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

[ImporterExporter]

I think he was referring to the playoffs. And while your statement is certainly true, they didn't have much playoff success in the late 90's, especially without Mario.

Yes, I was predominantly speaking of the playoffs and his lack of success there. And the notion that the Penguins were void of any talent in the late 90's beyond Jagr.

 

[ImporterExporter]

My vote has been sent to Q.

 

[VanIslander]

...how was Gordie Howe never CP athlete of the year in the 1950s?

I was an accredited newspaper journalist for years back in the nineties and I've had several of my stories picked up by CP. Canadian Press is a newswire service that makes LOCAL CANADIAN newspaper stories available for other local Canadian newspapers to publish.

Gasp! Montreal's Richard getting more attention than Detroit's Howe? Montreal's Morenz more than Boston's Shore? ... I'm not in the slightest surprised.

Note: I wrote an environmental illness story in 1997 that CP picked up and several papers ran. I got paid for every pick up. My editor encouraged me to do another story on the topic and include American sources because THEN the AP (American Press newswire service) might select it. So I did phone interviews in Phoenix and some town in Minnesota (plus Winnipeg since it was being run here initially) and the story was plastered from LA to Chicago to Oklahoma City and I made the second biggest paycheque of my life off of it. The Internet was starting, and a decade later I came across several full text links to it by googling. Two years ago, nearly twenty years later, two online references to that story remained, one by some uni conference use of it. My experience is like a Marleau moving to Toronto: local media attention is largely focused on local sources.

 

[Tuna Tatarrrrrr]

Gasp! Montreal's Richard getting more attention than Detroit's Howe? Montreal's Morenz more than Boston's Shore? ... I'm not in the slightest surprised.

Yeah because Richard didn't deserve it too right?

There was no other player in history of the game with more "star power" than the Rocket, so he clearly deserved all the attention he was getting back then.

 

[ImporterExporter]

Yeah I don't think anyone can question the Rocket's star power then or even now. He's the most iconic Quebecois player of all time. Absolutely revered among the working/poor class of folks.

 

[Tuna Tatarrrrrr]

Yeah I don't think anyone can question the Rocket's star power then or even now. He's the most iconic Quebecois player of all time. Absolutely revered among the working/poor class of folks.

Hum... Maybe more back then when he played but nowadays, you don't need to be in the working/poor class of folks to revere him. He is one if not my biggest sportive idol and I'm not in the working/poor class of folks. I'd say more that he is absolutely revered among Québécois.

 

[ChiTownPhilly]

Emerging from the Voting Booth. In light of the fact that I reconsidered some placements, I'll provide an "Exit-Interview."

Hašek advocacy? Sale made.
Bourque advocacy? Didn't do enough lasting harm for me to hold it against the candidate.
Shore advocacy? Whistled in the darkness past the whole Ace Bailey assault as though it never happened.
Crosby advocacy: Helpful in buttressing the case for Jágr.
Messier advocacy: Helpful in reinforcing the case for Lidström.

 

[sr edler]

And the notion that the Penguins were void of any talent in the late 90's beyond Jagr.

Kevin Hatcher and Petr Nedved? Rly? Gunslinger Petr Nedved?

 

[ResilientBeast]

Voted, I was fairly sure of the ranking going into this vote and the thread devolving into a slapfight made me check out for a bit. I tried to read any of the good arguments and I'm looking forward to seeing how it shakes out

 

[The Macho King]

Vote's in. I gotta say - some of the people on the second half of my list probably wouldn't be close to the top of my list next time.

Edit: Seriously - I was trying to fit like 4 different players in the "do not place" section of the list.

 

[Kyle McMahon]

I think this has been mostly covered, but here's how this looks to me. I'm saying, "hey, let's really value what their contemporaries thought", and you guys are saying to me, "look, if you like award voting, then have I got a poll you should check out!"

