Top-100 Hockey Players of All-Time - Round 2, Vote 2

[Kyle McMahon]

So I wanted to do a comparison of the 4 more “modern” players. Bourque, Crosby, Hasek and Roy. I’ll do a similar style scoreboard of all of their best seasons as I did in round 1 with the big 4. Here is the grade on which I’m scoring:

Extra Special – 10 points
Great - 5 points
Good - 2 points
Ok - 1 point
“Zero” - 0 points (the stuff not really worth looking at – I simply ignored those. Either due to crappy play or not enough games played)

It was important for me to highlight “moments” and not just individual seasons. (ie golden goal, or 98 olympics). I also wanted to capture non-NHL stuff and combine things where it made sense (so all of Hasek’s pre-NHL stuff earns him one extra combined “extra special” score). In some cases I averaged two items and put one in one category vs one in another (ex: Roy’s 89 & 96 playoffs, or Crosby’s 2008/2009 – instead of putting both great or extra special, I put 1 each).

Obviously this is subjective but here is an idea of what constitutes each category. Extra special is a truly special moment/achievement, or a significant award (Hart, Pearson, Smythe). “Great” is usually Vezina, Norris, Rocket – or possibly lack of any of those yet still an extremely great run/season. “Good” is every good season. These are all fantastic players, and combined have very few seasons/playoffs below this threshold. “ok” are seasons/playoffs that I tally up for longevity but that are mostly disappointing. Some particularly bad or short seasons were ignored completely.

Sidney Crosby
Totals	Ok	Good	Great	Extra Special	Total Score
	2014 playoffs	2006 season	2010 season	2007 season
	2015 playoffs	2008 season	2011 season	2014 season
		2009 season	2013 season	2009 playoffs
		2015 season	2016 season	2016 playoffs
		2018 season	2017 season	2017 playoffs
		2007 playoffs	2008 playoffs	2010 olympics
		2010 playoffs	2018 playoffs	2016 world up
		2012 playoffs	2014 olympic
		2013 playoffs
Total Count	2	9	8	7
Total Score	2	18	40	70	130

[TBODY] [/TBODY]

26 Total elements ranked. I scored both 2011 and 2013 seasons as “great”. To me level of domination over peers is definitely worthy of recognition, despite smaller sample size (2012 ignored completely). His smythes & harts give him 4 extra specials, his 2009 playoffs as well (vs 2008 is great, flip a coin between both). Then I also gave him extra special for the golden goal (due to importance of winning a gold medal on home soil – it helps he was captain too and the biggest star who came through) and the 2016 world cup MVP (best on best tournament MVP is important I feel). I gave him a “great” designation for the 2014 olympics – in large part because he was captain and had a big responsibility in winning/losing – but I could see the argument for knocking this down to “good”. The rest is pretty self-explanatory I feel.

Patrick Roy
Totals	OK	Good	Great	Extra Special	Total Score
	86 season	87 season	89 season	86 playoffs
	93 season	88 season	90 season	93 playoffs
	95 season	91 season	92 season	96 playoffs
	99 season	94 season	2002 season	2001 playoffs
	87 playoffs	96 season	89 playoffs
	88 playoffs	97 season	97 playoffs
	91 playoffs	98 season	2000 playoffs
	98 playoffs	2000 season	98 olympics
	2003 playoffs	2001 season
		2003 season
		90 playoffs
		92 playoffs
		94 playoffs
		99 playoffs
		2002 playoffs
Total Count	9	15	8	4
Total Score	9	30	40	40	119

[TBODY] [/TBODY]

His 3 smythes are “extra special”. I also wanted to give 1 of 96 or 89 playoffs “extra special” so put one in that category and one in great. 98 olympics gets a “great” nod. All his vezinas are “great”. For playoff runs, as a #1 goalie I looked at statistics but also simply results. More games played, more rounds won = better ranking.

Hasek
Totals	OK	Good	Great	Extra Special	Total Score
	90-93 seasons	96 season	95 season	PRE-NHL stuff
	90-93 playoffs	2000 season	99 season	94 season
	2000 playoffs	2002 season	2001 season	97 season
		2006 seaspm	98 playoffs	98 season
		2007 season	2002 playoffs	99 playoffs
		2008 season		98 olympics
		1994 playoffs
		1997 playoffs
		2001 playoffs
		2007 playoffs
		2008 playoffs
Total Count	3	11	5	6
Total Score	3	22	25	60	110

[TBODY] [/TBODY]

Hasek gets 6 “extra special” nods. His hart seasons are self-explanatory. I also gave 94 the nod. Honestly, I feel his 94, 99 and even 2001 season are pretty great – and I wanted to at least average out and bump one up a level, which is why 94 got the rank of “extra special”. 98 olympics too. I hesitated on playoffs – but finally gave 1999 extra special. Is it fair that 99 Hasek playoffs is here but 89 Roy is not? Maybe in a 1 to 1 comparison no – but I figure between 2002 playoffs, 99 playoffs and even 98 playoffs Hasek deserved one “extra special” nod which is why 1999 made it. I also wanted to highlight his pre-NHL stuff, so I combined it into one “extra special” score. Rest is pretty straightforward.

