TheDevilMadeMe
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Two 2nd place finishes for Datsyuk while winning the Selke both years would be pretty good.. though not as good as Gilmour's 2 Harts in this hypothetical league.
Top-200 Hockey Players of All-Time - Round 2, Vote 3
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Two 2nd place finishes for Datsyuk while winning the Selke both years would be pretty good.. though not as good as Gilmour's 2 Harts in this hypothetical league.
Hockey Outsider
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I'll start by saying that I think it's too early for Bernie Parent. But, since not much has been said about him, here's a post from the final round of the last project:
I agree with @ChiTownPhilly that Bernie Parent is more than a two-year wonder.
We all know that he had arguably the greatest two-year peak of any goalie in NHL history. Let's see how he stacks up using the Goals Versus Threshold statistic (basically this looks at how many goals a netminder prevented, relative to a theoretical marginal NHL goalie - this metric gives a goalie credit for playing a lot, even if he's at or below the league average, since it's better than needing to start a borderline minor-league replacement):
Best two years, based on GVT, 1956-2018
[TBODY]
[/TBODY]Parent, as expected, ranks very high - in the top three. This is based on regular season only - we all know he won two Conn Smythe trophies this seasons. (No, I wasn't expecting to see Mike Palmateer on this list either).
Best results for years 3-7, based on GVT, 1956-2018
[TBODY]
[/TBODY]To be clear, this table shows each goalie's results for the 3rd to 7th best seasons of their career - that is, their top two seasons are removed entirely. Parent ranks 12th, which is way higher than I expected. I thought he might have been something like 50th with his two-year peak removed. I agree it doesn't look good that he's behind Tomas Vokoun, but everyone else on the list (except probably Curtis Joseph) is a Hall of Famer.
GVT isn't a perfect stat (nothing in hockey is) - but I think it's a useful data point.
(Two points that I'm adding now, in 2021. The first is, as a few people pointed out last round, good goalies from the seventies likely get an artificial boost in save percentage, and any related stats like GVA/GVT, due to the lack of parity - so that would boost Parent's numbers. On the other hand, Parent faced a disproportionately high number of shots on the PK, because the Flyers were such an undisciplined team, so that would hurt his numbers. It's hard to say how precisely these two factors offset each other - but both are important to consider in addition to the numbers).
I agree with @ChiTownPhilly that Bernie Parent is more than a two-year wonder.
We all know that he had arguably the greatest two-year peak of any goalie in NHL history. Let's see how he stacks up using the Goals Versus Threshold statistic (basically this looks at how many goals a netminder prevented, relative to a theoretical marginal NHL goalie - this metric gives a goalie credit for playing a lot, even if he's at or below the league average, since it's better than needing to start a borderline minor-league replacement):
Best two years, based on GVT, 1956-2018
| Goalie | YR1 | YR2 | Total |
| Dominik Hasek* | 114.6 | 113.3 | 228.0 |
| Tony Esposito* | 114.2 | 100.4 | 214.6 |
| Bernie Parent* | 123.3 | 85.2 | 208.5 |
| Ken Dryden* | 103.6 | 99.5 | 203.1 |
| Roberto Luongo | 112.9 | 90.1 | 203.0 |
| Curtis Joseph | 103.6 | 90.3 | 193.9 |
| Jacques Plante* | 95.9 | 95.6 | 191.5 |
| Mike Palmateer | 95.9 | 92.3 | 188.2 |
| Glenn Hall* | 101.7 | 82.6 | 184.3 |
| Patrick Roy* | 90.6 | 87.1 | 177.7 |
Best results for years 3-7, based on GVT, 1956-2018
| Goalie | YR3 | YR4 | YR5 | YR6 | YR7 | Total |
| Dominik Hasek* | 105.7 | 105.0 | 89.4 | 87.6 | 75.7 | 463.6 |
| Tony Esposito* | 95.8 | 93.1 | 83.7 | 83.7 | 79.2 | 435.5 |
| Glenn Hall* | 81.5 | 79.6 | 76.1 | 71.9 | 71.6 | 380.7 |
| Patrick Roy* | 85.0 | 77.9 | 71.6 | 68.2 | 66.1 | 368.9 |
| Ken Dryden* | 87.5 | 78.5 | 77.8 | 62.2 | 61.7 | 367.8 |
| Jacques Plante* | 81.0 | 68.5 | 68.0 | 64.6 | 63.4 | 345.5 |
| Roberto Luongo | 85.8 | 69.4 | 66.1 | 64.9 | 57.2 | 343.4 |
| Curtis Joseph | 89.3 | 70.9 | 66.5 | 53.8 | 51.8 | 332.3 |
| Martin Brodeur* | 72.0 | 70.1 | 69.4 | 58.5 | 56.4 | 326.4 |
| Henrik Lundqvist | 67.9 | 67.9 | 65.1 | 63.4 | 61.3 | 325.7 |
| Tomas Vokoun | 74.1 | 74.0 | 59.5 | 55.2 | 49.8 | 312.5 |
| Bernie Parent* | 79.2 | 67.1 | 58.9 | 52.7 | 51.2 | 309.1 |
| Gump Worsley* | 65.6 | 63.4 | 63.2 | 55.9 | 55.7 | 303.8 |
| Johnny Bower* | 69.0 | 65.7 | 63.5 | 57.9 | 45.9 | 302.1 |
| Ed Belfour* | 70.3 | 63.8 | 62.2 | 49.2 | 48.2 | 293.7 |
GVT isn't a perfect stat (nothing in hockey is) - but I think it's a useful data point.
