Pierre Turgeon in the playoffs

[decma]

Cool, I was just messing around there a bit. They have playoff series odds too, which is a different way of looking at expectations. I'm not sure if I'm converting the odds correctly -- hope it's close enough.

Adding up the playoff series in Turgeon's career, and excluding 1988 because the odds are missing, it looks like his team should have been expected to win:

About 1 series in 3 years in Buffalo (they won 0)
About 1 series with the Islanders (they won 2)
About 4 series with the Blues (they won 4)
About 2 series with Dallas (they won 1)
About 1 series between Montreal and Colorado (they won 0)

So his team won 7 playoff series against about 9 expected series wins in his career. This accounts for the fact that his team was usually an underdog except for a few series in St Louis and Dallas, and also shows that he still won a little less than you would expect. It also includes a playoff series his team won where he barely played (Pittsburgh in 1993).

So, until his seasons in his mid 30s as a role player, his teams won about as many series as they were expected to?

 

[Stephen]

It's interesting that during his prime, Turgeon was a part of two blockbusters where he was traded for less talented, heart and soul guys (Kirk Muller and Shayne Corson), and traded three times. I think that even though those deals were misguided and executed by less than competent management, it's a good reminder that even if Turgeon brought great offensive numbers, there was missing in the overall equation that teams felt they were missing if they hitched their fortunes to Pierre Turgeon.

 

[overpass]

amazing. i'm only halfway through all this but amazing.



this is an answer i've always been looking for.

I liked that one too. There was another article that mentioned the same thing.

Matheson, Jim.Edmonton Journal; Edmonton, Alta. [Edmonton, Alta]23 Apr 1996: D.1.

Nobody gave Dale Hunter a call to ask him why it looks like that Montreal Canadiens' torch has finally hit a pair of failing hands. Captain Pierre Turgeon's hands.

Ever since Hunter blasted Turgeon into another area code three years ago in a playoff game, Turgeon's looked spooked. He was a no-show against the Rangers in '94 and it's a repeat performance so far again this spring.

But when you're a French-Canadian captain in this town, you can't hide. ``If you're a French-Canadian here and you're playing well, you're on a pedestal. If you are playing bad ...,'' trailed off Vinnie Damphousse.

This would be a rough crowd for Don Rickles. Turgeon, on the other hand, wouldn't raise his voice to his kids, never mind anybody paying $100 a ticket. He's not the first guy who ever got booed here. Lafleur was, in his early days. Serge Savard, too, before the spinaramas.

``I have been booed,'' said Jean Beliveau. Nobody can ever remember that, not in any game that counted, but Beliveau apparently was going to have a talk with Turgeon.

It all comes down to how much Turgeon is making, not how hard he's working. He's making $3.6 million US, a lot of money for somebody with two assists in his last seven playoff games.

``They never booed the Rocket, but then he was making $25,000 in his biggest year, on a whole team making $300,000,'' said Red Fisher, longtime hockey writer for the Montreal Gazette.

``Strangest thing I ever heard in the last minute Sunday,'' said Lowe. ``They're trying to get the tying goal and the fans aren't pumping the team up, they're booing Turgeon.

``I'm surprised he could get the puck from his end to ours. Give him credit. This has to be devastating for him. But in this town, the goalies and the stars are always going to be under some heat. I remember a guy like Larry Robinson here. The fans were on him, but he fought through it and got them on his side. I'm sure Turgeon will, too.''

But the ``C'' here stands for claustrophobic. Actually, Damphousse should have got it when Mike Keane left with Patrick Roy in December but there was a feeling that Ronald Corey, who carries the biggest stick, named Turgeon because he's good-lookin and married, with kids -- the right corporate image.

Damphousse is single, likes to gamble and maybe he's been down to Crescent Street a few times. Vinnie's certainly more outgoing.

But Turgeon got it. So far, in the playoffs, Rangers Mark Messier's looked a lot more comfortable with the ``C'' than Turgeon has.

``Wearing the `C' is tough. I don't know if you can compare the two cities, but I said it all those years in Edmonton, that being captain keeps you on your toes,'' said Lowe. ``You couldn't have a bad shift, never mind a bad game. I don't know if it's the same in the American cities (except New York). But it's up to him to take it to another level.''

There's the rub. Maybe Turgeon can't. In traffic, he has trouble. And if you don't like traffic, you can't play in April and May and now June.

``Anybody who puts on a Canadiens' jersey, whether he's captain or not, has to deal with their great past,'' said Messier. ``You can take that possible energy two ways. You can look at it as light or a dark thing. You have to be able to turn this sort of thing (captaincy) into light and make it a positive thing.''

