Is Peter Forsberg underrated?

[daver]

Now you’re just being childish

You think ignoring whole seasons of data isn't?

 

[daver]

This doesn’t contradict my post, still 2 reg seasons and 2 playoffs where he was at Jagr level offensively

No, he wasn't. There is no way you spin the stats to make this claim.

As for playoffs, by what metric are using and is that same metric also applied to Sakic?

 

[Ben White]

No, he wasn't. There is no way you spin the stats to make this claim.

As for playoffs, by what metric are using and is that same metric also applied to Sakic?

Well, he was at the time the only player in history to lead the playoffs in scoring despite not playing in the finals, and he did it both in 1999 and 2002, so to say he wasn’t a very top tier offensive producer in these 2 playoffs is just really weird.

As for the regular seasons, check his adjusted stats for these two seasons and compare them to peak Jagr, yes Jagr had a few seasons that were even better but he also had a lot more healthy seasons to choose from and a longer career.

All in all, yes I’ve already given the nod to Jagr offensively, but considering his more offense oriented role and his larger amount of ice time and the benefit of playing more healthy more often and looking at per game production throughout their respective primes (Forsberg was a very consistent scorer when playing), it’s really not that far off in terms of offensive ability. Adding Forsberg’s more important role, his 2-way play and physical element, they are in the same tier as players, ability wise, in NHL history. If you ONLY look at offense, yes Jagr was slightly better, if you look at the whole package you can debate either way but there’s no way to spin it to make it out as they’re not in the same tier as players, ability wise.

To clearify things yet again, this thread is about ability. “Who was the best player”. In terms of career value off course Jagr is on another level. It seems people mix these things up more or less automatically.

 

[Ben White]

You think ignoring whole seasons of data isn't?

No, it’s absolutely necessary to (to a large degree) ignore full seasons when evaluating injury prone players with highly fragmented careers.

 

[Golden_Jet]

No, it’s absolutely necessary to (to a large degree) ignore full seasons when evaluating injury prone players with highly fragmented careers.

No injury prone players are just that, injury prone, being available to play is a big part of a career.
Trying to justify being injury prone with what ifs, when comparing to Jagr or players is just fools gold.

 

[Hockey Outsider]

Again, using “peak seasons” instead of “peak play” more or less automatically disqualifies every injury prone player from every hypothetical player comparison in history, save for maybe Lemieux and Orr, and nobody says Forsberg or Lindros or Malkin is on their level. However they are on Jagr’s level, if your’re actually interested in digging into facts with a curious mindset looking for contexts and revealing facts, which you are clearly not, instead of glossing them over with worn out misleading arguments which fits your preset agenda, which is clearly what you do in every post.

Periods in time when Forsberg clearly played on Jagr’s top level or above:

2002 playoffs
1999 playoffs
2003 reg season
2004 reg season
2005(-06) reg season pre injury
1998 reg season pre injury
1997 reg season pre injury

Forsberg’s prime was fragmented and cut short by injuries, we all know that, but we have more than enough data to know his peak level and that was on par with Jagr’s

Jagr's peak was the 1999 calendar year. He scored 1.81 PPG. The next closest players were HOF'ers at/near their peaks (Bure at 1.36, Sakic at 1.34, and Selanne at 1.30). He's 33% ahead of 2nd place, and 62% ahead of 10th place.

Did Forsberg ever separate himself from the pack to such an extent? The best timeframe I can find for him was his 2004 season (when he finished 21% ahead of 2nd place in PPG, and 35% ahead of 10th place). Is there another timeframe we should be using?

Granted, Forsberg was a better defensive player than Jagr, so he wouldn't need the same separation offensively to match Jagr's overall performance. But Jagr outscored his peers by a significantly larger margin (62% ahead of 10th place vs 35%). Or if you want raw numbers - 1.81 vs 1.41 PPG in similar scoring environments (Jagr was 28% ahead). Jagr maintained this over twice as many games (84 games in calendar 1999 vs just 39 for Forsberg in 2004). Jagr was by far a better goal-scorer. And the competition at the top was clearly stronger for Jagr (Bure, Sakic, Selanne, Lindros and Forsberg) than for Forsberg (the top five were Palffy, Savard, St. Louis, Lang, and Tanguay). If we're going to cherry-pick partial seasons for Forsberg, we should do the same thing for Jagr.

