Top-100 Hockey Players of All-Time - Round 2, Vote 3

[The Macho King]

One.

And he is on some top120 all time lists in this project (not mine) because of one great regular season, four great playoffs, worldclass wheels and a hounddog mentality. He did nothing great during his three seasons in Columbus as a 35+ year old.

I had no idea he played for the Blue Jackets. How did I forget that?

 

[VanIslander]

I had no idea he played for the Blue Jackets. How did I forget that?

Three years, 113 NHL points.

How did we forget?

1. Zero playoff appearances those years.
2. It's Columbus. You could count on one hand how many games most hockey fans outside of Ohio have seen of that franchise.

 

[ChiTownPhilly]

My chart movers (in order of relative degree of movement):

Lidström: Stock moderately UP
Hašek: Stock slightly up
Bourque: Stock slightly down (still easily enough to get a podium-spot on my upcoming ballot)
Jagr: Stock slightly down (but still my top Forward, post-Morenz)
Ovechkin: Stock slightly down- Bubble Boy

All other evaluations remain relatively the same.

 

[The Panther]

A modern team that one could analogize to the Bourque-era Bruins would be a tough find. A Prez. A "retro-Prez." Two Final appearances (without winning). And more than half the time, being eliminated by a team with a worse regular season record. Naw... Boston wasn't always "Ray-and-the-Plugs."

Macho Man said "a lot of the reason" the Bruins were in contention was Bourque, and that is indisputably true. No one's saying "Ray and the Plugs".

The Bruins generally had a strong line-up from when Ray joined in 1979 until about 1984. After 1983-84, the wheels kind of fell off the Bruins for a few years, with Middleton getting slower, Peterson injured (then traded), Park traded, etc. Pete Peeters also seemed to kind of lose-it after 1984.

From about 1984 to 1987, Bourque very nearly was the Bruins. Here's a clip of an Edmonton-Boston game in 1984-85:


For these three years, the Bruins weren't terrible by any means, but they were talent-depleted or old. After Neely came and started hitting his stride c.1987, the talent level went up a bit, but certainly they were not up with any of the other top teams in terms of upper-echelon players. Looking at their roster in 1988, you wonder how they made it to the Finals...

 

[Canadiens1958]

TBH, you are the last one who should bring up someone being a "fanboy". All you do is post positives about Canadiens in 95% of your posts. Still don't understand the video of Robinson trying to get Messier to fight him.

Let's see. History of being critical of Geoffrion, Lafleur, Carey Price, Claude Lemieux, Lalonde,others.

Lets see the numbers supporting your claim of 95 %.

Robinson / Messier. Who swings his stick in a chopping motion? Then won't drop his gloves. Not Robinson.

 

[Captain Bowie]

Let's see. History of being critical of Geoffrion, Lafleur, Carey Price, Claude Lemieux, Lalonde,others.

Lets see the numbers supporting your claim of 95 %.

Robinson / Messier. Who swings his stick in a chopping motion? Then won't drop his gloves. Not Robinson.

I look forward to holding you to that.

 

[VanIslander]

Let's see. History of being critical of ... Claude Lemieux,...

*gasp*

 

[MXD]

I look forward to holding you to that.

From what I remember, he's not bluffing.
I don't quite see how this is relevant nor appropriate as a discussion point.

 

[BenchBrawl]

I'm not sure this is true for Messier.

He was probably a better defensive player as a winger. At center, for most of his career, he really floated quite a bit on the defensive end. He could pick his spots when defending. But he was on the ice for a ton of "goals against" in his career. 2nd only to Gretzky. Considering defensemen make up 19 of the top 25 in goals against, I think its telling that Gretzky and Messier are 1 & 2. Of course Gretzky is also number one in on the ice for "goals for" (by a ton). But Messier is only 10th in that category. Bourque, by the way, is 3rd all-time in goals against, but also 2nd in goals for.

True.It was just a quick way to say he had more to his game than offense.I understand he was no Bryan Trottier.

I should have worded it differently.

 

[BenchBrawl]

I've heard of players that are physical, but players that are metaphysical? I still have a lot to learn about hockey.

