HOH 2022-23 Project: Top-60 Pre-Merger Players of All-Time Pre-Discussion thread

[The Macho King]

Incredible work again @rmartin65. I’ve been a newspapers.com subscriber as well, for a few years now, and it’s an invaluable research tool. I highly recommend anyone with a serious interest in hockey history check it out, and your posts are illustrating just how useful these old reports are.

Thank you for compiling all of this information.

It's great and very usable.

 

[Dreakmur]

Not 100% sure, but somewhere around the turn of the century I think. Like 1898-1902? That's interesting, why do you consider that an important fact in excluding Jack Campbell and Weldy Young?

I find it hard to take anything before that really seriously.

 

[BenchBrawl]

I find it hard to take anything before that really seriously.

I understand. I try to see this project as praising early hockey history, more than who has more merit in a calculating way from a modern hockey perspective. That's why I ranked Campbell, Young and Cameron high on my list.

 

[tarheelhockey]

Not 100% sure, but somewhere around the turn of the century I think. Like 1898-1902?

It was invented in 1891 and took off by mid-decade. Of course it's impossible to know what kids were using on ponds and what not, but I think we could safely say high-level leagues were using them by 1895.

That's interesting, why do you consider that an important fact in excluding Jack Campbell and Weldy Young?

TBH I've never even thought of this factor as it relates to early players. Interesting topic.

 

[Dreakmur]

I understand. I try to see this project as praising early hockey history, more than who has more merit in a calculating way from a modern hockey perspective. That's why I ranked Campbell, Young and Cameron high on my list.

For me, the implementation of the third dimension to the net is when hockey truly became a serious sport.

Two boots on the ice just seems too amateur to me.

 

[tarheelhockey]

I find it hard to take anything before that really seriously.

For me, the line between "take seriously" and "don't take seriously" is the number of teams/regions in competition.

If we go back much beyond 1890, we are talking about an environment where there were only a handful of known teams, drawn from an incredibly narrow pool of potential players (geographically and socially). You could literally invite every known "elite" hockey player to see a movie together. I really struggle to call players world-class or judge them against other eras when being the best player in the world meant beating less than 50 guys for that honor. That's comparable to being the best player on a high school football team.

This is where I really struggle with Tom Paton. I included him on my list but it was against my intuition to do so. If we can even say with any real certainty that he was the best goalie in a given season, what would that make him... #1 out of 5 in the early seasons, maybe #1 out of 15 or 20 by the end of his career? Again that's like being the best goalie in a house league environment. I don't mean to discredit the historical significance of that era, but we have to be realistic that the level of play was well below that of what would pass for competitive amateur play just 10 years later.

 

[jigglysquishy]

I only have 5 pre-1873 birthdays on my list.

Paton (1855)
Cameron (1863)
Stewart (?)
Swift (1866)
Young (1871)

After that, you get into guys who played in competitive eras. Mike Grant (1873) played until 1902 and Alf Smith (1873) played until 1909.

There are absolutely pre 1895 players worthy of discussion, but it's not a lot.

 

[Habsfan18]

I understand. I try to see this project as praising early hockey history, more than who has more merit in a calculating way from a modern hockey perspective. That's why I ranked Campbell, Young and Cameron high on my list.

Yup, I struggled with a lot of the early era guys simply based on the fact that the sample size of their overall career is obviously much lower. And because of the calibre of play, obviously. We have much less to go on. But then I actually looked more into the players and figured it was important to bump these players up to give them their due. As someone else mentioned, we wouldn’t want to be voting on players from the 1920’s every single round, although I will admit I obviously have a lot of those players on my ballot. But we can’t ignore the game’s earliest guys. Being one of the best players of any time period has to count for something.

 

[tarheelhockey]

As someone else mentioned, we wouldn’t want to be voting on players from the 1920’s every single round,

That's a bit of a strawman, though. After a certain point, we would be talking about players who didn't accomplish anything. Obviously we're not going to vote for guys who were just replaceable depth players, even if it's in the 1920s. The whole point of the project is to recognize achievements, not mere participation.

To me, the weight of consideration for each era forms a pyramid where the greatest consideration goes to the most recent/developed/competitive era, followed by the next most recent era, and so on. So generally speaking*, the final list would look like this:

- Most accomplished players from the 20s
- 2nd tier players from the 20s + most accomplished players from the 10s
- 3rd tier players from the 20s (if clearly warranted) + 2nd tier players from the 10s + most accomplished players from the 00s
- And so forth.

But, remember that there's also a pyramid in terms of how many players were in the field -- and not an equal-sided pyramid, as we would expect to see a big wide base in the 1920s and a tiny little peak in the 1870s, because that's reflective of the levels of competition in those eras.

