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

[Michael Farkas]

Best = most talented? That's a lot of scouting work...

 

[ResilientBeast]

Related note, for all those that do original newspaper digging, please let me know if you find games that I don't have with positions . I can make a google sheet bounty list of something similar to fill in the gaps, I'm trying to have pretty full picture of every single game

I'd love to have complete position logs for ECHA/NHA/PCHA/WCHL/NHL

My eastern league work was largely centered around Taylor so most gaps are because I didn't aggressively search for non Ottawa/Renfrew games and then once he went west in 1912 I stopped worrying about it at the time.

I've been aiming to try and have a copy from a home/away paper for most of these games, and my PCHA based coverage is currently a lot better, but I'll be revving up the research machine soon

RB's ECHA/NHA/NHL Position Thread

RB's PCHA/WCHL/WHL Position Thread

Edit: Peel's Prairie Provinces - Sources for Western Canada and Western Canadian History If you want to hunt through western papers the University of Alberta has this free resource. It's search function isn't particularly great, but you can find some good information if you're willing to put in the effort for the PCHA and WCHL

 

[seventieslord]

Related note, for all those that do original newspaper digging, please let me know if you find games that I don't have with positions . I can make a google sheet bounty list of something similar to fill in the gaps, I'm trying to have pretty full picture of every single game

I'd love to have complete position logs for ECHA/NHA/PCHA/WCHL/NHL

My eastern league work was largely centered around Taylor so most gaps are because I didn't aggressively search for non Ottawa/Renfrew games and then once he went west in 1912 I stopped worrying about it at the time.

I've been aiming to try and have a copy from a home/away paper for most of these games, and my PCHA based coverage is currently a lot better, but I'll be revving up the research machine soon

RB's ECHA/NHA/NHL Position Thread

RB's PCHA/WCHL/WHL Position Thread

Edit: Peel's Prairie Provinces - Sources for Western Canada and Western Canadian History If you want to hunt through western papers the University of Alberta has this free resource. It's search function isn't particularly great, but you can find some good information if you're willing to put in the effort for the PCHA and WCHL

Have you reached out to @Iain Fyffe for his information? I think he's already done all this work.

 

[ResilientBeast]

Have you reached out to @Iain Fyffe for his information? I think he's already done all this work.

I sent an email a while ago mainly about his point allocation system but never heard anything back so I just kinda finished the system naively (not worrying about league/position values) and then started chunking through scans

And especially since he's not active around here anymore, thought I may as well do the work for the ATDers

Edit: It's always worth someone reproducing a project like that anyway, especially since I've saved the scans mainly for bio building

 

[ResilientBeast]

@rmartin65 and I have been casually talking about goalies in PMs

What's everyone's feeling on the crop of candidates? Looking at our past top 40 goalie list

Vezina
Benedict
Lehman
Holmes
LeSueur
Connell

Are all that made the list, how many more deserving candidates do we feel are out there?

Off the top of my head (just throwing goalies from the period out there) Riley Hern, Bert Lindsay, Ross Roach (ineligible?), Paddy Moran, Bouse Hutton?

 

[seventieslord]

@rmartin65 and I have been casually talking about goalies in PMs

What's everyone's feeling on the crop of candidates? Looking at our past top 40 goalie list

Vezina
Benedict
Lehman
Holmes
LeSueur
Connell

Are all that made the list, how many more deserving candidates do we feel are out there?

Off the top of my head (just throwing goalies from the period out there) Riley Hern, Bert Lindsay, Ross Roach, Paddy Moran, Bouse Hutton?

The top-5 should be shoo-ins, Connell is ineligible (post-merger)

From the 2nd list:

Hern, Moran and Hutton should all be considered. So should Billy Nicholson and especially Tom Paton. Nicholson would likely miss the cut but he did a lot over a long period of time and I hope he gets discussed.

Lindsay was a guy who was "just there", I doubt there's room for him.

Roach is surely post-merger.

 

[seventieslord]

Hern, Moran and Hutton shouldn't just be considered, they probably should be in. On a top-60 list, what's the correct number of goalies? 8-9? The seeming consensus top-5 are all from the same generation too, and I don't think I like the way that looks. Lesueur is a tad older than them, then those next three are all the same age. That already gets us to 9 before we even think of Paton (who was more dominant in his own era than any of them).

 

[ResilientBeast]

Hern, Moran and Hutton shouldn't just be considered, they probably should be in. On a top-60 list, what's the correct number of goalies? 8-9? The seeming consensus top-5 are all from the same generation too, and I don't think I like the way that looks. Lesueur is a tad older than them, then those next three are all the same age. That already gets us to 9 before we even think of Paton (who was more dominant in his own era than any of them).

This was kinda where @rmartin65 and I ended up, that if we try to get the same proportions of goalies from the top 100/200 a couple guys not often considered will get to shine in the sun

Goal tending all the way from the dawn of hockey to Clint Benedict underwent such a massive change that they're going to be the hardest position I think for voters to compare.

