Martin St. Louis Versus Marian Hossa

[GlitchMarner]

Who was better?

 

[OKR]

St. Louis by some margin imo, both great players tho

 

[eli4spetterss0n]

St. Louis is in another tier.

 

[trentmccleary]

Marian Hossa. Produced nearly as much with much less talent on his lines and didn't get abandon defensive play to pad his stats.

Avg of their 10 best seasons by PPG:

Player	GP	G	Pts	GPG	PPG	EVGA	EVGA/GP
MSL	81	31	86	0.39	1.06	73	0.90
Hossa	75	34	75	0.45	1.00	45	0.60

[TBODY] [/TBODY]

 

[Agent Zub]

Marian Hossa. Produced nearly as much with much less talent on his lines and didn't get abandon defensive play to pad his stats.

Avg of their 10 best seasons by PPG:

Player	GP	G	Pts	GPG	PPG	EVGA	EVGA/GP
MSL	81	31	86	0.39	1.06	73	0.90
Hossa	75	34	75	0.45	1.00	45	0.60

[TBODY] [/TBODY]

too much logic

 

[Mrfenn92]

Hossa for me

 

[Regal]

St. Louis has the better scoring finishes near the top, but outside of '04 which was the best season by either player, all his top seasons came next to a high scoring center while getting big offensive minutes on a weak defensive team. He was good defensively early in his career and a shorthanded threat, but I think he largely sacrificed defense for offense after the lockout and his underlying numbers weren't good.

Hossa meanwhile only really got to play heavy offensive minutes for a bad team in Atlanta. In Ottawa, Detroit and Chicago, he always played under 20 min and always remained a good defensive player. St.Louis was over 20 min his entire best 10 year period.

Even still, as Trent McCleary shows above, their 10 best years aren't that far apart offensively. I was ready to say that the numbers undersold St.Louis when looking at league scoring, but they stay roughly the same even if we look at their scoring relative to the 10th scorer each year. And Hossa has several more years outside of that period where he was still very good.

St. Louis looks better on paper when you look at finishes and awards, but overall, Hossa was the better player. I mean, St.Louis was clearly never seen at the level of player his scoring numbers suggest while he was playing, it's strange that he seems to be held in higher regard after the fact because of them.

 

[TheKrebsCycle]

There is a big enough gap defensively to push things in Hossa s direction for me.

 

[GIN ANTONIC]

Peak is MSL. Everything else is Hossa. MSL had a great career though but if I have to choose overall impact then I’ll probably go Hossa

 

[Plural]

St.Louis for me. But that said, I feel St.Louis at times gets bit overrated and Hossa underrated.

 

[Plural]

Marian Hossa. Produced nearly as much with much less talent on his lines and didn't get abandon defensive play to pad his stats.

Avg of their 10 best seasons by PPG:

Player	GP	G	Pts	GPG	PPG	EVGA	EVGA/GP
MSL	81	31	86	0.39	1.06	73	0.90
Hossa	75	34	75	0.45	1.00	45	0.60

[TBODY] [/TBODY]

This is surprising to me. I would have guessed St.Louis to have bigger advantage over Hossa over 10 years. Hmm, I'll have to re-evaluate my position. Hossa was definitely better all-around player and when the gap is that Small it's reasonable to suggest Hossa to have been the actual better player.

 

[psycat]

Depends on how much you value peak, voted St.Louis since at their best id rather have him. Give me Hossa for whole careers.

 

[eli4spetterss0n]

I believe Hossa tends to get a bit overrated because when people look back at the player, they merge his offense from his Atlanta days with his defense from his time with Chicago.

While still a good defensive player in Atlanta and Ottawa, he was not the same defensive player as he was in Chicago. Early-career St. Louis was on par defensively with Atlanta Hossa, IMO.

 

[Sky04]

You could put MSL on any team and he can carry an offense, Hossa wasn't a driver like that. St.louis in Tampa was pretty much the best player on his team every single playoff run, Hossa took a backseat in a lot of years.

Who was better? At their absolute peaks, game to win it all I take St.louis no question.

 

[The Macho King]

Hossa's defense has been severely overrated. He was good defensively - he wasn't Lehtinen or Selke-worthy.

This is MSL and not particularly close.

 

[JaegerDice]

Marian Hossa. Produced nearly as much with much less talent on his lines and didn't get abandon defensive play to pad his stats.

