Top-100 Hockey Players of All-Time - Preliminary Discussion Thread (Revenge of Michael Myers)

[Sentinel]

Ovi celebrations through the summer post his first SC surpassed his celebrations for all his individual honours.

Actions speak louder than words or opinions.

It was one award he was missing. Whaddayaexpect?

Plus, he knows how to play the media / PR game better than anybody. He will make a fine politician one day.

 

[MXD]

Actually, it's funny you bring this up because I've always railed against 1-2-3-4-5... point systems when compiling lists, for the very reason that the 2nd last name on the list shouldn't get twice as many points as the last name, and the 10th last shouldn't get ten times as many, and so on.

It's been a decade so I doubt anyone else remembers this, but the reason we've always submitted lists 20 names longer than the target final list, was to appease me and my concerns. I like that we submit lists longer than the final list, but I still don't like that we start at one point when tallying the lists. I'd rather start at something like 100, so that simply making the list is rewarded.

Doesn't affect how any of the players on one individual list relate to eachother, of course (1, 2, 3, 4, 5 is the same as 101, 102, 103, 104, 105), but start adding multiple lists together and you see what I mean. A Datsyuk ranked 63rd gets 58 points. Suppose no one else ranks him, and 20 of us all rank Doug Bentley in the bottom three, and he ends up with a theoretical 57 points. Who actually deserves to place higher? The guy one player advocated for, or the one 20 of us did? In a system with appearance points, Bentley easily tops Datsyuk.

It's not flattery on my part to say that you're amongst the most, if not the most, knowledgeable poster around here, and, since I've been knowing you (well, here.. not personally) for so long, I sincerely believe you're also one of the fairest, non-biased participants here.

If we all had your knowledge and your fairness, and that our differences in ranking were mostly explained by philosophical disagreements, I'd probably agree 100% with you. But we don't all have your level of knowledge, and we don't all have your fairness either (starting with me, though no one would guess "my" team while screening my list).

With your system, Your fictionnal Bentley would probably make it to round 2. Your fictionnal Datsyuk would almost certainly not. It's probably preferable to have the fictionnal Bentley in round 2 (if we must have one of them), but ideally... None of these guys are making it, and I'm not saying that due to names attached.

1 x 58th is just a wild voter
20 x 117th is vanilla ice cream with white sprinkes.

 

[Canadiens1958]

It was one award he was missing. Whaddayaexpect?

Plus, he knows how to play the media / PR game better than anybody. He will make a fine politician one day.

Oxymoron.

Missing the Selke.

 

[seventieslord]

It's not flattery on my part to say that you're amongst the most, if not the most, knowledgeable poster around here, and, since I've been knowing you (well, here.. not personally) for so long, I sincerely believe you're also one of the fairest, non-biased participants here.

If we all had your knowledge and your fairness, and that our differences in ranking were mostly explained by philosophical disagreements, I'd probably agree 100% with you. But we don't all have your level of knowledge, and we don't all have your fairness either (starting with me, though no one would guess "my" team while screening my list).

With your system, Your fictionnal Bentley would probably make it to round 2. Your fictionnal Datsyuk would almost certainly not. It's probably preferable to have the fictionnal Bentley in round 2 (if we must have one of them), but ideally... None of these guys are making it, and I'm not saying that due to names attached.

1 x 58th is just a wild voter
20 x 117th is vanilla ice cream with white sprinkes.

Well, thank you

You're right about this hypothetical example, of course. It was an extreme case to show how it's plausible a player supported by one could beat out a player supported by twenty. In this case, neither would come up for discussion. Bentley would be topped by the guys who were on more than 20 lists, unless his 20 showings were significantly more impressive than their 22, or 23, or 25.

The number 100 was one I pulled out of thin air too, BTW. I think something like 20 or 50 would do the trick too. It's just more about, when you rank a guy 119th and another guy 120th, what are you saying? That one is twice as good as the other, or that one is marginally better? So I like the idea that you're giving them 21 and 20, or 51 and 50, or 101 and 100, better than 2 and 1.

 

[Dennis Bonvie]

2nd means best loser.

Maybe this list should be the top 1 hockey players of all time.

 

[ImporterExporter]

To be honest... Your table is extremely useful, both for general knowledge (because I didn't know beforehand what I figured out by looking at your numbers) and for the topic at hand; I mean, it is absolutely useful to know that Sakic was quite a bit more PP reliant than Jagr.

Did I just get a compliment?

