Miscellaneous NHL Discussion LXXXVII: What An Ugly Number

[FatTugboatFlahr]

The Flyers were trading for that guy for like 8 straight years.

 

[Magua]

That’s Las Vegas Desert Duck Bill Barber to you.

That's Honolulu Ghibli Bob Clarke to you.

To be fair, I had to take him in the expansion draft. BPA, right? *sigh*

 

[Chinatown88]

I still win.

 

[renberg]

....

Are you saying Ross Lonsberry and his career high of 55 points is better than Giroux?

Check your stats. Lonsberry was a workhorse who thrived in digging the puck out of dirty areas. BTW in his seven season with the Flyers he bagged 144 goals and 170 assists not 55. I can't see Shero pulling him off of the ice for Giroux or Dornhoefer. If you think that he was a better center than MacLeish, I can't help you.

 

[Cody Webster]

Oh look, we had our almost daily bickering about Giroux. God this is insufferable

 

[Beef Invictus]

Check your stats. Lonsberry was a workhorse who thrived in digging the puck out of dirty areas. BTW in his seven season with the Flyers he bagged 144 goals and 170 assists. not 55.

He topped out at 55 points with far better support around him. That's it. That's his best. Playing with MacLeish, that's all he could manage? Dude is comparable to Hayes, not Giroux.

Edit: hell, Couturier, Richards, Carter, and Briere should all be ranked ahead of Lonsberry just from the recent era alone.

 

[Striiker]

Ghost wins 3 MVPs and the Selke in the 70s

Ghost leads the entire league in scoring if he played in the 70's. Give him concrete skates and a pool noodle as a stick... it wouldn't matter. Probably wins the Vezina too.

 

[deadhead]

Right. Ghost = Mark Howe.

 

[Hollywood Cannon]

To be fair, I had to take him in the expansion draft. BPA, right? *sigh*

Just the fact that you were in the expansion draft and not the original means you’re not perfect.

 

[Striiker]

Just the fact that you were in the expansion draft and not the original means you’re not perfect.

Stop expansion shaming.

 

[Hollywood Cannon]

Stop expansion shaming.

That’s Las Vegas Desert Duck selection @Striiker to you.

 

[Beef Invictus]

Technically GKJ owns my franchise. But I also own his. It's a circular pyramid scheme.

 

[renberg]

Right. So compare the number of players in the league when there were six teams-in 1966 there were 165 players or so. Two years later after expansion to twelve, there were double that. Now there are over a thousand in the league. There is no way that the talent level has not been watered down.
I would disagree that the quality of play in the sixties and early years of expansion is less than today. Quite the opposite. Night after night the players were up against tough opposition. There were no nights off for softies.
This is one of the problems that the Flyers, and other teams, are currently having right now. Fans from the past know what good hockey's and good players are. They watch the game and see what is missing. Sure there are some fantastic players in the league but they are few and far between. As a result the fans pay to go to an entertainment event to see Gritty, lighting events, smoke, music and crap like that. The game itself is secondary for too many. This is the NHL that Bettman wanted and the owners allowed him to create. More of a happening and less of a hard nosed competitive sport than it used to be.

 

[Striiker]

That’s Las Vegas Desert Duck selection @Striiker to you.

I changed my mind.

Great pick.

 

[Magua]

The talent today is not watered down. Just look at recent expansion teams compared to previous ones. It's more international, better players are given chances they didn't get in previous eras, drafting and development has improved across the board. Teams discover 60 point players under minor league rocks, and the talent is watered down? Hockey is just starting to emerge from the primordial soup of not playing single celled organisms (well, mostly).

 

[Beef Invictus]

Right. So compare the number of players in the league when there were six teams-in 1966 there were 165 players or so. Two years later after expansion to twelve, there were double that. Now there are over a thousand in the league. There is no way that the talent level has not been watered down.
I would disagree that the quality of play in the sixties and early years of expansion is less than today. Quite the opposite. Night after night the players were up against tough opposition. There were no nights off for softies.
This is one of the problems that the Flyers, and other teams, are currently having right now. Fans from the past know what good hockey's and good players are. They watch the game and see what is missing. Sure there are some fantastic players in the league but they are few and far between. As a result the fans pay to go to an entertainment event to see Gritty, lighting events, smoke, music and crap like that. The game itself is secondary for too many. This is the NHL that Bettman wanted and the owners allowed him to create. More of a happening and less of a hard nosed competitive sport than it used to be.

