Runoff for the next HOH Project

Which HOH Project do you want to do next?


  • Total voters
    40
  • Poll closed .

Theokritos

Global Moderator
Apr 6, 2010
12,650
5,048
This is a good point.

It really is. Only six active players made the top 100, but if you go 101-200 then one can expect a whole lot more of them to show up. Including players with less than 10 years of senior hockey on their record. Frankly, I think the HOH board is not the right place to discuss them. It wasn't meant to be that place in the past, that's for sure.

The youngest player in the top 100 project was Patrick Kane with 11 years between his rookie season and the ranking. You should consider a cutoff rule for this project that makes any player ineligible that has less than that on his record. Otherwise a significant portion of the debate will be rather hard to justify on the HOH board.

Disclaimer: That's my individual opinion. If other moderators disagree, please chime in.
 

TheDevilMadeMe

Registered User
Aug 28, 2006
52,271
6,988
Brooklyn
It really is. Only six active players made the top 100, but if you go 101-200 then one can expect a whole lot more of them to show up. Including players with less than 10 years of senior hockey on their record. Frankly, I think the HOH board is not the right place to discuss them. It wasn't meant to be that place in the past, that's for sure.

The youngest player in the top 100 project was Patrick Kane with 11 years between his rookie season and the ranking. You should consider a cutoff rule for this project that makes any player ineligible that has less than that on his record. Otherwise a significant portion of the debate will be rather hard to justify on the HOH board.

Disclaimer: That's my individual opinion. If other moderators disagree, please chime in.

While I think that we have had some productive conversations in the past about the historical legacies of active players, making an age cutoff rule (something like players must be born before 1990 to be eligible; Patrick Kane was born in 1988) might be a good idea if we do the next 100.
 

Vilica

Registered User
Jun 1, 2014
492
559
It really is. Only six active players made the top 100, but if you go 101-200 then one can expect a whole lot more of them to show up. Including players with less than 10 years of senior hockey on their record. Frankly, I think the HOH board is not the right place to discuss them. It wasn't meant to be that place in the past, that's for sure.

The youngest player in the top 100 project was Patrick Kane with 11 years between his rookie season and the ranking. You should consider a cutoff rule for this project that makes any player ineligible that has less than that on his record. Otherwise a significant portion of the debate will be rather hard to justify on the HOH board.

Disclaimer: That's my individual opinion. If other moderators disagree, please chime in.

The reasoning behind this is one of the main difficulties I have with ranking pre-consolidation players against modern players. Your cutoff is seasons, but we all know how short seasons were back then. If you take just the minutes Connor McDavid played in junior, and add it to his NHL time on ice (and his international participation as well), there's a reasonable argument that at age 24, he's played just as many minutes professionally/semi-professionally as Frank Nighbor did in his 18 years, even with Nighbor playing 50+ minutes a game for the majority of his career.

I haven't really weighed in on the two projects, not having a preference, but I do think really digging down into early hockey will help us place those players in a top players list. I wrote months ago trying to draw parallels between baseball and hockey evolving to the modern game, right down to looking at where pre-1900 players fall on various MLB top 100 lists. Somebody like Old Hoss Radbourn performed on the field in a way that is impossible for modern players to replicate, and though he undoubtedly was a great pitcher for his time, he has mostly been pushed aside for a more current-day understanding of the job of a pitcher.
 

ted2019

History of Hockey
Oct 3, 2008
5,492
1,884
pittsgrove nj
It really is. Only six active players made the top 100, but if you go 101-200 then one can expect a whole lot more of them to show up. Including players with less than 10 years of senior hockey on their record. Frankly, I think the HOH board is not the right place to discuss them. It wasn't meant to be that place in the past, that's for sure.

The youngest player in the top 100 project was Patrick Kane with 11 years between his rookie season and the ranking. You should consider a cutoff rule for this project that makes any player ineligible that has less than that on his record. Otherwise a significant portion of the debate will be rather hard to justify on the HOH board.

Disclaimer: That's my individual opinion. If other moderators disagree, please chime in.

Counterpoint. How can it be a true list if there are cutoffs due to age?
 

Professor What

Registered User
Sep 16, 2020
2,636
2,302
Gallifrey
I'm getting ready for whichever project we do by starting on my own positional lists, since those will come in handy for either project.

