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

[jigglysquishy]

Odie Cleghorn is a name that I'm struggling to place.

On the surface, he looks like someone who will place towards the back-half of the list as a high-end, but not top forward of the 1910s. We recognize his brother Sprague as the best pre-consolidation defenseman (though I think that distinction deserves more discussion).

A few things that stick out to me.


Iain Fyffe's comment "The most notable player who's not in is Odie Cleghorn, who should have followed his brother Sprague into the temple, but did not for whatever reason. Sprague certainly made more noise with his career, for better or worse, but Odie was nearly his equal on the ice."

The Canadiens' bio on him certainly makes it seem like he was close in ability to Sprague

But he was never enshrined in the HHOF, and he looks to have been Sprague's near equal until about 1923.

Does Odie deserve mention within our top 25? Is the gap between the brothers as large as it initially looks? Like, we could place Sprague top 5 and Odie outside the top 50, but does that make sense?

 

[Sanf]

I believe there are 81 players eligible for this project who are in the HHOF. On that basis alone, they are all worthy of discussion, even if categorically dismissed:

Riley Hern is actually Hall Of Famer. Though it´s impressive if you did that from memory. I probably coukd do only goalies from that era.

Regarding Hern there were few other goalies from that era that could be mentioned. You already have Eddie Giroux there... Others would be Herns IPHL rivals Billy Nicholson, Jack Winchester and Chief Jones. All of them were highly regarded, but Hern is in HOF probably mainly because his success with Wanderers. Others were ringers and mercenarys. That obviously makes them hard to compare or evaluate.

Ofcourse here we are reaching era where there are more questions regarding goalies. Hern and Merritt (who is mentioned but better counted to previous age group) both were skaters earlier in their careers. Both Jones and Winchester were regarded good roaming goalies, decent skaters who could challenge the shooter.

Jones espacially was often compared to Hern and I haven´t really find good evidence that Hern would have been clearly the better goalie in IPHL. Though obviously even at the best case we are talking low end candidates for the list.

I don´t want to flood this with newspapers quotes but here few that I have posted earlier comparing Jones and Hern.


The Pittsburgh Press - Mar 22, 1903
Jones, at goal was a stone wall and is in the class of the "only" Riley Hern.

Evening News January 14, 1904
The bright individual star of the two teams was Chief Jones in goal, and even the most enthusiastic Portage Lake supporter admit that while Riley Hern is great there are none the peers of Chief Jones.

The Pittsburgh press Feb 21, 1904
Jones, the goaltender. was with Houghton last season. It is said up in the copper country that Jones is superior to Riley Hern, an old local favorite, now with Portage Lake.

The Detroit Times 2. Dec 1914
So predicts "Chief" Jones, coach of the septet that is organizing in this city, and once the choice of Chaucer Elliot, the Canadian referee, as the best all-around hockey player in the world. That was wen Jones played with the Cobalt team, the conquerors of the Renfrew -the "million dollar team"-....

 

[ResilientBeast]

Does Odie deserve mention within our top 25? Is the gap between the brothers as large as it initially looks? Like, we could place Sprague top 5 and Odie outside the top 50, but does that make sense?

My first draft of a top 60 has Sprague in the top 5 & Odie in the 40s

Odie has Vs1 scores of

1918-1919	81.82%​
1911-1912	77.50%​
1914-1915	76.47%​
1922-1923	67.57%​
1916-1917	66.67%​
1915-1916	56.41%​
1910-1911	54.76%​
1921-1922	52.17%​

Which compared to a bunch of contemporary wingers like Morris, Roberts, Hyland & Harris aren't particularly exceptional

Sprague's scores as a defenseman compare reasonably well with Odie's

1914-1915	97.06%​
1921-1922	56.52%​
1916-1917	52.08%​
1923-1924	50.00%​
1918-1919	48.48%​
1922-1923	45.95%​
1913-1914	44.44%​
1919-1920	42.86%​

Edit: He'll definitely be above that next cut of wingers like Broadbent and Oatman (who I'm going to ride pretty hard for)

 

[ResilientBeast]

@jigglysquishy I'd be curious where you have someone like Harry Hyland or Gordon Roberts if you're struggling with placing Odie.

They all played for the Wanderers at the same time from 1912-13 till Roberts leaves for Vancouver in 1916 and their stats during this period

Player	GP	G	A	Points	Pts/G
Gord Roberts	76	95	27	122	1.605263
Harry Hyland	77	93	22	115	1.493506
Odie Cleghorn	69	63	24	87	1.26087

Roberts and Odie are 91 birthdays and Hyland is only 2 years older from 1889

 

[jigglysquishy]

@jigglysquishy I'd be curious where you have someone like Harry Hyland or Gordon Roberts if you're struggling with placing Odie.

