Prospect Info: Ivan Demidov (2024 5th OA): SKA St. Petersburg (KHL)

[Gravity]

Can we actually talk about Demidov and not let Bombshell derail the thread with ludicrous statements of generational players?

 

[Redux91]

Look what they did to my poor beloved Demidov thread..

 

[Riggins]

Caufield - Suzuki - Demidov
Slafkovsky - Dach - Laine

Would love that 1st line but think it makes the second line total ass at even strength.

Demidov plays tomorrow morning, some more heroics incoming.

 

[Favster]

Send The Nuge back to 1987 and I bet he racks up 600 pts (by Christmas)

This argument is so ridiculous and I really dislike comparing generations. Send him back to being born in lets say, 64-67 to play in 87 with only that generations influences and equipment. You'll see that he wouldnt have 600 points by christmas...

There isnt a sport in the world (well maybe golf) that has evolved as much as hockey and that is mostly due to equipment. Im at the age (38) where I played hockey with old school equipment (wood sticks, soft boot skates, hard high wrist protection gloves) and newer technology (carbon fiber sticks, hard boot molded skates, soft feel hard shell gloves) and trust me, the difference is immesurable. If you grow up using modern technology your technique will adjust to that. Look at the release Matthews and Bedard use where they rip it from 3 inches away from their lead foot; that shot is nearly impossible with wood sticks. Those sticks are the main reason slapshots are nearly extinct.

Anyways, my point was just that it is extremely unfair to compare eras.

Oh and Demidov is pretty good I guess

 

[Jurivan Demidovsky]

Would love that 1st line but think it makes the second line total ass at even strength.

Demidov plays tomorrow morning, some more heroics incoming.

Oh you're fingers hurt? Well now your back's gonna hurt cause you just pulled landscaping duty

 

[BJCOLLINS]

That just is not true. Gordie's generation featured NHLers who would struggle to be AHLers in today's game. This is why, to a man they all say that today's players are much better than their generation.....just watch the video lol. Players who were atrocious skaters and handled the puck like a grenade made up the majority of the league. Goalies were all terrible as the trade had yet to escape from the prison of idiot coaches who dictated like most dinosaurs do the way in which to play despite not having the knowledge to support their dumb truisms.

McDavid hits 200 points if he played when Mario and Wayne were playing.

I am old enough to have watched Wayne and Mario's entire career and I have love for that generation as that is where my fondest hockey memories lie, but......if we are being honest, there were 50 goal scorers who would be lucky to hit 30 goals nowadays and some like Maruk might not even be NHLers in today's game.

Hockey has a much larger pool to draw from today, as in multiple orders of magnitude as well as infinitely better developmental systems, training and nutrition. There is a solid argument to be made that players from these generations would be even better but the problem is that the kids with the most ability may never have played hockey back then. In Howe's generation there were far more families who relied on their kids to carry on the family business, especially farming and were never encouraged to try and play pro as well as the one's who did play and were never discovered.

My shot is better now with a new stick than it was in 1979. Players don’t drag behind hooking me with their sticks. I never have to worry about being offside because there’s no redline. Absolutely no neutral zone & heavy bangers to get through……I love todays game but come on, give Bossy or Lafleur todays sticks, rules, training/nutrition & no redline they’d be playing shiny. Don’t mistake parody with progress. Anyway, just IMHO. Cheers.

 

[jaffy27]

Send The Nuge back to 1987 and I bet he racks up 600 pts (by Christmas)

Send Gretzky to the 60’s and he has 600pts by November

 

[Estimated_Prophet]

My shot is better now with a new stick than it was in 1979. Players don’t drag behind hooking me with their sticks. I never have to worry about being offside because there’s no redline. Absolutely no neutral zone & heavy bangers to get through……I love todays game but come on, give Bossy or Lafleur todays sticks, rules, training/nutrition & no redline they’d be playing shiny. Don’t mistake parody with progress. Anyway, just IMHO. Cheers.

