Ovechkin just won his 9th Rocket. Does this change how you view him?

[quoipourquoi]

The list you start from was created without intellectual rigor.

The top 100 players project was doomed from day 1 for not having clear objectives (top = best or greatest?). This led to numerous debates where posters were talking past one another.

The group was a poor representation of hockey fandom (how many Russians or non-Canadians participated? 5%? 10%? 20%? How many Penguins fans - like 20%-30% of the group or something like that?). It would be like conducting a poll with a sample of 70% Republicans.

The group did not follow their own rules. Ridiculous lists - like the one that had Gretzky 7th and Ovechkin 59th - were not removed from consideration. Massively biased people (like the poster in this thread who said Ryan Getzlaf > Ovechkin) were not removed from participation. I cannot put stock in such opinions.

The group also struggled to say things that were factually accurate, often going unchallenged unless non-participants stepped in to check the [MOD] statements made by participants - specifically calling Ovechkin a "shoot only" player, and other objectively false assertions.

The project was a neat idea, but the end result is fatally tainted.

I think 100 players is probably too much to ask for, but I would be curious if you could give us a rough idea of your top-25 or top-50. It’s easier to criticize than it is to open oneself up to criticism, but the most important part of HOH projects are not the final list but rather increased knowledge.

So when you say we did not have a clear objective, you are incorrect. Participants learned.

Ultimately I don’t care about our final list. I care that the people who followed along with the threads would feel more confident in any list they make subsequent to the project than the one originally submitted to me.

 

[tarheelhockey]

Cost of playing hockey is certainly concerning, and somewhat scary at the elite levels. But, it's not the biggest issue with respect to the number of kids playing hockey.

I know lots of people playing minor hockey today, and a lot of them at the AAA level.

Most of the people I know don't have much money. In most cases, they will find the money. And in the large majority of cases, the people who want to start out playing hockey, do it.

The bigger problem is that there are a lot more things to do today, than play hockey.

People who in previous generations would have put their kids in hockey, are not doing it anymore. And it's generally not because of money.

I do agree that the single biggest issue is kids simply not engaging with the game. Either because they're not going down the path of organized sports at all, or because they're lured away by some other sport. The trend toward year-round competition seems to hurt hockey in the sense that sports are no longer seasonal. If your 5-year-old likes soccer, he plays it right through the winter. The concept of switching to a winter sport, which used to be simply the natural progression for any young athlete, doesn't even enter the equation today.

Come to think of it, that's another factor in the cost of development -- the kids who advance are the ones whose families shell out for not just one, but three or four seasons per year. Patrick Kane was on something like 5 teams simultaneously as a kid. The cost of that is just mind-blowing. Imagine how many pairs of skates he must have worn out... how many sticks in a single season.

I disagree that most people will just 'find the money'. People get cut out of the picture when costs go up. This article projects $10,000/year as a typical cost of enrolling one* child in AAA hockey. Median household income with one* child is around $75,000. The average family flat-out doesn't have the money to give, even if they dig deep. The demographics of hockey development haven't looked like this since the "Athletic Club" era of social exclusivity over 100 years ago.


* the average family has 2 children, which means if they do this for one child they are doing nothing for the other.

 

[Sentinel]

3 versus 2? Big freaking deal.

Hull had higher peak seasons. His runner-up Hart finishes were to Howe and Beliveau, who are both top 5 caliber players. Ovechkin finished runner-up twice, to Sedin and Price. Not exactly the same elites as Hull competed against. That "weak original six competition" everyone mentions doesn't make sense. It's not easy to win the Hart trophy with Mikita on your team and players like Howe, Beliveau, Harvey, and Plante around. Then a guy named Orr comes along.

Having Mikita on your team (and Esposito, and Pilote, and Hall) and feeding you pucks on PP is also a bit more conducive to getting better results than having Backstrom, Semin, Green, and Tom Poti.

I'll give you that much: the Hart competition was stiffer in Hull's era. But by the same token of accounting for teammates, you have to conceed that Ovy did about as much as Hull with much, MUCH less. So Ovechkin is a better / more consistent goalscorer than Hull and a greater physical presence than Hull. As for their assists... at this point in time their RS assist totals are:
Bobby Hull - 560
Alexander Ovechkin - 553

Their playoff statline is remarkably similar:

Bobby Hull: 62G + 67A in 119 GP
Alexander Ovechkin: 65G + 61A in 128 GP

 

[GMR]

Having Mikita on your team (and Esposito, and Pilote, and Hall) and feeding you pucks on PP is also a bit more conducive to getting better results than having Backstrom, Semin, Green, and Tom Poti.