They all played for the Wanderers at the same time from 1912-13 till Roberts leaves for Vancouver in 1916 and their stats during this period

Player	GP	G	A	Points	Pts/G
Gord Roberts	76	95	27	122	1.605263
Harry Hyland	77	93	22	115	1.493506
Odie Cleghorn	69	63	24	87	1.26087

Roberts and Odie are 91 birthdays and Hyland is only 2 years older from 1889

I have Odie and Roberts in my very wide category of not top 25, but will almost certainly make the list.

I have Hyland a bit below them.

 

[ResilientBeast]

I have Odie and Roberts in my very wide category of not top 25, but will almost certainly make the list.

I have Hyland a bit below them.

I suspect our lists are going to rank contemporary wingers of this era very differently

 

[Professor What]

I suspect everyone's lists of everything are going to look very different.

 

[jigglysquishy]

I suspect everyone's lists of everything are going to look very different.

I think the top 15/20 will look fairly similar. These guys will have been talked about repeatedly on the top 100 list and the top positional lists. 20 pre-merger players made the top 200 so we have some form of basis. Then there's another 10 guys that will be common, but after that it's wide open.

If we're submitting a top 80, the back half will probably be the most variance of any list we've done.

I suspect at least one person doesn't have Bob McDougall, despite him being the best offensive player pre Bowie. When looking at league strength, it's not necessarily wrong. But I 100% intend to find a spot for the early pioneers on my list.

 

[ResilientBeast]

despite him being the best offensive player pre Bowie

I'm not sure if that's true as I pointed out earlier.

Routh was much more the one man offensive dynamo that Bowie was later on

 

[Professor What]

I think the top 15/20 will look fairly similar. These guys will have been talked about repeatedly on the top 100 list and the top positional lists. 20 pre-merger players made the top 200 so we have some form of basis. Then there's another 10 guys that will be common, but after that it's wide open.

If we're submitting a top 80, the back half will probably be the most variance of any list we've done.

I suspect at least one person doesn't have Bob McDougall, despite him being the best offensive player pre Bowie. When looking at league strength, it's not necessarily wrong. But I 100% intend to find a spot for the early pioneers on my list.

Yeah, I do agree on the top 20 or so. It's going to be the wild west after that though.

 

[BenchBrawl]

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[jigglysquishy]

In 1925 and 1926, there was no PCHA. It merged with the WHL.

 

[BenchBrawl]

In 1925 and 1926, there was no PCHA. It merged with the WHL.

Right, my fault for going on autopilot. Thanks. Corrected.

 

[jigglysquishy]

All Time Best Players - Lists by their contemporaries

I always found it interesting to hear what was said about the hockey players of the early era (Pre World War II). Naturally we know the least about these players as we have very limited footage available from games, a few 30 second clips here and there. Very few people are alive today who...

forums.hfboards.com

I'll link this again because it's a standout resource. Lots of insight into how the greats viewed their peers.

 

[Professor What]

I feel alright about my top 30 or so. After that though, it feels like I've got a garbled mess. Every time I move someone relative to someone else, it feels like I'm creating a new knot in the web.

 

[Kyle McMahon]

Odie Cleghorn is a name that I'm struggling to place.

On the surface, he looks like someone who will place towards the back-half of the list as a high-end, but not top forward of the 1910s. We recognize his brother Sprague as the best pre-consolidation defenseman (though I think that distinction deserves more discussion).

A few things that stick out to me.


Iain Fyffe's comment "The most notable player who's not in is Odie Cleghorn, who should have followed his brother Sprague into the temple, but did not for whatever reason. Sprague certainly made more noise with his career, for better or worse, but Odie was nearly his equal on the ice."

The Canadiens' bio on him certainly makes it seem like he was close in ability to Sprague

But he was never enshrined in the HHOF, and he looks to have been Sprague's near equal until about 1923.

Does Odie deserve mention within our top 25? Is the gap between the brothers as large as it initially looks? Like, we could place Sprague top 5 and Odie outside the top 50, but does that make sense?

He's certainly in the top 25 of greatest names...

My initial gut instinct was that Odie would be in tough to crack a top 60 list. I've never really thought of him as true star player, more of a support guy. Mildly surprising he didn't make the HOF, but not a snub either.

But, I wonder if my opinion is biased by Sprague being the greater player? Because in my younger days I never thought of Mark Howe as a particularly great player, let alone eventual HOFer, because Gordie was the great Howe. In hindsight it's ridiculous and illogical, but it took a long time to break that subconscious childhood bias. What's odd is that I always "knew" Sprague was better than Odie, but I'm not exactly certain why. Ten year old me typically determined who was great by reading through the yearly top 10 leaderboards in the NHL Guide and Record Book, and Odie is slightly more prominent in that regard. He's also one of the very few players I associate with the old Pittsburgh Pirates.