(Two points that I'm adding now, in 2021. The first is, as a few people pointed out last round, good goalies from the seventies likely get an artificial boost in save percentage, and any related stats like GVA/GVT, due to the lack of parity - so that would boost Parent's numbers. On the other hand, Parent faced a disproportionately high number of shots on the PK, because the Flyers were such an undisciplined team, so that would hurt his numbers. It's hard to say how precisely these two factors offset each other - but both are important to consider in addition to the numbers).
Hockey Outsider
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I have exactly the same dilemma. I had Stastny in my top 100 on my initial list (2nd highest among the eligible players - behind only Ullman).
But the more I looked at the other players up for voting, the less impressed I was. I only had Stastny 8th on my Week 1 vote, and 6th on my Week 2 vote. I had him behind Gilmour both times, and he's still on the ballot this week. Not that there's anything "wrong" with Stastny, just that I think I overrated him on the list initially.
quoipourquoi
Goaltender
A Hart race would be more difficult to project than Bure’s 51 goals in 1998 or 94 points in 2000 becoming the top marks if the 52-goal and 96-point scorers are considered a layer of competition others in this round may not have endured.
Players like Bill Quackenbush, whose two Norris-equivalent seasons came directly above a teammate who made the HOF 12 years earlier than Quackenbush did (then again, since voters weren’t ranking players like 1-2-3-4-5-6 but rather 1-1-2-2-3-3, they’re not really Norris-equivalents, and if someone believed in 1948 that Stewart was the best and Quackenbush was the 2nd best, there was no mechanism to differentiate between the two - the same scenario that allowed Blake to win the Norris over Lidstrom in 1998 despite Lidstrom having the edge in All-Star voting).
Anyway, Gilmour in 1994 appeared on less than half of the Hart ballots that were cast and had fewer than half of Gretzky’s voting points for All-Star Center - another example of All-Star voting not being consistent with Hart voting and why it may be important to acknowledge both when available.
So while we absolutely should appreciate his 1993 and 1994 seasons, the conclusions of 34/54 voters who did not rank Gilmour on a Hart ballot in 1994 as well as how we factor in Americans (LaFontaine and Vanbiesbrouck) would matter in both years in a way it wouldn’t matter to Bure in 1998 and 2000 when looking strictly at his statistical placements.
But either way, yeah, Doug Gilmour is probably better than Bill Quackenbush too when we factor in their competition for individual awards. Obviously a better playoff performer too.
Hockey Outsider
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I had Roy Worters really low on my list initially (#166) - I'm trying to remember what my reasoning was. I know that I didn't like his minimal playoff resume, but I'm struggling to remember why I had a player four times in the top five in Hart voting so low.
One thing that I find impressive - he won Hart after switching teams in 1929. His previous team (Pittsburgh) dropped from 4th to 9th (out of ten teams) in goals against, with the roster otherwise reasonably stable. And the team he joined (NY Americans) saw their goals against drop from 9th to 3rd, again with an otherwise reasonable stable lineup.
He had great longevity/career value for his era. From 1926 to 1936 (capturing everything except his partial last season), he was the leader in games played. He stayed in the top five in career as late as 1952 - fifteen years after he retired.
I'm trying to remember why I was so low on him initially. Maybe it was just a bad ranking.
