Round 2, Vote 14 (HOH Top Centers)
- Thread starter Hawkey Town 18
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TheDevilMadeMe
Registered User
MacKey would spend 1919-20 in the Big-4, the amateur prairie league that would turn into the WCHL in 1921-22. A few HHOFers (Duke Keats and Herb Gardiner are the ones I know) were in the Big-4 and probably in their primes that year.
MacKay appears to have been named MVP of the Big 4 in his one season there (Source via BM67), so while it was a fairly weak league, it certainly wasnt a write off season for him.
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Sturminator
Love is a duel
Yeah, I know; I'm of the opinion that MacKay's time in the Big-4 was rather like a rehab season in the minor leagues. Bottom line is that MacKay could have gotten a PCHA contract, but chose to play in a league that had a season only about half as long as a PCHA season, and was not allowed to compete for the Stanley Cup. That's as clear a definition of a minor league as I can think of from that period. My guess is that he did this precisely because he wanted to "get his legs back under him" before returning to top-level competition on the coast league.
This is just my opinion. Nothing is definitive, and everyone will have to decide for themselves how much value to place in MacKay's season in the Big-4. For me, it is pretty much a write-off.
Kyle McMahon
Registered User
- May 10, 2006
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I don't think anybody would have considered Zetterberg better than Crosby, Ovechkin, Iginla, or Lidstrom. Arguably Datsyuk, Thornton, Malkin, Kiprusoff, probably a couple other names I'm missing.
Similar situation with Sedin. Despite winning the Hart, nobody would suggest he was the best player in the world.
Neither player sustained that level of play for multiple years either.
From 1903-1906 McGee was at worst the third-best player. Russell Bowie and Hod Stuart would be the two ahead of him, but I think it's pretty close.
So essentially nobody from before 1910 (or later, not sure what date you determine hockey to have "began" is) belongs. I believe the project is called Top 60 Centers of all-time, not top 60 centers beginning at a certain cut-off point that disregards certain eras.
Dennis Bonvie
Registered User
Wow, I don't see that at all.
I saw Nedomansky play in the WHA and NHL and wasn't really impressed.
With Lemaire, Sundin and Lafontaine still on the board Neds is hardly a sure #1. I'd say McGee and Sedin are ahead of him also for me.
TheDevilMadeMe
Registered User
Nedomansky was 30 and 31 years old when he had his 2 pretty strong seasons in the WHA (Why did I think he had only one? Oops). 32 and 33 when he had 2 weak seasons in the WHA (after the team moved to Alabama), then 34 when he led a pretty weak Detroit team in scoring, then 35 when he was second on Detroit in scoring.
Lafontaine retired at the age of 32 and Lemaire retired at the age of 33.
How can you be happy Petrov made it and not support Nedomansky making it soon? Nedomansky's prime was clearly in Europe.
MXD
Partying Hard
- Oct 27, 2005
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Initial observations :
My Top-6 went Top-6 last round. Not in the order I would've liked, and certainly not with Mickey MacKay in the Top-4 with a big contingent of WCHL/PCHA players getting in for this round. Still, what's done is done, and as it is, I do have a solidly entrenched Top-2 -- Nedomansky and Zetterberg.
With that out of the way... I understand that this is a Top-60. I also understand that it's a good idea to have a list that is representative of all eras. THIS SAID, going full-representativity at the end of the list shouldn't be the way to go. Let's say that we should approach this list the same way we should approach a Top-70 list that would suddenly lose its administrator at the 60th mark. A guy we vote it shouldn't be a pure token vote.
Now, back on topic... Many new Oldies/Westerners. Out of that group, I think there was already a good case made for Frank Fredrikson. I eagerly expect Sturm's piece on the Westerners, but I'm pretty convinced that the results will be clear : Fredrikson is the best of that contingent, AND, that the difference between Fredrikson and the already in MacKay ranges between minimal and very small. In other words -- my Top-3 for this round is pretty much already set, with Fredrikson holding the Top-3 (and certainly not headed downwards).
I do have strong reservations towards Dunderdale and McGee. I don't think Sidney Crosby would have made our (and certainly not mine) Top-60 at the end of 2007-2008. He was, at that time, considered one of the three best players in the world. Which is exactly McGee's calling card. As for Dunderdale... well, he has been compared to Niewendyk, and it's at worst an apt comparison (Nieuwendyk obviously never led the NHL in scoring, but whatever). HIs peak appears to have been when the PCHA was slightly weaker.
One thing -- for the earlier players, can we infer a bigger correlation between team success and the quality of a player? Usually, team success is strongly related to the quality of its players, and even moreso when the players play 60 minutes except for the occasionnal sub.
I also don't expect much regarding Bernie Morris as well.
Henrik Sedin? I originally had him in my Top-60, but at this point, I have to be convinced he belongs. I'm not ready to give him any blame for the stupid way he was used in the recent years. This said, can we credit him anything prelockout? It's not like he was on a dynasty -- he wasn't exactly in Lemaire's situation as far as who was ahead of him on the depth chart, and the Canucks were certainly not a great team either. I don't even see how his case compares to Datsyuk, who had at least a legit excuse for playing 13 minutes a game. Between him and Primeau, it's pretty much a question of preference amongst terrible goalscorers : the player with the better longevity as a relevant player who was the best player on its line vs. the more "complete" player who brought more value in playoffs.