 

[daver]

Periods in time when Forsberg clearly played on Jagr’s top level or above:

2005(-06) reg season pre injury
1998 reg season pre injury
1997 reg season pre injury

It's already been shown that Forsberg's best stretch of hockey wasn't on Jagr's level, how about we put your "pre-injury" Forsberg narrative to bed.


1997: pre-injury PPG of 1.39 vs. Jagr's pre-injury PPG of 1.55.

1998: pre-injury (Game 68) PPG of 1.25 vs. Jagr's PPG of 1.32 (his weakest full season Art Ross win)

2005: pre-injury PPG of 1.86 (tied with Spezza and Alfredsson thru 21 games who finished 3rd and 4th in scoring). It's completely unreasonable to think Forsberg can keep up that pace.

 

[authentic]

Jagr's peak was the 1999 calendar year. He scored 1.81 PPG. The next closest players were HOF'ers at/near their peaks (Bure at 1.36, Sakic at 1.34, and Selanne at 1.30). He's 33% ahead of 2nd place, and 62% ahead of 10th place.

Did Forsberg ever separate himself from the pack to such an extent? The best timeframe I can find for him was his 2004 season (when he finished 21% ahead of 2nd place in PPG, and 35% ahead of 10th place). Is there another timeframe we should be using?

Granted, Forsberg was a better defensive player than Jagr, so he wouldn't need the same separation offensively to match Jagr's overall performance. But Jagr outscored his peers by a significantly larger margin (62% ahead of 10th place vs 35%). Or if you want raw numbers - 1.81 vs 1.41 PPG in similar scoring environments (Jagr was 28% ahead). Jagr maintained this over twice as many games (84 games in calendar 1999 vs just 39 for Forsberg in 2004). Jagr was by far a better goal-scorer. And the competition at the top was clearly stronger for Jagr (Bure, Sakic, Selanne, Lindros and Forsberg) than for Forsberg (the top five were Palffy, Savard, St. Louis, Lang, and Tanguay). If we're going to cherry-pick partial seasons for Forsberg, we should do the same thing for Jagr.

You don’t need to use just 39 for Forsberg though, you could take the 74 game stretch from 03 to 04 where Forsberg was 26 and 52% ahead respectively.

Also to get back to the point being made here which I still feel is being brushed aside by too many posters, the difference in their points per game from 1995-2005 was .07, not even .1, and was even closer in the playoffs, this with Forsberg playing considerably less ice time and in a more defensive role. You don’t even need to get into the whole peer domination thing, Jagr barely played better offensively on a per game basis throughout the entirety of his prime than Forsberg did in his injury plagued first 10 seasons of his career. Thus you have two players who are undeniably in the same tier of ability.

 

[authentic]

Forsberg had a 107 game stretch with 172 points averaging around 19 minutes, in a league where one other player besides himself hit 100 points in 2 seasons, after leading the league in points in the playoffs without reaching the finals. That’s his offensive peak, you can’t discount that and also only choose his 22-27 year old seasons, instead of the entire first decade of his career where he was barely behind Jaromir Jagr (a consensus top 5 offensive talent of all-time) in points per game in the regular season and playoffs while playing a two-way game with less ice time, less powerplay time, and more PK time in a more defensive role

The posters who believe Forsberg is being overrated and their reasons why are comical.

 

[authentic]

It's already been shown that Forsberg's best stretch of hockey wasn't on Jagr's level, how about we put your "pre-injury" Forsberg narrative to bed.


1997: pre-injury PPG of 1.39 vs. Jagr's pre-injury PPG of 1.55.

1998: pre-injury (Game 68) PPG of 1.25 vs. Jagr's PPG of 1.32 (his weakest full season Art Ross win)

2005: pre-injury PPG of 1.86 (tied with Spezza and Alfredsson thru 21 games who finished 3rd and 4th in scoring). It's completely unreasonable to think Forsberg can keep up that pace.

