Poll: Lidstrom vs Bourque (All-Time)

[MadLuke]

We have to be careful with this dynamic, though, because the effect of financial incentives is not linear.

Higher salaries will always garner more interest, but there is a breaking point where extremely-high salaries reduce the level of competition — because people who are already wealthy will apply their financial leverage to corner the market on opportunity.

My first thought was the explosion of F1 driver salary, how much does it build the talent pool for it ?

That type of profession already has a child dream without the high pay, the power of money being important mostly to counter the high cost of keeping up as you get older if you can pay that cost and take that risk.

Evrey formula one driver make a million or more the well paid are in the 10-50m before sponsor deals, how many 14 years old seriously in the process of trying to be one do you know ? Knew growing up ?

An lower incentive but much more attainable, say good school scholarship for football-bastketball do maybe much more to increase the talent pool than a small winner take all like Hockey even if the reward is much bigger.

 

[Calad]

Here is the relevant data set, found toward the end of that thread:

Competition per roster spot decreased between ~1993 and ~2015.

That coincides with Lidstrom’s entire career, whereas Bourque was 32 years old when the talent slump began.

Talent slump? Yeah, definitely not because between 92-94, the Sharks, Sens, Lightning, Panthers, and Ducks entered the league? Then at the turn of the century was the Preds, Thrashers, Blue Jackets, and Wild?

What about this? Bourque never wins a cup if the talent pool never gets diluted by expansion.

 

[MadLuke]

These are the same people who will argue that more teams = more people in situations to challenge for the votes. The goalposts will be moved because newer automatically means better.

There would be I suppose a diminishing return.

Maybe no one lost an Art Ross to Martin St-Louis in a 6 team league or a Norris to Chara (either get drafted by a good team and never get to play or on a bad one playing against the good one significantly more than his competition), but in the 20-26 teams league of Bourque prime ? Could someone that would challenge him (but that had a slower developing curve a la Chara) got lost, that would have in a 30 team league ?

But that favour the Norris winning of the player that faced more defenceman with the chance to play on the first unit of powerplay, Lidstrom, not Bourque.

 

[tarheelhockey]

Talent slump? Yeah, definitely not because between 92-94, the Sharks, Sens, Lightning, Panthers, and Ducks entered the league? Then at the turn of the century was the Preds, Thrashers, Blue Jackets, and Wild?

What about this? Bourque never wins a cup if the talent pool never gets diluted by expansion.

Expansion introduced the DPE, which led to low-skill players flooding the league, which led to development issues even after the lockout. The talent slump was obvious at the time and remains obvious in retrospect.

For a stark example, look at 1998 Norris voting and then 2008 Norris voting. Ten years made a radical difference in the quality of players considered “stars”.

 

[Michael Farkas]

Talent slump? Yeah, definitely not because between 92-94, the Sharks, Sens, Lightning, Panthers, and Ducks entered the league? Then at the turn of the century was the Preds, Thrashers, Blue Jackets, and Wild?

What about this? Bourque never wins a cup if the talent pool never gets diluted by expansion.

By the numbers, the league fell into one of its deeper holes when Russians became more prevalent in the league...

Yr	Rus Skaters
90-91	10​
91-92	19​
92-93	36​
93-94	48​
94-95	50​
95-96	48​
96-97	43​
97-98	44​
98-99	49​
99-00	58​
00-01	63​
01-02	54​
02-03	55​
03-04	52​
05-06	39​
06-07	37​
…	…
15-16	33​
16-17	31​
17-18	31​
18-19	30​
19-20	31​

By the numbers...it seems clear to me that Russians directly caused the dead-puck era. We had really great hockey in the late 80's and early 90's...and then Sergei Krivokrasov and Vitali Vishnevski came in and killed the league...and as we see, once we went back to average of one per team, the league started to really come around again.

Obvious sarcasm. But you're not going to be able to estimate the actual talent pool with population (categorically). This is another one of those things where we want an easy answer - some people want their easy answer. But unfortunately, there's a lot of nuance to this.

 

[vadim sharifijanov]

beyond expansion, i think the important criteria is you had a really really special generation of high end players born roughly between 1961 (gretzky/messier's birth year, bourque was born dec 28, 1960) and 1965 (yzerman/roy birth year) who not only played forever but remained elite players all the way to the end, or very close to it. so you have the forwards: gretzky, mario when he's playing, yzerman, but especially dmen competing with lidstrom/blake/pronger for norrises and post-season all-stars: bourque, chelios, stevens, macinnis, and to a lesser extent coffey.

whereas lidstrom's generation largely had similar longevity in terms of years played, but who was still at an elite well into the next generation's time? i think really only lidstrom, brodeur, and sakic. so by the time of keith and weber, and later karlsson and doughty, only lidstrom is competing with them.

whereas late 90s bourque is fighting off both his contemporaries AND the young up and comers.