One thing that I find impressive - he won Hart after switching teams in 1929. His previous team (Pittsburgh) dropped from 4th to 9th (out of ten teams) in goals against, with the roster otherwise reasonably stable. And the team he joined (NY Americans) saw their goals against drop from 9th to 3rd, again with an otherwise reasonable stable lineup.
He had great longevity/career value for his era. From 1926 to 1936 (capturing everything except his partial last season), he was the leader in games played. He stayed in the top five in career as late as 1952 - fifteen years after he retired.
I'm trying to remember why I was so low on him initially. Maybe it was just a bad ranking.
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quoipourquoi
Goaltender
I would still consider him a good choice for top-5 this round, but some of those playoff series were winnable.
In 1926, Pittsburgh as a 19-win team lost to a 20-win Maroons team with Worters surrendering 6 goals in 2 games (3 in each) after averaging just 1.90 GAA on the season.
In 1928, it was a total goal loss to an equal Rangers team (both at 19 wins), with a 4-0 loss in Game 1 making it so the Pirates needed a 5-goal win in Game 2 to advance. They scored 4, which would have tied it if not for the 2 more allowed by Worters.
In 1929, the Rangers (21 wins) beat the Americans (19 wins). Hardly Worters fault this time though, as only 1 goal was scored across the two game series.
In 1936, Worters won his first series (as a heavy underdog no less). The Americans were up 5 goals to 1 with 25 minutes left, but Worters surrendered 4 goals in those 25 minutes. Thankfully the Americans added 2 more themselves. The Maple Leafs then dispatched them with a pair of 3 GA games from Worters bookending a shutout.
There are things to like (1929) and things to not like as much (the rest).
tarheelhockey
Offside Review Specialist
This is probably somewhat a case of regional bias speaking, because I see the guy all the time, but -- when I think about Quackenbush, I very strongly think of Jaccob Slavin.
Here's the thing about a defensively-elite dman who never takes penalties: the reason he doesn't take penalties is because he's almost always better at hockey than the guy he's defending against. It's one of those things that hits me like a ton of bricks when one of the best players in the world comes screaming down the wing with the puck, and Slavin just casually keeps pace with him while skating backwards, tracks whatever ankle-breaking move the guy's trying to pull, scoops the puck off the guy's stick like it's a simple task to do this, and hits a teammate going the other way to completely reverse the flow of play. You have that moment of... he's just flat-out better at this game than the $9M forward he just silenced.
The flip side of this is you find yourself wondering, how the hell does this guy not score 90 points a year? What's missing? It comes down to the fact that there are a few specific hockey skills that lead to scoring lots of points... you either have those skills or you don't. If a d-man doesn't have a shot, if he's not extremely fast, then he's just not going to score a lot of points. D-men don't get deflections and rebounds, they don't get shots from right in the slot very often. They can either rip one from the point or they can't... they can either beat a guy in a footrace or they can't. Slavin can't, so he's always going to be limited in terms of overall 2-way impact.
That's where I see a really high value in Quackenbush's overall game. He had that suffocating defensive presence while also being one of the top scoring D in the game. That speaks to a guy who honestly may have been the best all-round hockey player in the league for a time, even if it's hard to pin it down in numbers and even if some other guys were doing spectacular things at the offensive end of the ice.
tarheelhockey
Offside Review Specialist
For what it's worth, when Worters made that jump to the Americans, the goalie going the other way in that deal was Joe Miller.
Miller is maybe a bit underrated historically (which is to say, not rated at all) because he had a short NHL career and kept finding himself in really awful situations, but he was not a terrible goalie as his stats would suggest. He was a lower-end starter compared to the HOF'ers on most teams, but very much a legitimate NHL goalie. Probably the most famous things about his career were being unexpectedly thrown into the ‘28 Finals (which he won for the Rangers) and that he absolutely hated playing home games at MSG because the Amerks fans would ride him so hard if he let in a goal.
Miller played some reasonably decent hockey in Pittsburgh, but that was a bad team with a laughably bad off-ice situation. Even though the roster was superficially stable, that was a team that had major arena issues, was owned and largely managed by a boxer who knew almost nothing about hockey, was secretly shadow-owned by the same mobster who owned the Amerks, constantly ran into holdouts and other contractual problems, were constantly in the press talking about blowing up the roster, and generally were just a rolling disaster of a franchise. Modern comparable would be the Coyotes when they're having a particularly bad year on-ice and the usual off-ice. There's a reason Worters bailed.
