- Bentley was the backchecker of the Bentley-Bentley-Monsienko line. Good two-way player, voted best hockey player for the first half century of the Hawks.
That's kind of a shallow platitude, isn't it? Mainly because we
know he wasn't the best player for the Hawks during that time period -- that would be either Earl Seibert (our #61), Charlie Gardiner (#75), or Max Bentley (#77). There's really no justifying a vote which has those 3 guys behind Doug, even if we ignore what they did outside of Chicago.
The half-century award can be easily explained as
1) a "vote" by only one newspaper
2) coming in 1950, a unique point in time when Doug was coming off his peak season while also leading the franchise in compiled career totals.
It's understandable how, at that moment in time, he could have been seen as the "top Blackhawk" on the basis of career service and recent improvement, but the Hawks as a franchise were defined as a punching bag franchise that rarely got top talent and never held on to it.
You absolutely should not completely dismiss results from 1942-43, as it is incorrect to say there was virtually no competition for awards that season. The league strength was much closer to 1941-42 than to the real war-depleted seasons of 1943-44 and 1944-45, since most of the players had not yet left for the war effort by the spring of 1943.
For example, 16 of the top 20 scorers from 1941-42 played full seasons in 1942-43, and that doesn't even include Max Bentley, Bill Cowley or Elmer Lach, all of whom played partial seasons in 1941-42 and finished in the top 10 in scoring in 1942-43.
In 1943 the NHL had already lost 1/3rd of its players including 13 former or future postseason All Stars, 8 HHOFers, and 3 starting goaltenders.
The missing included:
- Tom Anderson, the reigning Hart winner
- Milt Schmidt, who had previously been a 1AS with a 4th place Hart finish
- Neil Colville, who had twice been a 2AS with a 4th place Hart finish
- Bobby Bauer, who had been 2nd All Star three times
- Woody Dumart, who had been 2nd All Star twice
at left wing
Does this mean we give Bentley absolute zero credit for 1943? No, because the NHL wasn't quite the AHL-level exhibition league that it would be the following season. But we absolutely do have to acknowledge that this was probably the weakest post-consolidation season in history, other than the two immediately following. Statistical marks and postseason recognition earned in that context definitely do need to be taxed for that, recognizing that its unlikely those achievements are replicated in a complete league (particularly if the Bruins powerhouse team stays intact).
To your point, though, an example of a season that deserves near-zero credit is 1944, which erases a 1AS, an assist title, and a Hart nomination from Bentley's record.
Quoting myself from over a year ago just to be clear that I'm not tailoring an argument for the sake of influencing this vote:
Bentley's 1943 and especially 1944 were both inflated. 1943 was a war year.
Even in 1943, the league was already missing e.g. Roy Conacher, Bobby Bauer, Milt Schmidt, Neil Colville, Woody Dumart. In the ebb and flow of careers, at least a couple of those guys were due for big seasons -- especially considering how many of them were stacked together with the Bruins. If nothing else, Syl Apps was running away with the title when he broke his leg mid-season.
Bentley was a good player in the middle of his prime, but he was probably peaked closer to a "natural" 3rd-5th type finish in both of those years. It would have been quite the stroke of luck for all of those missing players to simultaneously have down years AND Apps get hurt just in time for him to finish #1.