 

[Albatros]

In the internet age players are also significantly more exposed than back when a handful of media outlets had hegemony when it came to setting narratives.

 

[Michael Farkas]

Now, there's more potentially unqualified people to push narratives too...

 

[Bear of Bad News]

Man, I loved watching Vitali Vishnevski play. Takes a goalie to appreciate a defenseman like that, I guess.

 

[Michael Farkas]

Man, I loved watching Vitali Vishnevski play. Takes a goalie to appreciate a defenseman like that, I guess.

Because you guys have better stickhandling skills than him...?

(I actually have some time for VV, but I was just trying to think of a technically untalented player...)

 

[Bear of Bad News]

Because you guys have better stickhandling skills than him...?

(I actually have some time for VV, but I was just trying to think of a technically untalented player...)

The worst part about going from checking league to beer league as a goaltender is that you still have a split-second when a guy comes across the net that they're going to get leveled. I haven't played checking hockey in a decade and it still happens.

Anyhow, the best part about guys like this is that when you get leveled as a goaltender, by the time you get up to handle things, it's already taken care of.

And my problem with stickhandling is that I'm about half as good as I think I am.

 

[vadim sharifijanov]

Because you guys have better stickhandling skills than him...?

(I actually have some time for VV, but I was just trying to think of a technically untalented player...)

he was a phenomenal shotblocker, from what i recall?

maybe a goalie is appreciating him because they have the same technique

 

[Bear of Bad News]

he was a phenomenal shotblocker, from what i recall?

maybe a goalie is appreciating him because they have the same technique

I do have a strong preference for shot blockers who really commit to it, and they either block the shot or get the hell out of the way.

Too many flamingos playing defense these days.

 

[Michael Farkas]

Goalies have their union. There was a time right after the big sleep where Anton Volchenkov was the goalie's union boss.

I recall Vishnevski burying people and having an oddly hard shot from the point. But it was like a half slap thing, if I remember...he probably blocked a lot of shots too.

The next project should be: What defensemen most often checked the attacking player into their goalie. I bet Brooks Orpik is top 10 all time.

 

[Midnight Judges]

beyond expansion, i think the important criteria is you had a really really special generation of high end players born roughly between 1961 (gretzky/messier's birth year, bourque was born dec 28, 1960) and 1965 (yzerman/roy birth year) who not only played forever but remained elite players all the way to the end, or very close to it. so you have the forwards: gretzky, mario when he's playing, yzerman, but especially dmen competing with lidstrom/blake/pronger for norrises and post-season all-stars: bourque, chelios, stevens, macinnis, and to a lesser extent coffey.

whereas lidstrom's generation largely had similar longevity in terms of years played, but who was still at an elite well into the next generation's time? i think really only lidstrom, brodeur, and sakic. so by the time of keith and weber, and later karlsson and doughty, only lidstrom is competing with them.

whereas late 90s bourque is fighting off both his contemporaries AND the young up and comers.

Add Jagr, MSL, and Selanne. And it would have been Forsberg and Lindros too were it not for injuries. Also Brian Leetch, Sergei Zubov, and Scott Niedermeyer.

 

[vadim sharifijanov]

Add Jagr, MSL, and Selanne. And it would have been Forsberg and Lindros too were it not for injuries. Also Brian Leetch, Sergei Zubov, and Scott Niedermeyer.

i think the way i'm calculating it, bourque/chelios/macinnis/stevens all began their careers in the first half of the 80s and peaked in the late 80s/early 90s. coffey peaked a little earlier and had his last relevant season in 1996, but he belongs in this conversation to a degree.

so in the late 90s/early 2000s, a full decade after their peaks, and 15-odd years after they broke into the league, they were still pushing blake/pronger/lidstrom for norrises, stevens won the conn smythe, macinnis, chelios, and bourque all had multiple postseason all-stars including at least one norris runner-up, and macinnis won one.

whereas lidstrom and those guys started in the early 90s (leetch if you count him in the late 80s). they peaked in the late 90s/early 2000s. leetch a little earlier, niedermayer a little later. so fast forward a decade after their peaks, who's still relevant in the late 2000s/early 2010s? niedermayer's last relevant year was 2007, ditto regular season pronger. leetch was long gone, rob blake hadn't been relevant since the lockout. zubov doesn't even enter the conversation (he's really the larry murphy here), but his last relevant year is 2006.

so when keith and weber come along, only lidstrom is competing with them. or to reverse the way i'm saying this, in lidstrom's old man years, he's only competing with keith/weber and later karlsson/doughty. he doesn't also have to compete with the chelios/macinnis/stevens of his own era because they didn't exist.

and i agree, injuries play a part here. not so much for the dmen (arguably pronger's patchy regular season record, i guess), but for that much of that generation of elite forwards: lindros, forsberg, bure, selanne, kariya, maybe if their bodies were different or if the league had been different they could have had long and mostly healthy, generation-spanning al macinnis careers.