Apologies if I've forgotten a discussion that might have already covered this, but, assuming we do pre-consolidation, how many players are we going to put on that list?
 

TheDevilMadeMe

Registered User
Aug 28, 2006
52,271
6,988
Brooklyn
I'm getting ready for whichever project we do by starting on my own positional lists, since those will come in handy for either project.

Apologies if I've forgotten a discussion that might have already covered this, but, assuming we do pre-consolidation, how many players are we going to put on that list?

Either 40, 50, or 60.
 

Sanf

Registered User
Sep 8, 2012
2,021
969
Well I decided to vote. I think the pre-consolidation project is more of learning project to all. Impacts of WW1 and related to that how strong the 20´s actually is and so on. It will probably take also deeper dive to earlier years which is most often discussed only through few of the absolute best of that era. And like said for that project I may also have something to give.

But I do understand if the other option wins. It is more of variety thing. It brings people who are interest in eras like 60´s to 80´s Europeans, O6 era and so on. And it will bring people who are fans of some recent/current players. In ways bring interest and discussion. Probably in both good and bad way. But personally I do not have any interest to it.
 
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bobholly39

Registered User
Mar 10, 2013
23,382
16,766
It really is. Only six active players made the top 100, but if you go 101-200 then one can expect a whole lot more of them to show up. Including players with less than 10 years of senior hockey on their record. Frankly, I think the HOH board is not the right place to discuss them. It wasn't meant to be that place in the past, that's for sure.

The youngest player in the top 100 project was Patrick Kane with 11 years between his rookie season and the ranking. You should consider a cutoff rule for this project that makes any player ineligible that has less than that on his record. Otherwise a significant portion of the debate will be rather hard to justify on the HOH board.

Disclaimer: That's my individual opinion. If other moderators disagree, please chime in.

There's probably going to be ~10-15 guys at most in consideration among active players. Guys like Stamkos/Tavares/Hedman are of the same age group as Kane was when voted in - and I think they should be considered since they have enough of a track record/career by now.

The only guys with less than 10 years on their record who might show up are McDavid (which is obvious - and considering he'll likely end up top ~20 all time, don't see the problem with slotting him) and maybe Kucherov.

I think if you bring up a rule to exclude players when it wasn't the case on the initial top 100, it taints the results. And really - when there's only 2 players or so, I don't think it's that big a deal.
 

bobholly39

Registered User
Mar 10, 2013
23,382
16,766
I think player ranking is more pyramid shaped than linear, so it’ll probably be another 100 years before I feel fundamentally different about the 150th best player and the 200th. And that’s, like, 10 weeks of time in the project. Just seems like diminishing returns at a point.

To me, all the calls to expand the voting block beyond 10 players per round after about 2/3rds of the last project is a red flag that we can do a tight list up to a point, and after that, it’s an under-revealing grab bag that will age terribly.

I also think we should consider expanding beyond 10 players - but I agree it might be a bit of a shit show if we do. I think if we have enough voters it's possible, but if participation is lower this makes it too difficult.

That's why in the other thread I was talking a lot about our initial lists of 101-220, and needing it to be as accurate as possible. None of us (most at least I think) have seriously ranked all the way up to 200 before - and so our lists that low are going to be all over the place. And if that initial list is all we're going by to determine which 10 players show up each round - it'll be all over the place.

Two dynamics that could be helpful:

1. Find a way to make the initial top 101-220 lists more representative/accurate

2. Maybe allow a nomination/voting process to bring up players sooner than when they show up on the aggregate list. I know there were a few names last time around that people kept waiting on. I believe Makarov was one, there's a few others. That would help counter any glaring errors/omissions
 

plusandminus

Registered User
Mar 7, 2011
1,411
269
Which one should we do next?

I notice there's a new thread about "top 200" players.
Is the voting here over already? (If so, I'm a bit surprised you guys suddenly finished it, especially since it's a weekend and you said that some potential voters only may be around here on weekends. 35 have voted so far, and I think it was 48 or something that voted in the previous poll. But maybe 19-16 is considered a clear enough difference.)
 