Anyway, glad you brought up Odie, likely a guy I ought to give a fresh evaluation.

 

[rmartin65]

I started my newspapers.com subscription this morning, and after poking around a bit (and finding out I wanted to do more research into Weldy Young), I decided to go through the AHAC seasons. I've got 1887 and 1888 done (I think), and while I will post more about it later, Jack Campbell (referred to as J. or J.D. Campbell) for the Montreal Victorias was getting a bunch of attention, especially in 1888- to my reading, he was easily the star of 1888, with comments such as

Campbell did the work of a giant, and the beautiful manner in which he dodged and steered the puck through the opposing men drew forth loud cheers from the large number of spectators assembled, and on one occasion so well had he played that on his again getting the puck an argent though old support of the Crystals, carried away by his excitement, roared at the top of his voice ‘Two of yez on him now, he wants two of yez’, and unwitting an unintentional compliment to the grand play of Campbell

Had the Victorias been a little harder pressed perhaps their play would not have appeared so brilliant and dashing, but such play as Campbell showed can only be characterized as wonderful. His speed and his cleverness at dodging are worth going a long way to see; in a couple of instances he wiggled though the whole McGill team and only stopped at the goal-keeps, while the puck seems magnetically attracted by his stick.

The third game was particularly well won by one of those grand rushes of Campbell’s, who carried the puck the whole length of the rink, lost it near the flags and secured it again just in time to seed a neat shot wizzing through the goal

Campbell, at coverpoint as usual, however, was a whole team in himself, and it was chiefly due to his fine play that some of the combined rushes of the M.A.A.A. men lost their effectiveness for scoring.

Campbell, of the Victorias, certainly took the honors, and his run with the puck, dodging Lowe, Hodgson, Virtue, Cameron, and Stewart, and winding up with getting the puck past Paton through the goal post was one of the finest things ever witnessed on the ice, and evoked well merited cheers and applause on all sides.

Please excuse any typing/copying errors- I'm working through these while also cooking. There are also more comments/descriptions (which I have grabbed), but I don't want to spam the thread before I get a better picture of the player.

It looks like Iaian made a blog post about him here, according to which Cambell seems like a guy with a high peak but a short prime. I'm not sure if I agree with Iaian's Coffey comparison, but I obviously have a lot more to read through (as like I said, I'm only 2 seasons deep).

I don't know if he makes my list, but- to me- Campbell was the top player in the AHAC for at least 1888. Considering that was the big league at the time, that carries some real weight.

 

[Sanf]

George "Whitey" Merritt from the Winnipeg Victorias of the 1890s is another goalie who should be given consideration and one I'd like to do some additional research on.

Whitey was credited with being the first goalie to use cricket pads for leg protection, and with introducing the goalie stick with a wider shaft and blade than other players' sticks.

I have done quite a lot of him and I agree. Merritt should be considered. There are few reasons I believe so.

Leg protection was something that they seeemed to use in Manitoba. I´m quite not sure if Merritt really was the man behind it. But I think he was one of the original roaming goalies. Whether his style of game modified how goalie position was played the is ofcourse speculation, but in the early 1900´s it became much more popular and Hugh Lehman became poster boy of it. Overall it may have had risks, but overall Merritt made it work.

The Winnipeg Daily Tribune 16. Jan 1895
Everybody on the ice was attempting to rush, running, against and falling over everybody else. Merritt made a break for the goal with the puck, a distance of about a dozen yards, when he fell over the stick of an oppenent and slid along the ice as far again, and during his absence Bain scored.

The Montreal Star 16. Feb 1899
Merrit is peculiar inasmuch as he comes out of goal and often plays out in point position. This was almost fatal on a couple of occasions, when turning to get back between the poles, he fell, but, however, on both occasions he managed to save a score by tipping the puck aside as it slid by him.

Brandon Daily Sun 15. Feb 1900
Puck then came down on Winnpeg goal, and in a fierce mix-up Merritt left the goal and cleared with a beautiful lift.

The Montreal Gazette 30. Dec 1955
Jimmy Hanratty former sports editor of Montreal Gazette

"My interest was stirred reading in a recent issue of our family journal a piece regarding rambling goalies, with special reference to some who displayed nomadic tendencies long prior to the appearance on ice of our Mr. Plante. May I add a name to the list? It is that of Whitey Merritt, who came east out of Winnipeg with a Stanley Cup team sometime in the early years of this present century, and was seen in the original Arena...

...Mr. Merritt wandered afar and often and this was really upsetting to the conservatives- hockey, not political- who believed that a goaltender should be just that and remain on guard at the portals....