Seriously though, thank you. I don't mind doing the work and if it can help us flesh out some details down the road, great. And as 70's said, there is more that can probably be done in terms of advanced studies, branching off from the raw data.

And Jagr surprised me as well. He was a guy I figured would be near the top of the post 94-95 lockout players.

 

[MXD]

Bronco Horvath > Frank Mahovlich
#yolo

 

[seventieslord]

Bronco Horvath > Frank Mahovlich
#yolo

....That was you!?!

 

[ImporterExporter]

Power Play Points by Percentage:

All numbers taken from NHL.com

Name	PPP	TP	PP%
Gretzky	890	2857	31.1
Orr	324	915	35.4
Howe	564	1850	30.5
Lemieux	701	1723	40.7
Bo. Hull	324	1170	27.7
D. Harvey	232	540	43.0
Beliveau	442	1219	36.3
M. Richard	254	966	26.3
Bourque	761	1579	48.2
Lidstrom	590	1142	51.7
Crosby	415	1123	37.0
Messier	581	1887	30.8
Kelly*	232	823	28.2
Mikita	462	1467	31.5
Potvin	459	1052	43.6
Esposito	549	1590	34.5
Ovechkin	443	1135	39.0
Robinson	309	958	32.2
Lafleur	420	1353	31.0
Jagr	610	1921	31.8
Trottier	423	1425	29.7
Clarke	333	1210	27.5
Lindsay	218	851	25.6
Sakic	631	1641	38.4
Bossy	378	1126	33.6
Yzerman	595	1755	33.9
H. Richard	162	1046	15.5
Chelios	407	948	42.9
Pilote	169	498	33.9
E. Seibert**	51	261	19.5
Park	377	896	42.1
Malkin	362	943	38.4
F. Mahovlich	304	1103	27.6
B. Geoffrion	302	822	36.7
Coffey	664	1531	43.4
Apps Sr.	83	432	19.2
Bathgate	311	973	32.0
T. Kennedy	138	560	24.6
P. Forsberg	323	885	36.5
MacInnis	722	1274	56.7
Kurri	395	1398	28.3
Schmidt	98	575	17.0
Selanne	588	1457	40.4
Pronger	374	698	53.6
D. Moore	182	607	30.0
M. Bentley	182	544	33.5
S. Abel	120	472	25.4
Br. Hull	536	1391	38.5
Leetch	542	1028	52.7

[TBODY] [/TBODY]

Edit: BTW, power play stats go back to the 33-34 season. So anyone who had playing time before that will not be included for obvious reasons.

*Played multiple seasons at F
**Does not include first 2 seasons as PP stats weren't available

 

[MXD]

Wow. Max Bentley's numbers are VERY high, in the circumstances where none of his contemporaries (forget Gordie Howe here) is anywhere close.

 

[ImporterExporter]

Wow. Max Bentley's numbers are VERY high, in the circumstances where none of his contemporaries (forget Gordie Howe here) is anywhere close.

Yep. I knew Max would end up being higher given some stuff from the ATD but it's another WTF as 30+% for a 40's forward is off the charts.

I put him right above Abel considering their careers almost overlapped perfectly and you can see the wide gap. Both missed the same amount of time due to WWII.

 

[BenchBrawl]

Didn't Max Bentley play the point on the PP?

 

[ImporterExporter]

Didn't Max Bentley play the point on the PP?

He did. Part of the story I'd wager.

 

[ImporterExporter]

Seeing the numbers from the 30's, 40's and 50's guys makes me appreciate Henri Richard even more.

 

[BenchBrawl]

Both Bathgate and Geoffrion also played the point, so their numbers are not to be compared with other forwards.

Pretty sure this is why Max Bentley's numbers are high.

 

[Michael Farkas]

A couple of things just to say them aloud in case they aren't obvious...

- Number of useful units and the ice time effects. We talked about Detroit's PP loading up with the big guns, plus Delvecchio and Ullman at the point. We see it with Pittsburgh's top unit these days, they play 80, 90, 100 seconds of a power play generally...

