Unpopular opinions

[Michael Farkas]

The immediate improvement coming off of winning five straight Cups? Or the immediate improvement where Jacques Plante was awarded a rare goalie MVP for his efforts in Harvey's absence (a wire-to-wire Hart win, at that)?

Or the immediate improvement that nearly won Harvey a Hart for his efforts with the Rangers immediately upon joining the team despite being 37...or the fact that he helped drag the Rangers to the playoffs for the first time in years?

And that's before we actually dig in and watch him play...where he spent way too much time babysitting a minor leaguer in Al Langlois...

 

[Mike C]

The immediate improvement coming off of winning five straight Cups? Or the immediate improvement where Jacques Plante was awarded a rare goalie MVP for his efforts in Harvey's absence (a wire-to-wire Hart win, at that)?

Or the immediate improvement that nearly won Harvey a Hart for his efforts with the Rangers immediately upon joining the team despite being 37...or the fact that he helped drag the Rangers to the playoffs for the first time in years?

And that's before we actually dig in and watch him play...where he spent way too much time babysitting a minor leaguer in Al Langlois...

The immediate improvement coming off of winning five straight Cups? Or the immediate improvement where Jacques Plante was awarded a rare goalie MVP for his efforts in Harvey's absence (a wire-to-wire Hart win, at that)?

Or the immediate improvement that nearly won Harvey a Hart for his efforts with the Rangers immediately upon joining the team despite being 37...or the fact that he helped drag the Rangers to the playoffs for the first time in years?

And that's before we actually dig in and watch him play...where he spent way too much time babysitting a minor leaguer in Al Langlois...

Al Langlois. Now THERE'S a guy I forgot ever existed. Good bar trivia answer though. Al is the last gut to wear number 4 for his team before NUMBER FOUR put it on!!


Also the same last name as the guitar player from one of my favorite Canadian Rock and Roll bands of all time. Shout to to Paul Langlois and the Tragically Hip!

Thanks for indulging the off topic foray!

 

[MadLuke]

and given the immediate improvement of the Montreal Canadiens after his departure,

Versus the 58 games Harvey played in 1961 Canadians ?

In the 58 games he played in 1961, the Habs were 38W-13L-7T, .715 pts
In the 12 missed games they went, 3W-6L-3T, .375pts

In 1962 mtl was a .700 teams so almost Harvey level montreal despite Beliveau-Moore-Geoffrion-Richard missing games or having down seasons, but Plante played all the games this time instead of just 40 and that seem to have been a goaltender hot season, the next season they were down to .564

 

[tabness]

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)

Nailed it and just look at the valuations of the franchises over the years/how much they were sold for in the past compared to what they go for now. All that extra money is going for the owners. When I was younger, though even the I recognized owner greed, a part of me blamed kinda the players for the lockout year, cause like why is a guy like Bobby Holik making 9 million and all that. Now that I'm older, I'm solely blaming the owners here (the greed of professional athletes is another secondary matter altogether that simply isn't the problem here).

I guess it is partly our fault as fans of professional sports (aka suckers) we are the fodder for the machine and keep paying into the ridiculously overpriced tickets and merchandise and all that.

Ah well, last game I actually paid for was the third last game at the Joe, now I just go to a game if someone else already got the tickets lol

 

[MadLuke]

Blaming greed for something is a bit like blaming gravity when a plane crash.... (owner will and should be greedy a lot, players will and should be greedy a lot, tv studios and other buyer of their product will as well, average fans will be probably the most of all of them because he is not as rich)

 

[tabness]

It isn't really about greed in itself so much, I'm not talking about going and answering for this disease of the heart on Judgment Day or nothing, "owner greed" wasn't meant to be taken literally. It is about the owners literally forcing a salary cap on the players and causing a lockout, with a false excuses of financial health or league parity or whatever.

As someone in big tech, the big tech analogy by @Nerowoy nora tolad is a good one, and of course big tech never does any of the sleazy stuff like this collusion to keep down employee salaries as blatantly as the NHL owners.