So poor Joe Miller escapes NYC, ends up in that situation, and gets ventilated for 2 years straight. I'm not sure that actually says much about Worters himself, other than that he had the sense to get paid and out of Pittsburgh before the Depression started.
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tarheelhockey
Offside Review Specialist
Cross-posting this from the voting results thread, because it's pertinent to Bower:
But save percentage titles don't carry nearly the same value as All Star selections, especially when they're based on less than 40 games (which was the case in half of those seasons).
1960 - Hall, Plante
1961 - Bower, Hall
1962 - Plante, Hall
1963 - Hall, Sawchuk
1964 - Hall, Hodge
1965 - Crozier, Hodge
1966 - Hall, Worsley,
1967 - Giacomin, Hall
It's very hard for me to look at this and think "Bower had a run comparable to Sawchuk 51-55 and Plante 56-60".
In fact, a big part of why I hold Bower so clear-cut below those guys is precisely what we see here -- they were both still pulling down AS selections right through the middle of Bower's peak. Meaning they had both a better-looking peak and better-looking longevity. Add in Hall's being the clear-cut favorite during this phase, plus also before and after it, and you end up with Bower and Worsley competing for the #4 spot.
I agree that Bower beat out a lot of very good competition to get to that #4 spot. #4 in the late Original Six is nothing to underestimate... roster spots were probably never harder to earn than in the early/mid 60s, and we know how much harder it is for goalies.
But I can't stretch to see him as a #1 or #1a if Glenn Hall is in the picture. Hall was right behind Bower in save% every year, while playing way more games behind a much weaker defense, getting far greater recognition from the voters. And as if it were necessary, Hall added a Smythe in 68 and a 1AS 69. It's just not close between them.
I know this is technically true (6 titles in 8 years) but a couple of them feel kind of weird to me.
1960 - It's not the save% title that's weird, but that he didn't get a single vote for an award. Bower played almost every game, led the league in shots and saves and save%, had a great W/L record... and didn't get a vote for an award? Statistically, Terry Sawchuck was clear-cut inferior and ended up with 65 AS votes and 7 Hart votes. Bower's total lack of recognition from the press feels very weird. There has to be something to this, right?
1965 and 1966 - It's really hard to swallow a save% title with 34 and 35 games played. That's especially the case in '65, when he finished ahead of Hall by 0.01 with 7 fewer games played. Even in '66, with a more comfortable margin, he's ahead of guys who played 50+ and 60+ games. I guess that's kind of quibbling, as he probably wins it anyway if he plays more games. But that's not clearly the case in '65.
1967 - It's 27 games.
1968 - I'm not sure why H-R doesn't give him the title in this year. He tied for the best save% with two more GP than the other guy. It seems like a legitimate win. That being said, the other guy is his platoon mate, Bruce Gamble. Now maybe Gamble was the 2nd best goalie that season, but seeing two goalies split the schedule (43/41) and end up tied for the league lead in save% has strong "team effect" vibes.
So in the end, it feels like 60, 61, 64, 66, 68 are straightforward statistical wins. I have questions about what two of them actually meant in hockey terms. 65, 67 don't seem like entirely valid titles to me.
Alllllll of that being said, as you pointed out in the other thread, it's not like Bower was up against chopped liver. Being 0.01 ahead of Glenn Hall is not notably different than being 0.01 behind Glenn Hall... both are really good. Finishing 2nd behind Jacques Plante in 1962 is not some black mark. I do think that Bower is the clear-cut 4th best during an incredibly competitive era for goalies, and that looks pretty good in this group. Question is how do we hold him against guys who were the best at their position during a less competitive era, or who were slightly lower ranked during the international era?
But save percentage titles don't carry nearly the same value as All Star selections, especially when they're based on less than 40 games (which was the case in half of those seasons).
1960 - Hall, Plante
1961 - Bower, Hall
1962 - Plante, Hall
1963 - Hall, Sawchuk
1964 - Hall, Hodge
1965 - Crozier, Hodge
1966 - Hall, Worsley,
1967 - Giacomin, Hall
It's very hard for me to look at this and think "Bower had a run comparable to Sawchuk 51-55 and Plante 56-60".