Avg of their 10 best seasons by PPG:

Player	GP	G	Pts	GPG	PPG	EVGA	EVGA/GP
MSL	81	31	86	0.39	1.06	73	0.90
Hossa	75	34	75	0.45	1.00	45	0.60

[TBODY] [/TBODY]

This.

MSL is a fantastic player, but if I get to choose to have one on my team, it’s Hossa.

 

[Albatros]

Hossa, offensively on par with St-Louis and superior in other aspects of the game.

 

[Regal]

Hossa's defense has been severely overrated. He was good defensively - he wasn't Lehtinen or Selke-worthy.

This is MSL and not particularly close.

I agree Hossa's defense is overrated, but so is St. Louis' offense. His best seasons outside of '04 all come next to a similarly high-scoring center with big minutes on a team without much defensive structure. Hossa never had the same luxury. And their numbers weren't nearly as different as people seem to be assuming.

 

[Fatass]

There is a big enough gap defensively to push things in Hossa s direction for me.

Me too. Pretty similar offensively, with a slight edge to MSL. But Hossa was a dominant defensive player too. Got to go with the 200 foot player if the two guys are close on offence.

 

[Golden_Jet]

Going with Hossa, loved his game.

 

[AlwaysSunnyInTampa]

How is this even a question?


Marty St. Louis lost about 7 years of his career because people were too stupid to actually give him a chance because of "muh size" and got the first ACTUAL shot in his career at the age of 25 in the heart of the Dead Puck Era on a God awful Lightning team. Hossa was given every chance to succeed on a budding Senators team while St. Louis was doing time with St. John of the AHL at the tail end of the 1990's. At age 38 Hossa was a shell of his former self. At 38 St. Louis was carrying the Rangers to the Stanley Cup Finals. And despite all this St. Louis managed to finish only 101 points behind Hossa. Anyone saying Marty wasn't better is should try out for the Olympics for mental gymnastics. A 6'2 St. Louis gets his chance right away and finishes his career with 1400 points. Literally the only thing Hossa has on St. Louis is an overrated defensive career. People suck up on him because they remember him being the hard luck Cup loser who went on to win 3 of them anyway with a popular Hawks team.

It's not even a "little guy" thing. Marty was the most dominant player on the ice against whatever team he was facing for the vast majority of his career and the fact he did it at his size makes him that much more dominant over Hossa.

 

[AlwaysSunnyInTampa]

And this is if my long-winded post wasn't convincing enough. He and Vinny's 2006 highlights belongs on Brazzers

 

[ScaredStreit]

Wins 2 Art Rosses and a Hart. Still called overrated. smh.

 

[Regal]

How is this even a question?


Marty St. Louis lost about 7 years of his career because people were too stupid to actually give him a chance because of "muh size" and got the first ACTUAL shot in his career at the age of 25 in the heart of the Dead Puck Era on a God awful Lightning team. Hossa was given every chance to succeed on a budding Senators team while St. Louis was doing time with St. John of the AHL at the tail end of the 1990's. At age 38 Hossa was a shell of his former self. At 38 St. Louis was carrying the Rangers to the Stanley Cup Finals. And despite all this St. Louis managed to finish only 101 points behind Hossa. Anyone saying Marty wasn't better is should try out for the Olympics for mental gymnastics. A 6'2 St. Louis gets his chance right away and finishes his career with 1400 points. Literally the only thing Hossa has on St. Louis is an overrated defensive career. People suck up on him because they remember him being the hard luck Cup loser who went on to win 3 of them anyway with a popular Hawks team.

It's not even a "little guy" thing. Marty was the most dominant player on the ice against whatever team he was facing for the vast majority of his career and the fact he did it at his size makes him that much more dominant over Hossa.

You're making it sound like the only reason St. Louis didn't heavily outscore Hossa over their careers, focusing on "only 101 points behind", is because he started later and didn't get to play enough games, but Hossa only played 175 more games. That's great that St.Louis was healthier but he didn't actually produce at a much higher rate over their careers outside of a couple seasons.

And while St. Louis may have "led" the Rangers forwards in the final run, it's interesting that as soon as he went to a more structured defensive team with more balanced ice time, like what Hossa had in Chicago, his numbers sharply declined. He played at a 50 point pace in that playoff run, after being PPG for 60 games with Tampa that year.

 

[vadim sharifijanov]

How is this even a question?

agree

and i like hossa a lot