LOL the questions were metaphysical, not the players.

Not sure if you were just cracking a joke

 

[vadim sharifijanov]

It's supposed to be fun, it's supposed to be educational, it's supposed to challenge what you think you know rather than be an exhibition of what you do.

!

hear hear

that’s why it doesn’t matter if i vote, which i don’t

 

[seventieslord]

Why is Morenz a shoo-in for this round while Mikita has been more or less laughed off as an afterthought?

ImporterExporter has done a good job of showing that a comparison of their on-paper resumes side-by-side probably favors Mikita.

The best thing I can say to counter that, is that Morenz actually did a little better in Hart voting among forwards: 1-1-1-2-3-4-5-5 vs. 1-1-2-3-4-4. I think this is a fairer comparison than raw Hart voting and he looks good by this metric.

Was Morenz more important to his era? Was he more significant in his time? Yes, almost certainly. But look at their competition.

Mikita's contemporaries were Howe (2nd), Hull (5th), Beliveau (6th), Harvey (8th), Plante (~18th?), Hall (~30th), and Pilote (~50th).
Morenz' contemporaries were Shore (~15th), Nighbor (~20th), Cook (~35th), Boucher (~50th), Clancy (~50th), Conacher (~55th) and Clapper (~75th)

Would it be safe to say that if Mikita played in Morenz' era, we'd probably see him right around Shore, and ahead of the rest?
Would it be safe to say that if Morenz played in Mikita's era, we'd have him behind Howe, Hull, Beliveau and Harvey?

Are we just forcing Morenz in because we think he's the next one from his era who belongs on the list? Or are we legitimately doing it based on his on-ice dominance compared to a player like Mikita? the temperature of this room feels like we're going to put these two players ten spots apart and that feels very wrong to me.

Someone mentioned Mikita had "his issues" in the playoffs - what were these issues? He seems to have produced at an exceptional level over a long sample size mostly during a time of deflated scoring.

He is frequently brushed off as having easy matchups because Bobby Hull got the best checkers. Even though he affected his team's goal differential more than any player in the 1960s, it just gets treated as though it had more to do with his matchups than with his own ability. Pre-expansion, he posted a 1.80 r-on with just a 1.11 r-off - a number that was approximately half-influenced by the performance of Bobby Hull's line. In fact, from 1960-1972, Mikita surrendered 569 adjusted ES goals against, while Hull surrendered 704.

I don't even think I want Mikita in this round, but I'm not convinced that by extension I shouldn't feel the same way about Morenz. Someone change my mind and don't bother citing that 1950 poll, please.

 

[seventieslord]

Eddie Shore needs to get in this round

Maybe not as badly as Ray Bourque, but he does. If he waits any longer than this, we are just revising history.

The arguments against Shore are: His Hart trophies were easily come by due to an environment that favoured defensemen, His Hart votes were earned through flash and dash, sizzle without steak, star power. His teams didn't do that well in the playoffs. He cost them big time in the playoffs with penalties. And Mike Farkas watched a few videos of him and doesn't like the way he played.

Hart trophy favoring defensemen?

This one is easy to see. Clearly it was easier to get votes for the Hart trophy as a defenseman in Shore's era. Some would say too easy, others would say it was just fair for the only time in history. It's clear though, that comparing defenseman only by hart trophy wins and hart votes is not fair.

Here's something interesting I came up with: percentage of hart votes by position over time.

I took a look at the number of voting points the best defensemen of all-time received during their vote-getting prime, compared to the voting points earned by other defensemen in the same time frame. Here's what I found:

Orr: 726 (92%)
next best: 16, 14, 14

Harvey: 163 (74%)
next best: 40, 9, 4

Bourque: 407 (60%)
next best: 130, 48, 37

Lidstrom: 513 (42%)
next best: 402, 181, 70

Shore: 590 (35%)
next best: 271, 129, 126

What to make of this? Not sure. It's a step, at least, towards normalizing hart results for defensemen. Lidstrom earned a slightly higher percentage, but also he's the only one who didn't outright double the next best in his timeframe. (he didn't even come close).

Flash and dash? Sizzle, no steak?

