Underrated Superstars

[Doctyl]

I wasn't even born when he was in his prime, but I've always had the impression that Marcel Dionne was under-appreciated despite being a top 5 all-time player.

Just some players in no order


Gretzky
Lemieux
Orr
Howe
Hull
Harvey
Beliveau
Richard
Bourque
Hasek
Roy
Brodeur
Jagr

Not top 5 at all. You just massively overrated him in an underrated superstar thread.

 

[StoneHands]

Most players dont play the whole 60 min. Gotta divide by 20min a night, not 60 min in a game. Shanny spent over a season of his career in the box

If we break it down by 20 minutes, wouldn't that be assuming that he would have been on the ice for every minute he was in the box? For example, if he gets in a fight and serves a 5 minute major, he wouldn't have played all 5 minutes that he served, he would have played about 1:40 of that time(1:40 of a 5 minute penalty translates to 20 minutes a game). You can really only assume he would have played an addition 830 minutes had he never taken a penalty in his career.

Forwards play roughly 20 minutes a night, we'll say.

Brendan Shanahan played 1524 games, which would equal 30,480 minutes.

He scored 1354 points, which is a point every 22.5 minutes.

That's 111 points he missed out on, just on averages.

Not a huge amount considering all players take some penalties in their career, but you also have to consider that being in the box also eliminates a lot of potential PP time - prime stuff for a guy like Shanny.

Shanahan had 2,489 penalty minute in his career. He obviously wouldn't play all of those minutes. If we assume he would have played a third of those minutes which translates to 20 minutes a game, that's 830 minutes of icetime he lost out on. If he scores a point every 22.5 minutes he's on the ice, that's 37 points in 830 minutes. Those 37 points wouldn't make much of a difference and again that's assuming he would have never taken a penalty. Even if he only took 50 PIM each season which is around the average for a player, that would take 16 of those 37 extra points away, so now we're talking about adding 21 points to his total.

Also, coaches are pretty good at getting their players consistent ice time. If Shanny gets in a fight there's a good chance that he will finish the game up around 18-20 minutes. It's not like he normally plays 20 minutes but if he has 5 PIM that game that he's only going to play 15 minutes. They'll find a way to use him at least close to his regular ice time.

Again, if I'm wrong, let me know. I just think the whole PIM thing is blown way out of proportion.

 

[RedWingsForPresident]

Again, unless my math is way off(it totally could be) or I'm not calculating it correctly(again, possible), there's no way he scores another 44 goals in the 41 games he missed due to PIMs.

The 579 PIM more than Messier comes out to 9 games. Again, no chance Shanny scores 38 goals in those 9 games.

I'm not necessarily saying he would have passed Messier in goals or anything, I was just saying only being 38 goals away with double the PIMs is pretty remarkable. If he would have had only 1,500 career PIMs, there could have been a chance

 

[StoneHands]

Again, unless my math is way off(it totally could be) or I'm not calculating it correctly(again, possible), there's no way he scores another 44 goals in the 41 games he missed due to PIMs.

The 579 PIM more than Messier comes out to 9 games. Again, no chance Shanny scores 38 goals in those 9 games.

I'm not necessarily saying he would have passed Messier in goals or anything, I was just saying only being 38 goals away with double the PIMs is pretty remarkable. If he would have had only 1,500 career PIMs, there could have been a chance

No, there would still be no chance at all. If he only had 1,500 PIM that's a little less than 1,000 less PIM. If he plays 1/3 of those 1,000 minutes, that's 333 minutes of additional ice time. He scored around a point for every 22.5 minutes of ice time which equals out to 15 points that he missed out on and going by his career pace, that's 7 goals that he missed out on. Still not close.

Also, there doesn't seem to be a very strong correlation between PIM and missed ice time. For example, I looked through the 2001-2002 season to see how it effected his ice time. Before you question my motive, i didn't choose that season to fit my agenda by any means. I wanted to use the '93-'94 season because it was his highest scoring season and also his highest PIM season but the site I used didn't have TOI for each specific game. I chose '01-'02 because it was an excellent season and his highest Hart finish (9th) so I assumed he was getting a lot of ice time that year.

Anyway, in the second game of the 2001 season Shanny had 19 PIM but still played 20:27. Not only would he not have played all 19 of those minutes he was in the box but he probably wouldn't have played any more at all considering he averaged less than that throughout the season. The next game he had 7 PIM and played 19:21, the game after that he had 4 PIM and played 21:28. The games before and after this 3 game stretch he played 18:51 and 20:35 so he actually had more TOI in the 3 games where he accumulated 30 PIM so it's very unlikely he would have played any more than he did in those games and if he did, it's a negligible amount that wouldn't result in many more points, if any at all. Obviously this isn't the case in every game and some games it did cost him minutes but during that season which is the only season I really looked at, he had 9 games with 5 PIM or more. In those 9 games he played 19 or more minutes in 7 of them.

 

[LetsGoBLUES91]

I still don't think Pronger gets the credit he deserves. One of the best to ever play the position.

 

[rangers91*]

i dont know if he qualifies as a superstar but Robert Lang was a very underrated player imo, for current players its hands down Jason Spezza, guy is a ppg player over his career, very impressive.

 

[StoneHands]

i dont know if he qualifies as a superstar but Robert Lang was a very underrated player imo, for current players its hands down Jason Spezza, guy is a ppg player over his career, very impressive.

Lang was never a superstar IMO but he's definitely an underrated player.

Spezza is underrated for sure and while he's not a superstar anymore, I don't think he ever got the credit he deserved. It might be due to him playing with a local legend in Alfy for so long and at one point you could say he was the 3rd best player on his line. Injuries also havent helped him.