The others? I really like the case of two players that were at the bottom of the results table last round -- Jacques Lemaire and Duke Keats. I cannot stress enough the impact WWI had on the career of Keats. As to why he went to the "weaker" league afterwards, I don't know, really. I don't think there's anything that suggests Keats being a better player than Fredrikson, but I see him as being totally fair game for the last Top-4 spot.
Lemaire? Well, while his longevity isn't great, but if one considers the all the playoff games, plus the fact he was a relevant player right from the start, he fares much better than the raw regular games totals would suggest. Besides, we can't expect a Top-60 hopeful to unseat Henri Richard and Jean Beliveau as the main centers. In the circumstances, he posted great playoffs numbers, even early in his career. Add to this a complete game, his best seasons NOT being leaches, and the fact that playoffs tend to make players "grow older" a wee bit faster than they should, and you have a guy with a solid resume, perfectly worthy of a Top-60 spot. In fact, there's a very easy parallel to make between Larionov and Lemaire -- roles being the same on legendary teams.
My Top-6 went Top-6 last round. Not in the order I would've liked, and certainly not with Mickey MacKay in the Top-4 with a big contingent of WCHL/PCHA players getting in for this round. Still, what's done is done, and as it is, I do have a solidly entrenched Top-2 -- Nedomansky and Zetterberg.
With that out of the way... I understand that this is a Top-60. I also understand that it's a good idea to have a list that is representative of all eras. THIS SAID, going full-representativity at the end of the list shouldn't be the way to go. Let's say that we should approach this list the same way we should approach a Top-70 list that would suddenly lose its administrator at the 60th mark. A guy we vote it shouldn't be a pure token vote.
Now, back on topic... Many new Oldies/Westerners. Out of that group, I think there was already a good case made for Frank Fredrikson. I eagerly expect Sturm's piece on the Westerners, but I'm pretty convinced that the results will be clear : Fredrikson is the best of that contingent, AND, that the difference between Fredrikson and the already in MacKay ranges between minimal and very small. In other words -- my Top-3 for this round is pretty much already set, with Fredrikson holding the Top-3 (and certainly not headed downwards).
I do have strong reservations towards Dunderdale and McGee. I don't think Sidney Crosby would have made our (and certainly not mine) Top-60 at the end of 2007-2008. He was, at that time, considered one of the three best players in the world. Which is exactly McGee's calling card. As for Dunderdale... well, he has been compared to Niewendyk, and it's at worst an apt comparison (Nieuwendyk obviously never led the NHL in scoring, but whatever). HIs peak appears to have been when the PCHA was slightly weaker.
One thing -- for the earlier players, can we infer a bigger correlation between team success and the quality of a player? Usually, team success is strongly related to the quality of its players, and even moreso when the players play 60 minutes except for the occasionnal sub.
I also don't expect much regarding Bernie Morris as well.
Henrik Sedin? I originally had him in my Top-60, but at this point, I have to be convinced he belongs. I'm not ready to give him any blame for the stupid way he was used in the recent years. This said, can we credit him anything prelockout? It's not like he was on a dynasty -- he wasn't exactly in Lemaire's situation as far as who was ahead of him on the depth chart, and the Canucks were certainly not a great team either. I don't even see how his case compares to Datsyuk, who had at least a legit excuse for playing 13 minutes a game. Between him and Primeau, it's pretty much a question of preference amongst terrible goalscorers : the player with the better longevity as a relevant player who was the best player on its line vs. the more "complete" player who brought more value in playoffs.
The others? I really like the case of two players that were at the bottom of the results table last round -- Jacques Lemaire and Duke Keats. I cannot stress enough the impact WWI had on the career of Keats. As to why he went to the "weaker" league afterwards, I don't know, really. I don't think there's anything that suggests Keats being a better player than Fredrikson, but I see him as being totally fair game for the last Top-4 spot.
Lemaire? Well, while his longevity isn't great, but if one considers the all the playoff games, plus the fact he was a relevant player right from the start, he fares much better than the raw regular games totals would suggest. Besides, we can't expect a Top-60 hopeful to unseat Henri Richard and Jean Beliveau as the main centers. In the circumstances, he posted great playoffs numbers, even early in his career. Add to this a complete game, his best seasons NOT being leaches, and the fact that playoffs tend to make players "grow older" a wee bit faster than they should, and you have a guy with a solid resume, perfectly worthy of a Top-60 spot. In fact, there's a very easy parallel to make between Larionov and Lemaire -- roles being the same on legendary teams.
Lemaire averaged less than a pts a game,was never an allstar-never had 100 pts season or 50 goal season
TheDevilMadeMe
Registered User
BM67
Registered User
Players born in 1944 who scored 30+ goals in the NHL:
Player - Season - Goals
Ken Hodge 68-69 - 45
Dennis Hull 68-69 - 30
Bill Goldsworthy 69-70 - 36
Ken Hodge 70-71 - 43
Dennis Hull 70-71 - 40
Bill Goldsworthy 70-71 - 34
Bill Goldsworthy 71-72 - 31
Dennis Hull 71-72 - 30
Dennis Hull 72-73 - 39
Ken Hodge 72-73 - 37
Ken Hodge 73-74 - 50
Bill Goldsworthy 73-74 - 48
Bill Goldsworthy 74-75 - 37
Vaclav Nedomansky 78-79 - 38
Vaclav Nedomansky 79-80 - 35
Players born in 1944 who scored 70+ points in the NHL:
Player - Season - Goals
Ken Hodge 68-69 - 90
Ken Hodge 70-71 - 105
Fred Stanfield 70-71 - 76
Fred Stanfield 71-72 - 79
Dennis Hull 72-73 - 90
Ken Hodge 72-73 - 81
Fred Stanfield 72-73 - 78
Ken Hodge 73-74 - 105
Bill Goldsworthy 73-74 - 74
Bill Goldsworthy 74-75 - 72
Vaclav Nedomansky 78-79 - 73
Vaclav Nedomansky 79-80 - 74
So the others born in 1944 started scoring 30+ goals and 70+ points 6 years before Nedomansky came to North America, and stopped doing it the year he arrived. Then 3 years later Nedomansky puts up 30+ and 70+ not once but twice.
