I'm not convinced that Mike Grant should have won every "retro Norris" over Harvey Pulford in 5 straight seasons. Pulford, despite essentially never scoring, played for many more seasons than Grant. This is indicative of his contributions outside of offense (i.e. defense). Given that there were a couple of seasons where Grant scored only one goal (1894-95 and and 1897-98), my hunch would be that Pulford would have been at least as valuable as Grant over those two seasons.
Grant was one of the earliest "rushing defensemen", so perhaps his style was more appealing. The Victorias were also the Cup champions every season that Grant won his "retro Norrises", so there might be a "Cup winner" factor in play as well.
I'm not completely through the 1890's, so I cant comment too much on the Pulford vs Grant debate, but I don't think the "rushing defenseman" thing is quite accurate.
While rushes from the point position do seem to be quite rare, game reports from contemporary newspapers describe coverpoints rushing quite often- Campbell (who should be on people's lists, IMO) for the Victorias is the first one that really seemed to get a lot of press for it, Cameron gets some nods, Weldy Young (who should also be on people's lists, IMO) gets some press, etc. I'm not quite at Grant's prime, so maybe he did it more often, but after having done a bunch of reading, he's not the first to be well-known for it (despite that being the popular opinion).
Since I mentioned Cameron- I know he gets a lot of credit (Iain's model has him rated well, Ultimate Hockey gives him a bunch of awards), but I'm not terribly impressed at this point. He doesn't get the same level of press per game (I'll get into that in a second) as guys like Campbell and Young, and- particularly in his mid-to-late career- gets mentioned for penalties more than other players. He was a very likely a good player on a great team, but I don't know if he is what made that team great. Stewart (the point on those M.A.A.A. teams) is another guy who I think gets too much credit.
Returning to press-per-game- I think part of the issue with the 1880's and early 1890's is that it was a challenge style "league", so players on different teams weren't playing anywhere near the same amount of games. In 1891, for example, M.A.A.A. played 8 games- the other teams (Ottawa Hockey Club, Montreal Shamrocks, Montreal Victorias, Montreal Crescents, and Quebec Hockey Club) played 1, 2, 2, 2, and 1, respectively, in AHAC play. Naturally the M.A.A.A. players are going to be getting more mentions and are going to be accruing more stats. Newspaper writers are going to be more familiar with the M.A.A.A. players, and may be more inclined to write more glowingly about them. As a result, I'm trying to look at press-per game instead of just raw mentions. I'm also more interested in the summaries of the best players of each game than I am about player X making a nice rush in this game or that game, or player Y being a stalwart in goal for a game. I'm also more interested in comments like "made one of his famous rushes", as this means this player was well known for rushing. Individual acts in games may be of interest for an ATD bio (and certainly enough mentions of a particular act over multiple games or seasons does build a picture of both a player's abilities and playing style), but for measuring greatness, I think a bigger picture view is more valuable. Please feel free to let me know if anyone thinks I'm off base here.
As an aside, it is interesting (to me, at least) that, coverpoint appears to be the "star" position in the 1880s-1890s. Maybe I'm reading to much into it or am being biased by my interest in some of the players, but it is the coverpoints who get the most press, who get the most credit for impacting the games, even if they are not the ones doing a lot of the scoring. Indeed, what strikes me as particularly strange is that the players who do a lot of scoring often don't get mentioned- or don't get special mention, at least- when the reporter is summing up the stars/impact players of the game. I don't know if that is because it is assumed that a guy who scored 4 goals had a good game, thus he doesn't need to be mentioned, or what, but I find it odd every time. McNaughton in particular had that one dominant scoring season (1890, where he had double the goals as the next nearest player, and 3 times as many as the nearest non-teammate... though of course the games-played thing comes into play there), but the game reports don't mention him all that much (comparatively) outside of saying things like he did the needful and made some fancy rushes. Was he a star, or was he just the guy that finished the combination plays? A guy like A. Hogdson didn't score nearly as much, but he gets noted for rushes as well and gets credit for things like checking. It honestly seems like writers often preferred Hogdson's game to McNaughton's. Is this a Toews vs Crosby thing? Am I reading too much or too little into certain details? I don't know... but I thought I would share.
Another issue with the AHAC is that seasons were so short, so small sample size is a serious issue. Some (though certainly not all) well-respected players also played only a couple (less than 7) seasons, so while they lack longevity, they were considered among the best when they played. How do we deal with a player who only played for 5 years- which really isn't that short of a career for the time- and only 2-8 games per season, but who received a lot of good press? Bradley from Ottawa is someone who I think this applies to in particular.
Injuries were also a big issue- Herbie Scott from Quebec, for example, is described several times in 1892 and 1893 as one of Canada's best (among all players by The Ottawa Journal; among forwards by The Montreal Star), but seems to have dealt with knee problems, so he missed a lot of time. Longer seasons would have helped give him time to recover and actually play a meaningful amount of games, but that wasn't a thing back then. He obviously doesn't make this list (you have to play the games), but this impacts how I view the other forwards of the era- in such a small talent pool, one of the best players at the position was perpetually injured, so how should we rate the other forwards? Guys who were maybe less talented but stayed healthy? In the modern era I think we go with the healthy guy, because there is enough talent to be able to say "yeah, this guy was still really, really good". But when there were pretty much only 6-8 "high-level" teams in the world at the time, can we really say that the healthy guy was an all-time great? Maybe... it's another thing I'm working through.
I feel like I'm rambling at this point, haha, so I'll end this post here.