But this poll is just "A" piece of evidence in the grand scheme of things. It's not "THE" piece of evidence, or even the single most important piece. I'm actually pretty surprised it's held in such high esteem considering:

- It was conducted by "sportscasters and sports editors" - who? - while annual award voting was conducted by people we know for sure watched and covered hockey (or the GMs in early years? someone remind me)
- Voters were only able to name one player, meaning the final results were just ranked by their number of first place votes. While it's clear a more detailed system wouldn't have changed the winner, it would have allowed a lot more depth to the results and very likely wouldn't have looked like such a slam dunk. We can only speculate on who would have taken the bulk of 2nd and 3rd place votes, had those been an option. Binary voting systems where one person gets all the points and everyone else can pound sand, suck. NHL award voting always allowed for multiple players to be named on the ballots, leading to the detailed results we now enjoy the use of.
- NHL award voting was conducted right after the season had ended, after the voters had watched multiple games featuring the players they were voting on. This poll was conducted 10 and 14 years after the careers of Shore and Morenz had ended
- At the time that the poll was conducted, most eligible players were alive, but one very prominent one was dead, and died under tragic, heart-wrenching circumstances. I think that we've seen enough cases where romanticism comes into play for the deceased (in more than just hockey), that we can't rule that out as being a major factor. NHL award voting, of course, was conducted when all players were alive.

"If you guys like polls where 44 sportscasters and sports editors who may - or may not - follow hockey closely, each named one player the best of all-time, 10+ years after their careers were over, with one prominent player deceased, then boy, have I got some great data for you to check out! It's these votes that were conducted every year, by hockey people, immediately following dozens of hockey games, with detailed, multiple-player ballots, and no romanticism at play."

What does the better, more detailed, more first hand data tell us? Well, it's inconclusive. It really doesn't prove Morenz or Shore was better, considering the oddity that one peaked in his 20s and the other in his 30s. But it is the better data. It would be reasonable to conclude they are pretty damn close. This is no slam dunk. Saying Morenz is a must for this round, and Shore has to wait another one (or two) flies in the face of what their actual contemporaries thought of them.

I can only assume that the participants in that 1950 poll never imagined it would still be a source of contentious debate nearly 70 years later. I agree with this sentiment. It's a piece of evidence. Shouldn't be discounted, shouldn't be the trump card either.

I've got Morenz a little ahead of Shore, but I agree that you can't just discount Eddie's case here. There's probably less of a gap between them than there is between Gretzky and Lemieux or Crosby and Ovechkin.

I do think one of them pretty much needs to land in the top 3 of this vote though to avoid serious questions about whether or not pre-WWII play has been too greatly discounted by our panel as a whole. Unless we suddenly had Nighbor, Taylor, and Lalonde all pop up shortly and end up in the top 20 or so. But I find that unlikely and I wouldn't necessarily advocate for it either.

You raised the issue of Mikita matching Morenz in terms of accomplishments, but perhaps getting buried behind Hull, Beliveau, and Howe. It's a valid point to raise. But history wasn't devoid of Hull/Beliveau/Howe comparables at the time Morenz was celebrated as the game's greatest. Charlie Conacher was certainly a Hull-level goal scorer. Lalonde had the all-around ability and exceptional longevity as an elite player that Gordie Howe would one day surpass. Nighbor was the well respected gentleman who led the game's greatest franchise to many Stanley Cups, as Beliveau eventually did. If Morenz was really only a Mikita-level player, I think there'd have been more noise about these guys being greater or equal (there is some in regards to Nighbor; pretty much none that I've seen as far as Conacher and Lalonde go).

I'm still left feeling that Morenz and Crosby are the two guys remaining who can make the greatest claim that they defined their generation. Were they weak generations? I don't think the post-consolodation era was. I think a good argument exists that it was the strongest, deepest era in history up until the 1950s. What about the present era? Tough to gauge without passage of time to provide context. It it probably weaker than the late 80s/90s that still live in fairly recent memory...but most people consider that to be an exceptionally strong era. Personally, I can't really assign it any sort of extremist rating. I haven't done any sort of exhaustive study, but going just by "feel", it seems fair to group it with the reasonably stable NHA/PCHA era, the war-recovered 1950s, and the expansion but not WHA-depleted late 60s and early 70s. An era that isn't getting bonus points for strength, but isn't being seriously suspected of being weak either.

So I'm still left with Morenz and Crosby as my prospective top-2 in this round.

