Unpopular opinions

[McGuillicuddy]

-Wayne Gretzky's legacy was boosted greatly by the era he played in. If he played today, he'd be an average goal scorer at best (although would still rack up the assists).

You mean league average goal scorer? I don't know what that number is but I'm guessing it's somewhere around 10-15 G for forwards. That's what you think a Gretzky with modern training/equipment/nutrition/medical would contribute?

 

[Hockey Outsider]

My fault. Realized it was a tangent and thought you connecting it to my opinion of giguere.

No worries and welcome!

 

[RegDunlop]

Some benefit from certain eras more than others. A huge amount of goals that he scored in his prime in Edmonton would simply not be goals today. And his goal scoring fell off a cliff when goaltending got better league-wide. I think someone like Ovechkin would be more consistent era to era because no goalie is stopping that one timer.

Really?
Era arguments are bullshit.

How come no one mentions the elimination of two line passes? Perhaps he would've have even more points when he was younger.
Then there's the hooking / holding / interference that is called today that wasn't when he was setting records.
Also 4 on 4 then 3 on 3 in OT. Even OT itself. Check out his stats when playing 4 on 4. The league had to change the rules because of the Oilers.
I could go on and on.

NO ONE knows how any competitor would fare in any other era. My thinking is if the person dominated in his own time, they probably would in any timeframe.

 

[RJMA]

Jagr is absurdly underrated.

For 21 years, only 3 guys won the scoring title: Gretzky x 10, Lemieux x 6, Jagr x 5

Jagr won 4 of his 5 consecutively

For context, it took 16 years following Jagr's last Art Ross for anyone to win consecutive scoring titles, and still no one has matched Jagr's 4 in a row.

Only Gretzky, Lemieux and Howe have more scoring titles. Only Gretzky has more consecutive scoring titles, with 7.

All that without taking into consideration his Olympic gold, 2 Cups, being 2nd all time in points, 4th all time in goals, 5th in assists and currently has the most playoff points all time outside players on the Oilers dynasty.

 

[MadLuke]

Jagr is absurdly underrated.

I think has a goalscorer, at least speaking for myself it was obvious to me I was underrating him, everytime I made anything to compare or look at goals scoring over time, everytime I saw Jagr near the very top I was surprised.
Even after knowing it well, just by relooking at my own table I already seen in the past, surprised again.

Not sure what it is, that he was such a good all-around offensive affair, ridiculous human binary brain that judge 4 second place and no Rocket wins....

96-97
Goals Per Game

1.	Jaromír Jágr • PIT	0.75
2.	Mario Lemieux* • PIT	0.66
3.	Teemu Selänne* • MDA	0.65

99-00
Goals Per Game

1.	Pavel Bure* • FLA	0.78
2.	Jaromír Jágr • PIT	0.67
3.	Paul Kariya* • MDA	0.57

 

[frisco]

The real overdone team in the early 90s' is the Buffalo Sabres, who won... nothing:
-- Pierre Turgeon
-- Dave Andreychuk
-- Phil Housley
-- Dale Hawerchuk
-- Pat Lafontaine
- -Grant Fuhr
-- Dominik Hasek

Mogilny will be in soon, too. (Not to mention Muckler and, someday, Tortorella.)

How about the mid-90's Blues:
--Glenn Anderson
--Grant Fuhr
--Wayne Gretzky
--Dale Hawerchuk
--Phil Housley
--Brett Hull
--Al MacInnis
--Chris Pronger
--Pierre Turgeon

And Keenan, Quenneville, Curtis Joseph, Esa Tikkanen are all future possibilities.

Although, a lot of it was simply they made a lot of trades involving big names.

My Best-Carey

 

[MadLuke]

Some of the same HOFs show up here (Housley / Turgeon / Hawerchuk / Fuhr which probably goes quite inline with the point), one big different is the age of the players, the Sabres were in their youth

 

[CharlestownChiefsESC]

Agreed on the Colorado opinions eventhough they technically lost in the conference finals in 1999 and 2002 you can basically chalk those up to cup losses, all they had to do was win 1 game on home ice. They were stacked in 99 and would have beaten Buffalo. In 2002 the roster wasn't as strong but I still think they beat the Canes.

For as much credit as the Russian 5 get for the Red Wings sucess it was 2 North Americans Larry Murphy and Brendan Shanahan that got them over the hump. They never bring them in they don't win in at least 97.

On to 1 member of those Russian 5 in Fedorov, I think that despite his talent at the nhl level he was overrated and a product of his environment in Detroit. He wanted so badly to be the gut elsewhere and it flat our didn't work.

Gms overrated the surplus of Russians coming over in the early 90s case in point the Rangers kept Sergei Nemchinov over Doug Weight.

Patrick Roy was a better goaltender than Brodeur. The 2 cups in Montreal speak for that.