Habs coach Mario Tremblay was saying all the right things Monday. ``He is my player. I like Pierre, he is a nice man. He was one of my best players with 96 points in the regular season and he is in a slump. I think I had some of those, too, when I played,'' said Tremblay.

``The fans they can do what they want. You never like to hear these things said about you,'' said Turgeon. ``The only thing I can control is my effort.''

The body's there. But the soul isn't and if Turgeon continues to be a no-show, the Canadiens are dead.

 

[overpass]

So, until his seasons in his mid 30s as a role player, his teams won about as many series as they were expected to?

Well, not quite -- through 2001, I have him with 7.06 expected series wins and 6 series wins. And that includes the 1993 win over Pittsburgh when he only played a few shifts in Game 7 and didn't score.

In Dallas, he was only 33 and 34 for those playoff series, just a year older than Modano, Zubov, and Guerin, and was being paid like a star player, so I wouldn't let him off the hook for those seasons.

 

[vadim sharifijanov]

perhaps a useful comparison for playoff points/game is craig janney, turgeon’s exact contemporary.

 

[frisco]

I liked that one too. There was another article that mentioned the same thing.

Matheson, Jim.Edmonton Journal; Edmonton, Alta. [Edmonton, Alta]23 Apr 1996: D.1.

So it was Turgeon's fault Montreal lost in the first round when he went 2g/4a in six games? That after leading the team into the playoffs with 96 points and a +19. Of course, Turgeon was married and not a gambler like Damphousse so that's obviously the reason. Or didn't start a brawl with the USSR junior team ten years before with the gold medal on the line. This thread is a pathetic hatchet job.

My Best-Carey

 

[ContrarianGoaltender]

Cool, I was just messing around there a bit. They have playoff series odds too, which is a different way of looking at expectations. I'm not sure if I'm converting the odds correctly -- hope it's close enough.

Technically you're supposed to remove the vig, which usually ends up being around 4% for series and something like 40% for Stanley Cup odds (although both rates vary a lot from year to year).

Obviously that affects the probabilities from the Cup odds a lot more than the series odds. For example, I just ran the numbers for Turgeon and got 0.76 expected Cups for his career based on the pre-playoff odds (after adjusting each year so that the probabilities sum to 1.00).

But some of the data seem a bit odd. E.g., teams with their odds of winning the cup declining after they win their first round series. (i.e., the money line goes up from before first round to before second round).

It's definitely not a perfect data set. For example, just going through the numbers for Turgeon the 1988 numbers are missing the pre-playoff odds for the #4 seed in each division, and the 2006 pre-playoff odds have an entry for Chicago and not for Colorado, even though the Avs made the playoffs while the Hawks did not (I just substituted estimates for this missing data based on comparable teams).

I guess it's likely there are other issues in there, although I didn't notice too many teams with their money line going up because that wouldn't really make sense unless they potentially suffered major injuries. Probably won't impact much if you're looking at the big picture, and if you notice these types of errors you could estimate something that likely ends up being fairly close if you want, but it is something to be aware of for sure.

 

[overpass]

So it was Turgeon's fault Montreal lost in the first round when he went 2g/4a in six games? That after leading the team into the playoffs with 96 points and a +19. Of course, Turgeon was married and not a gambler like Damphousse so that's obviously the reason. Or didn't start a brawl with the USSR junior team ten years before with the gold medal on the line. This thread is a pathetic hatchet job.

My Best-Carey

Can you find anyone who said Turgeon had a good playoff back in 1996? I'll wait.

Here's another quote from the day after the series that gives a balanced overview of Turgeon's performance in the series.

Gare, Joyce.The Globe and Mail; Toronto, Ont. [Toronto, Ont]30 Apr 1996: D.5.

The disappointing showing of Turgeon: Turgeon, appointed captain of the Habs after Mike (Francais? Moi?) Keane was dispatched with Roy to Colorado, did not show up for the first two games in New York, the two Montreal victories. He put in a miserable performance in the third game and was booed mercilessly for it by the puckistes at the Molson Centre. "A tin man, just like he was on Long Island," said the New York puck scribes, that cynical lot whose familiarity with blades in their youth was mostly confined to the knives they had to check at the door of their primary schools.

A funny thing happened. Turgeon was not terrifically effective in Game 4. He couldn't elevate his game overnight or lift Montreal to victory, but there were at least signs of hard effort there. The Montreal fans, who have eyes trained for such matters, picked up on Turgeon's play and spared him the catcalls and derision.