I'll give you that much: the Hart competition was stiffer in Hull's era. But by the same token of accounting for teammates, you have to conceed that Ovy did about as much as Hull with much, MUCH less. So Ovechkin is a better / more consistent goalscorer than Hull and a greater physical presence than Hull. As for their assists... at this point in time their RS assist totals are:
Bobby Hull - 560
Alexander Ovechkin - 553

Their playoff statline is remarkably similar:

Bobby Hull: 62G + 67A in 119 GP
Alexander Ovechkin: 65G + 61A in 128 GP

Backstrom is a terrific passer. No, he's not a better all-around player than Mikita, but his passing is more than good enough. There's not going to be any Mikita's on Ovechkin's team, unless he played with Crosby and Malkin. That's just not possible nowadays. Also, keep in mind that Montreal, Detroit, and Toronto, and eventually Boston when Orr came along, were loaded with stars on the powerplay also. Not like Hull had Mikita and Pilote while those other teams had garbage on the powerplay.

 

[Sentinel]

Backstrom is a terrific passer. No, he's not a better all-around player than Mikita, but his passing is more than good enough. There's not going to be any Mikita's on Ovechkin's team, unless he played with Crosby and Malkin. That's just not possible nowadays. Also, keep in mind that Montreal, Detroit, and Toronto, and eventually Boston when Orr came along, were loaded with stars on the powerplay also. Not like Hull had Mikita and Pilote while those other teams had garbage on the powerplay.

But when you have other top end HoFers, the other teams don't center exclusively on you. They have to figure out how to stop Mikita and how to score on Hall.
When you are the sole circle on the opponent's drawing board, you're much easier to stop.

Incidentally, both Hull and Ovechkin scored 22 power play goals in their peak season.

 

[Fantomas]

how many Russians or non-Canadians participated? 5%? 10%? 20%?

Good question. I'm guessing very few.

 

[sr edler]

The group also struggled to say things that were factually accurate, often going unchallenged unless non-participants stepped in to check the [MOD] statements made by participants - specifically calling Ovechkin a "shoot only" player, and other objectively false assertions.

Haha, I remember the "shoot only" thing but not who said it. I'm 98% positive it wasn't me though.

 

[Merrrlin]

To me, he is the Cristiano Ronaldo of hockey. One-dimensional players who can score a lot of goals but provide little else especially as they have aged. Now, CR has proven to be a huge winner and leader, moreso than Ovi whose NT record is horrible while CR has a great one, but the parallel is still there. Crosby is still better, and so is Messi.

Somehow this comes off insulting until you realize that the two "lesser players" are two of the best ever at doing the most valued thing in either sport.

 

[GMR]

But when you have other top end HoFers, the other teams don't center exclusively on you. They have to figure out how to stop Mikita and how to score on Hall.
When you are the sole circle on the opponent's drawing board, you're much easier to stop.

Incidentally, both Hull and Ovechkin scored 22 power play goals in their peak season.

Evidently not today, because teams still haven't figured out how to stop Ovechkin from parking at his one spot on the powerplay. Ovechkin's coaches and teammates have done a great job of feeding him for that one-timer. They've created ways to get him the puck despite everyone knowing where it's going. For some reason, people diminish his teammates, but he's had a strong supporting cast there for many seasons.

 

[Sentinel]

Evidently not today, because teams still haven't figured out how to stop Ovechkin from parking at his one spot on the powerplay. Ovechkin's coaches and teammates have done a great job of feeding him for that one-timer. They've created ways to get him the puck despite everyone knowing where it's going. For some reason, people diminish his teammates, but he's had a strong supporting cast there for many seasons.

Nobody diminishes his teammates. But they are not to today's NHL what Mikita & Co were to the 60s NHL.

 

[Scandale du Jour]

Somehow this comes off insulting until you realize that the two "lesser players" are two of the best ever at doing the most valued thing in either sport.

