Do You Think Ovechkin's Legacy Will Improve over Time

[CactusCap]

Intently watching 100+ years of hockey

Sure whatever you need to tell yourself bud.

 

[Michael Farkas]

Sure whatever you need to tell yourself bud.

Well, it's either that or I can speak in riddles and innuendo and hope that people will fall for it...

 

[WarriorofTime]

Good question, in about 50 years, if someone look at stats, Ovi will be number one in the most valueble stat.

Even though I think Crosby is better and will be judged consensus as better, they’ll probably always be associated together and perhaps grouped together in the history lore. They came into league together and were basically neck and neck for a while. Once Crosby was clearly better, he stopped winning individual hardware in his own right and didn’t run up a monster award gap accordingly. Plus Ovechkin maintained his relevance being the league’s best goal scorer. The Crosby “milestone” thread is basically the “we have records at home” version of Ovechkin, who got the famous record (that only loses significance if it’s surpassed in next 12 years or so).

My guess is that cohort when league was early to mid millennials will be viewed as the “Crosby and Ovechkin era” and not “Crosby and some other guys like Ovechkin, Malkin, etc.”

 

[CactusCap]

Well, it's either that or I can speak in riddles and innuendo and hope that people will fall for it...

No it’s fine. It’s because he’s not Canadian and worse he’s Russian. It’s 100% that. Always has been that. Always will be that. We are talking about a player that has done things many people have never seen before. Things done only by Wayne Gretzky and Gordie Howe. It’s whatever. I’m done talking about it. I used to try to engage in these until it became obvious it was personal/political with Ovechkin. Go visit Reddit hockey for even more fantastic takes on his prowess.

 

[Bear of Bad News]

No it’s fine. It’s because he’s not Canadian and worse he’s Russian. It’s 100% that. Always has been that. Always will be that. We are talking about a player that has done things many people have never seen before. Things done only by Wayne Gretzky and Gordie Howe. It’s whatever. I’m done talking about it. I used to try to engage in these until it became obvious it was personal/political with Ovechkin. Go visit Reddit hockey for even more fantastic takes on his prowess.

Particularly in this subforum, people have watched and studied enough hockey history that there are valid reasons to have Ovechkin outside the top ten.

If you're only willing to ascribe one potential reason, you're missing out on a lot of discussion (and if you're only willing to ascribe one potential reason, I can see why you'd be "done talking about it").

Do I have Ovechkin in my top ten? I actually don't know - I haven't gone to the effort of making a rigorous list (and it *is* an effort to do it well). Most people who cherry pick others' lists haven't tried making their own and standing it up for scrutiny.

 

[Michael Farkas]

No it’s fine. It’s because he’s not Canadian and worse he’s Russian. It’s 100% that. Always has been that. Always will be that. We are talking about a player that has done things many people have never seen before. Things done only by Wayne Gretzky and Gordie Howe. It’s whatever. I’m done talking about it. I used to try to engage in these until it became obvious it was personal/political with Ovechkin. Go visit Reddit hockey for even more fantastic takes on his prowess.

Well, I have Fetisov, among others ahead of Ovechkin. So the whole jingoist angle falls apart pretty quickly there. I know it's incomprehensible that anyone can have a different opinion without "BIAS!" but sometimes it happens legitimately...

I wouldn't say you're done talking about it, because that would insinuate that you ever started...

 

[WarriorofTime]

Russian is part of but not sole reason people have a big hate thing for Ovechkin compared to others. Ovechkin’s legacy will likely improve as the unreasonable hate dies down which you’d expect naturally when say he’s retired a decade.

 

[wetcoast]

We compare their careers. Not 9 years Vs 9 years. McDavid has a chance to be ranked above Ovechkin in the future. Time will tell

So the answer would be no then eh?

It's not a hard question and that's why he is trending higher with a bullet.

 

[MadLuke]

Russian is part of but not sole reason people have a big hate thing for Ovechkin compared to others. Ovechkin’s legacy will likely improve as the unreasonable hate dies down which you’d expect naturally when say he’s retired a decade.