Turgeon wasn't the best player on the ice in the fifth and sixth games, but he did put in as solid an effort as Vincent Damphousse, star of the two Canadiens victories, the centre annointed as St. Vincent by the Montreal press contingent. Turgeon has something to build on for next year.

To recap: A disappointing showing overall, a no show for games 1 and 2, a miserable effort in game 3, signs of hard effort but not terrifically effective in game 4, a solid effort but not the best player on the ice in games 5 and 6.

Nobody in this thread is criticizing Turgeon for Piestany. Nice strawman.

 

[Staniowski]

We really need an entire subforum dedicated to Pierre Turgeon....

What explains the great interest in this player?

 

[MarkusKetterer]

We really need an entire subforum dedicated to Pierre Turgeon....

What explains the great interest in this player?

Because his last name reminds people of a rarely seen bigass North American fish?

 

[Staniowski]

Turgeon wasn't a playoff disappointment. His biggest issue was playing for poor teams.

Starting at the end, he was injured (with several different injuries, which affected his game a lot) for most of his time in Colorado. He started out really strong in his first 2 or 3 months in Colorado, outscoring Sakic, where he was one of the top scorers in the league. Then he got injured. He was not healthy during the playoffs there.

Dallas was a wasted 3 seasons for Turgeon. It was obviously a terrible fit. I don't know why Dallas wanted Turgeon, and I don't know why Turgeon would think it was a good fit. Perhaps $$$...

In his 5 seasons in St. Louis, Turgeon was one of the best playoff (and regular season) scorers in the NHL. In particular, in the final 4 of those seasons combined, his points-per-game in the playoffs (of players playing at least 20 games) was 4th best in the NHL, behind only Forsberg, Jagr, and Yzerman....and ahead of Sakic, Fedorov, Sundin, Modano, and everybody else. So, he scored lots in St. Louis.

In Buffalo, NYI, and Montreal, he didn't play for good teams, which doesn't help the scoring totals of players. But his scoring was fine, considering the circumstances.

He was drafted by the worst team in the league, he was traded to a team in epic decline, and then he was traded to another team in epic decline.

The 3 teams that traded Turgeon all lost those trades.

The Islanders 3 best seasons of the 1990s were the exact 3 seasons Turgeon played over 60 games there. They declined further when he left....a very bad trade for the Isles. The Islander GM, Maloney, who traded Turgeon, was fired not long after.

Mario Tremblay made a very bad choice when he chose Damphousse over Turgeon. He should have made Turgeon and Koivu the top 2 centres. Damphousse was not capable of scoring at Turgeon's level over the long haul, and that became obvious after Turgeon was traded, and then Tremblay was gone....(whether he quit, or was forced out, or whatever).

 

[decma]

Can you find anyone who said Turgeon had a good playoff back in 1996? I'll wait.

Here's another quote from the day after the series that gives a balanced overview of Turgeon's performance in the series.

Gare, Joyce.The Globe and Mail; Toronto, Ont. [Toronto, Ont]30 Apr 1996: D.5.


To recap: A disappointing showing overall, a no show for games 1 and 2, a miserable effort in game 3, signs of hard effort but not terrifically effective in game 4, a solid effort but not the best player on the ice in games 5 and 6.

Nobody in this thread is criticizing Turgeon for Piestany. Nice strawman.

No, but do you think Gare Joyce, who has expressed strong anti-Turgeon feelings b/c of Piestany, might be a little biased in his review of Turgeon's play?

 

[Staniowski]

It's interesting that during his prime, Turgeon was a part of two blockbusters where he was traded for less talented, heart and soul guys (Kirk Muller and Shayne Corson), and traded three times. I think that even though those deals were misguided and executed by less than competent management, it's a good reminder that even if Turgeon brought great offensive numbers, there was missing in the overall equation that teams felt they were missing if they hitched their fortunes to Pierre Turgeon.

They were both teams that were poorly managed, were in epic decline, and made big mistakes in trading Turgeon.

They may have thought they were missing something with Turgeon....but the truth was they were missing a lot of things. If they thought trading Turgeon was going to put them over the top, or something, they were delusional. Trading Turgeon made things worse for both of them.

 

[VanIslander]

Do I have to go academic here?

Okay.

Turgeon sucks eggs.

 

[feffan]

The undervaluing and misconception of Turgeon starts with the "he didn´t get them over the hump"-crowd. A 1st line center ain´t the one to get you over the hump. He´s the one that get´s you the momentum as you aproach the hump. To get over the hump you need a deep great team. And the one thing Turegon really never had was a great team built behind/around him. But he produced just fine during the playoffs. Would say a player like Andreychuk was more underwelming during the playoffs in his Sabres days (and outside that, if not for Gilmour...). To add. The bigget "he didn´t get us over the hump"-crowd probably is NA sport journalists. Seems in Europe it´s historically more about the team letting the fans down (even if that´s changed the last 10-15 years...). In NA it always seems about getting a scape goat. And the offensive star is first to blame, when the problem almost always is in the depth.

