Making a pro Selanne case based on VsX is pretty bizarre when he's 5th out of 7 and significantly behind the Top 4.
I'll doubt he catches any of Conacher/Ovechkin even if you remove all Europeans.
Let's look, my comoputer is acting up and the season by season look will take too long but let's look at his consecutive peak 96-00 the 5 years were he was a top 10 point producrer and the makeup of the others during that time frame.
http://www.hockey-reference.com/pla...3val=&c4stat=&c4comp=gt&c4val=&order_by=goals
I brought up goals , as he is known more for a goal scorer and the guys he ranks around with
Canadians in bold
goals 96-00
John LeClair 235
Jagr 230
Selanne 223
Bondra 220
Tkachuck 200
Kariya 192
Shannahan 191
Amonte 190
Palffy 185
Lindros 176
Sundin 170
Sakic 169
So there are 4 Canadian in the top 11 in goal scoring over that period of time and only 2 from traditional 06 era talent streams as BC was an insignificant talent stream for a long period of time before the 70's.
In points over the same time period it changes a bit as well, Selanne is a solid 2nd, behind Jagr and the best Canadain players are Sakic and Kariya at 5 and 6 (both from BC which was basically a non factor in producing NHL talent in the 06 era.
the bottom line is that Selanne's VsX score, when context is considered is much closer to the top 4 guys this round than the 5th guy.
Trying to say something positive about Selanne's playoffs doesn't mean he was 'really good', especially compared to the competition he faces.
To be clear "really good" is below excellent and elite but it's not like others here don't have holes or circumstances around their playoff resumes either right?
the point was made quite well earlier up thread that Selanne performed really good in the playoffs given his team circumstances and his poor playoff reputation has been exaggerated by many.
I think that an illusion based on his late resurgence and quite big gap doing nothing noteworthy.
The only player who falls short in terms of longevity or number of elite seasons is Conacher, all others have about 7 or more.
What big gap?
Sure the year in Colorado was a disaster and ages 31 and 32 were jsut okay (but pretty decent for his age).
The bottom line is that Selanne had an elite all time performance from ages 35-41 ( a 7 year period can hardly be referred to as an illusion can it?)
All the points you've made about were Selanne supposedly is excellent (except International play) he's actually average/below average in this group of players.
Sure if one wants to totally disregard the context of when Selanne played.
See above the late 90's was a time period were guys from Europe/States dominated the NHL scoring, at least on par with Canadian elite talent.
If one wants to treat the NHL and it's talent streams as the same in the 06 era and the post 90's then they are doing a great disservice to this project IMO as it puts one group of players to a higher standard of judgment and fairness and context should matter.