And in both cases, neither early-Ronaldo or early-Ovechkin were unidimensional. The aging versions, yes. But no the peak versions.

 

[Vilica]

I have a whole slew of Hull/Ovechkin comparisons and breakdowns, but I get the sense that people don't want huge posts and a large scale one-on-one discussion that's only partially relevant to the thread. I do have two questions to pose for the comparison - if you remove all of Hull's WHA accomplishments and both of their international resumes, would people still rank Hull ahead of Ovechkin based entirely on just their NHL performances, regular season and playoffs? The other question is more of a hypothetical - say the NHL remains shut down for the next season, but the AHL resumes play, and along with every waiver-eligible player in the NHL, Ovechkin (but no other established NHL player) is allowed to play for Hershey next year. How many goals does he score in a full 76 game season?

The aspect that people here always miss when discussing talent is that top end talent doesn't change much across eras, it's the depth of talent that matters. Just because the 10th best defenseman right now is say Drew Doughty doesn't mean that the 10th best defenseman in the O6 era was as talented as Doughty. That 10th best defenseman back then was more like TJ Brodie. In a similar fashion, the 25th best center now might be Matt Duchene, while the 25th best center back then was more like Jay Beagle. Another way to look at it is to consider Metro Prystai - the 2nd line center for a few of the Detroit dynasty teams in the 50s. He had a decade-long career from 47-48 through 56-57, scoring 328 points in 659 games. Over that time period, that was the 11th most points, the 3rd highest scoring center, and 13th in PPG (of players who played in more than 300 games). As far as I can tell, he received a single vote for AS honors at center in 49-50 for Chicago. Move to the past decade, and the 11th highest player in points is Ryan Getzlaf, who is 5th amongst centers in both points and PPG. Now take a look at Prystai's 52-53 season, his age-25 year. That is peak of the peak Gordie Howe, and Prystai centered Howe and Lindsay for a good chunk of time that year, and yet Metro only had 50 points in 70 games (he had 41 ESP, and Howe had points on 23 of those, Lindsay had points on 16). Does anybody think that Getzlaf, playing with peak of the peak Gordie Howe, only puts up 50 points?

Also, quoipourquoi, I know you aimed your request for a list to Midnight Judges, but I've been meaning to post a top 16ish list for a bit now, just been refining my list/reasoning. Should that list just go in the sticky for the top 100 project for purposes of discussion?

 

[tarheelhockey]

The aspect that people here always miss when discussing talent is that top end talent doesn't change much across eras, it's the depth of talent that matters.

You really think people here always miss this?

 

[KevinRedkey]

For the last 3-4 years, people care about and talk about Ovechkin after the season, a lot more than Crosby. Like it or not, it's starting to look like that will be the case for after they retire. It's simply too hard to ignore arguably the best goal scorer off all time.

 

[overpass]

I have a whole slew of Hull/Ovechkin comparisons and breakdowns, but I get the sense that people don't want huge posts and a large scale one-on-one discussion that's only partially relevant to the thread. I do have two questions to pose for the comparison - if you remove all of Hull's WHA accomplishments and both of their international resumes, would people still rank Hull ahead of Ovechkin based entirely on just their NHL performances, regular season and playoffs? The other question is more of a hypothetical - say the NHL remains shut down for the next season, but the AHL resumes play, and along with every waiver-eligible player in the NHL, Ovechkin (but no other established NHL player) is allowed to play for Hershey next year. How many goals does he score in a full 76 game season?

The aspect that people here always miss when discussing talent is that top end talent doesn't change much across eras, it's the depth of talent that matters. Just because the 10th best defenseman right now is say Drew Doughty doesn't mean that the 10th best defenseman in the O6 era was as talented as Doughty. That 10th best defenseman back then was more like TJ Brodie. In a similar fashion, the 25th best center now might be Matt Duchene, while the 25th best center back then was more like Jay Beagle. Another way to look at it is to consider Metro Prystai - the 2nd line center for a few of the Detroit dynasty teams in the 50s. He had a decade-long career from 47-48 through 56-57, scoring 328 points in 659 games. Over that time period, that was the 11th most points, the 3rd highest scoring center, and 13th in PPG (of players who played in more than 300 games). As far as I can tell, he received a single vote for AS honors at center in 49-50 for Chicago. Move to the past decade, and the 11th highest player in points is Ryan Getzlaf, who is 5th amongst centers in both points and PPG. Now take a look at Prystai's 52-53 season, his age-25 year. That is peak of the peak Gordie Howe, and Prystai centered Howe and Lindsay for a good chunk of time that year, and yet Metro only had 50 points in 70 games (he had 41 ESP, and Howe had points on 23 of those, Lindsay had points on 16). Does anybody think that Getzlaf, playing with peak of the peak Gordie Howe, only puts up 50 points?

