Only a few guys have a chance to win the Hart? Before the season starts every NHL player has a chance to win it. Did anyone expect Perry to win it before that season? Did any Russians have a chance to win it pre-1990? How many Europeans had a chance to win it in the 1930's? I know I know, this somehow doesn't matter when comparing across eras.
Call me up when Marcus Kruger and Dan Paille win Harts.
At most, 10% of the league might have any possible chance of having a season good enough to win it. And even for a lot of those guys it would take a huge career year.
No Russians had a chance to win it in the 80's because none were as good as Gretzky or Lemieux, it wouldn't have mattered whether or not they came over.
No Europeans had a chance in the 30's because none were good enough. Not even close to good enough. Once again, these "phantom players" have been introduced into a debate. No Chinese players have a chance to win it right now, so I guess we should put an asterisk next to Crosby's name too.
I never implied or suggested that, however neither of us really knows for sure and can't prove it either way. The key again is those 90 or so O6 players came from a vastly smaller talent pool and it was nearly only Canadians. Today, the 600 or so players are being picked from far far more people playing hockey, and from different nations. They aren't really comparable no matter how much you try.
So you admit that your theory that Howe, Morenz, etc would be less dominant, had phantom players existed, is unverifiable. So why should it be accepted as truth when compiling a list of all time great players? All that we have to go on is what actually DID happen, so to criticize people for only taking into account real world events and disregarding unprovable theories is rather odd. I mean, I could theorize that since it's much easier for a person to survive today than it was in 1890, the gene pool has been significantly weakened over the last century, and really players like Crosby are actually much weaker athletes than Frank McGee or Russell Bowie were. But it's unprovable, so I'm not going to factor it in to my rankings.
Yup, and the opposite shouldn't fit anyone's theory because it would be a completely backwards way of thinking. The same theory suits this debate.
Your proposal is to take 1,000,000 people from the random world population. This would include children, infants, the elderly, the disabled. This is entirely different than taking numbers of hockey players out of elite hockey-playing nations. If the NHL was made up of some sort of random lottery of people on earth, then I would agree that the odds of a generational player being present among the group would be higher in the larger sample size.
But that is nothing more than a fantastic scenario. If we limit ourselves to taking qualified players out of specific nations, it's already been shown that the number of active players does not correlate strongly with the number of generational talents, for example Czech Republic producing more than Canada over the last 25 years.
Okay, but you can't possibly just think they'd be limited to 2nd and 3rd liners. Why would it stop with 2nd liners and not 1st liners? It's a huge gap in logic and it's extremely arbitrary.
I agree.
If you agree with my rationale explaining why I believe to 50th best player today would be rated higher than the 50th best from 1950, the bolded is self explanatory. The higher up the ladder you go, the less difference between players of different eras.
The stars are being compared much more with the other stars but as long as they are on the ice with other players they have to compete with them as well. If those other non-star players were not as strong in the past as they are now then it makes it easier for the past stars to dominate, making them appear to be better or on par with todays stars. Just watch Orr skate around guys in the 70's. I have serious doubts a lot of those players had abilities that would allow them to play in todays NHL because they look terrible. I don't have a problem saying Orr is an all-time great because he dominated his peers to an extreme degree but it gets exaggerated by many due to how weak the players he played against were.
A greatly expanded league counteracts this effect. Gordie Howe was perpetually playing against the top 90 players in the world, even if he managed to get out there against fringe NHLers from time to time. Sidney Crosby will rarely face a team with more than 2 or 3 such players. Howe had to face a team of the current Blackhawks' depth and caliber on a constant basis. There were no Buffalo Sabres and Florida Panthers to feast upon. So even though the 30th, 50th, 70th, etc player may be stronger today, it doesn't hamper Crosby because he only plays against 2 or 3 of those guys at a time, if that, not an entire team of them. He gets plenty of time against 200th, 300th, 500th players, something that was impossible for Howe.
Orr managed to dominate established players on other Original Six teams. It's not like he was just out there making the Oakland Seals look stupid. In fact, he's on the record as saying he instructed his teammates to let up on weak expansion teams so as not to drive away fans in markets that were just trying to establish themselves.
Who knows, but if they have a good developmental program and Russians didn't suddenly become inherently bad at hockey, I'd expect some NHL players to come from it, which would replace other players who weren't quite as good, making the league better as a whole, and more difficult to dominate for everyone.
So even with a higher number of players, we don't know if another generational star would emerge, and all we can conclude is that a few more depth players emerging is probable. Depth players that would be of no threat to Ovechkin or Malkin's ability to lord over other star players.
I disagree, the great Russians from the 80's seem to get completely downgraded here because they didn't play in the NHL during their primes, despite dominating the Canadians in best on best final games in '79 and '81 and going down to the wire in '87. It seems it's the NHL or nothing for many here, whether it's 1985 or 1920, and that doesn't make any sense either.
People on this board have been screaming for Makarov to get into the Hall of Fame for years. Slava Fetisov got ranked as the 8th best defenseman of all time in the Top Defenseman project, Tretiak the 8th best goaltender. There are no Americans ahead of either one, despite the USA always having access to the NHL and their best players playing in the league. Sweden has also always been free to send players to the NHL, but the best Swedish goaltender is way down at 38th. They have one defenseman better than Fetisov.
If we look at forwards, there are 3 Soviet forwards ranked within the top 70 on the 2009 Greatest Player project. 0 American forwards. One Swedish forward.
So are American players getting completely downgraded as well? They've been playing hockey much longer than the Russians, and have many more registered players. Shouldn't they have much greater representation on such lists?
Jagr has 9 major trophies (Art Ross', Hart, Pearsons). Those would be going to other players and that would completely change those players resumes. Selanne, Bure, Forsberg, and Sakic would all have an Art Ross added to the careers.
Upgrading a 2nd place scoring finish to a 1st place finish isn't going to greatly alter the all-time perspective of those players amongst anybody that digs deeper than pure award counting. And anybody on this board with a shred of credibility digs much, much deeper than that.
The centre list has 5 players in the top 16 who all finished their careers before 1940. No one here has seen them play and the number of registered players back then was under 30,000 people in Canada, with no real competition from the US or Europe. That wouldn't be a problem if people admitted it's only a peer to peer comparison but they don't. It's extemely hard to take this seriously and give the list any value.
So 31% of the top 16 centers come from approximately 42% of the game's organized history. Seems reasonable to me. It should also be pointed out that 2 of those 5 finished their careers in the late 30's.
According to the voters, only 19% of the top centers come from the first 33% of hockey history. And 0% retired during the first 25% of history.
A whopping 40% of the best 10 centers in history retired during the most recent 13% of history. 7 of the top 11 (64%) peaked post-expansion (most recent 38%).
There is a very clear trend there, and it fully agrees with your contention that the quality of player has increased as time goes on. I really have no idea what you have to complain about. Should the top 10 be made up entirely of players from the last 30 years, would that satisfy you? Should there be 0 players from the first half of history included on the list at all?