I had bigger hopes for a player with Turgeons talent, but that he didn´t achieve more has more to do with what teams he was one.

Best example how much what team you end up on from a swede is Sundin/Forsberg. When we saw them play together on the national team Sundin dominated more times than Forsberg. He was the Captatin and no.1 guy. Even if Forsberg was clutch for Sweden, Sundin has more great goals during comebacks and leading the charge. Many NHL-fans stil think Sundin underachieved, when he instead was having the same symptoms as Turgeon. Poorly constructed teams while being the No.1 offensive guy. Ask any Finn who they feared the most during the 90´s and early 00´s of Sundin/Forsberg. Had Forsberg been the one traded I would think we would shift them in all time rankings even in here, where international play still is quite underrated as I see it.

It´s often hard for some to take in that winning a Cup takes a lot of luck, and that many times it doesn´t go to the best team. Just as having a great playoffs as a 1st center has much do with what 3rd line (etc) you have. Just as breaking in as a talent and reach your full potential is much about luck and timing with a team (GM, scouts, coaches...) that believe in you. Heck. Swedens 3 only Art Ross winners almost broke their contracts or was about to not sign new ones and go home to Sweden. Forsberg during his first season, and Sedins when their first contracts where up.

 

[VanIslander]

Turgeon was BOOED in New York in the playoffs. He stunk against the crosstown Rags. Look it up.

Hard to think of a HHOFer whose own fan base booed them.

 

[Hobnobs]

Turgeon was BOOED in New York in the playoffs. He stunk against the crosstown Rags. Look it up.

Hard to think of a HHOFer whose own fan base booed them.

Patrick Roy. There. Was pretty easy actually.

 

[VanIslander]

Patrick Roy. There. Was pretty easy actually.

Dang Montreal fans!

 

[shadow1]

The guy had his ups and downs in the playoffs, but the bottom line is that had had 97 playoff points in 109 career playoff games.

If you ignore his time with Dallas/Colorado, when he was an older player and he clearly a shell of his former self, the totals are 94 games played, 90 points.

 

[Hobnobs]

Dang Montreal fans!

Larry Murphy and Dominik Hasek plus prospect HoFers Hall and Price.

 

[Johnny Engine]

Does anyone here have any particularly strong memories of how many of Nieuwendyk's winning goals were what you'd call "clutch", vs how many were the 3-0 goal in a game the Stars eventually won 5-2?
I'm just going to throw it out there that I don't know or have any opinion on the matter, so when I go and look and come back in a bit with an answer, you'll know that I'm not trying to prove a point.

 

[Stephen]

Who would be a good contemporary example of Pierre Turgeon? I think it would be someone similar to a Jason Spezza for offensive production. He’s going to be an important piece on a team but not necessarily going to be very competitive in the playoffs.

 

[overpass]

The undervaluing and misconception of Turgeon starts with the "he didn´t get them over the hump"-crowd. A 1st line center ain´t the one to get you over the hump. He´s the one that get´s you the momentum as you aproach the hump. To get over the hump you need a deep great team. And the one thing Turegon really never had was a great team built behind/around him. But he produced just fine during the playoffs. Would say a player like Andreychuk was more underwelming during the playoffs in his Sabres days (and outside that, if not for Gilmour...). To add. The bigget "he didn´t get us over the hump"-crowd probably is NA sport journalists. Seems in Europe it´s historically more about the team letting the fans down (even if that´s changed the last 10-15 years...). In NA it always seems about getting a scape goat. And the offensive star is first to blame, when the problem almost always is in the depth.

I had bigger hopes for a player with Turgeons talent, but that he didn´t achieve more has more to do with what teams he was one.

Best example how much what team you end up on from a swede is Sundin/Forsberg. When we saw them play together on the national team Sundin dominated more times than Forsberg. He was the Captatin and no.1 guy. Even if Forsberg was clutch for Sweden, Sundin has more great goals during comebacks and leading the charge. Many NHL-fans stil think Sundin underachieved, when he instead was having the same symptoms as Turgeon. Poorly constructed teams while being the No.1 offensive guy. Ask any Finn who they feared the most during the 90´s and early 00´s of Sundin/Forsberg. Had Forsberg been the one traded I would think we would shift them in all time rankings even in here, where international play still is quite underrated as I see it.