I think this is mostly baseless. A player who gets by on sizzle but lacks steak may get the benefit of the doubt short term (see Dion Phaneuf), but Eddie Shore earned significant hart votes in both the 1928 and the 1939 seasons. It's simply not possible for him to get by on reputation, or star power, or wowing the crowd with (let's face it, occasional) goals and big hits.

No one doubts he was the best offensive defenseman of his time. No one doubts he was tough and could hit. It's his defense that is being questioned. But Shore had defensive ability. It's pretty obvious from the results. He was the #1 defenseman for 13 years, on a team that only failed to be above average defensively twice. Overall, the Bruins averaged 14% better than the league defensively. Recall in my past study, that Lidstrom's wings were 11% better than average, Bourque's Bruins 10% and Potvin's Isles 16%.

Defensive consistency seemed to be the Bruins' strength. Aside from 1934, their results were remarkably steady. Offensively, over this time they were just as dominant, 13% better than average, but with results all over the map, with huge swings from season to season. the one constant was strong defense and the one player who was always there was Shore.

So what? They were good defensively, right? Well, he kinda was the most important player to those efforts. Every season from 1928 to 1939, Shore was the leading vote getter among defensive players on the Bruins, except for 1930 (Hitchman) and 1937 (Thompson). Also, in 1932 and 1934 no Bruins received any votes. Every other season, Shore was the only defenseman or goalie on Boston getting any credit in Hart voting.

In fact, his best hart voting seasons tend to correspond to the years Boston was most dominant defensively. Three of his four Hart wins were in three of Boston's five most dominant defensive seasons: 1938, 1936 and 1933.

He cost his team big-time in the playoffs?

I read every word of what overpass posted, and the results were pretty mixed there. He took penalties, yes, but it was not often to negative effect. His play was only cited as being bad in one game - otherwise it seemed like you couldn't read a few lines without reading effusive praise for his play. There was a highly-publicized incident where Clancy trolled him and he shot the puck at the ref, and yes that cost them big-time. Other than that? I'm not feeling it. I wonder if some of you read different accounts of that same incident and thought it was two or three separate incidents. Looking at how bad it got for Boston when he was in the box that time, it says a lot about his level of play on the ice at that time. I mean jeez, what were his r-on and r-off that game? hahaha.

His team failed badly in the playoffs?

well, they weren't great, but there were mitigating circumstances. As I posted last round:

His team success needs to be discussed, but the most important thing to point out is that during nearly his entire career, the NHL placed the division winners in a series against eachother. That means that unless the league's two best teams were in one division, it was impossible to see a final with the league's two best teams. It also means that every season, a powerhouse would be out after 2-5 games, and not even because they were the victims of an upset, just that they had to play their (more or less) equal for a first opponent. This greatly deflates the GP and point totals of anyone who was on a typically strong team. The "most likely" occurrence for a division winner is to roll over an also-ran in round one, picking up nice stats along the way, then have a closer division final, but ultimately win, then have a finals matchup that could go either way. But division winners (which Shore's Bruins were 8 times in his career) had this scenario fast-forwarded for them. They had seven first round series (1928 was more logical) that could have gone either way, and they did - they won three times and lost four. Here are the results:

1929: 57-point Boston defeated 59-point Montreal, 3-0, 5 GF, 2 GA
1930: 77-point Boston defeated 51-point Maroons, 3-1, 9 GF, 5 GA
1931: 62-point Boston lost to 60-point Montreal, 2-3, 13 GF, 13 GA
1933: 58-point Boston lost to 54-point Toronto, 2-3, 7 GF, 13 GA
1935: 58-point Boston lost to 64-point Toronto, 1-3, 2 GF, 7 GA
1938: 67-point Boston lost to 57-point Toronto, 0-3, 3 GF, 6 GA
1939: 74-point Boston defeated 58-point New York, 4-3, 14 GF, 12 GA

1939 wasn't quite like the rest - the league was one division, and the top-2 teams played a best of 7 to get to the finals, while the other 4 playoff teams had little best-of-3 series to get there. Again, pretty nonsensical.