In fact, a big part of why I hold Bower so clear-cut below those guys is precisely what we see here -- they were both still pulling down AS selections right through the middle of Bower's peak. Meaning they had both a better-looking peak and better-looking longevity. Add in Hall's being the clear-cut favorite during this phase, plus also before and after it, and you end up with Bower and Worsley competing for the #4 spot.
I agree that Bower beat out a lot of very good competition to get to that #4 spot. #4 in the late Original Six is nothing to underestimate... roster spots were probably never harder to earn than in the early/mid 60s, and we know how much harder it is for goalies.
But I can't stretch to see him as a #1 or #1a if Glenn Hall is in the picture. Hall was right behind Bower in save% every year, while playing way more games behind a much weaker defense, getting far greater recognition from the voters. And as if it were necessary, Hall added a Smythe in 68 and a 1AS 69. It's just not close between them.
I know this is technically true (6 titles in 8 years) but a couple of them feel kind of weird to me.
1960 - It's not the save% title that's weird, but that he didn't get a single vote for an award. Bower played almost every game, led the league in shots and saves and save%, had a great W/L record... and didn't get a vote for an award? Statistically, Terry Sawchuck was clear-cut inferior and ended up with 65 AS votes and 7 Hart votes. Bower's total lack of recognition from the press feels very weird. There has to be something to this, right?
1965 and 1966 - It's really hard to swallow a save% title with 34 and 35 games played. That's especially the case in '65, when he finished ahead of Hall by 0.01 with 7 fewer games played. Even in '66, with a more comfortable margin, he's ahead of guys who played 50+ and 60+ games. I guess that's kind of quibbling, as he probably wins it anyway if he plays more games. But that's not clearly the case in '65.
1967 - It's 27 games.
1968 - I'm not sure why H-R doesn't give him the title in this year. He tied for the best save% with two more GP than the other guy. It seems like a legitimate win. That being said, the other guy is his platoon mate, Bruce Gamble. Now maybe Gamble was the 2nd best goalie that season, but seeing two goalies split the schedule (43/41) and end up tied for the league lead in save% has strong "team effect" vibes.
So in the end, it feels like 60, 61, 64, 66, 68 are straightforward statistical wins. I have questions about what two of them actually meant in hockey terms. 65, 67 don't seem like entirely valid titles to me.
Alllllll of that being said, as you pointed out in the other thread, it's not like Bower was up against chopped liver. Being 0.01 ahead of Glenn Hall is not notably different than being 0.01 behind Glenn Hall... both are really good. Finishing 2nd behind Jacques Plante in 1962 is not some black mark. I do think that Bower is the clear-cut 4th best during an incredibly competitive era for goalies, and that looks pretty good in this group. Question is how do we hold him against guys who were the best at their position during a less competitive era, or who were slightly lower ranked during the international era?
Theokritos
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Huh? I'm not claiming the number of all-star berths is the ultimate answer to how good the players were and where they deserve to rank. Luc Robitaille is a five-time AS, but no-one will rank him over two-time AS Dickie Moore. We certainly agree on that. Yet you were the one who brought up the number of AS berths in post #107, but if I'm pointing out that Bure had additional competition from non-Canadian talent that Busher Jackson didn't have, it suddenly turns into an awful way to look at it?
Removing non-Canadians, BTW, along with teammates & Gretzky+Lemieux (historic outliers), is something I did in a scoring comparison between Gordie Howe and Jaromír Jágr years ago, which you called a very fair way to look at the strength of the "potential talent pool". See here: Better offensively: Jagr vs. Howe
Of course, I'm not saying this should only be done for Bure. It should be employed across the board.
TheDevilMadeMe
Registered User
I believe QPQ is the one who brought up winger AS births, with regards to Bure. My post was meant as a quick-and-dirty counter to that... I guess that wasn't entirely clear.
In the Howe/Jagr post from 6 years ago, you were comparing them to all Canadian players, not just wingers.
My point is that a much greater percentage of Canadian talent in modern eras plays center vs all 3 forward positions in earlier years. I mean, no offense to Neely and Recchi, but that's not exactly historically strong competition at wing.
(Personally, I think the refining of what VsX considers "an outlier" has made the idea of "removing non-Canadians and Gretzky/Lemieux" somewhat obsolete, but I get there's no definitive "right" answer there)
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ted2019
History of Hockey
Due to severe depression, I'm stepping away from the board at least for now.
quoipourquoi
Goaltender
To be clear, that was not what I was implying. I was pointing out that Sawchuk, Plante, and Bower had their peak successes in time frames across ~20 years that did not overlap too much - just as Roy (1988-1992), Hasek (1994-1999), and Brodeur (2003-2008) had their peak successes in time frames across ~20 years that did not overlap too much.