Bourque
Totals	OK	Good	Great	Extra Special	Total Score
	81 playoffs	80 season	85 season
	84 playoffs	81 season	87 season
	87 playoffs	82 season	88 season
	85 playoffs	83 season	90 season
	89 playoffs	84 season	91 season
	95 playoffs	86 season	94 season
	98 playoffs	89 season	83 playoffs
		92 season	88 playoffs
		93 season	2001 playoffs
		95 season	International resume
		96 season
		97 season
		98 season
		99 season
		2000 season
		2001 season
		80 playoffs
		82 playoffs
		90 playoffs
		91 playoffs
		92 playoffs
		94 playoffs
		96 playoffs
		99 playoffs
		2000 playoffs
Total Count	7	25	10	0
Total Score	7	50	50	0	107

[TBODY] [/TBODY]

Bourque’s biggest strength is definitely his longevity. 25 “good” nods, but no “extra special” ones. He does also get 10 “great” nods. The “great” stuff are the Norris or strong hart placements. His 2001 playoffs gets a nod too as do a couple of others – and his overall international resume gets a “great” too.

Total Results:

Summary Table	OK	Good	Great	Extra Special	Total
Sidney Crosby	2	18	40	70	130
Patrick Roy	8	30	40	40	118
Dominik Hasek	3	22	25	60	110
Ray Bouque	7	50	50	0	107

[TBODY] [/TBODY]

Out of 26 items ranked, Crosby scores 130. Average of 5 (or great).
Out of 36 items ranked, Roy scores 119. Average of 3.3 (halfway between good & great).
Out of 25 items ranked, Hasek scores 110. Average of 4.4 (closer to great than good)
Out of 42 items ranked, Bourque scores 107. Average of 2.5 (very close to “good”).

Conclusions:

Crosby ranks #1. He has more accomplishments and high end stuff than everyone, and his average rank is also easily the highest. Very impressive.
Patrick Roy ranks #2 overall – but #3 in average rank. Still the idea in this exercise is to try and calculate if enough “longevity” overtakes “better” stuff, since we’re ranking players overall and not just peak. Results seem to say that yes, Roy over Hasek.
Hasek ranks #3 overall – but #2 in average rank. Very high average rank which is highly impressive. Still he does lack overall longevity I feel to take over Roy.
Bourque. I really feel he doesn’t belong here. His overall score of 107 is close to Hasek maybe – but he really doesn’t stand out much. A wall of consistency and so many good (and great) seasons – but not much “extra special” about him. His average rank is disappointingly low at 2.5.

I think Bourque's 1988 and 1990 seasons/playoffs are getting sold short here.

Bourque is unique among this group (as in, all ten guys up for voting) in terms of being both the offensive and defensive driver of his teams. Maybe you can argue that Harvey was also doing so for the late 50's Habs, but Harvey didn't need to drive offense like Bourque needed to in order for his team to score enough goals to consistently win.

In 1988 you have Bourque follow up a Norris-winning regular season with a trip to the SC Finals, the first for Boston in a decade. On the way, they upset Montreal (2nd overall) in just 5 games, beating the Habs in a playoff series for the first time since the 1940's. They get overwhelmed in the Final by Gretzky's Oilers, who nearly run the table at 16-2 for their fourth Cup in five years. As Hockey Outsider's excellent post a couple pages back highlighted, there was nothing particularly special about this Bruins team besides Bourque. The R-on/R-off numbers show that they were simply average throughout the playoffs with Bourque on the bench, and Stanley-Cup caliber with him on the ice. The raw numbers seem to back this up. Bourque was Boston's second-leading point producer (21 in 23 games) and his +16 was far ahead of any teammates. If Hasek's 1999 playoffs are "extra special", surely Bourque's 1988 playoffs should also rank the same.

I believe 1990 is in a similar vein. Bourque was just a few votes away from winning a Hart Trophy. Given that only one defenseman in the last 40+ years has won a Hart, and that he pretty much carried the Bruins to a President's Trophy, I think this has to rank as something "extra special" as well. I don't think any of Hasek's "extra special" regular seasons or Crosby's 2007 season should be worth double the points that Bourque's 1990 was.