We would look at the playoff records of a few 1930s stars a lot differently if the playoff format had made sense back then. Eddie Shore is affected by this more negatively than anyone else.

In total, Boston was 15-16 in these seven series, with 53 GF and 58 GA (47.7 GF%). On average, they were 7.1 points better than their first round opponent. These results are disappointing, of course - Boston was, on the whole, favoured to win more than three of seven series, but this is not a train wreck either.

In case anyone is wondering, Boston was 10-8-4 (44GF, 43 GA) in the other 22 games they played that were against the kind of competition they typically deserved. About 60% of their playoff games were the ones detailed above, hard-matched against other elite teams.

Mike Farkas says he is just a Dustin Byfuglien?

We asked Mike where he got this from and he posted two youtube videos that are, combined, about 8 minutes long. While I think I speak for everyone when I say I greatly appreciate Mike's scouting reports and his critical eye for players, I'm not sure he has seen nearly enough to come to a fair conclusion about Shore. He calls him a high transaction player who just goes for the big hit and isn't very smart, like a Byfuglien or Burns. Judgments like that need to be taken in the context of the era, and I don't think that is being done. First of all, it seems like that was the way that defense was played at the time. What reference points can we look back at in order to see how other elite players defended? Is Shore really an outlier or did defensemen just hit a lot? Secondly, this is a freaking highlight reel. Of course he's going to be rushing the puck and going for big hits. This does not demonstrate that this is how he defended all the time. It's almost certainly selection bias.

Hart voters between 1928 and 1939 didn't just see eight minutes of Eddie Shore, they saw about 8 days of him, and frequently concluded he was not only the best defenseman in the league, but the best player, period. Plenty of passages say plenty of good things about his defensive ability, and the team results bear this out. Mike may be an expert at picking apart the games of players from the 50s to the present day, but the source material just isn't strong enough and a highlight reel is no substitute for actually being there. We should believe what the people who were actually there thought.

In conclusion...

Eddie Shore was the most decorated player of his era, and arguably the best. If his Hart trophies had been directly against a prime Howie Morenz, then you could remove the word "arguably" from that. On the other hand, the reason we never saw the best of Shore versus the best of Morenz, was because Morenz, who was born in the same year but steeply declined after age 30, only was elite for a six year period, half as long as Shore was. The results that he did attain, post-Morenz-prime, I see no reason to discount them greatly.

Shore's regular season team results, and the recognition he earned for those results, demonstrate that he was not just a highlight heavy player; he actually brought elite skills. 85 year old highlight clips can't and don't disprove that. Playoffs are another story. Boston played 8 coin toss semis and won three. They should have been in one more final and won one more cup, but let's not pretend that an elite team winning 48% of their games and scoring 48% of the goals in games against other elite teams is terrible. Disappointing, admittedly. Not terrible.

 

[sr edler]

One.

And he is on some top120 all time lists in this project (not mine) because of one great regular season, four great playoffs, worldclass wheels and a hounddog mentality. He did nothing great during his three seasons in Columbus as a 35+ year old.

Since voting is open now for this round I thought I could address this.

Fyodorov was more or less the defining defensive forward (or two-way player) of his era (peak challenged/rivaled only by Gilmour) and I think it’s probably a bit unfair to say he was a flash in the pan in the regular season. While 93–94 sticks out, he led the Wings in scoring over the 94–95 – 95–96 time period (157 points in 120 games over those two seasons, including a Selke), leading a unit that quite literally chased #7 on our all-time list off his team. That’s not exactly falling off an immediate cliff when it comes to regular season offensive production.

While he shouldn’t escape criticism or some blame himself for lacking more regular season extravagance, he was also deployed in a system by Bowman, post 96, that somewhat stymied his production/offensive output (imagine Malkin in that situation). Just like Lidström doesn’t have any Hart Trophy flash to his resume. He (Fyodorov) kinda does fall (outside of his peak) in the Modano/(Sundin) category in that sense as a consistent regular season pawn, having 10 seasons with 30 or more goals.

And while I consider criticism to be fair (most always) I find it a bit odd to selectively pick on his +35 year old exploits in Ohio. What exactly was he supposed to do there that would have catapulted him onto a top 120 list?