I rewarded Howe in my previous voting for supreme longevity, and for consistently raising the results of his teams beyond what you might expect out of those rosters. I've come to see Ray Bourque as a Gordie Howe-lite. I'm comfortable with him as my #3 in this vote if it ends up that way.

I agree that Morenz didn't do enough to completely discount the idea that Shore was equal or marginally better. Shore dropping below...#15 or so...seems too extreme. His day to day impact on games as one of the very last 60-minute players is too great. There is a reason he won all those Harts and the proposed equivalent of 8 Norris trophies. I think playoffs and discipline concerns are enough to keep him out of the top 10...but not the top 15. I think he's settled in as my #4 here.

#5 and beyond is wide open for me. Messier is getting a lot of steam in here and has emerged as a viable candidate. I want to do a deeper dive on his playoff numbers like I did for Morenz and Crosby. I'm not sure if I should save it for next round though. It seems a number of people have already voted.

I haven't seen enough presented in favour of Lidstrom or Potvin to convince me they had a greater impact than Bourque or Shore did. I think Potvin vs Messier is a worthwhile debate to explore in further detail. Lidstrom's trophy case is exceptional. One thing that hurts him a little for me is that Detroit flamed out in the playoffs repeatedly during the 2003-2007 span where he was clearly driving the bus. Yzerman, Fedorov, and Shanahan left/declined after 2002...and Zetterberg and Datsyuk didn't really evolve into their peak forms until around 2008 when Detroit win again. It shows me that as great as Lidstrom was, he was limited in just how far he could drag the rest of the roster. Bourque comes out favourably in this comparison.

Jagr seems to be a guy who has a "yeah, but..." counterpoint to many of the compliments and criticisms directed at him. I think he is still above Ovechkin for me. He was a much more well-rounded offensive threat. His plus/minus and R-on/off numbers are better than I expected. I'm not really sure he had anyone covering for him defensively on the post-Francis Penguins either. Ovechkin, even in last years playoffs, got paired with Backstrom rather than Kuznetsov in situations where the Capitals needed to be careful defensively.

Plante/Hasek...we've seen some back and forth, but I'm still unconvinced that either is going to make my top 5 in this vote. A lot of the participants championing Hasek are beating around the bush. Trying to enhance the pre-NHL resume, placing enormous value on a tiny sample (98 Olympics), not really addressing accusations that he quit on his team in the playoffs twice, or putting forth "Buffalo sucked, but almost won the Cup in 99". These are topics to explore, but don't make the case on their own. How valuable is this 1999 playoff run? Hasek missed games against Toronto that Buffalo still won. Buffalo in general had an easy path to the Final after the Devils and Flyers got conveniently eliminated by other teams. I'm not set in stone here, but I just haven't seen the mountain of evidence in Hasek's favour that I expected to see for a guy who some feel is already a serious omission.

Plante has probably had a better case laid out for him. The only real "negative" presented is that his teams were so great that it is tough to determine how much individual credit he deserves. St. Louis and Toronto results from when he was presumably well past his athletic prime are helpful to his case. Hart Trophy on the post-Harvey Canadiens indicates he may have been under-valued up to that point.

Mikita hasn't had a lot of publicity in this thread so far. Bobby Hull was seemingly given a pass for Chicago coming up short on Cups in the 60s, and I think reasonably so. Mikita isn't being afforded the same leeway. Evidence that his penalty problems prior to his reformation as a disciplined player really hurt the Black Hawks is one reason. And unlike Beliveau for example, he doesn't get that late career boost. After age 30, he seems to have been merely a a strong #1 center, not an MVP-level difference maker. Are we giving too little weight to 1962-1968? Is Mikita's case worse really worse than Hasek's? The parallels are there. Huge peak, somewhat lacking in elite seasons outside of that peak, playoff question marks.

 

[Captain Bowie]

Vote's in. I gotta say - some of the people on the second half of my list probably wouldn't be close to the top of my list next time.

Edit: Seriously - I was trying to fit like 4 different players in the "do not place" section of the list.

I have 3 such players. A couple of which got some good discussion, but not enough for me to move them up, yet anyways.

I should be around all weekend so will wait to vote, in case any new interesting arguments get made.