My last 1 I guess. If the Boston Bruins win game 2 in ot in the 74 finals they beat the Flyers in 7. If the Flyers win Game 6 in ot in 1980 or the offside is called on the disputed Islanders goal the Flyers win the 1980 cup in 7 games.

 

[The Panther]

Age plays a factor, but this much? He went from scoring 70+ in his prime to 30-40 in his early 30s. Mario Lemieux played in the same era and didn't drop like that. I think you're overlooking how much more difficult it became to score off a slapper from the blueline by the time the 90s rolled around.

The hard dividing line in Gretzky's career is September 1991 (the 'Suter'-ing). His back had been injured twice before that (both in early spring 1990), but that third time seemed to trigger something that was permanent.

His prime years are 1979-80 to 1990-91, but more specifically Jan. 1981 to September 1991.

So, yes, his goal-scoring declined a lot after September 1991, but so did every other aspect of his career --- his ability to tilt the ice at ES completely ended, basically; his consistency as an elite producer ended; his ability to pile up points in bunches was largely over; his skating became more limited. In accordance with all of this, his desire to drive to the net and put his body in risky situations (possibly leading to further injury) pretty much ended; he stayed mostly on the perimeter, offensively.

The key point here is that when Gretzky's goal scoring suddenly dried up in mid-1991 and thereafter, it had absolutely nothing to do with goaltending improvements. Goaltending didn't notably improve in the early 1990s, and it certainly didn't improve overnight from 1990-91 to 1991-92.

 

[jigglysquishy]

Gretzky lead the league in goals in 1986-87 at age 26.

He had 30 goals in 38 games in 1987-88 (63 goal pace) before hurting his knee. At the time of injury he was ahead of everyone in the league in goals except Lemieux. He lead the league in EVG.

He slowed down massively afterwards.

He even kept it up a bit to start in 1988-89 (60 goal pace through 32 games) before slowing down (roughly 45 goal pace over back 40).

That knee injury really impacted his acceleration. And his ability to force his way to the net. He had a noticeable decline in even strength goal scoring afterwards.

The 1991 injury is a whole different level. But the late 1987 injury was very impactful too.

 

[Dennis Bonvie]

Agreed on the Colorado opinions eventhough they technically lost in the conference finals in 1999 and 2002 you can basically chalk those up to cup losses, all they had to do was win 1 game on home ice. They were stacked in 99 and would have beaten Buffalo. In 2002 the roster wasn't as strong but I still think they beat the Canes.

For as much credit as the Russian 5 get for the Red Wings sucess it was 2 North Americans Larry Murphy and Brendan Shanahan that got them over the hump. They never bring them in they don't win in at least 97.

On to 1 member of those Russian 5 in Fedorov, I think that despite his talent at the nhl level he was overrated and a product of his environment in Detroit. He wanted so badly to be the gut elsewhere and it flat our didn't work.

Gms overrated the surplus of Russians coming over in the early 90s case in point the Rangers kept Sergei Nemchinov over Doug Weight.

Patrick Roy was a better goaltender than Brodeur. The 2 cups in Montreal speak for that.

My last 1 I guess. If the Boston Bruins win game 2 in ot in the 74 finals they beat the Flyers in 7. If the Flyers win Game 6 in ot in 1980 or the offside is called on the disputed Islanders goal the Flyers win the 1980 cup in 7 games.

Key move in the Rangers winning their only Stanley Cup in modern time.

 

[Nerowoy nora tolad]

The salary cap isnt an actual necessary for the financial health of the NHL. If you adjust for inflation, even the supposedly excessive salary numbers of the 2002 red wings only comes out to 105M vs 80M for most 2023 NHL teams, and 90M+ for top spenders like the leafs and tampa.

Meanwhile in the last 20 years, the level of monetization of every aspect of the game has increased by at least an order of magnitude if not two

Although its obviously legal under modern US and Canadian law, the existence of the cap is still immoral and collusion on salaries by NHL owners should be considered a serious white collar crime the same way it would be treated if Apple, Microsoft, & Google had conspired to fix salaries on top programming talent (they have)

 

[MadLuke]

The salary cap isnt an actual necessary for the financial health of the NHL. If you adjust for inflation, even the supposedly excessive salary numbers of the 2002 red wings only comes out to 105M vs 80M for most 2023 NHL teams, and 90M+ for top spenders like the leafs and tampa.

Which assume a complete stop in the growing of salary (for inflation) without it too.

The 2004 Wings had a 129-130 millions in today dollar types salary mass, Rangers peaked around 130-131.

I feel that you are almost certainly right, it can be, owner just had to control themselve and it can be possible, but it is not uncommon for ownership to be either ultra subsidies by cities or for already rich people pet project and not care about being profitable (they will still re-sales at a gain specially in the low interest loan era), making it hard for those who do.

collusion on salaries by NHL owners

Here the collusion on salaries include the players themselves that colluded for a giant minimum salary in exchange for that maximum, I imagine that from the draft to that level of collusion it does challenge a lot of local-state-national laws, and they get by for being some sort of both special status and paying so extremely well.

