​
1974​	1.96​	1.25​	57%​
1975​	2.04​	0.90​	127%​

Over the course of Orr's prime, the Bruins were almost twice as good (at ES) when he was on the ice, compared to when he was off. That's an absurd level of performance.

None of the other big four are close to this. (When the NHL released plus/minus component data going back to 1960, it showed that - as described by contemporary accounts - Gordie Howe, despite being past his peak, was a very strong two-way player, at least relative to the rest of his team). Post-peak Howe, believe it or not, looked better than both Gretzky and Lemieux by this metric (but still way behind Orr).

For Orr's entire career, his teams were approximately 95% more effective at ES when he was on the ice (compared to when he wasn't). The next closest players (min 500 games played - as of 2020) were far back, at around 50-60%. And many of those were players with short careers who (like Orr) didn't have their numbers dragged down by aging (Forsberg, Lindros, Bossy, etc). There's context to any stat but I don't think the numbers or the "eye test" suggests that Orr was in any way cheating on defensive responsibilities to score all the points he did.

 

[Midnight Judges]

Can't say that I've heard that before.

Being a Bruins fan living in New England at that time, don't recall anyone having that opinion.

The actual historical record proves otherwise.

 

[MadLuke]

The actual historical record proves otherwise.

Just for a test, do you think the players that voted Yzerman for the Pearson in 1989 did so because they thought he was better at hockey (in general or that year) than Wayne Gretzky and Mario Lemieux ?

Or there is significantly more going on with awards than purely who is the best at hockey ? Like who won last year, careers, friendship, personality, hatred, voted for him for the vezina or norris already share the love and so on. Without going over more obvious bias when talking about the press voting and who they watch, follow, travel with.

 

[Hockey Outsider]

The actual historical record proves otherwise.

During his nine years in Boston, Orr ranked 1st in Hart voting among the Bruins six times (1967, 1968, 1970, 1971, 1972 and 1975). He finished behind Esposito three times (he was injured in one of those seasons - 1973).

Even before considering the Hart being biased against defensemen (for 70 years now), isn't that pretty good evidence that Orr was considered the better player? (Not to mention the two Conn Smythes?)

 

[TheStatican]

The Oilers powerplay going from awful to all time largely explains the interseason change. In 2018, McDavid won the Art Ross by 6 points. Fairly boring at first glance, until you see the Oilers had the worst powerplay in the league. Even a 15th place powerplay transforms his 108 points to 120 and the 6 point margin into a very strong 18 point margin. I believe that's the only Art Ross in history to come from a league worst powerplay.

Not sure that's something we can give him 'credit' for. McDavid has always been the most important player on the Oilers powerplay. The fact that it did so poorly that year also reflects on him and his performance.

 

[Matsun]

I think McDavid might have a chance of passing Howe because I think McDavid might be peaking higher right now. Also, there is this.
Top 5 finishes

Howe	McDavid
20	7

Top 3 finishes

Howe	McDavid
12	7

Top 2 finishes

Howe	McDavid
7	7

Art Ross

Howe	McDavid
6	5

I don't think McDavid has a shot at catching Howe in Top 5 finishes, but I think he can end up with a high number there. Other than that McDavid is already super close in finishes at the very very top. Let's say it ends up something like this:
Top 5 finishes

Howe	McDavid
20	14

Top 3 finishes

Howe	McDavid
12	13

Top 2 finishes

Howe	McDavid
7	11

Art Ross

Howe	McDavid
6	8

McDavid would obviously need to start winning also, but I don't think Howe is as out of reach as it might seem. Atleast McDavid has the chance to make it an interesting debate if he has some team success.

Also here are most top 2 finishes ever, incredible stuff from McDavid...

Gretzky	13
Esposito	8
Lemieux	7
Howe	7
McDavid	7
Jagr	7
Hull	6

I've always felt that Howes peak is attainable in a way the other 3 guys aren't. His peak might be highest outside of the 3 other guys (I lean Hasek though), but his outstanding career more than make up for it. It's hard for me to rank the top 4. Wayne is easy 1 because he had both career and insane peak. I don't even know if Howe is 4th for me, but he is weirdly the one I think is easiest to knock out of the top 4. I have a harder time ranking McDavid ahead of Mario when I'm pretty confident that Mario would beat McDavid head to head. It's weird.