Would he have looked better if he somehow Olli Jokinen-ed himself as a one-dimensional bad team scorer?

Fyodorov to me is a player that showed quite a rare (but yes, relatively brief) combination of offensive/defensive regular season work load. Scoff all you want at people ranking him high, but I don’t know if keeping him all off the list is that much more of a viable position.

 

[Tuna Tatarrrrrr]

*gasp*

Problem with that too?

 

[sr edler]

Does NY win a title without Messier? Probably not.

Let's agree to agree on that, but do they win without Leetch? No.

 

[MXD]

I'm not sure they are winning without Zubov either.

 

[ChiTownPhilly]

Eddie Shore needs to get in this round...
Maybe not as badly as Ray Bourque, but he does. If he waits any longer than this, we are just revising history.

I'm not seeing Shore as a victim of history revision. It's more like history accretion. Other players have come onto our radar- and we feel like they've come into better focus (in at least one case, mistakenly IMO), and Shore is being shuffled back in a numbers game.

To take the most obvious one, Crosby. More people will be voting Crosby ahead of Shore- including (I suspect) you. I won't be... so that one's on yew'all.

Second- Lidström. When the top-70 on this board was done nearly a decade ago, Lidström was still playing- and (in line with "Killion's" earlier point), we didn't have a full-measure and perspective on the guy as a player. The board was completely justified in treading cautiously in ranking him. I'd say it was prudent- perhaps excessively so... but understandable. Now, with the benefit of retrospective, we see that he played damned good and damned smart for a freaking long time.

Next, Jagr. His last full season was not much longer than a year ago. We have our refined offensive metrics and we can see that after adjustments his prime still outscored prime Crosby, and he played longer than Messier.

Next, Hašek. A small, vocal, but relatively informed minority here consider him to be the best to ever play his position.

Finally, Ovechkin. "Nyah, nyah (or should I say 'nyet, nyet') he never won a Cup" can no longer be used as a cudgel to slap him about. That alone is going to raise his stock. Should it be raised to the point that it pushes him ahead of Shore? That's a biopsy I don't think I'll have to perform until next round, 'cause I don't think either of these guys are going through.

 

[Canadiens1958]

Why is Morenz a shoo-in for this round while Mikita has been more or less laughed off as an afterthought?

ImporterExporter has done a good job of showing that a comparison of their on-paper resumes side-by-side probably favors Mikita.

The best thing I can say to counter that, is that Morenz actually did a little better in Hart voting among forwards: 1-1-1-2-3-4-5-5 vs. 1-1-2-3-4-4. I think this is a fairer comparison than raw Hart voting and he looks good by this metric.

Was Morenz more important to his era? Was he more significant in his time? Yes, almost certainly. But look at their competition.

Mikita's contemporaries were Howe (2nd), Hull (5th), Beliveau (6th), Harvey (8th), Plante (~18th?), Hall (~30th), and Pilote (~50th).
Morenz' contemporaries were Shore (~15th), Nighbor (~20th), Cook (~35th), Boucher (~50th), Clancy (~50th), Conacher (~55th) and Clapper (~75th)

Would it be safe to say that if Mikita played in Morenz' era, we'd probably see him right around Shore, and ahead of the rest?
Would it be safe to say that if Morenz played in Mikita's era, we'd have him behind Howe, Hull, Beliveau and Harvey?

Are we just forcing Morenz in because we think he's the next one from his era who belongs on the list? Or are we legitimately doing it based on his on-ice dominance compared to a player like Mikita? the temperature of this room feels like we're going to put these two players ten spots apart and that feels very wrong to me.

Someone mentioned Mikita had "his issues" in the playoffs - what were these issues? He seems to have produced at an exceptional level over a long sample size mostly during a time of deflated scoring.

He is frequently brushed off as having easy matchups because Bobby Hull got the best checkers. Even though he affected his team's goal differential more than any player in the 1960s, it just gets treated as though it had more to do with his matchups than with his own ability. Pre-expansion, he posted a 1.80 r-on with just a 1.11 r-off - a number that was approximately half-influenced by the performance of Bobby Hull's line. In fact, from 1960-1972, Mikita surrendered 569 adjusted ES goals against, while Hull surrendered 704.