TheDevilMadeMe

Registered User
Aug 28, 2006
52,271
6,988
Brooklyn
I notice there's a new thread about "top 200" players.
Is the voting here over already? (If so, I'm a bit surprised you guys suddenly finished it, especially since it's a weekend and you said that some potential voters only may be around here on weekends. 35 have voted so far, and I think it was 48 or something that voted in the previous poll. But maybe 19-16 is considered a clear enough difference.)

This poll is still open

In fact, I was considering changing my vote after reading the responses here.
 

quoipourquoi

Goaltender
Jan 26, 2009
10,123
4,130
Hockeytown, MI
I notice there's a new thread about "top 200" players.
Is the voting here over already? (If so, I'm a bit surprised you guys suddenly finished it, especially since it's a weekend and you said that some potential voters only may be around here on weekends. 35 have voted so far, and I think it was 48 or something that voted in the previous poll. But maybe 19-16 is considered a clear enough difference.)

I made the call (despite voting for pre-consolidation). We’re already getting into rules discussion for #101-200 in this thread, and as Hockey Outsider pointed out, there is nothing preventing us from doing both.

That there is any demand for #101-200 (let alone a majority) means that we would need to do it first.
 
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TheDevilMadeMe

Registered User
Aug 28, 2006
52,271
6,988
Brooklyn
I made the call (despite voting for pre-consolidation). We’re already getting into rules discussion for #101-200 in this thread, and as Hockey Outsider pointed out, there is nothing preventing us from doing both.

That there is any demand for #101-200 (let alone a majority) means that we would need to do it first.

That is a good point.

There is also the possibility that we do #101-150 and then get to pre-consolidation faster. But I guess at this point, it's a discussion for another thread.
 

rmartin65

Registered User
Apr 7, 2011
2,836
2,399
Ugh. I just don't get this project... it's a couple years after the original list, and current players have changed things.

I'll probably be sitting this one out.
 
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Hockey Outsider

Registered User
Jan 16, 2005
9,443
15,618
After reading through the discussion here, I think my previous post was (unintentionally) misleading. I thought there was broad consensus that most people wanted to do both projects (101-200 and pre-consolidation) and it was just a matter of figuring out the order. It sounds like there are some people who don't want to do the "next 100" project at all.

Reading through this thread, and thinking things over, I think this is a fair summary of the three arguments against doing the "next 100" project (with some comments on each):

Objection 1 - the "next 100" project will, for the most part, cover relatively little new ground. We'd be discussing players who have been already been analyzed to death. I think this is a fair point, to an extent. There's no question that the pre-consolidation would encourage us to cover newer territory (or, at the very least, consolidate existing research in a more organized way). (A counter argument is, if we're being honest, most of what we do here covers relatively new ground. I've been here for more than 15 years - time flies! - and while the knowledge has certainly advanced, I don't think that comparing Mark Recchi and Patrik Elias for the 200th spot really covers less ground than us comparing Pavel Bure and Ron Francis for the 100th spot - which nobody objected to then).

Objection 2 - the "next 100" project will run into issues where we struggle to rank active players. How do we rank McDavid's five seasons against, say, Gartner's 20 years? That ranking probably says as much about each voter's preferences than it does about the players themselves. (Another risk is the discussion threads get derailed with posts from current fans, coming in to support their favourite players- but that's not likely as most people on the main board don't visit here). With the pre-consolidation project, there's no such concern - it's not like Didier Pitre is going to rise from the grave and score a few more goals. (Counter-argument - given the number and varying quality of different leagues that existed pre-consolidation, and the range in the length of players' careers, we'd likely encounter similar issues - how do we compare Frank McGee's 45 games, or Hobey Baker's zero professional games, against Reg Noble's 500+ NHL games? And how do we deal with players whose careers straddled 1927 - would Morenz be eligible?)

Objection 3 - by the time we get to player 200, we'd be comparing players like Mark Recchi, Jan Suchy, and Didier Pitre. It may be difficult to rank them with any accuracy. We can agree they'd all be on the same general tier with, say, Jean Ratelle and Anze Kopitar, but ranking them feels like an exercise in futility - trying to force a precise answer to something that's largely subjective. (Counter-argument - I don't even know who the 37th best pre-consolidation player would be, but I'd imagine we'd face exactly the same issue trying to distinguish them from 36th or 38th).

My preference is still the 101-200 project, but I'm less sure than before, and I think I have a better sense of what the objections are.
 

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