Haviland Routh scoring buckets of goals in the 1890s is easier to reconcile with Bowie doing the same in the 1900s and then Malone in the 1910s but goaltending was completely different

 

[seventieslord]

I just scanned through Iain Fyffe's lists of 1880s-1920s players and there's really no one there that we haven't already discussed, and he even has them pretty much in the order we would:

For post-1910:
Benedict
Vezina
Lehman
Holmes
Lesueur

For 1900s:
Moran
Hern
Hutton

For 1890s, no one.

For 1880s, only Paton.

Off the top of my head, if we ended up with 9 goalies and it was them, I'd be pretty satisfied. I hope we discuss a few others, though.

 

[Sanf]

I left out Hainsworth because he's harder to judge. I have no formula to just determine when he was truly at his best. Surely, his most famous years are 1927, 1928 and 1929 (when he won the vezina despite not really being known as one of the few best goalies), and 1930 and 1931 (when he won the cup and a retro smythe). But the years in which he actually got some individual recognition were 1918 & 1920 (OHA 1st AST), 1921 & 1923 (OHA 2nd AST), and 1926 (WHL AST). Is all that enough to overcome actual NHL achievements, as team-oriented as they were? I dunno. He was 31 before he played an NHL game.

Yeah Hainsworth is difficult for this project. He played to on of pre-consolidation hockey. But for the project I might say OUT. I believe his first season in top OHA level was in 1915-1916. Before that he played with Berlin in intermediates (I guess to simplify that in second level of senior hockey). Then in 1916-1917 in some amateur league which is not familiar to me.

1918 he is back at top level of OHA and wins Allan Cup with Kitchener Greenshirts. From that season onwards I believe he played highest level of OHA. In 1921 he refused pro contract offer from Saskatoon.

I´m not familiar with OHA all-star selection. But I have never seen him really regarded in anyway above others. In truth "Doc" Stewart may have been even highly regarded. He refused St.Patricks contract in 1920. Jake Forbes who also came from OHA was regarded highly and sought both east and west. Herb Rheaume was one of the big goalie names in OHA.

Though I do not have best sources for OHA.

 

[Sanf]

I just scanned through Iain Fyffe's lists of 1880s-1920s players and there's really no one there that we haven't already discussed, and he even has them pretty much in the order we would:

For post-1910:
Benedict
Vezina
Lehman
Holmes
Lesueur

For 1900s:
Moran
Hern
Hutton

For 1890s, no one.

For 1880s, only Paton.

Off the top of my head, if we ended up with 9 goalies and it was them, I'd be pretty satisfied. I hope we discuss a few others, though.

I can raise few names that are atleast worth discussion at some point. And maybe it Obviously there might be fair comments and criticism for very early goaltending too.

 

[seventieslord]

By the way, on Iain Fyffe's page of pre-1900 players:

Hall of Famers from the Earliest Years

In a previous post I wrote that players from the earliest days of organized hockey have largely been left out of the Hall of Fame, not beca...

hockeyhistorysis.blogspot.com

If you scroll down you get to the 1880s players. And look who's at the top of the list - Jimmy Stewart!

A book, The Odd Fellow's Heart, was written about him just last year by Morey Holzman which I reviewed:

Finished this two days ago. It was really tough to put down. There has never been another book where you will read such detailed accounts of the play of the best players and teams of the 1880s and 1890s. But as good as that is, it's secondary to the off-ice material regarding Stewart, which is part human-interest piece, part hockey Origins story. @moreyhockey makes a good case that James Creighton's 1875 game has no more of a case to be known as the beginning of hockey, than does the drafting and publication of the rules by Stewart and others a decade later (many of which still exist today). If you consider yourself a historian, do yourself a favor and get this book.

What I got from reading the book, was that Stewart was perhaps the most important builder of the game in the 1880s. What I didn't get from it, was that he was arguably also the decade's most important player . Ian's system seems, on the surface, to give a lot more credit to players whose careers came later (look at the career scores of the top-10 in the 1920s and then look at earlier decades) and Stewart still manages to come in tied for 44th. In fact, 58 players who are eligible for this project get a score of 80 or more, including three from the 1880s: Stewart, Allan Cameron (who was Ultimate Hockey's top choice for best player of the era), and Paton.

There should be room for at least those three, and at least the top-5 of the 1890s. Eight from a 15-year period (0.5 per year) leaves room for 52 over the next 26 years (2.0 per year). If anything, we should try to have a few more, even.

 

[jigglysquishy]

Charles Stewart was a name poking around the backend of my goalie list. He was very strong in the OHA, but struggled coming into the NHL. It depends on how many goalies I end up with, but I have him around 10-12 right now. I struggle with quantifying the strength of the OHA. The NHA and PCHA are the clear league kings in the 1910s, but I do not know the gap between them and the top amateur leagues. What is the talent gap between the OHA and NHA of 1915? Are we talking present day NHL/AHL, where anything in the AHL is largely discarded? Or are we talking closer to 1972-~1975 NHL/WHA, where the WHA competition was high and part of legitimate comparison?