- Pointman =! quarterback. Personal example, I've been the lone power play coach on every team that I've coached for the last 7 or 8 years now...for the last several years, my power plays run from the corner, not from high. There is only one pointman and he's just outlet to manipulate PKers...is instructed to rarely shoot, rarely hold on to the puck, it doesn't run through him...he's the interchangeable piece, both in terms of skill level (relatively speaking) and handedness...he's the only piece that doesn't require exact or near-exact specificity from me. (and yes, we had the top power play unit in the league last year, thank ya very much haha)

- Puck carrier matters. Who is in charge for carrying the puck into the zone and initiating play. Good example: a few years ago the Los Angeles Kings power play used Drew Doughty as a puck carrier...but never got the apple because it was a three-pass deal. Kopitar to Voynov (if memory serves), down low to Kopitar, into the slot for Carter - bang! Kopitar never gets the puck back. Less of an issue for teams with multiple carriers (like current Pittsburgh, for instance) because it does balance out...Doughty with "true" assists gets a million more points in 2014 (I think it was) when the Kings utilized that setup...

 

[Canadiens1958]

Wow. Max Bentley's numbers are VERY high, in the circumstances where none of his contemporaries (forget Gordie Howe here) is anywhere close.

Long time point man.

 

[MXD]

... The point about PP% is mostly that, well, if two contemporary players are absolutely equal offensively, the one who is the most PP dependant probably have to be "slightly adjusted downwards".

...And then you have cases like Henri Richard, where the player's has to be adjusted upwards.

Being a great PP player is a positive, don't get me wrong.

 

[DannyGallivan]

Seeing the numbers from the 30's, 40's and 50's guys makes me appreciate Henri Richard even more.

He was in the top 10 in even strength goals eight times in his career, as high as 3rd once.

 

[Michael Farkas]

This is one of those things, and people might take this wrong way, that you have to evaluate case by case and draw a case by case conclusion instead of a broad brush stroke...and go "all players with [this high] of a percentage are these kind of guys and all players with [this low] of a percentage are these kind of guys..."

Example: Chris Pronger and Brian Leetch have a very similar percentage of power play point production relative to their totals. Having watched both players, I come to very different conclusions about the reasoning...

Pronger relied on power play production because he wasn't a particularly great skater, nor was he a passing marksman. He was not a strong multi-line puck carrier either. Early in his career he was kind of a mutant with the puck, in fact. He did have a big shot and he covered a good amount of ground laterally at the line. But without PP time, he was not a very effective point producer (in the sense of all time greats)...those just weren't his strengths. Similarly, I'd suspect that Chara - especially in terms of goal output and especially during his time pre-Boston - is reliant on PP production for a lot of the same reason. Chara had better players to outlet to in Boston from top to bottom and more ice time and was a better player overall, so I'm sure he picked up a lot of assists just from playing 65 minutes a night...but particularly Ottawa Chara, where he didn't have much competition on the blue line and only had one line to dish to, was probably a half & half guy...

Leetch, on the other hand, was a wizard and mopped up on the power play because it suited a lot of his strengths...he was a much more skilled player than anyone we've mentioned here, a much better skater, a much better QB...he produced a ton on the power play and he could put down a ton of easy minutes on it to produce even more...his power play production was just so good that it makes up a good portion of his production, he wasn't dependent upon it because he had the skills needed to produce at even strength just as well.

I'm a size schmedium if we're looking for straitjackets...

 

[Sentinel]

Oxymoron.

Missing the Selke.

I'm sure this was supposed to mean something. On second thought, no, I am not sure.

 

[kruezer]

Here’s the distribution of votes for #113 in case it makes a difference:

45, 49, 56, 72, 79, 86, 86, 86, 104, 104, 107, 111 113

Not that we are betting or anything, but I bet this is Russell Bowie.

 

[VanIslander]

Being a powerplay specialist is a benefit, but citing pp production has often been used to discount scoring totals. So, on the face of it, a lower pp % is worth remembering when later looking at career scoring.

Players I'm surprised have relatively more of their scoring not with the man advantage:

Gretzky (relative to Mario), Hull, Lindsay, H.Richard.

Some players are alltime greats because of their multifaceted game play, not gaudy scoring, so low pp % is neither here nor there for guys like: Kennedy, Abel, Schmidt, Apps.

 

[Dennis Bonvie]

Not that we are betting or anything, but I bet this is Russell Bowie.

That seems possible.

 

[VanIslander]

Defensemen have a higher pp % than forwards.

MacInnis, Leetch, Pronger have 50+ % to no surprise given their legendary shots. Orr has a low pp% relative to other dmen, as one would expect, given he is renowned more for counterattacking rushes than set-up plays from the point.

I am a bit surprised at how high Lidstrom's % is and how low Robinson's is.

Of course, the Wings had great pps so it should be no surprise it's Nik's offensive bread and butter.

And Robinson is like H.Richard: on a deeply-talented dynasty team, pp time gets divided up and I assume these two had less opportunities.