If Microsoft-Apple-Google-Facebook-Netflix-Testla-Nvidia would start a draft system, you cannot work for them before turning 35 undrafted, with round pick, with the worst stock growth from last year picking first, etc... that would not go well.

 

[Hockeyville USA]

The Predators win a Cup if Radulov stays in North America with Nashville and keeps his head on straight.

 

[Nerowoy nora tolad]

The Predators win a Cup if Radulov stays in North America with Nashville and keeps his head on straight.

Okay, but what year do they make their cup run?

 

[Hockeyville USA]

Okay, but what year do they make their cup run?

I will say 2011

 

[Midnight Judges]

Really?
Era arguments are bullshit.

How come no one mentions the elimination of two line passes? Perhaps he would've have even more points when he was younger.
Then there's the hooking / holding / interference that is called today that wasn't when he was setting records.
Also 4 on 4 then 3 on 3 in OT. Even OT itself. Check out his stats when playing 4 on 4. The league had to change the rules because of the Oilers.
I could go on and on.

League averages take all that into account. And more.

 

[blogofmike]

He showed that he couldn't adjust when he stopped being an elite goalscorer in the 90s. So yes, there is a precedence for this. To say he would have adjusted is not based on reality. He didn't adjust because he couldn't. I don't think the comparison to Crosby is very good either. Crosby scored 10 more goals at age 35 than Gretzky did. Gretzky's bread and butter got taken away and there was little he could do to compensate. He shot under 10% in the final 5 seasons of his career despite being a low volume shooter. He was lucky people focus on the early part of his career when it was possible to score many goals based on his skillset.

Gretzky was always a playmaker first. This became more pronounced over time, as he shot fewer shots on the powerplay.

As Gretzky also scored 23 goals in 1998 (and we have shot data for 1998), we can compare Crosby's age 35 season to Gretzky's age 37 season.

	Gretzky '98	Crosby '23
PP Goals	6​	9​
PP Shots	46​	68​
PP SH%	13.0%​	13.2%​
Lg. Avg	12.6%​	13.9%​

This is one of the few era comparisons where scoring in Gretzky's day is a goal a game below the the other guy. Gretzky was still a solid finisher, especially for his age. In this same season, Jagr was shooting 10.1% on the powerplay.

But Gretzky was still one of the best passers of all time. That's why his PPP/60 in 1998 is higher than Crosby's in 2023, even though PP goals are more frequent in 2023, and the Rangers had no elite goal scorers.

Can't really fault the approach. During his time with New York, the Rangers were 1st, 5th, and 2nd on the PP, and 1st overall in aggregate, finishing a full percentage point over the 97-99 Avalanche. A 15-76-91 split isn't going to pad his personal goal totals though.

But if you are including the early 90s, Gretzky was solid, until 1991. 33 ES goals was 4th in the NHL, and though it's a 41 goal season, it's more ES goals than Lemieux scored in 1996 (69 goals) or Bure scored in 1994 (60 goals). Gretzky also scored 10 even strength goals in 1993's playoffs. For reference, Lemieux peaked at 8, in 1991.

Also, few people his age were great goal scorers, but Gretzky had some big playoff performances: Oldest NHL Player To Get Playoff A Hat Trick | StatMuse

 

[VanIslander]

Pronger > Lidstrom defines this thread.

Truthfully.

(But the trophies! The emperor's clothes!)

 

[patnyrnyg]

In a league with a hard salary cap, you do not need a draft, limits on rookie deals, or RFA vs UFA designations. Each team will be allowed to spend $88.5MM this year and Macklin Celibrini and any player not under contract for 2024-25 should be able to play for any team willing to offer them a contract.

 

[BigBadBruins7708]

I will say 2011

if they make the Finals that year the Bruins defense + Bergeron shuts them down easily

 

[Hockeyville USA]

if they make the Finals that year the Bruins defense + Bergeron shuts them down easily

Fair. My original point was that I think that the Predators a Cup at some point with a productive, mature, in his prime Radulov. I've rarely seen that point been made by non Predators fans, so it's definitely unpopular.

 

[Dennis Bonvie]

Orr & Howe better than Gretzky & Lemieux.

 

[Michael Farkas]

Orr & Howe better than Gretzky & Lemieux.

Enough value on defensive play to put Harvey and Lidstrom over Bourque for you?

 

[blogofmike]

Enough value on defensive play to put Harvey and Lidstrom over Bourque for you?

Ooh! Another unpopular opinion of mine is that Doug Harvey is overrated around these parts.

Many other defenders bring more to the table offensively, and given the immediate improvement of the Montreal Canadiens after his departure, I'm not sure how much he's got going for him defensively.