Which is all to say, we should expect to be way down the list before we even consider players who peaked during the 1880s, and we shouldn't feel overly compelled to force them onto the list for the sake of representation. We more or less did that with Harvey Pulford on the Defensemen list and it still feels a little goofy that he leapfrogged Zubov to make the cut.

* there will always be exceptions. Gretzky ranks above Crosby because his achievements are of a higher order than Crosby's by virtually all measurements. But that should be a conscious exception, not the result of inattention to the difference between eras.

 

[BenchBrawl]

That's a bit of a strawman, though. After a certain point, we would be talking about players who didn't accomplish anything. Obviously we're not going to vote for guys who were just replaceable depth players, even if it's in the 1920s. The whole point of the project is to recognize achievements, not mere participation.

To me, the weight of consideration for each era forms a pyramid where the greatest consideration goes to the most recent/developed/competitive era, followed by the next most recent era, and so on. So generally speaking*, the final list would look like this:

- Most accomplished players from the 20s
- 2nd tier players from the 20s + most accomplished players from the 10s
- 3rd tier players from the 20s (if clearly warranted) + 2nd tier players from the 10s + most accomplished players from the 00s
- And so forth.

But, remember that there's also a pyramid in terms of how many players were in the field -- and not an equal-sided pyramid, as we would expect to see a big wide base in the 1920s and a tiny little peak in the 1870s, because that's reflective of the levels of competition in those eras.

Which is all to say, we should expect to be way down the list before we even consider players who peaked during the 1880s, and we shouldn't feel overly compelled to force them onto the list for the sake of representation. We more or less did that with Harvey Pulford on the Defensemen list and it still feels a little goofy that he leapfrogged Zubov to make the cut.

* there will always be exceptions. Gretzky ranks above Crosby because his achievements are of a higher order than Crosby's by virtually all measurements. But that should be a conscious exception, not the result of inattention to the difference between eras.

Jack Campbell is an important figure from the infancy era of hockey history and should be celebrated in a project like this. That's my philosophy, and I see no reason to go overboard with the exactness of "all-time value" in this exercise.

 

[rmartin65]

I find it hard to take anything before that really seriously.

I am very surprised to read this type of thinking. Some games in the 1900s had over a thousand spectators, and multiple leagues were covered in multiple papers- it was clearly a big deal to the people of the time.

I don't see much of a difference between your line in the sand and someone who would claim that hockey pre-forward pass shouldn't be taken seriously, or that hockey before Europeans really started playing was a joke, or similar arguments about any number of thing- before the short shift era, before expansion, before the salary cap, before any number of things. It just feels arbitrary, and, in my opinion, not in the spirit of what these projects are about.

EDIT- I meant to write "before the 1900s", haha, we know that games in the 1900s had lots of spectators.

 

[rmartin65]

After that, you get into guys who played in competitive eras. Mike Grant (1873) played until 1902 and Alf Smith (1873) played until 1909.

Mike Grant stopped being an impact player after 1899- the same year Weldy Young went West for non-hockey reasons. In my opinion, the "meat" of their careers overlapped.

There are absolutely pre 1895 players worthy of discussion, but it's not a lot.

Depends on what you think a lot is. To me, there is more up in the air about the early guys. I think there are several guys who may have been worthy of the list, but we won't ever find out because we are never going to have the debate about them, comparing them to one another to find out who was actually the best couple guys of the era.

There are the easy (again, in my opinion) choices like Young, Campbell, Grant, and Paton, but are we really going to say that no forwards from that era were worthy of the list? I listed 3 covers and a goalie just now, but no points or forwards? That seems wild to me, and indicates that we need to be trying to figure out who the best of the crop at those positions were, and then they probably should be on the list.

 

[tarheelhockey]

Jack Campbell is an important figure from the infancy era of hockey history and should be celebrated in a project like this. That's my philosophy, and I see no reason to go overboard with the exactness of "all-time value" in this exercise.

I'm not rejecting Campbell as a candidate, just speaking to the idea that it would be imbalanced to have many 1920s selections and very few selections from the infancy (pre-1890) era. If anything, that would be the expectation unless we're planning to give a really heavy amount of credit to players who played in what amounts to a weekend-warrior environment. That doesn't necessarily exclude all players from the era, but it puts a large onus on justifying them in the same way that there would be a high bar for anyone else based on their "importance" rather than their achievements and excellence as a player.

 

[Habsfan18]

That's a bit of a strawman, though. After a certain point, we would be talking about players who didn't accomplish anything. Obviously we're not going to vote for guys who were just replaceable depth players, even if it's in the 1920s. The whole point of the project is to recognize achievements, not mere participation.