 

[sr edler]

Why are you all obsessed wit Big 4?

People here are a little bit obsessed with rankings in general. Particularly in the sense of building paper resumes that almost look like job applications sometimes, where you brush off (or hide completely) all the rough edges.

 

[MarotteMarauder]

Let me know when another defenseman wins the Art Ross by over 20% the 2nd place guy. Also be on the lookout when another player is +124 in a season.

Then I will listen about that player moving Bobby Orr off his perch.

 

[Michael Farkas]

I know, in this case, the answer is painfully obvious - Orr was unreal and virtually everything in history corroborates that - there's a ton of Bruins games out there from this era...and, if you're even a little bit sharp, you won't have to even get through a whole game before you realize how much better Orr was than Esposito (respectfully) and everyone (less respectfully)...

 

[BraveCanadian]

As great as Orr was I do quibble with the R-On and R-Off comparison in his case because he has no remotely close off ice comparable on his team or in the league. Then again, that is also an argument in his favour. I just think it skews the numbers when comparing to say a Sakic / Forsberg or Yzerman / Fedorov who have comparables on their team.

 

[Staniowski]

As great as Orr was I do quibble with the R-On and R-Off comparison in his case because he has no remotely close off ice comparable on his team or in the league. Then again, that is also an argument in his favour. I just think it skews the numbers when comparing to say a Sakic / Forsberg or Yzerman / Fedorov who have comparables on their team.

Yes, I was looking at R-On, R-Off the other day...I never paid any attention to it before, I assumed it was something dumb, and it certainly is. I don't know where this metric came from but it looks like something designed by a 6-year-old who doesn't yet know how the world works.

The central problem with it, of course, is that it has relatively little to do with the player you are focusing on. It depends overwhelmingly on who the other players are.

In the case of Bobby Orr, he is going to look excellent no matter what. But....take, for example, '70-'71....Orr is playing mostly with Dallas Smith, and Don Awrey is playing mostly with Ted Green (I think), and Rick Smith is #5 and getting very little ice-time.

So, they are basically playing 4 defensemen. And both pairs would be playing with each of the lines - centred by Sanderson, Esposito, Stanfield....3 good lines.

So, in this situation, the R-On, R-Off is mostly saying that Bobby Orr is a much, much better player (mostly offensively) than Ted Green and Don Awrey....right?

But if you simply change a couple players, the result can be wildly different, even though Orr stayed the same.

Conclusion is you can't compare players with this metric.

 

[MadLuke]

The central problem with it, of course, is that it has relatively little to do with the player you are focusing on. It depends overwhelmingly on who the other players are.

Not so sure about that, delta between player will tend to be larger than the delta of the average players of the rest of the teams.

Forsberg has superb metric despite tending to play a lot of a great team with Joe Sakic and others, Gretzky has well, they were better than the average nhler more than the rest of their teams were better than the average bottom 9.

It is obviously quite limited (poor Oilers Messier and poor second pair of D being evaluated with an R-off of mostly Orr).

Every metric will have many clear you can't compare players with it angle.

 

[Sentinel]

I'd take early 90's Lemieux over the current McDavid.

Why? Lemieux lost the 1991 Hart to Brett Hull, 1992 Hart to Messier, and in 1992-93 missed a huge chunk of the season to cancer.

On the subject: so people are just going to ignore Hasek's two Harts, six Vezinas, an Olympic Gold medal, and two Cups? I argued for him over Lemieux because of the nature of his position (and he was voted the best in his position six times to Lemieux's five). It did not get much traction. I can live with Hasek being #5 behind Lemieux but I don't see McDavid overtaking Hasek and not overtaking Lemieux as well.

 

[Sentinel]

To your point about the cancer thing I woild differ on what you suggest about Orr. His MVP performance in the 1976 Canada Cup is just as epic to me, and that's saying a lot. Playing on one leg. Who does that?

Steve Yzerman in 2002.

 

[Nadal On Clay]

I think it’s reasonable to project that he’s gonna end his career as the 2nd best, only behind Gretzky, barring any major injuries. What he is accomplishing right now is completely remarkable.