A little bit of Jagr legacy aging will probably occur, the main negative point about Ovechkin was not winning the Cup on those great teams in his prime, second one was the peak being relatively short and some down year (longevity will make up for those, having won the cup will make up for the first one)

Jagr not winning without Mario (or worst, with him from time to time), Washington sign/what the caps did with him were the 2 big one, but people looking back now, 2 cups, a legit great cup winning run in 1992, great career numbers in the playoff, what was that all about ?

Not a winner Ovechkin talking point will also not survive we can imagine

 

[Midnight Judges]

A little bit of Jagr legacy aging will probably occur, the main negative point about Ovechkin was not winning the Cup on those great teams in his prime...

When did they have a great team?

Their blue line lacked depth until Orpik and Niskanen arrived in 2014. Their goaltending was inconsistent at best prior to Holtby breaking out in 2012. They never had a legit 2C (aside from Ribeiro in 1 season) until Kuznetsov upped his game in 2015. Then once they had those things they won a cup.

 

[TrKB PAM]

When did they have a great team?

Their blue line lacked depth until Orpik and Niskanen arrived in 2014. Their goaltending was inconsistent at best prior to Holtby breaking out in 2012. They never had a legit 2C (aside from Ribeiro in 1 season) until Kuznetsov upped his game in 2015. Then once they had those things they won a cup.

By 2017, Ovechkin's Caps had won three Presidents trophies and never advanced past the 2nd round. The gap between regular season performance and playoff success for the team was quite wide.

 

[Midnight Judges]

Well, I have Fetisov, among others ahead of Ovechkin. So the whole jingoist angle falls apart pretty quickly there.

Plucking a Russian player out of history in an attempt to insult a player you don't favor does no such thing.

Not saying you are guilty of jingoism or whatever - just pointing out the fallaciousness of your argument.

But yeah Jordan Staal is better than Sidney Crosby. There. Now I can never be accused of bias against Canadians or Penguins. Boom. Done. My objectivity is hereby unimpeachable - solidified forever simply by typing one gibberish sentence. Man, doing this 'credibility' thing sure does have a low bar.

 

[Midnight Judges]

By 2017, Ovechkin's Caps had won three Presidents trophies and never advanced past the 2nd round. The gap between regular season performance and playoff success for the team was quite wide.

The 2016 and 2017 teams were indeed solid. They actually lost some very good players and then won a cup in 2018. And the only team they lost to in 16 and 17 won the cup, and Pittsburgh did not have an easy time winning those games. Then they beat Pittsburgh in 2018.

The 2010 team had glaring weaknesses at G, C, and D. Yes, they could run up a score, but outside of Mike Green the rest of the blue line was essentially out of the NHL within a few years. (Carlson played 22 games that season and became an excellent player, but he wasn't yet).

So again, that's like 2 or 3 years where Ovie had a great team prior to winning the cup.

 

[WarriorofTime]

The 2016 and 2017 teams were indeed solid. They actually lost some very good players and then won a cup in 2018.

The 2010 team had glaring weaknesses at G, C, and D. Outside of Mike Green the rest of the blue line was essentially out of the NHL within a few years. (Carlson played 22 games that season and became an excellent player, but he wasn't yet).

So again, that's like 2 or 3 years where Ovie had a great team prior to winning the cup.

The NHL’s quirky playoff format also meant they met and had no opportunity not to meet the Stanley Cup winner in 2016 and 2017. They could have been the two best teams in the league (not saying they necessarily were) in all of 2016, 2017 and 2018 with no possibility to meet any later than when they did.

Caps circa 2009 and 2010 certainly had a lot of firepower but were a flawed team for sure. Their regular season team success was in part fueled by being in a really bad division.

Conference finals being a unique and of high significant categorization in and of itself is not something I’ve really ever seen applied outside the context of Ovechkin. Do people generally know off hand the last time various teams made the conference finals, compared to say winning a cup, making the cup finals or making the playoffs?

 

[Michael Farkas]

Plucking a Russian player out of history in an attempt to insult a player you don't favor does no such thing.

Not saying you are guilty of jingoism or whatever - just pointing out the fallaciousness of your argument.

But yeah Jordan Staal is better than Sidney Crosby. There. Now I can never be accused of bias against Canadians or Penguins. Boom. Done. My objectivity is hereby unimpeachable - solidified forever simply by typing one gibberish sentence. Man, doing this 'credibility' thing sure does have a low bar.