To me, the weight of consideration for each era forms a pyramid where the greatest consideration goes to the most recent/developed/competitive era, followed by the next most recent era, and so on. So generally speaking*, the final list would look like this:

- Most accomplished players from the 20s
- 2nd tier players from the 20s + most accomplished players from the 10s
- 3rd tier players from the 20s (if clearly warranted) + 2nd tier players from the 10s + most accomplished players from the 00s
- And so forth.

But, remember that there's also a pyramid in terms of how many players were in the field -- and not an equal-sided pyramid, as we would expect to see a big wide base in the 1920s and a tiny little peak in the 1870s, because that's reflective of the levels of competition in those eras.

Which is all to say, we should expect to be way down the list before we even consider players who peaked during the 1880s, and we shouldn't feel overly compelled to force them onto the list for the sake of representation. We more or less did that with Harvey Pulford on the Defensemen list and it still feels a little goofy that he leapfrogged Zubov to make the cut.

* there will always be exceptions. Gretzky ranks above Crosby because his achievements are of a higher order than Crosby's by virtually all measurements. But that should be a conscious exception, not the result of inattention to the difference between eras.

Yeah, I get what you mean. I wasn’t trying to imply that I would place 1880’s players on my list simply for the sake of it and to move some good 1920’s players off it just for the sake of balance. But I do think players should be recognized for being among the best of their peers in ANY given time period. My own early lists had excluded some earlier era players and the more research I did on them, the more I believe they absolutely belonged. 3rd tier 1920’s players shouldn’t be on the list over 1st tier 1880’s players.

 

[seventieslord]

tarheel and benchbrawl can both be correct simultaneously here. I'm 100% certain that we should have a good, fair representation of pre-1900 hockey on this list, and I'm also 100% certain that we should and will have a good deal more players from each generation than the one before it.

 

[seventieslord]

If we look at the top-80 from the aggregate list as it exists right now (pre-screening and missing two submissions), there are 11 born in 1875 or before, whom one might call pre-1900 players. There are 25 from 1876-1885, and 37 from 1886-1895. We're going to end up with exactly the pyramid that tarheel described. Let's just make sure we don't go overboard with it. I know I'll be voting for the 5th best pre-1900 player over the 20th best guy from the 1920s if such a choice is presented to me.

 

[jigglysquishy]

I'm at 7, 24, and 49. And I thought I was being too pre 1900 hockey weighted.

For whatever it's worth, I had Campbell at 81.

 

[seventieslord]

I'm at 7, 24, and 49. And I thought I was being too pre 1900 hockey weighted.

For whatever it's worth, I had Campbell at 81.

7, 24 and 44, by the same methodology i used (which cut off the 1896-1899 birthdays)

 

[BenchBrawl]

Jack Campbell is 13th on my list. Great peak over Allan Cameron, who then competed against all the 1890s guys, and then up the chain.

Great peak in the infancy era = Top 20 worthy in a pre-consolidation project.

 

[Habsfan18]

I'm at 7, 24, and 49. And I thought I was being too pre 1900 hockey weighted.

For whatever it's worth, I had Campbell at 81.

By all accounts, Campbell was the much flashier player offensively, but Cameron more solid at stopping the opposition. Campbell may be the first real rushing defenseman/cover-point ever. He may have been the most exciting player of the time period. The more I read about Campbell in particular, he went from not on my early lists at all to being placed somewhere in the early 30’s.

 

[jigglysquishy]

7, 24 and 44, by the same methodology i used (which cut off the 1896-1899 birthdays)

Good catch.

Babe Dye, George Hay, and Harry Oliver are my 3 post 1896.

 

[seventieslord]

I know he's slipped this year, but you've gotta give Campbell credit for reinventing himself in another position and playing until age 147.

Good catch.

Babe Dye, George Hay, and Harry Oliver are my 3 post 1896.

oops, 42. you have 7 post-1895

 

[rmartin65]

By all accounts, Campbell was the much flashier player offensively, but Cameron more solid at stopping the opposition. Campbell may be the first real rushing defenseman/cover-point ever. He may have been the most exciting player of the time period. The more I read about Campbell in particular, he went from not on my early lists at all to being placed somewhere in the early 30’s.

This is something I'm hoping gets fleshed out during the project, because I know this is the popular opinion, but I'm not sold on it after going through the primary sources I saw.

To be clear, I'm not categorically denying the possibility that Cameron was a superior defensive player, but I'd like to hear more evidence before I am convinced.

 

[BenchBrawl]

This is something I'm hoping gets fleshed out during the project, because I know this is the popular opinion, but I'm not sold on it after going through the primary sources I saw.

To be clear, I'm not categorically denying the possibility that Cameron was a superior defensive player, but I'd like to hear more evidence before I am convinced.

Not sold at all neither.

Cameron looked like he became better defensively in the 1890s when he was past his peak, à la George Boucher.

 

[seventieslord]

@VanIslander last seen: "Today at 8:02 AM"

Dude. We need your list.