 

[67 others]

Not sure I buy that the competition shrank while the talent pool expanded.

If the talent pool expanded, they forgot to tell the defensemen. Usually the Norris voting is dominated by guys under or just over 30. Lidstrom's first 3 victories the runner up's were....40 year old Bourque, 40 year old Chelios, and 39 year old Macinnis. The younger guys weren't challenging the older guys who had lost a step. And yeah, Bourque, Chelios and Macinnis were waaaaay better players at age 26-32 in the 80's and early 90's than they were at 40 years old in the 2000's.

 

[67 others]

I think Bourque and Lidstrom are close enough that I don't really care who is higher. Elite legends both.

Bourque came into the League at a time when it was, like, "Kid, you're 19, go out there and make a difference on the ice in any way you know how!" Whereas when Lidstrom came in, it was more like, "Kid, you're going to learn your craft slowly and by playing your position and the team system." Both excelled into the best at what they were asked to do.

The difference here is that Bourque was basically depended on to carry the heavy weight of his club offensively and defensively for about 16 years, while Lidstrom's entire career bookends a period when Detroit had an all-time great line-up of talent in all areas (well, not so much in goal). This doesn't mean Bourque was better necessarily, but it explains why Bourque can be seen making more mistakes. Lidstrom didn't need to carry his club's offensive load, and he didn't have to gamble too often. He was the master at knowing where to be, letting the game come to him, taking charge when necessary. Bourque didn't have that luxury, as he had to lead at both ends.

To put this in perspective, the Bruins made the Cup Finals with a defence core that included two teenage rookies, Gord Kluzak, Michael Thelven, and Allen Pedersen (and the corpse of Reed Larson who played 8 games). Oh yeah, and Bourque (who had also led the team in scoring that season).

Two years later, they were the League's #1 defensive team and made the Finals again. This time, the playoff D-core included Wesley, Galley (-8), Sweeney (-10), Hawgood (-9), Beers, Pedersen, and Wiemer. And Bourque (+11).

The first time Lidstrom made the Finals (and lost, like Bourque), the D-core included Coffey, Fetisov, Konstantinov, Ramsey, and Rouse (even the corpse of Mark Howe for a few games).

The second time Lidstrom made the Finals (and won), the D-core included Murphy, Fetisov, Konstantinov, Rouse, and... er, Aaron Ward.

Not only looking at the D Corps, but let's play the game of move the forwards.

How about those cup winning Red wings teams that won against the Gretzky and Messier lead Oilers with Craig Janney and Ken Linesman centering their top 2 lines instead of Yzerman and Fedorov eh? im sure everything would have worked out EXACTLY the same

 

[Victorias]

If the talent pool expanded, they forgot to tell the defensemen. Usually the Norris voting is dominated by guys under or just over 30. Lidstrom's first 3 victories the runner up's were....40 year old Bourque, 40 year old Chelios, and 39 year old Macinnis. The younger guys weren't challenging the older guys who had lost a step. And yeah, Bourque, Chelios and Macinnis were waaaaay better players at age 26-32 in the 80's and early 90's than they were at 40 years old in the 2000's.

I think the Norris is a bit of a reputation award (when there is not a dominant scorer at that position), so maybe that’s part of why old Bourque/Chelios/Macinnis were in the mix. However, I have 0 doubt that Bourque faced tougher competition for the Norris (and Hart).

Lidstrom dominating the Norris late in his career is like Brodeur winning those Vezinas; Marty was basically the last one left of the Hasek/Roy/Belfour/Joseph group so he started winning the award that eluded him during his best years.