You have Roy’s 1994 and 2002 to go with Plante’s 1962 and 1971 of years outside their five-consecutive All-Star selections, just as you have Brodeur’s 1997 and 1998 that pair well with Sawchuk’s 1959 and 1963 as years outside of their five-consecutive All-Star selections, but for the most part, these periods of their dominance are very much stratified.
So Bower not being as good as Plante and Sawchuk in a general sense because of what they did from 1951-1960 doesn’t make me think of him as of that era any more than Brodeur not being as good as Roy and Hasek because of what they did from 1988-1999 makes me think of him as of that era.
20 years is just too big of a window. That’s 2000-2020. That’s Forsberg and Ovechkin and Crosby and McDavid.
And in conjunction with his playoff record, I think that should be enough for top of the ballot - even if Plante and Sawchuk and Hall were better goaltenders.
I reference the number of titles because it’s quicker and more accessible than saying Bower had a .923 in the 1960s (the top number for the decade) while having the 2nd most GP behind Glenn Hall who was the only other regular goaltender above .916 (Bernie Parent, coincidentally).
The threshold for being named #111 shouldn’t be being better than Glenn Hall, so to hold him back on a ballot for only being the 4th best goaltender of a ~20 year block after Plante, Sawchuk, and Hall just seems weird and quota-ish.
Then maybe we should make sure all the Hedmans get in before we consider the Slavins?
Hockey Outsider
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Hang in there - hope everything's okay.
Professor What
Registered User
Speaking as someone who suffers from the same thing, I definitely send my best wishes to you. Knowing what it's like, I'm more than happy to be a sounding board, should you ever need it.
If you want to understand the AS votes, look at the Wins leaders for those seasons. There’s the odd time where 63 Sawchuk might pick up the 2nd AS spot with 21 wins while 2nd place has 22, but it’s basically win counting...
TheDevilMadeMe
Registered User
There is definitely a "games played" aspect to it, and "wins" probably had a disproportionate effect, but...
2 of Glenn Hall's 6 1st Team All-Star nods were with a losing record: Glenn Hall Stats | Hockey-Reference.com (he did lead the league in wins the other 4 times).
1968, Giacomin led in wins but Worsley was 1st Team: 1967-68 NHL Summary | Hockey-Reference.com
But yes, the 1st Team AS was the wins leader more than half the time.
tarheelhockey
Offside Review Specialist
That's fair... I was reading it as an equivalence. As long as we're saying that Bower is sort of the Belfour figure in this group as opposed to a Hasek/Roy/Brodeur, I'm good.
(again bearing in mind that we already added Belfour almost 30 picks ago)
This is definitely a more complicated way to say it, but IMO a more impressive way to frame Bower's placement in the decade. His voting profile is (almost weirdly) not very impressive, his season-by-season GP gets progressively less impressive, and his save percentage titles kind of overstate his case. But this:
1958-59 to 1967-68 (10 seasons)
[TABLE="class: brtb_item_table"][TBODY][TR][TD][/TD]
[TD]GP[/TD][TD]Sv%[/TD][/TR]
[TR][TD]Johnny Bower[/TD][TD]454[/TD][TD].923[/TD][/TR]
[TR][TD]Glenn Hall[/TD][TD]597[/TD][TD].917[/TD][/TR]
[TR][TD]Denis DeJordy[/TD][TD]135[/TD][TD].917[/TD][/TR]
[TR][TD]Jacques Plante[/TD][TD]400[/TD][TD].914[/TD][/TR]
[TR][TD]Gump Worsley[/TD][TD]427[/TD][TD].911[/TD][/TR]
[TR][TD]Charlie Hodge[/TD][TD]269[/TD][TD].910[/TD][/TR]
[TR][TD]Ed Giacomin[/TD][TD]170[/TD][TD].909[/TD][/TR]
[TR][TD]Terry Sawchuk[/TD][TD]433[/TD][TD].904[/TD][/TR][/TBODY][/TABLE]
To me, that's the heart of the argument for Bower. He has some runs of high-end brilliance, but his real punch comes from that sustained high-level performance over a long period, and that period happening to be unassailable in terms of competition. Three of the guys trailing far behind Bower over the course of a full decade were selected by this board as top-35 players of all time.
