- redo a positional list: Probably means taking on all of them. We re-rank and likely expand the list for whatever position we take on. May involve taking on the all-time list as well.
- top all-time 100 or 200 again (300?): Definitely means reranking the top 200, possibly expanding it. Again, may involve taking on the positional lists.
- women's list: New ground. Probably a shorter project since it would be more groundbreaking.
- coaches: New ground. Probably a shorter project based on recommendations I've seen.
- subset lists (defensive forwards, goal scoring, etc): New ground. I'd suspect that doing one will probably lead to others.
- best peak, prime, season, etc: New ground. Again, I'd suspect that it might lead to other projects.
- fill in awards and Allstars for old seasons: New ground. This one might need some explanation. We'd be filling in all-star teams and awards for seasons that they don't exist. Some discussion might be needed. I seem to remember people talking about third all-star teams and redoing "split" seasons (such as including WHA, Eastern European players). Could be an expansion of existing data or a re-do. How involved it would be would be determined by what exactly we decided to do.
- builders: New ground, but I'm not as sure what to say here. Would this be just GMs and owners, or coaches too?
- teams: New ground. Could mean individual teams, dynasties, etc. That would have to be determined.
- hall of fame: New ground: Scrapping the existing HHOF and rebuilding it. Could be a long term project.
So, that's my description. I'm trying to be unbiased in my explanations but also noting when taking on one would likely lead to others. Also if I suspect one would be longer or shorter, I noted that. That could affect the what and when in different ways. Anything anyone would add or change?
Thanks for summarizing. I'll give my opinion on these options.
1. Peak. This is by far my favorite. I think there are two mains reasons why I like it.
First - we've never done this. I know a lot of you are probably groaning at the thought of Lemieux vs Gretzky discussions for the millionth time and that's fine....what I'm more interrested in is...where does Joe Sakic rank? or Steve Yzerman? Or Paul Coffey? We always rank careers and have a fairly good idea where most players rank career-wise. Ranking by peak - at the very best - would be a completely different ranking and it would be great to see who ends up where. A lot of fun and a lot of value to it.
Second - whenever we redo top 100 or positional lists, having a top "peak" list to reference is very valuable. That's why I was a big supporter of playoff project - same idea. Peak - or playoffs - are a very important subset of career, and so it would be a great tool to help us rank players overall in future.
How do we do a peak project? Two options in my mind:
Option 1 - let's keep it simple, best single peak regular season (only one season per player). To me it's less important to call out the specific season - so if one voter prefers Gretzky 84 and one prefers Gretzky 82 - use whatever you feel is his best season when voting. So at the end - we'd have Gretzky #1 - but not necessarily Gretzky 82 #1. If the majority insist on having specific seasons called out (that came up in prior discussions) - fine, we could just pick each player's best season in the preliminary round by popular vote in some way. So going into project - we'd know it's Gretzky 84 and Lemieux 89 or what not.
Option 2 - my preference. Let's agree on a range of what peak can be - and go for more than 1 season. I'm thinking something like minimum: 2 full seasons + 1 playoffs - maximum 5 full seasons + 3 playoffs + 2 partial seasons.....or something like that. So guys like Gretzky/Orr who have qty benefit, vs someone like Fedorov with only one truly great season, benefit a bit less. So 2-5 seasons, 1-3 playoffs, up to 2 partial seasons. Obviously - the final range would have to be agreed upon, this is just a suggestion.
I don't like the idea of doing prime. I believe prime is too close to our top 100 already. Prime is by far the biggest subset of career - so it doesn't really change much to rankings when you rank prime vs career. Peak changes a lot though.
2. Positional rankings. I struggled a lot with the top 100 and 200 ranking different positions against one another - never participated in a positional ranking before. It feels so much easier - and I'm looking forward to it. It's a lot of work and there probably won't be a ton of change from the initial lists - but still, would be a great thing to refresh the lists and expand on them.
3. Top goal-scorers. I think this idea is a lot of "fun" so I would enjoy it - but unlike Peaks or Playoffs - I think this project has 0 real value. Peak or Playoffs are a subset of careers - so useful to reference when ranking top players. Top goal-scroers (or playmakers, etc) isn't a subset of career - it's a subset of either peak, or playoffs, or prime...so a subset of a subset. A bit less valuable.
4. Teams. My biggest issue with this one is I think it's completely impossible. So many red flags. I'll list two very obvious ones.
First - Islanders dynasty. Are all 4 years eligible, or only one? If all 4 years, how do you tell them apart? If only one - how do you pick, for them and other dynasties, which year?
Second - Pittsburgh 1993 (or Tampa 2019, or Boston 2023, etc). One of the greatest teams of all-time, but who disappointed majorly in playoffs. So.....do they rank high, or low? Do we rank based on how good the team was on paper, or how good they did in playoffs - or in regular season only? Too many criteria to choose from makes it impossible.
Worthwhile ideas but I wouldn't participate:
Womens, Coaches, Builders, Defensive Forwards....too hard to do. If other people pick a topic like that to get off the ground - I think it would be great, but I expect participation would be quite low.
Projects I don't like:
1. Hall of Fame. I think it's redundant and completely useless. Most of the hall of fame is fine...and I still say this could be completed in one week, by voting players in who are out, and out who are in but don't belong. We'd even get 90% consensus most likely.
2. Redo top 100 or 200. If this wins I'll participate, I just think it makes more sense to redo positional lists first. There wouldn't be much movement on this one.
3. Fill in awards and all-stars for old season. To be honest I just don't really understand this one. Lots of ways this could go....are we only re-doing early years? Are we only awarding tropies that didn't exist (ie Smythe for playoffs before the award was created). Are we re-doing close recent races like the 2018 hart? All-star nods only? Probably needs a bit of a clearer description.