There was a huge surge of players rights and empowerment starting in the nineties with the strengthening of the player's union, salaries being made public, an big influx of superstars and their importance to selling the league (strategy taken from the NBA), NHL becoming more of a global league, the Lindros holdout, a golden age of free agency, and this happened right as hockey was reaching its zenith as compared to other sports in terms of cultural clout. The moves taken by the owners after very cleary are exactly made to ensure that the employees don't enjoy too much of the profits for false attributions of "parity" and whatever.

At the very least the players still have their union, us idiots in big tech refuse to unionize lol, many of the dorks I gotta work with are happy with their stock prices growth and their wack Teslas and their free food and Jamba Juice coupons and don't pay how much we are getting ganked any mind (true story: like a couple months into my job after college, I'm in this meeting with the team leads since PMs get to go these things to have input on "strategy" or whatever and they are trying to come up with ways to encourage using the pre release product, and someone suggests a $10 Jamba Juice coupon, and one of the mid level managers sitting next to me who must be making like $700K a year at least blurts out "I LOVE JAMBA JUICE"... I had to control myself so much from saying "hey partner here's ten bucks you mind not flailing your arms and hitting my elbows and spitting all over the table")

 

[Overrated]

my unpopular opinions

1) Wide rink is much better
2) Two line offside rule should be brought back
3) Salary cap and the draft are destroying the competitive spirit of any game and should be gotten rid of
4) Relegation should be brought in (the hockey kind where the bottom team has to be beaten by the top minor team and not the soccer kind where they relegate automatically)

 

[MadLuke]

It isn't really about greed in itself so much, I'm not talking about going and answering for this disease of the heart on Judgment Day or nothing, "owner greed" wasn't meant to be taken literally. It is about the owners literally forcing a salary cap on the players and causing a lockout, with a false excuses of financial health or league parity or whatever.

Did the player in the history of the nhl ever made more than 57% of the league gross revenues ? The big stars make less than otherwise, but player has a whole, not so sure.

Wonder how many franchise are actually turning an profit (despite the giant subsidies), versus how many were just going on speculation that the value would go up regardless of profit already. I imagine almost none have public number to have a clue. Not even taking account amortizing the acquisition cost, which if interest stay up will become a thing again.

that 500-600 millions franchise cost before the ice need to beat the cost of borrow it... All that to say if the players really make 57% of the gross revenues, they make much more net income than the teams, by a wild amount.

 

[CokenoPepsi]

Jarome Iginla wasn't that great of a leader

 

[blogofmike]

Versus the 58 games Harvey played in 1961 Canadians ?

In the 58 games he played in 1961, the Habs were 38W-13L-7T, .715 pts
In the 12 missed games they went, 3W-6L-3T, .375pts

In 1962 mtl was a .700 teams so almost Harvey level montreal despite Beliveau-Moore-Geoffrion-Richard missing games or having down seasons, but Plante played all the games this time instead of just 40 and that seem to have been a goaltender hot season, the next season they were down to .564

You can credit that to Harvey if you want, but here's a more accurate breakdown of the 1960-61 Habs season.

Mini-Era	Timeline	GP	Record	GAA	SV %	Record w/o Harvey
Wobbly Plante	First 21 games	21	10-7-4	3.29	0.885	/
Hot Charlie	Nov 26 - Dec 31	16	13-2-1	1.94	0.933	1-1-1	5 GF, 6 GA
Medium Charlie	Jan 1 - 18	7	4-2-1	2.29	0.917	2-1-0	12 GF, 5 GA
Cold Charlie	Jan 21 - Feb 5	7	1-4-2	3.86	0.877	0-4-2	12 GF, 23 GA
Recovered Plante	Last 19 games	19	13-4-2	2.26	0.924	/
Recovered Plante	Playoffs	6	2-4	2.33	0.910	/

Harvey doesn't do much to help Wobbly Plante with his wobbly knee.

Hot Charlie is a solid 2.00 without Harvey, in line with how he played when Harvey was out.

Medium Charlie is still solid, with a 1.67 while Harvey is out.

Cold Charlie is a trainwreck, and is still giving up 5 GA against New York in the single game he plays with Harvey.

Looks like Harvey was just lucky enough to miss the Cold Charlie games. The one game he played was a win - a 7-5 win over the Rangers, where Harvey had 0 points, and was a +1.

The Habs finish strong with Recovered Plante.