The last time a player older than Nedomansky finished in the top 10 of NHL scoring was Jean Ratelle in 75-76. The first time a player born 1944 or later finished in the top 10 of NHL scoring was Ken Hodge in 68-69.
Player - Season - Goals
Ken Hodge 68-69 - 45
Dennis Hull 68-69 - 30
Bill Goldsworthy 69-70 - 36
Ken Hodge 70-71 - 43
Dennis Hull 70-71 - 40
Bill Goldsworthy 70-71 - 34
Bill Goldsworthy 71-72 - 31
Dennis Hull 71-72 - 30
Dennis Hull 72-73 - 39
Ken Hodge 72-73 - 37
Ken Hodge 73-74 - 50
Bill Goldsworthy 73-74 - 48
Bill Goldsworthy 74-75 - 37
Vaclav Nedomansky 78-79 - 38
Vaclav Nedomansky 79-80 - 35
Players born in 1944 who scored 70+ points in the NHL:
Player - Season - Goals
Ken Hodge 68-69 - 90
Ken Hodge 70-71 - 105
Fred Stanfield 70-71 - 76
Fred Stanfield 71-72 - 79
Dennis Hull 72-73 - 90
Ken Hodge 72-73 - 81
Fred Stanfield 72-73 - 78
Ken Hodge 73-74 - 105
Bill Goldsworthy 73-74 - 74
Bill Goldsworthy 74-75 - 72
Vaclav Nedomansky 78-79 - 73
Vaclav Nedomansky 79-80 - 74
So the others born in 1944 started scoring 30+ goals and 70+ points 6 years before Nedomansky came to North America, and stopped doing it the year he arrived. Then 3 years later Nedomansky puts up 30+ and 70+ not once but twice.
The last time a player older than Nedomansky finished in the top 10 of NHL scoring was Jean Ratelle in 75-76. The first time a player born 1944 or later finished in the top 10 of NHL scoring was Ken Hodge in 68-69.
Where did I actually say that but while you bring it up there is little debate that that amount and quality of hockey players changed drastically in McGee's time to as short as 15 years later.?
More countries were producing elite NHL talent in the NHL when Sundin was in the NHL so that might obscure his greatness, thus the apple versus apples comp of the Canadian standard.
Context should matter at least somewhat right?
Not really most of the resume for any center comes down to his production one would think and even in the intangible departments, ie leadership, defense and other stuff Sundin isn't lacking either.
To be fair though look at that lsit above, 3 Canadian players , 2 Russians and a Finn, certainly different circumstances for the title of best player in the world right?
And I was talking specifically about the 2008 regular and playoff seasons, it's not rocket science or incorrect to say that Zetts was "in the mix", just like McGee, for best player in the world, even if just for one season and with the major differences in the talent pool.
That's probably true, someone like Ian Fyffe would know alot about that but exactly how big of a context was it actually and how do we fairly account for the differences in 1910 and 2010?
We have Bowie and Hod from that era already, how many do we need from such a small and emerging pool of players back then when hockey was really in it's infancy?
who would be the 4th and 5th best guys from that first decade of hockey in the 20th century and are there even more than a couple of thousand adult players playing organized hockey at that point through out the decade?
To be honest I have always expressed that it would probably be better to have these types of lists broken down into more manageable eras as the changes are so enormous and vast across a period of over 115 years to give fair shake to either side.
And we know which era always seems to lose out in these things here.
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Pominville Knows
Registered User
How can Henrik Sedin be on the same ballot as Mats Sundin? The Big Viking dwarfs The Half Sister.
Well for starts Mats should not have fallen this far, yet some people will still leave him off their top 8 no doubt.
Hank has his problems in his resume but to be fair to him he has been an excellent play maker and pretty decent overall guy since the lockout in the regular season.
Dennis Bonvie
Registered User
To me, Petrov was the much better player. No matter where they came from.
When you have to go to WHA stats to pump someone, that's pretty sad. I prefer Ivan Hlinka.
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Kyle McMahon
Registered User
- May 10, 2006
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So if Russell Bowie was born in Helsinki it would make a difference? Not McGee's fault that the game had yet to spread to Europe and all the best players were Canadian.
When anointing somebody as "the best in the world", people generally take into account more than most recent few months of play. If you were to ask people in NHL arenas who the best player in the world was, at no point in time would the name "Zetterberg" have been commonly mentioned.
A lot of people in here would know a lot about it, including myself. Account for any perceived differences between 1910 and 2010 however you want to, all I stated was that McGee was no worse than 3rd best player in the world during his career. If you disagree, feel free to suggest players who were better besides Bowie and Stuart.