It´s often hard for some to take in that winning a Cup takes a lot of luck, and that many times it doesn´t go to the best team. Just as having a great playoffs as a 1st center has much do with what 3rd line (etc) you have. Just as breaking in as a talent and reach your full potential is much about luck and timing with a team (GM, scouts, coaches...) that believe in you. Heck. Swedens 3 only Art Ross winners almost broke their contracts or was about to not sign new ones and go home to Sweden. Forsberg during his first season, and Sedins when their first contracts where up.

No, I think the idea that the criticism of Turgeon was based on his team losing is a misconception. You’re over complicating this. Look at the quotes I posted — the criticism is based on the way Turgeon played. Without passion, without effort, without jam. Disappearing and not imposing himself on the game.

From 1991. This is clearly not based on points scored, it’s based on an assessment of their play after watching them.

Hawerchuk and Turgeon were ahead of Courtnall and Richer in points scored on the night but in the head game they were far, far behind. (Alexander Mogilny, the other Sabre who is supposed to be of superstar class, still hasn't shown up in this series, and so his emotional impact is pretty tough to gauge.) The Sabre stars passively rose and fell with their team. Courtnall and Richer, by contrast, charted the Habs' course, like Mark Messier does for Edmonton in his best moments, like Steve Yzerman does for Detroit, like Wayne Gretzky has done in almost every game he has played since puberty.

Pierre Turgeon scored a gift goal, when Petr Svoboda handed him the puck alone in front of Patrick Roy, but was otherwise just about absent.

Between them, Mogilny and Turgeon had four shots on goal and at the times when it was obvious the Sabres' confidence was flagging (after such a roller-coaster season with a coach perpetually on the firing line, it's no surprise this isn't Team Mental Toughness), Pierre and Al weren't there to lead by example.

Turgeon’a coach Rick Dudley said that Turgeon and others weren’t putting out the effort. Mathieu Schneider said that if you got Turgeon with your check, he wouldn’t give the second effort that players like Ruuttu or Hogue would.

In 1996, Jack Todd wrote about how Turgeon wasn’t showing up in the playoff series. Todd had written some really positive pieces about Turgeon just a few weeks before when he was traded to the team, so he was ready to get behind him, but he couldn’t get behind Turgeon’s playoff performance.

When he was flying high during the regular season, Turgeon would rage over the blue line, then either drive for the net or wheel around it, looking for Recchi or Brian Savage or Andrei Kovalenko.

During the playoffs he has tended to hit the blue line, flick a little wrist shot in the general direction of Mike Richter and then fade to the right, looking as he spins away from danger exactly like that other highly paid pacifist of the hockey wars - Alexandre Daigle.

Yesterday, Turgeon wasn't even using the little wrist shot to inflate his shots-on-goal totals. He was simply dumping the puck in for someone else to chase. In New York, they chanted ``Tin Man!'' every time Turgeon touched the puck. At the Keg yesterday, they simply booed.

Seriously, if you think that everyone turned on Turgeon just because his team lost, you’re off base. It was because of the way he played. The Montreal fans didn’t turn on Damphousse or Koivu after their loss in 1996, they turned on Turgeon. Because he was missing in action for almost the whole series. It wasn’t a conspiracy where everyone was out to get him. He earned the criticism.

In Buffalo, Hawerchuk and Mogilny came in for their share of criticism too, but Turgeon got it the worst. Because he played the worst.

 

[overpass]

No, but do you think Gare Joyce, who has expressed strong anti-Turgeon feelings b/c of Piestany, might be a little biased in his review of Turgeon's play?

I read Joyce’s book. I don’t remember his anti-Turgeon feelings—what did he say?

Joyce wrote this column more than 10 years before he researched and wrote the Piestany book, so I don’t have any reason to believe he had negative feelings about Turgeon at that time. In a column of Joyce’s I posted from the 1997 season, he put a lot of the blame for Turgeon‘s trade demand on Tremblay mishandling the situation at the beginning of the 1996-97 season and demoting Turgeon to third line centre instead of playing him on the top line as a winger, so it looks to me as if he was perfectly capable of assessing the situation fairly and drawing the appropriate conclusions.

 

[vadim sharifijanov]

Turgeon was BOOED in New York in the playoffs. He stunk against the crosstown Rags. Look it up.

Hard to think of a HHOFer whose own fan base booed them.

tbf there is an excerpt up there in the OP literally cataloguing many habs the forum/bell centre crowd booed. included are three unequivocal hall of famers, all top 30 players all time, and none named patrick so there’s a fourth.