Also, quoipourquoi, I know you aimed your request for a list to Midnight Judges, but I've been meaning to post a top 16ish list for a bit now, just been refining my list/reasoning. Should that list just go in the sticky for the top 100 project for purposes of discussion?

How much of this is because a 6 team league has a limited number of scoring line positions? If you limit the comparison to the 6 team NHL only, by definition the 25th best centre is going to be a role player. But if the NHL of the 50s had more teams, players like Guyle Fielder and Phil Maloney would be on scoring lines and possibly among the scoring leaders. A lot of the depth of talent was in the minor leagues.

Detroit tried Fielder on a line with Gordie Howe. It didn’t work because they both needed to be the main puck carrier. And Fielder wasn’t a checking centre, so he went back to the minor leagues. In a larger NHL, Fielder gets a line built around him and is probably a franchise player, like Getzlaf.

Also, do you really think Jay Beagle was at the level of the 3rd/4th liners of the 50s NHL? Take Glen Skov as a sample checker from the 50s. He scored over 2 points per game in the OHA Jr league as a 19 year old. Beagle barely scored a point per game in the AJHL at age 20.

Earl Balfour was probably as pure a checking forward you could find in the NHL of the 50s, a penalty killing specialist, and even he was a better AHL scorer than Jay Beagle.

 

[quoipourquoi]

Also, quoipourquoi, I know you aimed your request for a list to Midnight Judges, but I've been meaning to post a top 16ish list for a bit now, just been refining my list/reasoning. Should that list just go in the sticky for the top 100 project for purposes of discussion?

Would love to see it! Here would be fine too since we’re all kind of gauging where Ovechkin is now.

Obviously, the more players that are ranked, they easier it is to assess blind spots. I think for me a few years ago, I didn’t pick up on how low I had pre-1950s goaltenders until I was about 60 names deep into making a list. Recognizing that it would be entirely unlikely that no goaltender from the first half of hockey’s history was a top-60 player led me down a rabbit hole of learning about various things that influenced career lengths across different eras, and in a way, unlearning the things I held against players from one generation even if I still believed them to be important considerations from another generation.

 

[BenchBrawl]

You keep saying this, but you're only looking at the geographical sources of the talent. What we're not talking about is the socio-economic side of the equation. A quick search brings up the following occupations the fathers of some O6 stars earned their money with:

Gordie Howe – construction worker
Richard brothers – woodworker
Bobby Hull – concrete foreman
Jacques Plante – factory worker
Pierre Pilote – mill worker
Doug Harvey – truck driver
Andy Bathgate – truck driver

Would a kid with a similar background have a chance to make it to the NHL today?

So perhaps the upper class and upper middle class of other provinces were added as sources of talent, but in the meantime the entire working class of Ontario and Québec was lost?

And working class people are physically stronger than the upper class on average. They also have more character. This is a generalization and plenty of exceptions (both ways) would exist. But chances are, the greatest players would come from a working class background. There is a reason someone becomes an accountant and another becomes a carpenter. Some of it is circumstances, but some of it is natural inclination (like a stronger body and better eye-hand coordination).

Did a supposedly regular contributor of this forum actually say they would take Ryan Getzlaf over Ovechkin?

Come the f*** on.

Absolutely I would take Ryan Getzlaf over Alex Ovechkin. I believe him to be a better building block. In my own Top 100 list I ranked Ovechkin higher, but I'm sometimes subject to the forces of conformity like everyone else.

This is especially true now that I have reasons to believe Ovechkin and co. weren't very serious when he was in his prime.

 

[quoipourquoi]

For the last 3-4 years, people care about and talk about Ovechkin after the season, a lot more than Crosby. Like it or not, it's starting to look like that will be the case for after they retire. It's simply too hard to ignore arguably the best goal scorer off all time.