I don't believe there's any guideline stating that X number of players need to be included from certain eras. But the participants in the project have branded their lists as "all-time" lists. As an outside observer, if I came across a list describing itself as such, yet found certain eras of the game to be omitted and others over-represented, I personally wouldn't give that list too much credibility.
I recall C1958 refuting estimates of "a couple thousand" organized players in one of these threads quite recently. Go hunt down that post if you're interested. I'm not concerned myself with how many worse players there were than Frank McGee playing in rec leagues across the nation.
Be that as it may, you signed up to vote in a project that has not distinguished between eras in its criteria. It seems rather cheap of you to decry the format of a list you willingly contributed your opinion to.
Oh...and which era would that be? The one who's (arguably) 3rd-best player is up for debate among the likes of Mats Sundin, who was seldom if ever even considered one of the top 20 players of his era? I'd be in full agreement with that assessment.
tony d
New poll series coming from me in June
Henrik Sedin's a very interesting addition this time. The guy has been a great playmaker over the past few seasons. Don't know how he'll look on an all-time centres list but I'm willing to bet he'll get strong consideration from a lot of people.
seventieslord
Student Of The Game
I am swayed by the fact that McGee was almost certainly the next-best center from his era. I had him out of the top-80 coming into this, and even if I can be sympathetic to his status in his era (his star power, so to speak) and the lack of players from his era on this list, I don't think I can see him in the top-60. Even if McGee was 60th on the list, his distance from Russell Bowie would simply not represent how far apart they were as players.
Basically, Bowie scored as many goals per game as McGee, but for 3 and a half times more games. Bowie's games were also against higher quality competition. (he did not play a year in the weaker FAHL, and he played later into hockey's developmental years, three in the ECAHA as opposed to one).
McGee placed 2nd, 3rd and 6th in CAHL/ECAHA points, and tied for 1st in the FAHL with Jack Marshall. (yes, he was better per-game than his rankings). Which is solid but not exactly mindblowing. A player with basically those scoring finishes in a modern NHL, Steven Stamkos, is not coming up for voting yet, nor should McGee.
But the big deal about him is his playoff resume, right? The thing about that is that out of his 22 cup games, just half were against reasonable competition:
- his four against the Victorias and Thistles in 1903,
- 3 against Winnipeg and one against Wanderers in 1904,
- 2 against Rat Portage in 1905
- 2 against wanderers in 1906
for a total of 11, in which he scored 17 goals. In his other 11 playoff games, there was no doubt from the start that Ottawa would win. And McGee piled on the goals in those games: 46 in total. These games were for the cup, yes, but they were against weak challengers. They mean less than the league games he played. The 17 goals in 11 games against the Victorias, Thistles, Winnipeg and Wanderers, were against teams at least as good as he faced in league play, and his stats, though strong, were not uber dominant either, like they appear when you mix in the games against garbage opponents.
Whichever modern player we vote in at closest to 60th (player X) is not going to be significantly worse than a modern counterpart like Ratelle or Perreault (guys who sandwich Bowie on the final list). We'll be able to look at their stats and probably conclude that player X was 90+% as good of a regular season producer as those two players, only kept that far below them by hair splitting, less important factors and the fact that this is an all-time list with players from other eras slotted in between them. McGee isn't that close to Bowie.
Basically, Bowie scored as many goals per game as McGee, but for 3 and a half times more games. Bowie's games were also against higher quality competition. (he did not play a year in the weaker FAHL, and he played later into hockey's developmental years, three in the ECAHA as opposed to one).
McGee placed 2nd, 3rd and 6th in CAHL/ECAHA points, and tied for 1st in the FAHL with Jack Marshall. (yes, he was better per-game than his rankings). Which is solid but not exactly mindblowing. A player with basically those scoring finishes in a modern NHL, Steven Stamkos, is not coming up for voting yet, nor should McGee.
But the big deal about him is his playoff resume, right? The thing about that is that out of his 22 cup games, just half were against reasonable competition:
- his four against the Victorias and Thistles in 1903,
- 3 against Winnipeg and one against Wanderers in 1904,
- 2 against Rat Portage in 1905
- 2 against wanderers in 1906
for a total of 11, in which he scored 17 goals. In his other 11 playoff games, there was no doubt from the start that Ottawa would win. And McGee piled on the goals in those games: 46 in total. These games were for the cup, yes, but they were against weak challengers. They mean less than the league games he played. The 17 goals in 11 games against the Victorias, Thistles, Winnipeg and Wanderers, were against teams at least as good as he faced in league play, and his stats, though strong, were not uber dominant either, like they appear when you mix in the games against garbage opponents.
Whichever modern player we vote in at closest to 60th (player X) is not going to be significantly worse than a modern counterpart like Ratelle or Perreault (guys who sandwich Bowie on the final list). We'll be able to look at their stats and probably conclude that player X was 90+% as good of a regular season producer as those two players, only kept that far below them by hair splitting, less important factors and the fact that this is an all-time list with players from other eras slotted in between them. McGee isn't that close to Bowie.
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MadArcand
Whaletarded
^ or maybe we've underrated Bowie and added him too late?
And if you don't see the folly in using Sundin's whole career vs. parts of careers of guys who partially overlap with his career span in a career points comparison...