I don't even think I want Mikita in this round, but I'm not convinced that by extension I shouldn't feel the same way about Morenz. Someone change my mind and don't bother citing that 1950 poll, please.

Three points re your excellent post(s).

Stan Mikita was Top 4 on Chicago, between 2 and 4 depending on how Pilote and Hall rank. Morenz was #1 on the Canadiens, possibly the league.

Shore and Mikita had problematic playoffs from the standpoint of penalties, namely 1965 for Mikita, Clancy for Shore. Mikita had a post 1965 epiphany. Still.

Length of videos. Odds of a video catching a "one of" are very small. Technical flaws that a player has are like DNA. One or multiple swabs will not change the DNA. No need for daily videos of the sun rising east or the effects of gravity to affirm each.

 

[Dennis Bonvie]

True.It was just a quick way to say he had more to his game than offense.I understand he was no Bryan Trottier.

I should have worded it differently.

No problem. Just didn't want that impression of two-way play to turn into a truism, as seems to be happening. Other than actual goals on ice against, I'd have mentioned actually seeing lots of Messier's games as a determining factor, but that doesn't hold much weight any more.

 

[TheDevilMadeMe]

A small quibble, @seventieslord.

Morenz was 2nd in Hart voting in 1924-25 (albeit pre-consolidation) and won his final Hart Trophy in 1931-32, 8 years later. (He was also a 2nd Team AS in 1932-33, but his decline had clearly started by then. But yes, Shore's longevity as a top player was definitely longer.

Interesting that Morenz was still voted the fastest player in 1934.

 

[TheDevilMadeMe]

No problem. Just didn't want that impression of two-way play to turn into a truism, as seems to be happening. Other than actual goals on ice against, I'd have mentioned actually seeing lots of Messier's games as a determining factor, but that doesn't hold much weight any more.

I don't think Messier was so great at classic defense for things you said. What he was extremely effective at was bullying his opposing center, which was often very effective in the playoffs.

 

[MXD]

A small quibble, @seventieslord.

Morenz was 2nd in Hart voting in 1924-25 (albeit pre-consolidation) and won his final Hart Trophy in 1931-32, 8 years later. (He was also a 2nd Team AS in 1932-33, but his decline had clearly started by then. But yes, Shore's longevity as a top player was definitely longer.

Interesting that Morenz was still voted the fastest player in 1934.

Which raises a few questions :

- Did everyone took this seriously or just went speed = Morenz?
- Was Morenz' decline explained by things that do not have to do much with himself? Whether it's rule changes or system changes or linemate changes.
- Did coaching significantly improved (against Morenz mostly)?

You rarely see a guy losing what made him stood out EXCEPT his speed (that can't be explained by injuries, such as was the case with Alex Semin). There are some exceptions to this (a certain Mexicano-Alaskan comes to mind)

EDIT : There was some footage of a Canadiens - Rangers game available on HOH at some point. It's still probably available. I clearly remember a Canadiens being VERY fast, but if my memory doesn't fail me (as it sometimes does), the player whose speed really struck me wasn't Morenz, but his teammate Georges Mantha.

 

[86Habs]

I don't think Messier was so great at classic defense for things you said. What he was extremely effective at was bullying his opposing center, which was often very effective in the playoffs.

Interestingly, Mike Keenan intentionally matched up Messier (along with Gartner and Anderson) against the Soviets' KLM line in the 1987 Canada Cup final. Despite having highly regarded defensive center Sutter on the roster, Keenan believed (rightly) that Messier's, Gartner's and Anderson's speed and aggressiveness would be more effective than Sutter's more "typical" defensive style, despite any real or perceived defensive shortcomings of those three players. So, you're right; Messier didn't play a classic style of defensive hockey, like a Bergeron or Carbonneau, but he was a great skater, was incredibly strong, and at that point in his career would essentially do whatever was needed to win hockey games

 

[MXD]

I'm pretty sure this is the footage I was referring to (and can't read for whatever reason)