Playoffs are a similar story in 1990, only this time Boston is even more reliant on Bourque. Despite a President's Trophy and SC Finals berth, this roster is nowhere near great. Some solid veterans like Brian Propp got added during the season, but to go through that roster, it's honestly astounding that this was a 1st overall team. The R-on/off playoff numbers speak for themselves. Boston was downright bad when Bourque was not on the ice, and absolutely overwhelming the opposition when he was.

Overall, Boston went 11-8 in playoff series during Bourque's 1987-1994 peak. Losses coming to the dynasty Oilers, back-to-back Cup Penguins, strong Montreal teams, and a strong New Jersey team in 1994. Buffalo sweeping them in 1993 is the only real blemish. They were pretty clearly the best overall non-Cup winner during this stretch, despite a roster mostly devoid of high end talent. Bourque simply put this franchise on his back for nearly a decade.

 

[MXD]

I mean i would hope every voter does something somewhat similar with eligible players.

List the criteria that are most important to you. Grade each player on each criteria. Weight criteria appropriately if you value some more than others. and see who comes out ahead.

Isnt that the whole point?

Maybe you disagree with some specific grades or such but i dont see anything wrong with the methodology.

And I appreciate what you did, despite my reaction, and some rankings that just can't withstand scrutiny (the Crosby 2016 CS's getting the same weight as Roy playoffs runs sticking out like a sore thumb).

If it works for you, great. We all bring our own perspective to every player we rate. That's the way it should be and I applaude your effort.
Personally, I just think your method is still very subjective. A different person could come up with totally different results.

To be honest, I think it was never meant to be objective.
Which doesn't mean that certain flaws shouldn't be pointed out.

From my perspective, bobholly pretty much said :

Okay, this is where I stand. Show me where I missed something.

 

[bobholly39]

If it works for you, great. We all bring our own perspective to every player we rate. That's the way it should be and I applaude your effort.
Personally, I just think your method is still very subjective. A different person could come up with totally different results.

I think thats the point though. It is subjective based on what i value more and each person should come up with their own results doing something similar.

If you did the same exercise and value longevity more than peak - well maybe you score tiers 1 2 3 4 instead of 1 2 5 10 (which highlights peak and big moments more). I expect Bourque looks great then.

 

[Michael Farkas]

It's a ranking of the best players of all time. "Subjective" is not a dirty word. The whole thing is and should be subjective.

 

[DannyGallivan]

It's a ranking of the best players of all time. "Subjective" is not a dirty word. The whole thing is and should be subjective.

Agreed. Except subjectivity is always shot down when the challenge to "prove your opinion of player A or player B" is presented. Subjectivity is not valued as a tool in a debate, especially when somebody says "convince me why you think you're right".

I think several of my picks may be challenged on the "objectivity" front, myself.

 

[The Macho King]

It's a ranking of the best players of all time. "Subjective" is not a dirty word. The whole thing is and should be subjective.

Subjective is fine, and of course there's a lot of subjectivity in comparing players across different eras, positions, and team situations. But it's not a shield from criticism either.

 

[Michael Farkas]

No, of course not. I just want to ensure that we are being subjective...that's what we want....

 

[Sentinel]

In Crosby's defense, it's not his fault that he's playing in this environment.As your last sentence note, Crosby adapted to his environment by excelling at enhancing filler players, ultimately taking them to three Stanley Cup championships.

It's too bad that Crosby never faced Toews in the SC Finals in their prime.That would have been interesting.I think Pittsburgh only faced Boston and Bergeron one time, and Pittsburgh got cleaned 4-0, Crosby held scoreless.I don't remember that series very well.

If Zetterberg ate Crosby alive, I daresay so would Toews.

 

[Michael Farkas]

The Boston series was much more a product of coaching than it was on the individuals...that was the series that killed head-manning the puck and playing, as I call it, "island hockey"...it was done on a big stage and many NHL clubs took notice of that...

 

[DitchMarner]

Outside of scoring the so-called Golden goal, I don't remember Crosby being particularly great at the 2010 Olympics. I don't think I would call his performance there "extra special."

 

[DitchMarner]

Now that you mention it, I said Crosby faced tougher competition at forward, but I'm not sure this is true.

If you look at Crosby, his competition was not that good.Some mix of Ovechkin, Sedin, Kane, Benn, Thornton, Getzlaf, Giroux, Tavares, St. Louis, Stamkos, teammate Malkin and so on.