You seem to think that larger player pool automatically equals greater competition, and that the quality of competition increases with time. Neither is the case - the competition in 2000s and today is abysmal compared to the 90s, for starters.
Nonsense. Defense is much more important than you give it credit for, and Sundin is at best neutral in that department.
And if you don't see the folly in using Sundin's whole career vs. parts of careers of guys who partially overlap with his career span in a career points comparison...
Kyle McMahon
Registered User
- May 10, 2006
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Indeed, the thrashing of Dawson City in which McGee set a presumably unbreakable record for goals in a game and final series is a nice historical feather in his cap, but not really a big point in his favour as an all-time great, either.
seventieslord
Student Of The Game
Adjusted points per game (no extra credit for lockout seasons missed or lockout shortened seasons) in best cherrypicked 700-or-so game segments for selected modern players:
Name | Years Used | GP | Adj P | Adj PPG | %goals
Pierre Turgeon | 00 98 93 94 96 97 01 90 99 92 | 725 | 858 | 1.18 | 39
Mats Sundin | 97 99 93 08 02 06 00 03 04 | 699 | 782 | 1.12 | 44
Pat LaFontaine | 92 93 95 90 96 94 98 88 91 84 89 87 | 720 | 791 | 1.10 | 46
Henrik Sedin | 10 11 12 13 09 08 07 06 14 | 674 | 723 | 1.07 | 22
Henrik Zetterberg | 08 14 13 07 06 11 10 09 12 04 | 680 | 722 | 1.06 | 38
Methodology:
- used hockey-reference's adjusted points system, as it's readily available and no one seems to have a major problem with it, as far as comparing players from the last 24 or so years. Lafontaine is the only one affected by this, as his 8th, 10th, 11th, and 12th best seasons (by per-game adjusted points) are slightly devalued by the phenomenon where the adjustments overcredit post-1990 players compared to pre-1990 players; however, this should not have a huge impact on his overall result
- I ranked every player's seasons by adjusted points per game, regardless of GP.
- adjusted the player's adjusted points downwards for 1995 (Turgeon, Sundin, LaFontaine), 2013 (Zetterberg, Sedin) and the ongoing 2014 season (2014) since all of those results assume the player played a proportional share of an 82 game schedule as opposed to the lower number they actually played. This does include the games played this season, so it's to-the-minute.
- cherrypicked the number of seasons needed in order to come the closest to a 700-game block of seasons for each player. The seasons used, in order of per-game greatness, are listed.
- calculated each player's adjusted points per game for the selected blocks
- This has no projection built in, no forgiveness for injuries, and no extrapolations for shortened or ongoing seasons. It simply represents how good these players were at producing points in the regular season in their best 700 games. One was good for about 500 more games than that (Sundin), one for about 400 more games (Turgeon), the others not really for any more games.
Analysis/Comments:
- the "%goals" column is in there just to show you how close all of these guys are as goal scorers, with one obvious, noteworthy and important exception.
- You could say that these three shorter career guys just made the cutoff. There is quite the drop from seasons that were counted to the seasons that weren't, for the LaFontaine, Sedin and Zetterberg. The lowest adjusted PPG season used for any of them was LaFontaine's 1987 (0.74) and the highest ones not used were Sedin's 2004 and LaFontaine's 1985 (0.64). As mentioned, Sundin has 500 more games played at 0.84 or higher not captured in this chart, and Turgeon has 400 more at 0.72 or higher.
Does this over-reward longevity? Do Sundin and Turgeon benfefit just by having a better 7th, 8th, 9th-best season? Shrink the data set so that it's based on their best 400-ish games:
Turgeon 1.24
LaFontaine 1.24
Sedin 1.18
Zetterberg 1.15
Sundin 1.15
Turgeon, who you might have thought compiled his way to the top of the previous list, still has as good a 400-game sample as anyone here. Sundin, not so much!
- Clearly, we are doing Pierre Turgeon a great disservice by not strongly considering him for this list. His name won't come up.
- The flipside to Turgeon's best 400 game period (422, actually) is that they came across 6 seasons, instead of the traditional 5 sets of 80-ish games. However, it's important to note that the only player within striking distance of him, LaFontaine, has a "best-400" game period (396 games to be exact) spread over seven seasons. But instead of trying to compartmentalize these players' performances into october-to-march blocks, this method attempts to look at the bigger picture.
- This highlights a flaw with any system of looking at raw points, adjusted points, vs2 or vsx. In doing so you completely disregard that a player like Turgeon in 1998 needed only 52 games to post 66 points, or that LaFontaine in 1992 needed only 57 to post 93. The best stretches of hockey that they played get tossed in the bucket with the rest of them, treated as their 12th and 4th-best seasons, respectively, as though they posted those totals in full 82-game seasons.
- I specifically chose this set of players as they all played recently enough to compare fairly, and none of them brought anything special to the table aside from their points, with one obvious glaring exception (Zetterberg)
- Two things stand out to me right away. The first is that Zetterberg, in his best 800 and even best 400 games, isn't demonstrably worse offensively than the rest of these guys. Or, I should say, he's at least in the mix with them and not trailing by 0.15 like you might have guessed he'd be (admit it, you thought that). When you consider he has the best playoff record of all of these players (easily), was the best leader (easily) and has the best intangibles and defense (easily), he's a slam dunk ahead of the two other short career players Sedin and LaFontaine, and IMO has done enough to surpass Sundin whose only advantage over Zetterberg at this point is long-term compiling (which shouldn't be completely ignored, mind you). I'd also take him over Turgeon, not that that's relevant.