But do they talk about it because he is having better seasons or because he is adding bulletpoints? If it’s the former, that’s fine. If it’s the latter, then wouldn’t that call into question how valuable these accomplishments are?

 

[Dennis Bonvie]

How much of this is because a 6 team league has a limited number of scoring line positions? If you limit the comparison to the 6 team NHL only, by definition the 25th best centre is going to be a role player. But if the NHL of the 50s had more teams, players like Guyle Fielder and Phil Maloney would be on scoring lines and possibly among the scoring leaders. A lot of the depth of talent was in the minor leagues.

Detroit tried Fielder on a line with Gordie Howe. It didn’t work because they both needed to be the main puck carrier. And Fielder wasn’t a checking centre, so he went back to the minor leagues. In a larger NHL, Fielder gets a line built around him and is probably a franchise player, like Getzlaf.

Also, do you really think Jay Beagle was at the level of the 3rd/4th liners of the 50s NHL? Take Glen Skov as a sample checker from the 50s. He scored over 2 points per game in the OHA Jr league as a 19 year old. Beagle barely scored a point per game in the AJHL at age 20.

Earl Balfour was probably as pure a checking forward you could find in the NHL of the 50s, a penalty killing specialist, and even he was a better AHL scorer than Jay Beagle.

Did teams in the 50s even have 4th lines?

I thought they all had 3 lines and 2 PK specialists.

That would have made Jay Beagle a minor leaguer.

 

[Nathaniel Skywalker]

For the last 3-4 years, people care about and talk about Ovechkin after the season, a lot more than Crosby. Like it or not, it's starting to look like that will be the case for after they retire. It's simply too hard to ignore arguably the best goal scorer off all time.

Lol not really. Crosby is by far the best of his generation and it is generally accepted by the hockey world

 

[Voight]

He has Scott Niedermayer 19th all-time. How did this guy become a hockey analyst? He actually has Niedermayer ahead of........................you guessed it, Alexander Ovechkin.

Campbell has always been a tool.

Every single one of those players are way more useful for a team in a playoff run.

As if Ovechkin didn't finish 2nd in points or 1st in goals when his team won the cup.

People act as if he was a passenger on the 2018 Caps.

 

[Dennis Bonvie]

And working class people are physically stronger than the upper class on average. They also have more character. This is a generalization and plenty of exceptions (both ways) would exist. But chances are, the greatest players would come from a working class background. There is a reason someone becomes an accountant and another becomes a carpenter. Some of it is circumstances, but some of it is natural inclination (like a stronger body and better eye-hand coordination).



Absolutely I would take Ryan Getzlaf over Alex Ovechkin. I believe him to be a better building block. In my own Top 100 list I ranked Ovechkin higher, but I'm sometimes subject to the forces of conformity like everyone else.

This is especially true now that I have reasons to believe Ovechkin and co. weren't very serious when he was in his prime.

You had Ovechkin 20th and didn't have Getzlaf on the top 120.

What the hell?

 

[The Panther]

You make it sound like "Today's NHL" = "O6 NHL" + 72% more of garbage players. IMO it's a ridiculous approach.

Thanks. I was actually responding to a poster who stated simply the (rather tired point) that "today's NHL is bigger and has more nationalities than in the early-60s so everything is better than a six-team all-Canadian League". Thus, I was attempting to point out, in response to said poster, that if, say, Alex Ovechkin (or any player of today) were to play in a six-team, all-Canadian League in 2020, the median level of talent on every team would, in fact, be higher than the median level of talent on each of the 31 teams today. And thus, the competition would not necessarily be easier, but might actually be harder.

In other words, I was attempting to draw a hypothetical parallel in 2020 to the NHL that Bobby Hull played in in the early/mid-1960s by demonstrating that in such a League today, in 2020, many of today's NHL players would be minor-leaguers.

It was then pointed out by some that the Canadian population of 2020 is three times what it was when Bobby Hull was born (it's actually about 2.5 if you look at when today's NHL players were born, c. early-1990s) -- the suggestion being that, in a six-team League today, the talent pool would actually be a lot bigger than when Hull played, and thus (I presume they were arguing that) for an all-Canadian League to resemble Hull's era in 2020, it would have be around 15 teams of all Canadians, not six (i.e., 2.5 times the six teams of Hull's era).