Morenz had Frank Boucher, old Frank Nighbor, Nels Stewart, Bill Cook, Cy Denneny, Charlie Conacher, Frank Fredrickson, Busher Jackson, Ebbie Goodfellow, Babe Dye, teammate Joliat and so on.

Obviously peak Ovechkin is tough competition for the Hart and AR, but after that it's not that strong a group.

What about McDavid (as competition)?

 

[86Habs]

Outside of scoring the so-called Golden goal, I don't remember Crosby being particularly great at the 2010 Olympics. I don't think I would call his performance there "extra special."

He was, IMO, better in 2014 than in 2010. In 2010 the mail was carried by the Toews/Nash/Richards line. Perhaps BB was crediting the golden goal as "extra special", not his entire body of work during that tournament.

As far as the 2016 World Cup is concerned...did anybody actually care about that tournament?

 

[Dr John Carlson]

Am I wrong to not put much stock into international play ever since the inegration of most top Soviets/Russians into the NHL?

 

[DannyGallivan]

As far as the 2016 World Cup is concerned...did anybody actually care about that tournament?

The World Cup is always a nice little tourney, but it should be taken with a grain of salt. It's certainly not the Olympics. And one can say that Crosby may not have dominated the scoring like a Gretzky when it comes to the Olympics, but you can't say that he wasn't clutch.

 

[DannyGallivan]

Am I wrong to not put much stock into international play ever since the inegration of most top Soviets/Russians into the NHL?

Depends. It's all about the competition.

 

[MXD]

Am I wrong to not put much stock into international play ever since the inegration of most top Soviets/Russians into the NHL?

... I tend to lump "international play" with "Playoffs/Clutch" myself. It's not super relevant now, but at some point, we'll have to transmute pineapples into apples if we want to compare apples with apples. Or we end up bringing about ridiculous arguments like "Tretiak was a better player than Red Kelly due to gap between them in International play".

I'll always prefer NHL playoffs to OG, but that's mostly because the sample size is bigger (at comparable era, at least). In other words, I don't give more weight to 2016 playoffs than I do to 1934 playoffs because the 2016 NHL Playoffs were longer, but I will probably give more weight to 2014 NHL playoffs than to 2014 OG's.

As far as Post-Integration is concerned : nowadays, I really only care about best on best. The World Championships are probably held in Vegas every year, because what happens there stays there and will never, at any point, factor in my reasoning or my decisions.

Pavel Datsyuk was great during thte 2016 WCha, but his performance tilts the needle as much as the tennis game he probably played with his wife at some point in 2013. Patrick Laine was impressive, Panarin too. I just don't care.

 

[BraveCanadian]

Outside of scoring the so-called Golden goal, I don't remember Crosby being particularly great at the 2010 Olympics. I don't think I would call his performance there "extra special."

His performance wasn't extra special, at all. It wasn't even a great goal.. Iginla did most of the work on that play.

Crosby gets a ton of mileage out of the timing of it, though.

 

[bobholly39]

Outside of scoring the so-called Golden goal, I don't remember Crosby being particularly great at the 2010 Olympics. I don't think I would call his performance there "extra special."

It's about the importance of the goal. No he wasn't all that great overall in the run - but it's an important goal, and so it warrants a mention I feel. If Paul Henderson ever shows up in this project and if I do a similar analysis - i'll probably give his goal at least a 20 on its own. Sometimes moments are worthy of mentions.

Also a lot of comments about giving international play too much importance. I don't think I did that in my comparison.

Crosby has the most, and out of 26 grades for Crosby, 12 (46%) are for regular season, 11 (42%) are for playoffs and 3 (11%) are for international play. I don't think that's giving it too much importance. Other players with less international moments have even smaller percentages.

 

[ChiTownPhilly]

So you're telling us that all the big forwards [edit: mine] on those two teams were only on the same sheet of ice once??

Less than half the times they played during their "Di-umvirate," in reality:

Once in 2013-14. Once in 2014-15. Both times in 2015-16. Once in 2016-17. Five times in all.

 

[bobholly39]

I don't wan to edit my initial post since people took the time to respond specifically to my grades and I rather leave them there. So i'll just post one more summary table that represents the changes i've made with some of the feedback i received. We're now left with:

Summary Table	OK	Good	Great	Extra Special	Total
Sidney Crosby	2	18	45	60	125
Patrick Roy	9	30	40	40	119
Dominik Hasek	3	22	25	60	110
Ray Bouque	7	48	50	10	115

[TBODY] [/TBODY]

Changes off first post include:

Crosby's 2016 playoffs down from extra special to great
Bourque's 90 season bumped up to "extra special" (I wanted to do that first time around - somehow I completely missed it)
Bourque's 90 playoffs get bumped up to "great".

