I think you have an underlying logical flaw - you assume defensemen must be proportionately represented (or somewhat proportionately represented) among the greatest players of all time. The problem is, the vast majority of the greatest talents don't choose to play defense.
We've been waiting for your list for two years now. At least post your top fifty and help educate us as to which specific defensemen were overrated, and which specific forwards were underrated.
I disagree that forwards are more valuable than defenseman. The value that a good two-way defenseman can bring to his team is enormous. From 1996 (the start of the five-ballot Hart) to 2019, defenseman have earned less than 4% of the votes for the Hart trophy. Are you seriously going to argue that these results, where defensemen only earn 1/25th of the available votes, in any way reflects reality? I find it surprising we even need to discuss this point.
It's true that top prospects in recent years are disproportionately forwards. There are two obvious reasons for that. One, offense is easier to measure than defense. Even if two players are equally talented/impactful, it's easier for the forward to "prove" their value through stats. Defense can only be measured indirectly. Even if two players are equally good, the forward's talent is easier to measure (making him a less risky pick and more likely to be taken higher - leading him to getting more hype before the draft).
Two, players reach their offense peaks at a relatively young age and defensive abilities (and defensemen in general) tend to peak later. So even if there were two equally talented prospects, it makes sense for a team to pick the forward first - they're more likely to get most of that player's best years before he becomes a free agent.
I don't think it would have made the project biased to acknowledge this reality: The greatest prospects - the McDavids of the world - are far more likely to want to be forwards. This is true in lots of other sports too - tackles > guards, starting pitchers > relief pitchers, hitting > fielding. To control for position may actually be biased.
If we take this argument literally, we could conclude that centres are more valuable than wingers. Centres have a greater impact on the ice compared to wingers (so do defensemen, for the record); there are more all-time great centers than wingers; and more elite forward prospects are centers than wingers. Do we now use this as an argument for Crosby over Ovechkin? I'm fairly sure you wouldn't make that argument when comparing Crosby and Ovechkin (correct me if I'm wrong) - you'd argue, and rightly so, that we're comparing individual players, not positions as a whole. So why make that argument here?
The next 5 or 10 players probably aren't close. The #15 player from today may very well be far ahead of the #10 player from 1984. Ahead of this season, Leon Draisaitl was ranked 20th by the sporting news.
Ranking the top 25 NHL forwards in 2019-20
It's a far deeper NHL. All the evidence points to this.
Lemieux and Gretzky are probably better than anyone playing today, but if we go 50 years without anyone being able to make the ridiculous amount of separation from the pack the way they did (and Bobby Orr), it's going to look increasingly like the weakness of the era was the primary factor.
We're talking about Bourque versus Ovechkin (right)? There were 4 years, 4 months between Bourque's last NHL game (a season in which he was a Norris trophy finalist and played 28:32 per game on a Stanley Cup winning team), and the start of Ovechkin's first game. That would have been 3 years, 4 months if not for the lockout (Ovechkin was almost certainly NHL-ready in 2005).
Again, we're not talking about Howie Morenz here. Held me understand how the NHL advanced so dramatically in 3-4 years that Bourque gets downgraded in this player-to-player comparison.
Back to the Hart trophy argument - who was the 15th best player in the NHL this year - maybe Jack Eichel or Alex Pietrangelo? Maybe it's true they're better than the 10th best player in 1987 (perhaps one of Ron Francis, Michel Goulet, or Mark Howe). But does that matter, when Bourque finished 2nd in Hart voting to 183 point Gretzky (who took 49 of the 54 first-place votes)? That's another reason the Hart trophy argument is a bad one (in addition to it being unfair to compare across positions) - it doesn't matter who played in a deeper league - what's important is who faced the stiffest top-end competition.
I've been arguing for years that the talent pool has dramatically increased. I argued this point with you, specifically you, what, last week? Bizarre that you would accuse me of inventing this just now. This obviously isn't some new thing I just came up with - it's absolutely not a moving goal post. Canada used to be 97% of the NHL (at the beginning of Bobby Hull's career). 76% in Gretzky's heyday. Now it's 41.9%, and Canada's population has doubled since 1960 when 1980s players were born and tripled since Bobby Hull's generation was born (remember those numbers?).