I then conceded that my own approach was imperfect, but also pointed out that it's not as simple as "more Canadians today, so more teams needed to equate with 1965", because it's not like organized hockey participation today is 2.5 times higher than in 1952 (when Hull was a kid). Others chimed in to point out that the bulk of the increase in the Canadian population since the early 1960s -- Asian / East-Asian skilled immigrants and their first- and even second-generation descendants -- contribute a tiny portion of hockey participation in Canada (at the higher-competitive and certainly pro-levels). In addition, it was further pointed out by other posters that the bulk of the pre-1970s superstar hockey players emerged from the rural and working-classes, a demographic that, in today's Canada, struggles greatly to afford the prohibitive cost of competitive minor hockey for their children. (Indeed, there is today in the NHL of 2020 a former 1st-overall Canadian player whose parents pulled him out of competitive hockey when he was a young teen because they couldn't afford it. Remarkably, he still ended drafted 1st-overall despite missing an entire year.)

So, while my original idea of a six-team all-Canadian League today was perhaps too simplistically thought-out (I concede I was wrong), the implied suggestion of a 15-team League is certainly too large to equate with Hull's conditions being moved to today's (for reasons summarized in the preceding paragraph).

Perhaps the truth lies somewhere in the middle: If today's NHL were about 11 or 12 teams of all-Canadians, then maybe that would be the 2020 equivalent of the NHL that Bobby Hull competed in in the early/mid-1960s. Thus, the median talent level would probably be slightly higher or about the same as it is today, with 31-32 teams of international players.

To conclude: Hull's level of competition in the NHL (up to 1967 anyway) was about the same, or maybe slightly harder, than Ovechkin's today. Certainly Hull had no competitive advantage.


(NOTE: None of this results from my arguing for Hull over Ovechkin. I have no strong opinion about it one way or the other... my guess if that if I thought about it, I'd probably rate Ovechkin a bit higher than Hull by now. But honestly, the ranking of players is not that important to me. I find it all rather trivial.)

 

[wetcoast]

Can we be absolutely certain that Anatoli Firsov or Vyacheslav Starshinov would not give Bobby Hull a run for his money?

Nothing is absolute but it is extremely unlikely plain and simple.

There is simply little or no evidence that either player could have given Bobby Hull a run for his money.

Also what in the world does this have to do with the thread?

 

[BenchBrawl]

You had Ovechkin 20th and didn't have Getzlaf on the top 120.

What the hell?

There are two ways to rank players that mysteriously co-exist within me. The first way is more socially accepted around here, and this is how I "learned" to rank players during my time on this site. It is the "on-paper" way. The counting of accolades and even if those accolades are made very precise (so not simply trophy counting, but sophisticated quantifying methods). "Ovechkin scored X% of goals over his closest competitor". "Ovechkin won X Maurice Richard trophies". "Ovechkin is nth of all-time in playoff GPG". "Ovechkin's Hart record is 1,1,1,2...".

Then there is another way who has been increasingly insistent within myself, refusing to shut up. It's the "the goal is to win the Stanley Cup, and the relation between usual accolades (even precise ones created by us) and winning is not as clear as it usually implicitly assumed" way. It is the Skin in the Game way. It is whether, if my life was on the line and I was coaching some team, I really but really would pick Ovechkin over Getzlaf. Would I? I don't think I would. It is the way of asking myself whether it's really true that, because Ovechkin scores more goals and has more accolades, that in a very complicated and fluid game like hockey his "God all seeing" contributions are really superior than someone like Getzlaf, whom my intuition tells me does a lot of little things that might be more valuable than I give them credit for, and not picked up by the accolades.

Those two phenomenons co-exist paradoxally within me, and so their co-existence would explain some wide discrepancies between some of my posts. Clearly, in the Top 100 project I wasn't ready to make a radical stand on Ovechkin.

I understand this is almost taboo, maybe even more in the anglosphere (but that's just an impression reading english philosophers), to have two co-existing systems both insisting on their priority, inside the mind of a single person. People prefer when everything is clear, when we have our axioms solidly in place so we can go on and finally prove some theorems ! But that's not just the truth for me whether I like it or not. I keep going back to the axioms.