I don't have an argument in this regard. The blind insinuation is that "I have to think the same way as this person, otherwise I am biased...specifically, biased against Russians and/or non-Canadians".

If I hated Russians, there'd be clues...I could generally ignore the Soviet teams, but instead I think I'm higher than almost anyone on Fetisov. I think I was one of the only people that had Vasilevskiy top 10 in the last goalie project. I wouldn't have a Maxim Afinogenov jersey hanging in my home haha...ya know, there'd be clues.

What I do have is guys like Ovechkin, Mo Richard, and Ted Lindsay down further than most people...not because they're Russian...but because...well...you know...

But like you said, I'm not coming from jingo-town...but yet tried to sabotage my point anyway, even though you agree with me haha - life's tough on the night shift...

 

[MeHateHe]

Particularly in this subforum, people have watched and studied enough hockey history that there are valid reasons to have Ovechkin outside the top ten.

If you're only willing to ascribe one potential reason, you're missing out on a lot of discussion (and if you're only willing to ascribe one potential reason, I can see why you'd be "done talking about it").

Do I have Ovechkin in my top ten? I actually don't know - I haven't gone to the effort of making a rigorous list (and it *is* an effort to do it well). Most people who cherry pick others' lists haven't tried making their own and standing it up for scrutiny.

This is why you're my third or fourth favourite moderator. (You'd move up in the list if you'd get on board with my not-unreasonable demands for extra stringent moderation in this forum and in the business forum, and for a dedicated, moderated sub-forum on specific officiating decisions, oh, and a no-whining ordinance is long overdue, but maybe I digress.)

The entire conceit of this discussion is about the legacy of a player who hasn't retired yet, and here we are bogged down in another complaint about bias, which has the luxury of being pretty much impossible to disprove. (The drive-by smears of respected posters are out of line, IMO, which goes back to my desire for more stringent moderation. There are posters here who have watched the game for more than 19 seasons and can reliably look beyond a current era of players.)

 

[Bear of Bad News]

This is why you're my third or fourth favourite moderator. (You'd move up in the list if you'd get on board with my not-unreasonable demands for extra stringent moderation in this forum and in the business forum, and for a dedicated, moderated sub-forum on specific officiating decisions, oh, and a no-whining ordinance is long overdue, but maybe I digress.)

I agree with you broadly on these requests, but I have great news for you on the last one:

Thread 'What we need around here is an anti-whining ordinance.'

Apr 3, 2018

This has gotten worse over the past few months, so I'm posting here about it now.

There are a fair number of people on these boards who only want to read two types of things on the NHL Talk board: (1) good news about their team and players, and (2) bad news about their rivals' teams and players. And when they feel that there's "too much" of talk that isn't in one of those two buckets, they like to openly discuss whether or not the threads belong here.

Let the staff do our jobs. General pointers: if enough people skip threads, they disappear on their own. If a thread is breaking a rule...

• Bear of Bad News
• Replies: 6
• Forum: National Hockey League Talk

• 
• 
• 

I'd sign up for an officiating decision subforum right now if I was promised that I'd never have to go in and moderate it.

 

[daver]

It blows my mind that we have this many sad pathetic people watching hockey who would willingly argue for hours and hours that Alex f***ing ovechkin isn’t one of the 10 greatest players to ever play the game. There is only one reason this happens and we all know what it is.

Hours and hours?

Hold my beer.

 

[MadLuke]

When did they have a great team?

When they were a +85 winning president trophy with good margin...

This thread has nothing to do with factual, legacy is what people think and it would be revisionist to say that they were no negative for a while about Ovechkin never going past the second round despite having the chance of playing on good teams.

Narrative which will die down over time, not only he won one but could well end up in the 170 playoff games club, like Joe Sakic and Bergeron

 

[WarriorofTime]

Wingers are underrated. How many teams win cups without true number 1 wingers? If you don’t have a true number 1 winger you better have like two generational-ish centers.

 

[Gerulaitis]

Yup, folks can count all right...

