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Round 2, Vote 2 (HFNYR Top Centers)

I guess the question then becomes whether two great regular seasons and one great individual playoff performance supersede Espo's entire body of work as a Ranger. It's a tough question to answer. I keep going back and forth.
 
Harts are so rare in NYR history, though.

By the way, I think that this would be a good time to mention my amazement for what our friends in the HoH board have done. We're ranking ten centers out of thirty based on what they did on the Rangers alone, and it's a lot of work and research and tough decisions. I cannot even imagine ranking every player in every position throughout multiple leagues. It's absolutely incredible that they did that and did a thorough job of it.
 
Crease said:
I guess the question then becomes whether two great regular seasons and one great individual playoff performance supersede Espo's entire body of work as a Ranger. It's a tough question to answer. I keep going back and forth.
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I have insane respect for both guys, but in an ideal world, since both were at the ends of their careers and their best work was elsewhere, I'd prefer neither. Gretzky has the hardware, AST selections, point leads and what not, but it's a ridiculously short body of work.

Espo was a scoring machine, though he notched a lot of his points on the PP and from what I remember watching he was somewhat of a defensive nightmare at ES. I'll see if any stats can illustrate. Gosh, I hate +/- but it does kinda help make the point. Just for illustration purposes, here's Espo vs Walt in GP, Even Strength Pts and +/- the seasons Espo and Tkaczuk played together:

Esposito

Season | GP | ESP | +/-
75-76|62|33|-39
76-77|80|47|-28
77-78|79|42|-22
78-79|80|52|-1
79-80|80|50|-13
80-81|41|14|-13
TOTAL|422|238|-116

Tkaczuk

Season | GP | ESP | +/-
75-76|78|30|-10
76-77|80|45|+11
77-78|80|52|+15
78-79|77|35|+20
79-80|76|26|+19
80-81|43|25|+13
TOTAL|434|213|+68

This is not to take anything away from Espo's scoring, body of playoff work, or the fact that he was excellent on the PP, a fact that should not be diminished. I just remember him as pretty unspectacular in his own end. And that's being friendly lol. Point being, I'd rather have a few other top 10 options and am a little saddened that we don't.
 
For Chief. Espo's league-wide percentile ranking among goal scorers, while a Ranger.

Year | Goals | League Rank | Percentile
1975-76 | 35 | 21 | 95
1976-77 | 34 | 17 | 96
1977-78 | 38 | 15 | 97
1978-79 | 42 | 8 | 98
1979-80 | 34 | 33 | 94
1980-81 | 7 | 281 | 51
 
Greg02 said:
By the way, I think that this would be a good time to mention my amazement for what our friends in the HoH board have done. We're ranking ten centers out of thirty based on what they did on the Rangers alone, and it's a lot of work and research and tough decisions. I cannot even imagine ranking every player in every position throughout multiple leagues. It's absolutely incredible that they did that and did a thorough job of it.
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Agreed. They did an incredible job on those projects. The discussion threads are recommended reading.

I believe there are plans to re-do the Top 70 Forwards in the near future, but by position (C, LW, RW) this time. Which brings me to a question I planned on asking before the next installment: When we do the Wingers project, should we do LW and RW separately?
 
My first instinct is to say we should separate RW's from LW's but will we have enough info to do so going back more than 40 years?
 
I agree with separating RW and LW, but share the same concern as Chief. Perhaps we can start with LW and see if we have a viable 20-25 guys to start with and if not group in RWs?
 
Chief said:
My first instinct is to say we should separate RW's from LW's but will we have enough info to do so going back more than 40 years?
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If people thought the list of eligible centers was thin, wait until they get a load of the LWers. Vickers might be #1. :laugh: That's why I'm leaning towards combining the two positions into one project and maybe expanding it to 15 slots instead of 10.
 
I'm looking into it and there's a decent lot of LWs: Bun Cook, Camille Henry, Vic Hadfield, Lynn Patrick, Steve Vickers, Adam Graves, Don Maloney, Butch Keeling, Pat Hickey, Dean Prentice, Alex Shibicky. Not as steep as RW, but might be enough for a top 10.
 
My preliminary vote: submit 7 names for 5 slots

Tkaczuk
Laprade
this is definite in this order
Raleigh
O'Connor
believe this is also definite, suspect this is order..

final 3:
Smith going on rep and a complete player
Espo not a complete player, but has enough for long enough I have to give him
Duguay Was a good 2 way C, not Jan Erixon, but not an embarrassment on defense, hustled most of the time. F few more goals and he would have leapfrogged Espo


Goyette - didn't excel long enough as a ranger
Gretzky if we had him 2, maybe even just one year younger, he makes the list.

Gather I'm forgetting someone.

Pls feel free to make your cases, fans of anyone in particular.
 
Walt
Laprade
Raleigh

is pretty much my confirmed 6-8 at this point (think it's the same for most people), with the 9+ still in turmoil.

On the 'lack' of top 10 C and whether to top 10s for LW/RW or combine them: I think the bottom half of a top 10 for both positions will have you going with some less than 'spectacular' players, but is still worth doing. The franchise is only 85 years old (I say 'only' as my footy club is celebrating 145 years), meaning that 10 top players means you'd have a franchise player at each fwd position once every 8.5 years on average, which means that we should have had 2.5 players per position that were top 10 since the last cup. To me, this is a bit unrealistic, especially on a team as starved of success as the Rangers. It may also be why I have Goyette higher (fighting for #10) than most. He certainly wasn't a league superstar, but he was a very good Ranger for over a half a decade.

