Gordie Howe's offensive ceiling

[jigglysquishy]

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I'm excited to read what you have collected for the top dman project (even if I am still on the fence on participating). Your work during the goalie project was incredibly valuable and informative.

I've definitely overwhelmed myself. Would love if you could take pre 1910 or 1915 players just to lighten the load.

I've only gotten through Orr, Harvey, Shore, and half of Bourque and Kelly. I've already got a 90 page word document. Definitely harder now with two kids than just one.

I'll likely do my cutoff earlier than 2005. I tried doing some Lidstrom and the early 00s coverage is just too weak.

You get a good feel for matchups, evolution of players, and just a general media awareness. Reading Harvey go from young, promising, but ultimately a nobody, to slowly becoming the consensus best ever is pretty neat.

 

[rmartin65]

I've definitely overwhelmed myself. Would love if you could take pre 1910 or 1915 players just to lighten the load.

I'll definitely share what I have with the group- there is no sense in someone having to duplicate all the effort. So that should cover the pre-1910 period, SC and regular season for the big important (and sometimes not so important) leagues. I can probably find the time to get through the 1910-1915 seasons over the next couple months- taking a quick look at Wikipedia, there looks like there was 10 series I'd need to go through, that shouldn't be a problem. I could probably do a few more, actually, but we can talk that out over PM.

I've only gotten through Orr, Harvey, Shore, and half of Bourque and Kelly. I've already got a 90 page word document. Definitely harder now with two kids than just one.

Haha, kids are the reason I'm doing stuff at 0400!

I'll likely do my cutoff earlier than 2005. I tried doing some Lidstrom and the early 00s coverage is just too weak.

Makes sense- plus, I feel like we probably have enough awareness of those players to get a good idea of who is who.

You get a good feel for matchups, evolution of players, and just a general media awareness. Reading Harvey go from young, promising, but ultimately a nobody, to slowly becoming the consensus best ever is pretty neat.

I always kind of assumed Harvey hit the ground running like a lot of the best players throughout history, so already I'm learning something new!

 

[jigglysquishy]

I always kind of assumed Harvey hit the ground running like a lot of the best players throughout history, so already I'm learning something new!

1947-1950 he's just kind of there for Montreal. English or French, no newspapers give a glimpse of a guy who would be anything more than a high #2/low #1.

1951-1954 though, you start to see some people say he's the best or one of the best in the league. He was inconsistent, criticized as a loafer, and seen as someone who could be elite "when he wanted to be".

1955-1960 he's spoken of as the unquestioned best in the league. He quarterbacked the PP, which is generally called the best ever. His outlet pass is repeatedly praised and multiple papers call him the best defensive defenseman in the world.

He benefited from playing with Emile Bouchard, probably the best defensive defenseman of the late 40s early 50s. Early on, Bouchard stayed back so Harvey could rush. Later on, Harvey had the skillset to do both, but really learned a lot about the game from Bouchard. Montreal ran that mentorship style program a lot in the 1945-1985 period. Tom Johnson is another 50s defenseman that benefited from veterans teaching him.