The one season he made a concerted effort to shoot more and take more pucks to the net, he put in 65 or whatever it was and led the league. Just like when another, uh, not amazing goal scorer in Crosby led the league in goals, effectively, on a dare...

It's interesting how the smart, balanced attackers can do things like that...even though goals are just so darn hard, while you can trip over two assists just walking into the rink haha

I just don't feel like enough work has been done here to really dig into to the anatomy of a goal to justify some of these really large scale arguments...

So basically McDavid can score at will?

 

[CactusCap]

Well, I have Fetisov, among others ahead of Ovechkin. So the whole jingoist angle falls apart pretty quickly there. I know it's incomprehensible that anyone can have a different opinion without "BIAS!" but sometimes it happens legitimately...

I wouldn't say you're done talking about it, because that would insinuate that you ever started...

These debates have been going on for 2 decades now. Not all of us had usernames that have survived that timeframe. Ovechkin’s main problem is that he was so coachable he actually listened to Dale Hunter and did what he asked him to do. This gave his detractors the little blip they needed to say, “AHA! I knew he was bad! See! Only 30 goals and never trusted with defense!” It’s fine. I just know and i think most others do to, that these and really his whole career/criticism would be vastly different if he played for or was born in Canada. People get so steeped in their insistence of things they grasp at anything to justify their intransigence as Ovechkin proves them wrong time after time after time. They use their random and sometimes absurd justifications against Ovechkin’s current peers to elevate past players over him. It’s not that complex. He’s one of the greatest players of all-time and emphatically the greatest Russian NHL career of all time.

 

[Gerulaitis]

Plucking a Russian player out of history in an attempt to insult a player you don't favor does no such thing.

Not saying you are guilty of jingoism or whatever - just pointing out the fallaciousness of your argument.

But yeah Jordan Staal is better than Sidney Crosby. There. Now I can never be accused of bias against Canadians or Penguins. Boom. Done. My objectivity is hereby unimpeachable - solidified forever simply by typing one gibberish sentence. Man, doing this 'credibility' thing sure does have a low bar.

I don't usually agree with Farkas, but this a legit argument for Fetisov to be ranked above Ovechkin.

Then my top 5 (skaters) could be:

1 Orr
T2. Gretzky, Lemieux
4. Howe
5. Fetisov
6. Ovechkin

 

[Michael Farkas]

So basically McDavid can score at will?

At will? That's probably not a fair characterization of anyone, no. But he can turn it on and off because he has dimension to his game. He can certainly out score his shooting prowess, as we see...that's why he can score so many points. He can take it to the hole over and over and then when the defense adjusts to that, he adjusts back and makes some incredible cross net line pass...for Zach Hyman to do the, apparently, super-human action of...tapping it into a wide open net haha

 

[WarriorofTime]

These debates have been going on for 2 decades now. Not all of us had usernames that have survived that timeframe. Ovechkin’s main problem is that he was so coachable he actually listened to Dale Hunter and did what he asked him to do. This gave his detractors the little blip they needed to say, “AHA! I knew he was bad! See! Only 30 goals and never trusted with defense!” It’s fine. I just know and i think most others do to, that these and really his whole career/criticism would be vastly different if he played for or was born in Canada. People get so steeped in their insistence of things they grasp at anything to justify their intransigence as Ovechkin proves them wrong time after time after time. They use their random and sometimes absurd justifications against Ovechkin’s current peers to elevate past players over him. It’s not that complex. He’s one of the greatest players of all-time and emphatically the greatest Russian NHL career of all time.

Yeah don’t worry. You’re not crazy. People have been acting weird about Russian guys for about thirty years. There’s a reason Michkov prospect thread was way longer than comparable players. One guy was borderline losing his mind about Michkov scoring apparently a lot of points against a Chinese goalie in the khl and reciting off a list of random Russian busts a bunch of whom were like 3rd round-undrafted players. It’s definitely a thing and always been a thing. Hockey media, random internet people, etc. I guess because the Soviet teams were largely “faceless” products of the communist government and then one day all of a sudden a bunch of Russian dudes came to the nhl and some didn’t immediately fit in with the cultural vibe, and then geopolitics right now, etc. but yeah it’s a thing. Mogilny is probably in the hall of fame already if he’s from Minnesota.