- As you can see with Sundin, though his 700 game sample is great (and his 800, 900 and 1000 game samples would be even better in this group), he does not benefit from the narrower lens. He's got the least impressive 400-game stretch among these players, based on point production, if you give the tiebreaker to Zetterberg for intangibles. Sundin barely had a peak, or should I say, he had no spike: his best adjusted PPG season was 1997 (1.18). The other four have a combined eleven seasons with better adjusted PPG than that: Turgeon 4 (264 games), LaFontaine 4 (237 games), Sedin 2 (164 games), and Zetterberg 2 (120 games including the ongoing 2014 season). The flipside is that in Sundin's twelfth best adjusted PPG season, he averaged 1.03, just 0.15 short of his absolute peak, compared to Turgeon's 0.91 (0.47 short), Sedin's 0.50 (0.95 short), LaFontaine's 0.74 (0.70 short), and Zetterberg's "N/A" (he's currently in his 11th season, his 10th best is 0.63, 0.70 short).
So if you really like longevity, Sundin's your guy here. Over anyone. But if you think 700 games is plenty enough to judge a player on, then I don't see how Zetterberg isn't the best of this group.
- Taking a look at the point production of the remaining players, which, let's face it, is really what it comes down to for all of them, with Sundin given the longevity credit and excused from the class, I don't see why we should be putting Henrik Sedin or Pat LaFontaine on this list when they aren't demonstrably better than Pierre Turgeon - and are in fact demonstrably worse.
I agree that they have a couple of things in their favour though. LaFontaine is more of a "wow" player, and he's a slightly better goal scorer. Sedin has the scoring title/Hart and a couple of first all-star teams. But how valuable is Lafontaine's pizzazz if it didn't actually lead to him being a better producer than Turgeon over the long haul? And how valuable is Sedin's scoring title if it represents just one of his dozen seasons and it was the result of a superior player missing games? These kinds of things are merely symptomatic of what happened on the ice and are too often situational (i.e. who else had a good year and who got injured, etc). Pierre Turgeon in 2000 almost won a "tainted" scoring title himself, when a couple of superior players missed some games, but he, too, was felled by injury. Essentially, Sedin scored 1.45 adjusted PPG for 82 games, and Turgeon did it for 52 (on the third tightest team in the league in terms of total GF/GA, as opposed to the third most wide-open team in 2010 by the same metric). Sedin deserves that proportional extra credit for those 30 more games, but the fact that he's already on the table in the second last round and Turgeon never will be, indicates a vastly disproportional degree of credit being given for such a detail in their respective resumes.
Turgeon does have other advantages over Sedin besides the fact that he's been a much better point producer over their respective best 400 and 700 game stretches:
- Linemates. Turgeon almost never had a great linemate. He dragged players like Benoit Hogue and Derek King and Scott Young to career seasons. Sedin has played with a player who has been probably the NHL's 3rd best LW since the lockout. Look at how much each player tended to outscore their next-highest linemate each season and you'll see what I mean.
- Goals. Turgeon was literally twice as good at scoring goals. If all things are equal including points totals, you'd go with the guy who scored a higher percentage of his points in the form of goals, right? Well in this case all things aren't equal; Turgeon is a 5-10% better point producer to start with, depending on how wide a lens you use, and more of points were goals to boot, so that should only widen the gap.
- Whatever it's worth to you (and I think it's worth at least something to all of us), Turgeon had another very good 400 games not captured in any way by this study.
- Sedin would have to score 25 points in his next 10 playoff games to match Turgeon's career playoff stats
- This is a can of worms, but Sedin was given an obscene number of offensive zone starts in a few of his very best seasons. It doesn't explain 2010 on its own (he was only 10th in the league at 57.7%), but it seems his huge spike from 1.02 to 1.45 adjusted PPG had at least something to do with going from 49.9% to 57.7%. Then in 2011 and 2012, the zone starts experiment got taken to a new level, with the Sedins lapping the next highest guy by as much as that guy was ahead of 11th-40th place, and Henrik was able to stay as close to his 2010 spike as possible, having his 2nd and 3rd-best seasons. Then last season it was dialed back a bit (63.7%, 7th overall), and so was his scoring, to 1.04 adjusted PPG. This season Henrik's nowhere near the leaders in zone starts and... nowhere near the leaders in points, either. I completely realize it's arguable how strong this connection is, but there certainly appears to be some connection, and it's also common sense to an extent. No one knows what Turgeon's zone starts were like, or any pre-2008 player, for that matter, but we can safely presume they were never "highest in the league by obscene amounts".
in conclusion, trophy counting is NOT a good enough reason to prefer Sedin over Turgeon, and pizzazz is not a good enough reason to take Lafontaine. Don't vote in Turgeon if you mustn't - I'm not a huge advocate for him either, I only had him 58th myself so I'm not pushing for him to make this list - but don't vote in these two guys when the statistical case doesn't support them being here without him.
