If you want to verify what I'm saying, simply read their respective ATD profiles. It's all in there. I was trying to offer the reader a handy summation, and possibly save a bit of time.
I have mucked with these documents plenty, myself. By all means spend your morning verifying all of it because there is certainly at least some nuance stripped out of a very bare bones summation like "they all starred at various times." I hope every single voter in this project goes and reads those source documents, but I suspect that this will not be the case.
I have read the bios, and I have mucked around with primary sources. They were great players, but so were everyone else who is going to make this list. I think the discussion is the valuable part of these projects, so I'm not interested in hand-waving away potential topics.
As for inducting them all this round, I personally think that it's possible they're all a little overrated for having played together...all but Nighbor, that is. I tend to be skeptical of the Geoffrions and Dennenys of hockey history (to say nothing of the Olmsteads and Shutts) because I know they look better in the light cast by their superior team/linemates.
This is exactly what I've been driving at- I don't think they are bad players, or not deserving of this list. I'm trying to find out if they are overrated a tad. By your own admission here, they may be (Nighbor excluded, of course).
Of the Sens available at this point, I think Denneny clearly does not belong. The wattage on his star power may have been the lowest of any player available this round, scoring exploits be damned. No one seems to have wanted to give Denneny all that much credit for that team's success, and I've always found that concerning.
Yeah, he's the low man for me too.
Gerard is something of a Serge Savard figure for me in terms of what he brought as a defenseman. Not exactly a superstar, imo, but a great player who was a vital cog on great teams.
Same here
Boucher is harder to pin, but I think of him as something like a poor man's Brad Park. Strong skater in his youth, but broken down later after a knee injury, tough hitter, could stickhandle in a phone booth and score with the best of them...story checks out.
That's a comparison I hadn't thought of before, but I agree that it makes sense.
As to why those Sens teams didn't win even more...? Good question, but you know as well as I do that providing a holistic answer to it might fill volumes.
You brought up the same critique about Taylor's teams last round, and people are bringing it up against Stuart, so I think it is a good topic for discussion. Taylor and Stuart didn't have anywhere near the same support as those Sens players, however.
The main reason is probably simply that Frank McGee's career was cut extremely short. Otherwise, he's more firmly in the Hod Stuart vs Tommy Phillips vs Russell Bowie conversation for "best of the pre-WW1 players," right?
Yeah, he had a short senior career. He even sat out a couple games of the seasons he did play, not because of injury, but because he was done. When he played, however, he was probably the best player in the game- he scored at near-Bowie levels, he was physical, forechecked, etc.
I don't punish him too much for the short career (though I understand why people do) because it isn't like he went out because he couldn't hack it anymore, he just had other priorities in life. I can't credit him for that, but I don't have to let it drag his legacy down too much.
I imagine we'll get into him more when he becomes eligible.
Now that I think about it, I had Frank McGee well below Hod Stuart on my submitted list, and now I'm thinking I overly punished McGee for the short career.
I think I had McGee highest on all the lists, and I still had Stuart above him.... but I am also now reconsidering that stance.
That's a fair point, though it's kind of hard to make a case for the Silver Seven players against their positional counterparts.
G - Hutton vs Benedict - Hutton is a HOF'er and no slouch, but I don't know of him being regarded as a towering figure of his generation. According to people who saw them all play, Benedict rivals Vezina and Lehman as the GOAT of the pre-consolidation era (and perhaps the pre-WWII era), which seems to make this pretty open-and-shut.
D- Pulford vs Cleghorn - Cleghorn had nearly unparalleled longevity as a high-impact player, especially for this time period. He very narrowly missed out on the Hart Trophy in 1926, when he was 35 years old which would have set a record that would still not be broken (though tied twice). Also, there were no holes in Cleghorn's game whereas Pulford was notably offense-challenged even among defenseman of this time period. It's fair to say Cleghorn was better at his peak
and had better staying power, so not much of an argument here.
D - Moore vs Gerard or Boucher - I'm open to being corrected, but I don't believe this argument has legs.
C - McGee vs Nighbor -
@TheDevilMadeMe has already made the point a few posts up... McGee only played a handful of senior-level seasons and retired at 23. Nighbor was still a Hart contender at 33. Even if we disregard competition entirely, and assume they had a similar peak, there's really no argument for McGee's total career over Nighbor's total career.
W - Westwick/Smith vs Denneny/Broadbent - This is close enough to perhaps warrant a closer look, though I suspect at least Denneny will be off the board before we see any of the other three. If there's an argument to be made for either of Westwick or Smith as the superior player over Denneny, now would be the time to make it.
This is the best way to make the Silver Seven look as bad as possible. Why are we only doing positional counterparts?
Nighbor was clearly the class of the bunch. Cleghorn in second, sure. But McGee was one of if not the best player in the world for a handful of years (and Ottawa papers had been talking about him in passing for a couple years prior to his joining of the senior team), how does that legacy compare to Gerard's, Denneny's, etc? Instead of those Sens having the best 7 players (as a positional counterpart ranking may suggest), what if we ranked all 14 players 1-14? It's a different result for me, at least.
As far as Westwick and Alf. Smith vs Denneny? I don't know, it strikes me as unlikely. As I've said before, I had all these Sens players ranked highly on my initial list too, and it is only in the last two weeks that I've strongly considered the teammate argument.
If I had to make a case for it, I would start with their longevity- they each started playing in the 1890s, and were among the last of the 1890s players to retire. Alf Smith peaked a little higher, I think, having been called one of the best forwards in Canada in 1896 (or thereabout) and has some good press about covering Phillips against Kenora. He was also called the most unselfish forward in Canada, and apparently did a lot of the work to help Harry Smith score buckets of goals.
I don't mean to be flippant when I say the answer to "Why are their stars not worthy of a top 10 spot?" is "Because their case isn't good enough". But that is pretty much the situation we have here. Even if we penalize the later Sens for being too good as a group (or not good enough in the playoffs? oddly they seem to be getting it from both ends) the fact remains that they were a team comprised, almost to a man, of players with exceptionally high peaks, exceptionally strong longevity, and exceptionally sound and well-rounded skill sets. And if we were ranking coaches, Pete Green would probably be #1 as well. Maybe if they had all played in weak organizations it would have worked out differently for them, but that's not what happened.
If their case isn't good enough, then how did they win as many Cups as the Senators? Weaker era definitely counts for some of it, as I won't pretend that the 1900s were as strong as the 1920s, but are we comfortable in saying the 3rd best player, or 5th best player, or worst player from those Sens is better than the best player from the Silver Seven (who was in the conversation for best in the world)? That's just wild to me, and I think it does a disservice to hockey history to just discard the amateur era like that.
I'd never make the claim that McGee is better than Nighbor or Cleghorn. But some of the other guys? I can see it, and I think these are the conversations we should be having, because even if they don't entirely flip rankings around, we'll get a better sense of why each player is ranked where they are.
EDIT- honestly- and I know it is my fault for bringing up the Silver Seven- but the debate here should be guys like Frederickson over Denneny, or Lehman over Benedict, etc. I brought up the Silver Seven to question why we revere all the members of those Sens teams but don't give the same courtesy to other dynasty teams of the era.