 

[Hockey Outsider]

Yes, hockey stats require context. That's why when posting R-ON/OFF data I've made comments such as the following:

"On the other hand, I recognized that looking strictly at the improvement (from when a player is on the ice to off the ice) is punitive to players who were on strong teams, like Lidstrom and Messier (which I talked about in my discussion of both)... As with any data I post, the intention is to start a conversation and maybe get people to consider things from a different perspective (which I think is happening). But I wouldn't take the data... as definitive."

"I think this metric might be somewhat unfair to him [Malkin]. Since he usually doesn't play with Crosby at ES, his R-OFF number contains a lot of Crosby's performance. You see the same thing with Mark Messier in Edmonton - his R-OFF contains a lot of Wayne Gretzky, so his ON/OFF ratio wasn't very good. I think, in a case like this, we can probably conclude that this metric isn't fair for Malkin (it wasn't fair for Messier either, until Gretzky was traded away)".

"Of course it's not a perfect metric -Guy Lapointe has 2nd worst absolute difference, and one of the 20 worst ratios, because we're comparing him to Robinson-Savard."

"A mixed bag, but more disappointing than not. Horton's R-on during the Leafs dynasty was objectively quite strong, but the R-Off was even stronger... Still, I don't think this is uncommon for primarily defensive defensemen (the results for Stevens and Langway look similar)."

"Messier's results aren't great... but we need to take a deeper look. He consistently had a strong R-ON ratio while he was on the ice, but he doesn't look great according to this metric because his teams generally had strong R-OFF ratios. Not surprising as, in many of these years, Gretzky and Kurri were dominating at even-strength."

"Bossy's numbers are pretty similar to Trottier's for the years they overlap... their R-ON and R-OFFs are virtually identical during the Drive for Five (not surprising as they were linemates). Bossy looks better than Trottier during 1978 and 1979 (pre dynasty). Their R-ON and R-OFF are, again, almost identical during Bossy's last three seasons... Lesson - R-ON ratios probably won't tell you much when comparing long-time linemates."

"I agree that Lemieux's ability to drive his team's goal differential at ES, although great, is much less than Orr and Gretzky's [based on R-ON/OFF data]... But Lemieux is almost certainly the greatest PP performer of all-time. PP goals, of course, count just as much as ones at even-strength."

"Remember that these numbers take into account ES play only - MacInnis was a major contributor on the powerplay and penalty kill."

"[re Chris Neil] - occasionally a depth player will post phenomenal results and will appear to be the best player on their team. This sometimes happens with players getting limited and sheltered minutes (so we have a combination of small sample sizes, which makes it more likely for there to be flukes, and easier-than-average match-ups, which means we don't have an apples-to-apples comparison). When we're comparing top-pairing players who are routinely playing 12-18 minutes at ES per game, generally facing challenging match-ups, we can probably compare them to each other (with the caveats I had before about how no stat is all-encompassing). But I wouldn't use this data to compare Alfredsson to Neil (Andre Roy and Wade Belak are two other players who have, surprisingly, phenomenal results by the metric)."

I'll refrain from posting other examples. I try to be careful - probably excessively so - in talking about the limitations, and key assumptions, for any stats that I'm presenting. (These are posts on a hockey message board... not a doctoral thesis).

Maybe the response to that is there's so much context that the stat should be discarded. But if the stat is showing that the greatest "two-way" players ever include Orr, Clarke, Howe, Forsberg, Crosby, Bergeron, Trottier, Bourque, Pronger, Mark Howe, Modano, Gilmour, Datsyuk, Francis, Kopitar, Zetterberg, etc- there's probably some value in it. (Plus some one-dimensional forwards like Gretzky, Jagr, Lindros and Hull - who were so good offensively, their lack of conventional defense didn't matter). And if a player looks surprisingly bad (ie Malkin, Messier and Lapointe) - let's try to understand why, rather than ignoring the data altogether.

 

[crobro]

Lemieux has something that no else has done

Become a full owner of a big 4 Sport franchise while still in his 30’s

And then came out of retirement to play for them (at a high Level)