Pierre Turgeon | 00 98 93 94 96 97 01 90 99 92 | 725 | 858 | 1.18 | 39
Mats Sundin | 97 99 93 08 02 06 00 03 04 | 699 | 782 | 1.12 | 44
Pat LaFontaine | 92 93 95 90 96 94 98 88 91 84 89 87 | 720 | 791 | 1.10 | 46
Henrik Sedin | 10 11 12 13 09 08 07 06 14 | 674 | 723 | 1.07 | 22
Henrik Zetterberg | 08 14 13 07 06 11 10 09 12 04 | 680 | 722 | 1.06 | 38
Methodology:
- used hockey-reference's adjusted points system, as it's readily available and no one seems to have a major problem with it, as far as comparing players from the last 24 or so years. Lafontaine is the only one affected by this, as his 8th, 10th, 11th, and 12th best seasons (by per-game adjusted points) are slightly devalued by the phenomenon where the adjustments overcredit post-1990 players compared to pre-1990 players; however, this should not have a huge impact on his overall result
- I ranked every player's seasons by adjusted points per game, regardless of GP.
- adjusted the player's adjusted points downwards for 1995 (Turgeon, Sundin, LaFontaine), 2013 (Zetterberg, Sedin) and the ongoing 2014 season (2014) since all of those results assume the player played a proportional share of an 82 game schedule as opposed to the lower number they actually played. This does include the games played this season, so it's to-the-minute.
- cherrypicked the number of seasons needed in order to come the closest to a 700-game block of seasons for each player. The seasons used, in order of per-game greatness, are listed.
- calculated each player's adjusted points per game for the selected blocks
- This has no projection built in, no forgiveness for injuries, and no extrapolations for shortened or ongoing seasons. It simply represents how good these players were at producing points in the regular season in their best 700 games. One was good for about 500 more games than that (Sundin), one for about 400 more games (Turgeon), the others not really for any more games.
Analysis/Comments:
- the "%goals" column is in there just to show you how close all of these guys are as goal scorers, with one obvious, noteworthy and important exception.
- You could say that these three shorter career guys just made the cutoff. There is quite the drop from seasons that were counted to the seasons that weren't, for the LaFontaine, Sedin and Zetterberg. The lowest adjusted PPG season used for any of them was LaFontaine's 1987 (0.74) and the highest ones not used were Sedin's 2004 and LaFontaine's 1985 (0.64). As mentioned, Sundin has 500 more games played at 0.84 or higher not captured in this chart, and Turgeon has 400 more at 0.72 or higher.
Does this over-reward longevity? Do Sundin and Turgeon benfefit just by having a better 7th, 8th, 9th-best season? Shrink the data set so that it's based on their best 400-ish games:
Turgeon 1.24
LaFontaine 1.24
Sedin 1.18
Zetterberg 1.15
Sundin 1.15
Turgeon, who you might have thought compiled his way to the top of the previous list, still has as good a 400-game sample as anyone here. Sundin, not so much!
- Clearly, we are doing Pierre Turgeon a great disservice by not strongly considering him for this list. His name won't come up.
- The flipside to Turgeon's best 400 game period (422, actually) is that they came across 6 seasons, instead of the traditional 5 sets of 80-ish games. However, it's important to note that the only player within striking distance of him, LaFontaine, has a "best-400" game period (396 games to be exact) spread over seven seasons. But instead of trying to compartmentalize these players' performances into october-to-march blocks, this method attempts to look at the bigger picture.
- This highlights a flaw with any system of looking at raw points, adjusted points, vs2 or vsx. In doing so you completely disregard that a player like Turgeon in 1998 needed only 52 games to post 66 points, or that LaFontaine in 1992 needed only 57 to post 93. The best stretches of hockey that they played get tossed in the bucket with the rest of them, treated as their 12th and 4th-best seasons, respectively, as though they posted those totals in full 82-game seasons.
- I specifically chose this set of players as they all played recently enough to compare fairly, and none of them brought anything special to the table aside from their points, with one obvious glaring exception (Zetterberg)
- Two things stand out to me right away. The first is that Zetterberg, in his best 800 and even best 400 games, isn't demonstrably worse offensively than the rest of these guys. Or, I should say, he's at least in the mix with them and not trailing by 0.15 like you might have guessed he'd be (admit it, you thought that). When you consider he has the best playoff record of all of these players (easily), was the best leader (easily) and has the best intangibles and defense (easily), he's a slam dunk ahead of the two other short career players Sedin and LaFontaine, and IMO has done enough to surpass Sundin whose only advantage over Zetterberg at this point is long-term compiling (which shouldn't be completely ignored, mind you). I'd also take him over Turgeon, not that that's relevant.
- As you can see with Sundin, though his 700 game sample is great (and his 800, 900 and 1000 game samples would be even better in this group), he does not benefit from the narrower lens. He's got the least impressive 400-game stretch among these players, based on point production, if you give the tiebreaker to Zetterberg for intangibles. Sundin barely had a peak, or should I say, he had no spike: his best adjusted PPG season was 1997 (1.18). The other four have a combined eleven seasons with better adjusted PPG than that: Turgeon 4 (264 games), LaFontaine 4 (237 games), Sedin 2 (164 games), and Zetterberg 2 (120 games including the ongoing 2014 season). The flipside is that in Sundin's twelfth best adjusted PPG season, he averaged 1.03, just 0.15 short of his absolute peak, compared to Turgeon's 0.91 (0.47 short), Sedin's 0.50 (0.95 short), LaFontaine's 0.74 (0.70 short), and Zetterberg's "N/A" (he's currently in his 11th season, his 10th best is 0.63, 0.70 short).