 

[Albatros]

i think the way i'm calculating it, bourque/chelios/macinnis/stevens all began their careers in the first half of the 80s and peaked in the late 80s/early 90s. coffey peaked a little earlier and had his last relevant season in 1996, but he belongs in this conversation to a degree.

so in the late 90s/early 2000s, a full decade after their peaks, and 15-odd years after they broke into the league, they were still pushing blake/pronger/lidstrom for norrises, stevens won the conn smythe, macinnis, chelios, and bourque all had multiple postseason all-stars including at least one norris runner-up, and macinnis won one.

whereas lidstrom and those guys started in the early 90s (leetch if you count him in the late 80s). they peaked in the late 90s/early 2000s. leetch a little earlier, niedermayer a little later. so fast forward a decade after their peaks, who's still relevant in the late 2000s/early 2010s? niedermayer's last relevant year was 2007, ditto regular season pronger. leetch was long gone, rob blake hadn't been relevant since the lockout. zubov doesn't even enter the conversation (he's really the larry murphy here), but his last relevant year is 2006.

so when keith and weber come along, only lidstrom is competing with them. or to reverse the way i'm saying this, in lidstrom's old man years, he's only competing with keith/weber and later karlsson/doughty. he doesn't also have to compete with the chelios/macinnis/stevens of his own era because they didn't exist.

and i agree, injuries play a part here. not so much for the dmen (arguably pronger's patchy regular season record, i guess), but for that much of that generation of elite forwards: lindros, forsberg, bure, selanne, kariya, maybe if their bodies were different or if the league had been different they could have had long and mostly healthy, generation-spanning al macinnis careers.

I find that a bit arbitrary. Rob Blake played a major role when San José won the Presidents' Trophy in 2009. Likewise Scott Niedermayer was Anaheim's top defenseman at least up until that year. Pronger came back very strong in Philadelphia until the early 2010s. And Zubov at his best was definitely as elite as any of these other names. Also Gonchar had a very good tail end to his career in Ottawa, was up there with Keith or Weber at least momentarily still in his late 30s. Mathieu Schneider was very good not only with Lidström in Detroit but also in Anaheim still. Even Brian Rafalski to some extent, a late bloomer that found another gear in his mid 30s playing with Lidström.

 

[Michael Farkas]

Yeah...I mean, four Vezina trophies, two more top 3 finishes, three top-3 finishes for the Hart...isn't really a reputation thing.

A lot of folks point to the guys like Derian Hatcher and the like being thrust out of the league by the game play changes...folks don't take into account how difficult it became for goaltenders with a more open and faster paced game. In part, the same way that we recently talked about Dryden struggling to deal with east-west movement of the Soviets, similar concept on the other side of the big sleep...

It really hurt a lot of guys. The few that were really adaptable shined on both sides...Brodeur, Luongo, Kipper...once those guys started to wear down, woof, look what the cat dragged into the league because there was a bunch of guys that developed under old rules and then they changed the rules when their careers got real.

This is why I find the concept of positional and game evolution so appealing to research. Something that gets shooed away as a reputation vote is actually an even greater claim to stardom than many of us realize...

 

[Albatros]

Not only looking at the D Corps, but let's play the game of move the forwards.

How about those cup winning Red wings teams that won against the Gretzky and Messier lead Oilers with Craig Janney and Ken Linesman centering their top 2 lines instead of Yzerman and Fedorov eh? im sure everything would have worked out EXACTLY the same

In any case the Oilers lost to Joel Otto, Dan Quinn, and Doug Risebrough in '86.

 

[MadLuke]

Something that gets shooed away as a reputation vote is actually an even greater claim to stardom than many of us realize

Having accumulate a proven long body of work and excellence for you do get vote for an award is certainly the best of any bias outthere.

It beat playing in a watched market, timezone, beloved personally wise, being spectacular rather than boring, good at tracked things that have popular numbers people look at instead at things without them, etc...

 

[BigBadBruins7708]

I think the Norris is a bit of a reputation award (when there is not a dominant scorer at that position), so maybe that’s part of why old Bourque/Chelios/Macinnis were in the mix. However, I have 0 doubt that Bourque faced tougher competition for the Norris (and Hart).

Lidstrom dominating the Norris late in his career is like Brodeur winning those Vezinas; Marty was basically the last one left of the Hasek/Roy/Belfour/Joseph group so he started winning the award that eluded him during his best years.

I wouldn't call Bourque in 01 a reputation vote though.

26 min a night while being 3rd in the NHL in defenseman scoring. He carried a D group of Skoula, de Vries, Klemm covering for Foote only playing 35 games.

 

[jigglysquishy]

I think there's a clear trend towards a youth movement in the early 80s that slowly ages up the average.

Average age of Norris top 5 vote across entire voting history is 29.3.

Early 80s clearly younger. Mid 90s through late 2000s clearly older. 2021 was youngest average age since 1985.