FWIW, the above is also the heart of why I'd say it's too early for Worsley.
Agreed.
tarheelhockey
Offside Review Specialist
That's kind of glossing over the point about the offensive end of the ice. I think Slavin and Quackenbush are of the same stripe defensively, but there's a clear offensive gap between them. The question is how big that gap is.
If we look at seasons where he played at least 90% of the games, here are Quack's scoring finishes among D:
1945 (age 22) - 10th behind Hollett, Pratt, Bouchard, Seibert, Crawford, Lamoreau, Clapper, Egan, Cooper
1946 (age 23) - 3rd behind Allen, Pratt
1948 (age 25) - 2nd behind Thomson
1949 (age 26) - 2nd behind Egan
1950 (age 27) - 3rd behind Kelly, Gadsby, Reardon
1951 (age 28) - 3rd behind Kelly, Thomson, Harvey
1952 (age 29) - 7th behind Kelly, Buller, Harvey, Thomson, Dewsbury, Gadsby
1953 (age 30) - 10th behind Kelly, Harvey, Pronovost, Buller, Mortson, Gadsby, Thomson, Dewsbury, Reise
1955 (age 32) - 7th behind Kelly, Harvey, Pronovost, Stanley, Johnson, Gadsby
1956 (age 33) - 5th behind Gadsby, Kelly, Harvey
Bear in mind that starting in 1950, Quackenbush through an era of dynasties where he wasn't on one of the dynasty teams. Boston's scoring finishes in that run of years (skipping '54) were: 3, 4, 4, 5, 4, 5.
Certainly you could say that part of that is on Quackenbush... if he were a Kelly or a Harvey, maybe the Bruins would have scored more. But I think we all understand that nobody was going to put up Canadiens numbers while playing for the Bruins.
The big objection, as always, is that his best seasons came at a time when the field of competition was pretty weak. That is certainly true of the mid-40s, which I tend not to even count. It's somewhat true of the late 40s. WWII effects were over by '48, but it's pretty easy to see that the crop of D during those years was just not up to the standards of later generations. But the early to mid 50s? Kelly/Harvey/Seibert? That's real competition and Quackenbush showed pretty consistent #1D type offensive skill, unlike a Slavin.
What I'm getting at is: we have a guy who, when surrounded by a competitive non-dynasty team, clearly showed as an elite offensive force while also being probably the best pure defender in the league. Again, it's not a stretch to say he may have been the best 200-foot player in the game for a window of time. When placed on a bad team in an extremely competitive period, he was never any lower than the ~4th best overall D in the game.
This sounds a hell of a lot like Hedman to me.
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tarheelhockey
Offside Review Specialist
I tend to agree that Hedman was more successful in the playoffs.
[edit: durrrr]
I think it's worth taking a closer look at Quackenbush's 1946-51 playoffs, though I haven't been encouraged in past attempts to find detailed information about his game-by-game performances. There's zero video, and most of the articles say something like "Quackenbush played his usual style" without elaborating on whether he brought his A, B, C, or D game that night.
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quoipourquoi
Goaltender
Hedman scored as many goals in Game 1 against Boston these past playoffs as Quackenbush had in 80 playoff games across 11 different seasons.
When they went to the Finals in 1945, Flash Hollett had 7 points to Quackenbush’s 2. In 1948, it was pre-prime Kelly with 5 and Stewart with 4 to Quackenbush’s 2. In 1949, pre-prime Kelly and Stewart and Quackenbush all had 2. In 1953, it depends on our mileage on Jack McIntyre whether Quackenbush was a top-scoring defenseman on a Finalist (I believe him to be a Winger here), and even then, Quackenbush is 6th among all defensemen in points-per-game, trailing at least one defenseman from every other playoff team.
In Tampa’s deep runs in 2015, 2016, 2018, and 2020, Hedman had double the points of the Lightning’s 2nd highest scoring defenseman all four playoff runs.
I don’t see him as a Hedman.
The list of HOF defensemen elected between Quackenbush’s retirement and his induction is over a dozen. Roy Worters and Chuck Rayner didn’t win Cups either, and they got in quicker. Reardon and Stewart went in while Quackenbush was eligible 10 and 12 years earlier.
quoipourquoi
Goaltender
ted2019
History of Hockey
I have a doctor appointment tomorrow. I most likely won't be posting, but I will still and try to vote in this project at the very least.
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