I'm also interested in pre-Bowie dominance. If we say he established himself as the best ever offensive player in the 1904-1908 time period, who is he taking that crown from?

 

[seventieslord]

Charles Stewart was a name poking around the backend of my goalie list. He was very strong in the OHA, but struggled coming into the NHL. It depends on how many goalies I end up with, but I have him around 10-12 right now. I struggle with quantifying the strength of the OHA. The NHA and PCHA are the clear league kings in the 1910s, but I do not know the gap between them and the top amateur leagues. What is the talent gap between the OHA and NHA of 1915? Are we talking present day NHL/AHL, where anything in the AHL is largely discarded? Or are we talking closer to 1972-~1975 NHL/WHA, where the WHA competition was high and part of legitimate comparison?

I'm also interested in pre-Bowie dominance. If we say he established himself as the best ever offensive player in the 1904-1908 time period, who is he taking that crown from?

I think we have strong evidence that we should take 1920-1926 OHA achievements seriously. I am less sure about prior to that.

As for Bowie..... honestly, probably Bob McDougall!

 

[rmartin65]

I think we have strong evidence that we should take 1920-1926 OHA achievements seriously. I am less sure about prior to that.

As for Bowie..... honestly, probably Bob McDougall!

McDougall and Routh are two of the early skaters that I really hope we get more research on.

 

[Professor What]

Am I the only one having difficulty in comparing the pre-1900 players to those who played after?

 

[ResilientBeast]

Am I the only one having difficulty in comparing the pre-1900 players to those who played after?

The biggest issue I'm having is the idea of "longevity"

 

[Professor What]

The biggest issue I'm having is the idea of "longevity"

That's a big part of it for sure.

 

[jigglysquishy]

Am I the only one having difficulty in comparing the pre-1900 players to those who played after?

Part of what I struggle with is the huge year-to-year variance.

Haviland Routh scored 19 goals in 8 games in the 1895 AHAC season. This is after scoring 8 in 8 the year before. However, looking closer, he scored 5 of his 8 goals in one game on opening night in 1894.

So how do we look at that. 8 in 8 is a close third in the league. But 3 in 7 is good for about 15th (of about only 30 skaters in the entire league). And there is very little information about him in general on the internet. He didn't make the HHOF, so maybe he's just not going to make our discussions.

Bob MacDougall is looking like the best forward of the 1890s, but the difference in peak play between MacDougall and Routh doesn't look to be too terribly different. But Routh was out of the league in four years and MacDougall played 7, playing in 6 Stanley Cups. Small sample sizes and huge variance between years makes it really hard to separate players.

The AHAC is the largest league of the 1890s, but is it the only league worth discussing?

 

[ResilientBeast]

That's a big part of it for sure.

It's interesting seeing the change in player longevity (and this might make for a fun analysis for me or someone else) but the players from the 1890s to the about 1905 don't stick around particularly long

Then we have the next generation where Taylor/Lalonde etc stick around almost the entirety of the split league era

 

[ResilientBeast]

The AHAC is the largest league of the 1890s, but is it the only league worth discussing?

No, we should also be looking at the MHA (Manitoba Hockey Association), which morphs into the league the Kenora Thistles played in at the turn of the century.

Edit: This is the league Dan Bain played in

 

[Professor What]

Part of what I struggle with is the huge year-to-year variance.

Haviland Routh scored 19 goals in 8 games in the 1895 AHAC season. This is after scoring 8 in 8 the year before. However, looking closer, he scored 5 of his 8 goals in one game on opening night in 1894.

So how do we look at that. 8 in 8 is a close third in the league. But 3 in 7 is good for about 15th (of about only 30 skaters in the entire league). And there is very little information about him in general on the internet. He didn't make the HHOF, so maybe he's just not going to make our discussions.

Bob MacDougall is looking like the best forward of the 1890s, but the difference in peak play between MacDougall and Routh doesn't look to be too terribly different. But Routh was out of the league in four years and MacDougall played 7, playing in 6 Stanley Cups. Small sample sizes and huge variance between years makes it really hard to separate players.

The AHAC is the largest league of the 1890s, but is it the only league worth discussing?

Routh isn't in the Hall, no, but in the Iain Fyffe article that @seventieslord has linked to a couple of times, Fyffe argues that he should be by his system. I find Fyffe's opinion rather difficult to ignore there. I'm going to err on the side that he knows something that others don't.

 

[ResilientBeast]

No, we should also be looking at the MHA (Manitoba Hockey Association), which morphs into the league the Kenora Thistles played in at the turn of the century.

Edit: This is the league Dan Bain played in

Wikipedia actually has a pretty handy little graphic for this

 

[jigglysquishy]

Wikipedia actually has a pretty handy little graphic for this

View attachment 604662

List of pre-NHL seasons - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

I've found this handy too, but the MHA is completely absent from their records.

 

[ResilientBeast]

List of pre-NHL seasons - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

I've found this handy too, but the MHA is completely absent from their records.

They at least have a full table for Dan Bain's scoring exploits. Probably will also be on SIHR, and not sure if Trail covers this league