The fact that George Merritt was remembered at all is something that wasn´t usual for the goalies of that period. He was compared to best goalies of the next generation which I haven´t really seen do to others.

Vancouver Daily World 1. Feb 1912
"Whitey" Merritt was the old Victoria goal tender away back in 1896 when they first won the Stanley cup. His work is still talked about by the old timers, who claim that the present generation has not seen his equal.

Brandon Daily Sun 12. Dec 1914
Stuart, however, was there with frills on. Great goal keepers have performed in the city, and have been lauded for their work. There was Whitey Merritt away back in the days when the Bisons roamed unchecked on the ice. Whitey, they say, could pick them off with his eyes shut.



And maybe most importantly he was seen an very important player of the team and the Stanley Cup win.

Winnipeg Free Press Friday, February 21, 1896
Mr.George H.Merritt "the man who won the stanley cup" returned to the city on yesterday´s C.P.R train. ...
the redoubtable "Whitey" has not quite recoverd from his hard work in the big match a week ago to-day, and many bruises on his body bear testimony to the hard shots he stopped so well.

The Winnipeg Daily Tribune 16. Dec 1897
The Victorias are fortunate in that Merritt and Bain have turned ott, what they would have done without the former, it is hard to say. The presence of Bain, too, on the forward rank is a matter for congratulation.

Winnipeg Free Press Saturday, February 18, 1899
When the Winnipeg vics defeated the Victorias three years ago and carried off the Stanley Cup there were a great many who maintained that if it had not been for the phenomenal work of Merritt in goal westerners would not have won. While the the fair-minded do not admit the truth of this, there was no doubt that Merrit had his eye on the puck. In fact Geordie generally has his optics on the disk when he gets between the posts and he has been goal-keeper considerably over a decade...

 

[BenchBrawl]

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[jigglysquishy]

Dickie Boon is a name I'm really struggling to place. He only has 50 senior league games including the playoffs, but was a top defenseman every year he played.

Or was he?

I'm seeing lots of reference to him playing games mid season at forward. Did he switch for part of his career or just for some games or just for parts of games?

His ATD bio shows he was probably the best player for the Montreal HC Cups, but that's a McGee length career.

Did we ever settle on a final list size? Are we submitting a top 80?

 

[rmartin65]

Did we ever settle on a final list size? Are we submitting a top 80?

I believe the plan is still a top-60 final list/top 80 initial submission. I'm no where close to being comfortable with my list, haha.

 

[Professor What]

I believe the plan is still a top-60 final list/top 80 initial submission. I'm no where close to being comfortable with my list, haha.

I've got a feeling that this is one of those projects that needs to be done a second time in a few years. We do the best we can this time and lay the groundwork and it gets further sorted out in a second pass.

 

[Ben Grimm]

This will probably be the best project ever, because the difference in officiating/rules in different eras will not be a factor.

If you put McDavid in a time machine to the 70s, his skills would still be just as great, but I don't think he'd enjoy the behavior of his rivals or the non-calls/rules as much as he does playing today.

 

[rmartin65]

because the difference in officiating/rules in different eras will not be a factor

Uh...

I guess it won't be differences in officiating/rules in different eras that will be a factor, but rather those differences between the different leagues.

I don't know if that makes it better, but it at least makes it different.

EDIT- actually, scratch that. Rules changed a lot, even in the same league. Just look at the rover, for example.

Differences in officiating/rules is part of what makes this one rather challenging.

 

[DN28]

Thanks @seventieslord for the invitation to participate in this project. I don't know yet if I find enough time and send the ranking list but I'll at least make sure to read the threads and hopefully contribute.

I see some users struggling with ranking the earliest players. On the topic of amateur hockey, perhaps these 3 threads may help you. Lots of good quotes and stats in there.

The Greatest Players of the 1890's

I would like to show you posters the stats that I have compiled through old newspapers. The goals are not official as some games never showed the goal scorers but it gives a good indication of who the best players were. I have found that Hall of Fame members are the only men that are being...

forums.hfboards.com

Discussion: Who were the 10 best players 1895-1900?

As we gear up for another round of project-driven research, it seems like an opportune time to shed a bit of light on an era that is undoubtedly a weak point for most of us. This isn't a formal project, just a discussion and not meant to distract from the top-100 lists currently in progress...

forums.hfboards.com

Discussion: Who were the best 10 players 1900-1905?

Following on this thread, another round of light discussion on early era players. Hopefully this will be helpful for folks who are making their top-200 lists. ATD bios of players from this era: Defensemen Dickie Boon Mike Grant (until 1902) Si Griffis (from 1901-02) Fred Lake Jack Marshall...

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