Elite players of every generation would be elite players in any generation, there is no argument here. But......many of today's 3rd liners would be all stars in earlier generations and players like Maruk, Stoughton, Vaive, Leeman, Bullard, Ogrodnik, Carpenter etc stuggle to play on a 3rd line in today's league and some wouldn't even play in the NHL. The 70's and early 80's was shinny hockey mixed with the UFC lol. It was really entertaining and I miss the unique personalities and vicious rivalries but half of the players were brutally bad by today's standards and like I said before, they almost always admit as much.

The argument about sticks doesn't carry much weight as Goaltending equipment as well as technique have been winning the arms race over the sticks for over 30 years now, to the point where the NHL had to actually change it's rules to allow offensive players to even have a chance despite the new sticks. I have said from day one that the NHL should go back to wood sticks and reduce the dimension of goaltender equipment to where it was in the 80's. That would have soved everything.....other than the huge profits these NHL affiliated companies are making.

Then we have the fact that systems were non-existent until Bowman came on the scene and were still largely non existent unti the 90's when Bowman's prodigy Jacques Lemaire took it a step further. Don Cherry doesn't have the faintest idea how to play hockey at the NHL level as is the case with most of the old school coaches who were mostly gruff simpleton's overseeing a chess board but playing checkers as the forefathers had taught them.

I agree with the spirit of your post, as I think the depth of teams has increased greatly. I have no difficulty imagining the 2025 Blackhawks destroying the Gilbert Perreault Sabres (random example of a good team from the past) something like 15-2. Any fourth liner of today is a top-notch athlete in a remarkable shape, with fine tuned fundamentals, discipline and a solid knowledge of hockey systems and strategy. A fourth line of today could eat alive any line from the vintage era.

That said, the top talent will always compare. My argument for that is based on the most reliable measuring standard known to man : the Jagr-o-meter. Jaromir Jagr is the superstar player who played in both the early 90s and the late 2010s. He's been a clear bridge between that old generation and the present one. Would a prime Jagr dominate in today's game? I'd argue he'd contend for an Art Ross year in, year out. Maybe you don't agree. Imo he was always a beast. Well, as good as Jagr was in the 90s, there were still some 80s veterans playing during that time who directly faced Jagr on a rink and looked amazing too.

And those vets, they played against a still dominant 80s Larry Robinson, for example, who himself played his prime in the 70s with and against the stars of that time, and some looked as good or better than him. Emphasis on the word look. I know you said that some high-producing players of back then would suck today, that much is true, that's why I'm talking in terms of eye-test. Have you ever seen tapes of Bobby Orr? Train this guy from birth with the methods of today and heal his knees with the medical prowess of our time and he's a perennial Norris contender like Makar.

Back to Big Bird, it's not a stretch to say that a physical specimen with skill like him couldve been a great player if he had his prime in the 90s in an alternate universe. If he could do that, then a slightly older player could probably do it, and so on.

So, yes, today's players are just much better trained, prepared and fed than the pornstache era players, but the cream will always rise to the top, no matter the era. There's a limit at some point too. A player wouldnt score 10 a game. Well, maybe Ovie against the 1975 Caps. Lol.

I think we are entirely in agreement. I have always argued that elite is elite no matter what generation we are talking about.

 

[Estimated_Prophet]

Still there should be at least one generational player by generation minimum. That's the definition of the word. If not then we should use another word to describe the concept.

That would be a statement born from fallacy. A "Generational Player" is a player that typically comes around once in a generation and is defined by a level of dominance and separation from his peers. But.....is not limited to being the only such talent nor is there a guarantee that any such player will develop in a "generation". The real problem is the uber subjectivity that defines the start and end to a generation as it is purely based on the viewer's personal timeline. This is why the statement that "there should be at least one generational player by generation minimum" does not actually make sense nor does it really mean anything at all.

The "generational player" conversation is generally a nonsensical one anyways especially as a conversation about contemporaries when in fact the only time it can take place on any remotely reasonable platform is as a reflective post modern interpretation where the names stand the test of time. "Generational player", technically is just for the greatest of the greats who will be debated as the very best of all time and fans throw this distinction around way too flippantly. Arguing whether Bedard is a generational talent is mind numbingly asinine and needn't be discussed by anyone until his career is winding down. All we are doing is having silly arguments over who would win between Batman and Iron Man lol with personal bias at the forefront of every syllable in the discussion.

This last part was not in any way directed at you LaP.........just got my rant on buddy