I don’t know how you believe this proves your point unless you disregard every aspect of hockey besides offense. You realize Forsberg was playing more of a defensive role in those seasons and was recognized highly for his two-way game?

Give Jagr that same ice time and defensive responsibility and I don’t even think he scores more points per game than Forsberg at all.

And before someone claims that’s a what if, that’s a big part of what judging a players overall ability is all about, instead of just looking at full season or career totals and calling it a day.

 

[Felidae]

Since we seem to agree on a lot of other points, I'll respond to this part here.

What are we actually looking to evaluate though? Consistency? Forsberg is extremely consistent, no question. So if you want to look at a stretch of 12 years and ask who was more consistent, he might be #1 above even Jagr. But I thought the discussion was more about each player's best, and who was better.

I think looking at 11 or 12 seasons is way overkill. Look at each player's best ~2-4 seasons for peak, and ~5-7 seasons for prime. (sometimes can be a bit more/less depending on the player)

Ok fair enough, looking at a players peak, a timeframe such as that is overkill. I think it's completely fine with prime though. As you said yourself, peak and prime is sort of dependant on the player. The main reason I liked the 1995-2005 timeframe is it includes all their best seasons statistically.. I wouldn't mind an examination cherry picking each player's best seasons, it doesn't have to be consecutive though cause some players have lulls in between their best seasons. For example, if I'm gonna pick Jagr's 5 best seasons I wouldn't pick a consecutive timeframe just because 1997-98 was a pretty weak Art Ross win, he has 2nd place finishes stronger than that season.

Jagr's peak includes - 95, 96, 98, 99, 00, 01.
Forsberg's peak includes - 2003? Anythig else you'd include?

Well peak for peak - Jagr has multiple seasons better than Forsberg 2003. And all 6 of those seasons are better than Forsberg's 2nd best, 3rd best and so on seasons.

a season to season comparison is difficult considering the vast majority of Jagr's prime was healthy, which wasn't the case for Forsberg. It's partly why I prefer PPG comparisons over a large timeframe for players heavily impacted by injuries like Forsberg, Lindros and Malkin, cause it's more representative of their actual ability.

I also disagree that Jagr has multiple seasons better than Forsberg.

Lets look at Jagr's 1998-99 season and Forsberg's 2002-03 season for instance. Jagr had a 1.57 PPG to Forsberg's 1.41. that may seem large, but that's a 12 point difference over an 82 game sample size.. and the scoring environments were nearly identical (2.65 and 2.63) . I'm aware Forsberg didn't have as much defensive responsibility as previous years, playing little on the PK. But I'd still say Forsberg's two way play and physicality closes the gap a bit, and just like Jagr, he was a possession monster. So Jagr doesn't have that in his favour to the extent he would on other players.

And yeah, I'm not assuming Forsberg maintains that PPG over an 82 game season. But it's also worth noting he missed only 7 games that season, and that PPG carried over unto the next season for another 39 games in a very similar scoring environment.

I can see people taking peak Forsberg over peak Jagr, and clearly it wasn't exactly unpopular considering the best players ranking at the time were pretty close with Forsberg being ranked over Jagr in quite a few years.

 

[daver]

Lets look at Jagr's 1998-99 season and Forsberg's 2002-03 season for instance. Jagr had a 1.57 PPG to Forsberg's 1.41. that may seem large, but that's a 12 point difference over an 82 game sample size..

A 10% difference is enough to be considered a tier, IMO.

I'm aware Forsberg didn't have as much defensive responsibility as previous years, playing little on the PK. But I'd still say Forsberg's two way play and physicality closes the gap a bit, and just like Jagr, he was a possession monster. So Jagr doesn't have that in his favour to the extent he would on other players.

Some consider Jagr to be "The" possession monster so edge to him in that regard. Defensive play to Forsberg but quality of team and quality of linemates also to Forsberg which, IMO, eliminates the gap.

The OP wants the rating to be based on "when healthy" but in Forsberg's case, like Lindros, the rating needs to be based on "If healthy".

IMO, you can give Forsberg the benefit of the doubt for a season or two but after that you start going waaaaaay too far the hypothetical path and into an alternate universe.