In the playoffs, Plante is still okay, but the Habs really suffer when Langlois (0 Pts, -4) and Harvey (1 A, -3) are out there.

Here's a good article about the season, that was written when Hodge was still playing well.
HERO'S HUMILIATION IN MONTREAL

----

Was Plante unusually hot in 1962? Or did he just succeed with a lot of people missing? Did Plante regress in 1963? Or was this season a better one to show that Plante missing games affected team GAA.

Here's Harvey's Norris run, plus the seasons you mention.

Season	Other Hab	Plante GAA	Non Hab Leader	Diff
1954​	2.34		1.86​	+0.48​
1955​		2.12​	1.91​	+0.21​
1956​		1.86​	2.10​	-0.24​
1957​		2.00​	2.22​	-0.22​
1958​		2.11​	2.32​	-0.21​
1959​		2.16​	2.72​	-0.56​
1960​		2.54​	2.56​	-0.02​
1961​	2.40​	2.80​	2.50​	-.10 / +0.30​
1962​		2.37​	2.56​	-0.19​
1963​	3.07​	2.49​	2.47​	+0.58 / +0.02​

Hey look! Jacques Plante. Pretty good right? His MVP season seems to be just in line with the majority of Plante seasons in terms of beating the field.

In 1954, Plante was a 1.41 vs McNeil's 2.34, but he doesn't qualify, so he's not in the table.

In 1963 Plante looks to be slowing down, but is still very good. Maniago was less good.

And of course, 1961 is covered above, which to recap:
Plante was bad, independent of Harvey.
Hodge was good, independent of Harvey.
Hodge was bad, independent of Harvey.
Plante was good, independent of Harvey.
Plante was good, in spite of Harvey being bad.

The immediate improvement coming off of winning five straight Cups? Or the immediate improvement where Jacques Plante was awarded a rare goalie MVP for his efforts in Harvey's absence (a wire-to-wire Hart win, at that)?

Or the immediate improvement that nearly won Harvey a Hart for his efforts with the Rangers immediately upon joining the team despite being 37...or the fact that he helped drag the Rangers to the playoffs for the first time in years?

And that's before we actually dig in and watch him play...where he spent way too much time babysitting a minor leaguer in Al Langlois...

Plante played like Plante usually did. He became more valuable, because there were a lot of big names missing in front of him.

Harvey was good. He was better than what he replaced (which in this case is Gadsby, who went to Detroit, which also helped New York sneak past the Wings into the playoffs). But he was easily replaced by fairly competent, but unspectacular defenders in Montreal, Also, more to my general point does this 2nd place Hart finish put his season in the same category as 1990 Ray Bourque?

Watching him play does show that Langlois isn't good, (although that guy on the 2nd pair who can't skate backwards is surprisingly good.) it also shows that he doesn't have the breakout pass of a Potvin/Bourque/Lidstrom. (What's a breakout pass called when it doesn't clear the blue line? Stay-at-home pass?) It also shows that his main job on the PP was making an even shorter pass for Geoffrion.

Going by film, what I've seen also makes it look like maybe Red Kelly should have gotten another Norris or two.

 

[Bear of Bad News]

I’m here for the mini-era names.

 

[Michael Farkas]

What's a breakout pass called when it doesn't clear the blue line?

If it facilitates a zone exit, it's still a breakout pass. This is the progression of centers picking up the puck and carrying it down the ice and kicking it out to winger to shoot. Harvey doesn't have the stretch passes of Bourque, but nor should he. In fact, the game's rules were modified in Harvey's development time to favor shorter passes.

I don't view the distance of the pass to be a driving force behind its impressiveness in hockey. Otherwise, I'd have Artyom Levshunov as my top ranked defenseman...

Harvey's ability to lure in forecheckers and pass around them or through them to facilitate more speed generation for his forwards doesn't always show up on the scoresheet, but it's there. Slava Fetisov picked that up and ran with it later.

I don't know if the whole "easily replaced" thing is there...the immediate fall out from losing Harvey was the longest run of first-round exits for Montreal in the O6 era.