So if you really like longevity, Sundin's your guy here. Over anyone. But if you think 700 games is plenty enough to judge a player on, then I don't see how Zetterberg isn't the best of this group.
- Taking a look at the point production of the remaining players, which, let's face it, is really what it comes down to for all of them, with Sundin given the longevity credit and excused from the class, I don't see why we should be putting Henrik Sedin or Pat LaFontaine on this list when they aren't demonstrably better than Pierre Turgeon - and are in fact demonstrably worse.
I agree that they have a couple of things in their favour though. LaFontaine is more of a "wow" player, and he's a slightly better goal scorer. Sedin has the scoring title/Hart and a couple of first all-star teams. But how valuable is Lafontaine's pizzazz if it didn't actually lead to him being a better producer than Turgeon over the long haul? And how valuable is Sedin's scoring title if it represents just one of his dozen seasons and it was the result of a superior player missing games? These kinds of things are merely symptomatic of what happened on the ice and are too often situational (i.e. who else had a good year and who got injured, etc). Pierre Turgeon in 2000 almost won a "tainted" scoring title himself, when a couple of superior players missed some games, but he, too, was felled by injury. Essentially, Sedin scored 1.45 adjusted PPG for 82 games, and Turgeon did it for 52 (on the third tightest team in the league in terms of total GF/GA, as opposed to the third most wide-open team in 2010 by the same metric). Sedin deserves that proportional extra credit for those 30 more games, but the fact that he's already on the table in the second last round and Turgeon never will be, indicates a vastly disproportional degree of credit being given for such a detail in their respective resumes.
Turgeon does have other advantages over Sedin besides the fact that he's been a much better point producer over their respective best 400 and 700 game stretches:
- Linemates. Turgeon almost never had a great linemate. He dragged players like Benoit Hogue and Derek King and Scott Young to career seasons. Sedin has played with a player who has been probably the NHL's 3rd best LW since the lockout. Look at how much each player tended to outscore their next-highest linemate each season and you'll see what I mean.
- Goals. Turgeon was literally twice as good at scoring goals. If all things are equal including points totals, you'd go with the guy who scored a higher percentage of his points in the form of goals, right? Well in this case all things aren't equal; Turgeon is a 5-10% better point producer to start with, depending on how wide a lens you use, and more of points were goals to boot, so that should only widen the gap.
- Whatever it's worth to you (and I think it's worth at least something to all of us), Turgeon had another very good 400 games not captured in any way by this study.
- Sedin would have to score 25 points in his next 10 playoff games to match Turgeon's career playoff stats
- This is a can of worms, but Sedin was given an obscene number of offensive zone starts in a few of his very best seasons. It doesn't explain 2010 on its own (he was only 10th in the league at 57.7%), but it seems his huge spike from 1.02 to 1.45 adjusted PPG had at least something to do with going from 49.9% to 57.7%. Then in 2011 and 2012, the zone starts experiment got taken to a new level, with the Sedins lapping the next highest guy by as much as that guy was ahead of 11th-40th place, and Henrik was able to stay as close to his 2010 spike as possible, having his 2nd and 3rd-best seasons. Then last season it was dialed back a bit (63.7%, 7th overall), and so was his scoring, to 1.04 adjusted PPG. This season Henrik's nowhere near the leaders in zone starts and... nowhere near the leaders in points, either. I completely realize it's arguable how strong this connection is, but there certainly appears to be some connection, and it's also common sense to an extent. No one knows what Turgeon's zone starts were like, or any pre-2008 player, for that matter, but we can safely presume they were never "highest in the league by obscene amounts".
in conclusion, trophy counting is NOT a good enough reason to prefer Sedin over Turgeon, and pizzazz is not a good enough reason to take Lafontaine. Don't vote in Turgeon if you mustn't - I'm not a huge advocate for him either, I only had him 58th myself so I'm not pushing for him to make this list - but don't vote in these two guys when the statistical case doesn't support them being here without him.
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Sturminator
Love is a duel
Ugh...no. Henrik will not get any votes from me in round 2 of this project because he is not a top-60 center.
seventieslord
Student Of The Game
I won't vote for him either (or Dunderdale, Lafontaine, Lemaire or McGee). The rest are all in consideration; just one will have to be left out.
I'll have Zetterberg first this round, and Sundin/Sittler in the top-5 next to eachother in that order. Nedomansky somewhere there. The PCHA guys in the order I said earlier, pending careful consideration of your study. Primeau, if he makes it, will likely be 8th, at the expense of Keats or Morris.
this might be where I'm at for the moment:
Zetterberg
Sundin
Sittler
Foyston
Frederickson
Nedomansky
Morris
Primeau
give or take a few spots...
TheDevilMadeMe
Registered User
Foyston over Fredrickson and Keats? Why?
Hell Morris (who put up good stats but was rarely if ever considered a star) over Keats?
Primeau over Sedin? Is there any question that Sedin had a better peak? Did Primeau actually have more career value?
I'll leave the NHLers alone for the most part, other than to say that it seems pretty extreme to have Zetterberg #1 and Sedin not even on the list. I guess that's more a criticism of Zetterberg's high place than lack of Sedin
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MadArcand
Whaletarded
I don't really see why Nedomansky should be so far behind Petrov - inded, why should he be behind at all?
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