You're forgetting global expansion of the talent pool as well as massive development at the youth level to better harness and identify talent. It's not a Canadian league anymore. Youth hockey is a machine now, and that didn't exist then. The US is becoming a talent powerhouse. There's Europe and a massive Russia in play now.

Hockey in the 70s was a niche, regional sport. A weird novelty in most places it expanded to. Boxing and bowling were bigger.

 

[Hollywood Cannon]

Lol. The league was 90% Canadian back then if not more. Imagine saying the league is watered down now when it’s across the globe.

 

[freakydallas13]

Right. So compare the number of players in the league when there were six teams-in 1966 there were 165 players or so. Two years later after expansion to twelve, there were double that. Now there are over a thousand in the league. There is no way that the talent level has not been watered down.
I would disagree that the quality of play in the sixties and early years of expansion is less than today. Quite the opposite. Night after night the players were up against tough opposition. There were no nights off for softies.
This is one of the problems that the Flyers, and other teams, are currently having right now. Fans from the past know what good hockey's and good players are. They watch the game and see what is missing. Sure there are some fantastic players in the league but they are few and far between. As a result the fans pay to go to an entertainment event to see Gritty, lighting events, smoke, music and crap like that. The game itself is secondary for too many. This is the NHL that Bettman wanted and the owners allowed him to create. More of a happening and less of a hard nosed competitive sport than it used to be.

Bro, the time has come to stop posting. Lonsberry's best seasons are worse than Giroux's worst seasons.

Seek help.

 

[Ghosts Beer]

Giroux wouldn't be any faster than Clarke if Giroux played in the 70s with the low-tech, heavy equipment of the time.

Everyone ignores the gigantic impact of technology.

 

[Striiker]

Giroux beats every BSB in arm-wrestling.

Lonsberry loses to Sanheim.

 

[LegionOfDoom91]

We literally have higher end players from countries like Germany, Switzerland, Denmark, etc. playing in the NHL these days.

 

[Beef Invictus]

Lol. The league was 90% Canadian back then if not more. Imagine saying the league is watered down now when it’s across the globe.

Finland, Sweden, and Russia alone are pools of hockey talent with a collective population of 160 million people. The US has 330 million. Canada today has 38 million.

Canada's population in 1970 was 22 million. For that pool of people to produce better talent than today with such a small population to draw from (and a comparatively primitive development network) requires an unexplainable number of elite athletes to be born for a small period of time before those guys suddenly stopped being born at such a rate for no conceivable reason.

Unless you want to credit above ground nuclear testing for breeding elite mutant humans, it doesn't check out.

 

[renberg]

We literally have higher end players from countries like Germany, Switzerland, Denmark, etc. playing in the NHL these days.

No doubt. However they're split between 32 teams not six or twelve. The expansion from six to twelve made sense with the way that hockey was expanding in Canada and the U.S. Later expansions were predicated by finance. The boom of talented Euros coming over really hasn't born the fruit that Bettman advertised that it would. Sure some stars came over but so did the Robert Haggs to become roster fodder.

 

[Beef Invictus]

No doubt. However they're split between 32 teams not six or twelve. The expansion from six to twelve made sense with the way that hockey was expanding in Canada and the U.S. Later expansions were predicated by finance. The boom of talented Euros coming over really hasn't born the fruit that Bettman advertised that it would. Sure some stars came over but so did the Robert Haggs to become roster fodder.

There are about 5x as many teams now. The talent pool being drawn from is well over half a billion people rather than 22 million, though. 20x larger. It's not watered down. If anything competition to make the big leagues is tighter than ever.

 

[Hollywood Cannon]

This is an all time argument.