The above isn't a argument for the inclusion of Goyette, just trying to highlight that the bottom of each list probably wont be household names. Realistically, IMO of course, your top 5-6 should hopefully be in the 'star' mold, while, the latter guys are what are considered 'club greats' rather than 'league greats'.

Now I'm off to work to give the list a final going over...
 
Well, why do we separate by position? Ostensibly it's because the different positions have different intrinsic values and responsibilities. For example, a center has to take face offs and has more defensive responsibilities than a winger, and obviously requires a whole different skill set from a goaltender. But the two wings do the same things, just from two opposite ends of the ice. To me, it makes as much sense separating by wings as separating by defense side.
 
Greg02 said:
Well, why do we separate by position? Ostensibly it's because the different positions have different intrinsic values and responsibilities. For example, a center has to take face offs and has more defensive responsibilities than a winger, and obviously requires a whole different skill set from a goaltender. But the two wings do the same things, just from two opposite ends of the ice. To me, it makes as much sense separating by wings as separating by defense side.
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As immensely logical as that is, and it really is, I spent most of my life playing RW/C and could not play LW to save my life. I also spent large parts of two seasons playing D and did not have a problem playing either side. But LW killed me. I'm a RH shot and I was quick. Going wide on the right side gave me passing options on my forehand and let me see the ice. Doing the same on LW was brutal and I always felt forced to try to skate into a log jam of traffic. I didn't have this kind of issue flipping from one D to the other. Only real change, to me, was how you hold a puck in along the boards in the offensive zone. Not sure how other players feel on this, that's just my experience.
 
I figured we'd just do the 10 top Dmen but I'll go along with whatever the group decides to do. I don't know if this was contemplated or not but after we go through all the positions, we should vote on the Top 20 all-time Rangers from among all the positions.
 
Chief said:
I figured we'd just do the 10 top Dmen but I'll go along with whatever the group decides to do. I don't know if this was contemplated or not but after we go through all the positions, we should vote on the Top 20 all-time Rangers from among all the positions.
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I'd def be down to try and figure out a top 20 list
 
Cake or Death said:
As immensely logical as that is, and it really is, I spent most of my life playing RW/C and could not play LW to save my life. I also spent large parts of two seasons playing D and did not have a problem playing either side. But LW killed me. I'm a RH shot and I was quick. Going wide on the right side gave me passing options on my forehand and let me see the ice. Doing the same on LW was brutal and I always felt forced to try to skate into a log jam of traffic. I didn't have this kind of issue flipping from one D to the other. Only real change, to me, was how you hold a puck in along the boards in the offensive zone. Not sure how other players feel on this, that's just my experience.
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Well, it depends on whether you shoot right or left and what your style of play is, but is there a difference from a lefty on the left side from a righty on the right?
 
Greg02 said:
Well, it depends on whether you shoot right or left and what your style of play is, but is there a difference from a lefty on the left side from a righty on the right?
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Can't say there is. Main thing was that I found LW and RW a lot different, but not so much with LD and RD. Was wondering if others had similar experiences.
 
By the way, I'm going to laugh when Cook vs Gilbert turns out exactly the same as Boucher vs Ratelle.
 
**ADMIN NOTE**

Friendly reminder that Round 2 Vote 2 ballots are due end-of-day today. A valid ballot has the ranking of 7 of 9 centers listed in post #2 of this thread. Results will be listed tomorrow, or earlier of I have received all ballots before then.
 
Greg02 said:
By the way, I'm going to laugh when Cook vs Gilbert turns out exactly the same as Boucher vs Ratelle.
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Haha. Should be no contest. Gilbert may be having more of a 2-3 debate with Bryan Hextall. Hextall's got a Cup and IIRC a few 1st AST selections. And of course we'll be running into the same short tenure situation with Jagr. Should be fun
 
mike14 said:
Walt
Laprade
Raleigh

is pretty much my confirmed 6-8 at this point (think it's the same for most people), with the 9+ still in turmoil.

On the 'lack' of top 10 C and whether to top 10s for LW/RW or combine them: I think the bottom half of a top 10 for both positions will have you going with some less than 'spectacular' players, but is still worth doing. The franchise is only 85 years old (I say 'only' as my footy club is celebrating 145 years), meaning that 10 top players means you'd have a franchise player at each fwd position once every 8.5 years on average, which means that we should have had 2.5 players per position that were top 10 since the last cup. To me, this is a bit unrealistic, especially on a team as starved of success as the Rangers. It may also be why I have Goyette higher (fighting for #10) than most. He certainly wasn't a league superstar, but he was a very good Ranger for over a half a decade.

The above isn't a argument for the inclusion of Goyette, just trying to highlight that the bottom of each list probably wont be household names. Realistically, IMO of course, your top 5-6 should hopefully be in the 'star' mold, while, the latter guys are what are considered 'club greats' rather than 'league greats'.

Now I'm off to work to give the list a final going over...
Click to expand...

Thanks for advocating his inclusion.
I'm being picky, but half a decade is just 5 years. Clearly good contribution during that time but not lights out.
 
I had hoped to hold this off til later tonight, but want to adhere to deadline:

my final vote:
Tkaczuk
Laprade
Raleigh
O'Connor
Smith
Espo
Duguay

for reasons stated earlier.

This has been a blast, thanks to all esp. Crease and you guys with all that wild research KUDOS!

Will check in during the week.
 
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