You guys have anecdotal evidence to say kids are fat now because of video games, or immigrants don't count, hockey gear has somehow outpaced inflation, or whatever. It's mostly weak. The fertility data relative to the baby boom is a fair point, and relevant. Again, that's a deep dive and certainly worthy of its own thread topic. IMO the question is how much the talent pool increased by, and certainly not "if."
My point was - you brought up Hart trophy voting as evidence that Ovechkin was better. A bunch of posters here shot down that argument, pretty much simultaneously. Only then did you start talking about how Hart voting was unfair because of the larger talent pool Ovechkin faced. If that's really what you thought, you wouldn't have brought up the Hart trophy in the first place. Why would you advance an argument that you're now saying is invalid? You only brought it up after the flaws in the argument were exposed; you're trying to salvage what's left of a weakened position.
Yes, we talked about Canada's talent pool a few days ago. My point (which is well-supported by both data and common sense) is that the increase in the size of Canada's talent pool is less than the overall increase in Canada's population.
Of course the global talent pool is bigger today than it was 25 or 50 years ago - but who's denied that here? You're running around attacking positions that no regular on HOH has taken. For the record, I agree with your last two sentences above.
Nobody is accusing the project of an anti 1960s or bias. Quite the opposite. I am accusing you guys of an anti 2000s and 2010s bias.
This is evidenced by there being 5 players from the 50s and 60s ranked above the best ranked player from the 2000s and 2010s.
So the top 100 players project participants collectively believe Canada from 1921 to 1939 (18 years) with a population of 9-11 million, and no baby boom, put out 5 talents greater than the whole world did - inclusive of 30M Canada - in today's international NHL? I find that to be on the extreme end of unlikely.
Certainly you can argue that today's players aren't done yet. Crosby and Ovechkin can still add to their legacies, and they still are. But unless the needle moves, then it's going to look a little strange.
Every time there's a version of this project (the first one was more than a decade ago), one of the main criticisms that non-participants make is - why aren't recent players better represented? The reason is the same every time. Very recent players don't rank higher, because they haven't finished their careers yet. McDavid could legitimately end up in our top 20 (or higher) - but he's clearly not there yet. Crosby and Ovechkin could end up in our top 10 - and they're getting close (maybe Crosby is already there), but in my opinion neither is there yet.
When we re-do this project in, say 2030, we could very well have five players from the 2000s/2010s in the top twenty (those three plus Lidstrom and Jagr, if he counts). Malkin perhaps could have made it, if not for injuries. That's not even including players like Lemieux, Hasek, Roy, Messier and Bourque, who all played a bit in the 21st century.
If you look back at the 2008 project - there's been a ton of turnover on the list. In 11 years we added 10 players who built their legacies since 2008 (Crosby, Ovechkin, Malkin, Pronger, Selanne, Kane, Chara, Thornton, St. Louis, Keith). Then you have other players who moved up significantly based on what they added since 2008 (Lidstrom being the best example). If we were systematically biased against players from the 2000's and 2010's, as you've suggested, that type of transformation would be impossible.
The Hockey News did a top 100 project in 1997. It was, at the time, the most thorough and credible ranked list that anybody ever put together. But the biggest embarrassment was having Eric Lindros (who had played less than 300 games at the time) ranked 54th. They were obviously projecting how his career would turn out, and now they look silly for counting their chickens before they hatched. All of the HOH projects have strict "no projecting" rules - we want to avoid embarrassing outcomes like that (and, of course, we can't predict the future, even if we wanted to). So we're assuming Ovechkin doesn't score 800 goals, and McDavid doesn't win six Art Ross trophies - because it hasn't happened yet.
My point is - if you think that Crosby/Ovechkin/McDavid (or other recent players) are underrated on our list - give them a chance to finish their careers! Is it really surprising that 13 years of Crosby is ranked lower than 20 years of Beliveau? Longevity for the sake of longevity isn't rewarded, but Beliveau was a Hart finalist or Conn Smythe winner at ages 32, 33, 34, 36 and 37. When we finished the project more than a year ago, Crosby had just turned 31. Give him a chance to build a legacy over his full career. The results of the projects clearly show that most regulars here are willing to change their minds and give modern players a fair assessment - but it has to be based on evidence and actual accomplishments - not projections.