Few results i'm not sure I like:

Crosby has the only 2 runs with big awards that aren't extra special (Smythe in 16, pearson in 13).
In light of bumping Crosby's 2016 smythe down - he now has 4 finals (3 cups) where he was a top 2 player, yet only 2 "extra special" ones.
In contrast - Roy has 5 finals (4 cups) and 4 of his are "extra special". I don't like the ratio between Crosby/Roy here - I was ok with a 4-3 advantage, i feel like 4-2 is too much.


Also - i'm fully aware that the biggest limitation here is that i don't go further and grade/rank each season in a category. That is a next step I may get to (ie instead of giving each extra special 10 points, i could grade those 1 to 10 among each other and adjust) which would be more representative.


I had more of these analysis with other players - but considering how popular the first post was maybe i'll just keep those to myself.

 

[Beau Knows]

If Zetterberg ate Crosby alive, I daresay so would Toews.

Crosby had 6 points in 6 games their 2008 matchup. Not sure why that series is always forgotten, Crosby was good in that series against Zetterberg.

 

[solidmotion]

I was wondering when you were going to show up with this post. You have repeated it many times and I have shot it down many times.

A few points:

1. I always take old SI hockey articles with a grain of salt. They hardly covered hockey at all back in the 60's and when they did they didn't do it well.

2. I have yet to see a quote from Hull where he was critical of Pilous. In fact, he was instrumental in bringing Pilous to Winnipeg to manage the Jets, That sounds like he had a lot of respect for Rudy.

3. Chicago ran 3 lines in the 60's, For the most part so did Toronto & Montreal. Any extra ice time Hull got was on the PK which was hardly conducive to inflating his offensive stats, On the other hand Beliveau never killed penalties so he was not using up his energy in that way.

4. With all due respect to Glen Hall, He certainly wasn't going to blame himself for Chicago's lack of cups. Again a SI article .(cough, cough)

5. I never considered Chicago a run-and-gun team. I think their goals for and against will bear that out. Also, you should really watch some Hawk games from the 60's.

looking over those 60s blackhawks teams this morning, they definitely don't look shallower than the competition. an exception is defense, but even there, only toronto and montreal are definitively better, and of course pilote is #1... and yeah judging from stats they don't look run-and-gun, actually pretty middle-of-the-road in terms of goals for and goals against most years.

i do find those teams very hard to account for. the #1 centre, winger, defenseman and goalie of the era, with at least decent offensive depth, and all they come up with is one cup? 3 out of four years in the mid-60s, they lose to downright mediocre detroit teams in the first round. 1966 is the weirdest year: they dominated detroit in the regular season, outscoring them 51-27, winning 11 of 14 games, never allowing more than 4 in a game... and then lose in 6 games, getting beaten 7-0, 5-1 and 5-3, getting outscored 22-10. their loss the next year in the first round to toronto, while being the #1 team in the regular season as well as 1st in goals for and goals allowed, is along the same lines. had their number in the regular season, beaten soundly in the playoffs. i guess esposito gets blamed for that one. but do hull, mikita, hall and pilote ever shoulder the blame for those losses? it's hard because they all usually put up good-to-great stats even in losing causes... but the fact is they did lose a lot, often to teams they really should have beaten.

 

[MXD]

Few results i'm not sure I like:

Crosby has the only 2 runs with big awards that aren't extra special (Smythe in 16, pearson in 13).
In light of bumping Crosby's 2016 smythe down - he now has 4 finals (3 cups) where he was a top 2 player, yet only 2 "extra special" ones.
In contrast - Roy has 5 finals (4 cups) and 4 of his are "extra special". I don't like the ratio between Crosby/Roy here - I was ok with a 4-3 advantage, i feel like 4-2 is too much.

Well, to me , 4-2 seems "closer to reality" as opposed to "too much"...
And I'm one of those who thinks Crosby getting the CS in 2016 wasn't the wrong choice. It wasn't legendary, like, at all, but not a bad choice.

Awards aren't created equal.

 

[DannyGallivan]

Well, to me , 4-2 seems "closer to reality" as opposed to "too much"...
And I'm one of those who thinks Crosby getting the CS in 2016 wasn't the wrong choice. It wasn't legendary, like, at all, but not a bad choice.

Awards aren't created equal.

so that's why nobody has brought up Lady Byng voting results!

 

[Captain Bowie]

so that's why nobody has brought up Lady Byng voting results!

That's where you're wrong.

Unlike Morenz,Crosby never never had to compete against another generational dynasty, complete game center Lady Byng winner.