Should that 2nd place Hart count as much as Bourque's 2nd* place Hart? I don't know if we have enough (visual) data to make that conclusion (I mean, that legitimately, I don't know). But it's possible...I certainly wouldn't be in a hurry to dismiss it. He "won" the half-season Hart. Which, in another world, he would have gotten full season credit (look at how people treat the 2013 season, for instance). Cuba launches a rocket at Florida in January of 62 and, bam, we have a defenseman Hart.

I don't know want to go too far down the road on this now, but Red Kelly sometimes does a lot for me - where I think we have him fairly rated. Then sometimes, I think, "Hmmm...I wonder if we have him too high..."

 

[blogofmike]

If it facilitates a zone exit, it's still a breakout pass. This is the progression of centers picking up the puck and carrying it down the ice and kicking it out to winger to shoot. Harvey doesn't have the stretch passes of Bourque, but nor should he. In fact, the game's rules were modified in Harvey's development time to favor shorter passes.

I don't view the distance of the pass to be a driving force behind its impressiveness in hockey. Otherwise, I'd have Artyom Levshunov as my top ranked defenseman...

Harvey's ability to lure in forecheckers and pass around them or through them to facilitate more speed generation for his forwards doesn't always show up on the scoresheet, but it's there. Slava Fetisov picked that up and ran with it later.

I don't know if the whole "easily replaced" thing is there...the immediate fall out from losing Harvey was the longest run of first-round exits for Montreal in the O6 era.

Should that 2nd place Hart count as much as Bourque's 2nd* place Hart? I don't know if we have enough (visual) data to make that conclusion (I mean, that legitimately, I don't know). But it's possible...I certainly wouldn't be in a hurry to dismiss it. He "won" the half-season Hart. Which, in another world, he would have gotten full season credit (look at how people treat the 2013 season, for instance). Cuba launches a rocket at Florida in January of 62 and, bam, we have a defenseman Hart.

I don't know want to go too far down the road on this now, but Red Kelly sometimes does a lot for me - where I think we have him fairly rated. Then sometimes, I think, "Hmmm...I wonder if we have him too high..."

I don't think we can look at 4 first round exits and say that's just because they miss Harvey.

Starting in the 1960s it's a 4-team race for the Cup.

https://www.hockey-reference.com/leagues/NHL_1964.html

When every series goes 7 (it's just 3 because of league size, but still) anyone could have won the Cup.

Montreal won the 1958 and 1959 Cups without facing a winning team (and went 5 series in a row counting the 1st round of 1960).

Here's their playoff results:

Year	Opponent	Opp PTS	Habs PTS	W	L
1950	NYR (4)	67	77	1	4
1951	Toronto (2)	95	65	1	4
1951	Detroit (1)	100	65	4	2
1952	Boston (4)	66	78	4	3
1952	Detroit (1)	100	78	0	4
1953	Chicago (4)	69	75	4	3
1953	Boston (3)	69	75	4	1
1954	Toronto (3)	78	81	4	1
1954	Detroit (1)	88	81	3	4
1955	Toronto (3)	70	93	4	0
1955	Detroit (1)	95	93	3	4
1956	NYR (3)	74	100	4	1
1956	Detroit (2)	76	100	4	1
1957	NYR (4)	66	88	4	1
1957	Boston (3)	80	88	4	1
1958	Detroit (3)	70	96	4	0
1958	Boston (4)	69	96	4	2
1959	Chicago (3)	69	91	4	2
1959	Toronto (4)	65	91	4	1
1960	Chicago (3)	69	92	4	0
1960	Toronto (2)	79	92	4	0
1961	Chicago (3)	75	92	2	4
1962	Chicago (3)	75	98	2	4
1963	Toronto (1)	82	79	1	4
1964	Toronto (3)	78	85	3	4
1965	Toronto (4)	74	83	4	3
1965	Chicago (3)	76	83	4	3
1966	Toronto(3)	79	90	4	0
1966	Detroit (4)	74	90	4	2
1967	NYR (4)	72	77	4	2
1967	Toronto (3)	75	77	2	4

After 1960, Toronto starts being good. After 1961 Chicago is a contender. After 1963 there are no losing teams anymore, because Detroit made the leap with Sawchuk winning the 1st half Hart, and Howe the overall award.

Now I understand this is a 6 team league, but we have posited that perhaps the NHL didn't have all the talent in the world in the early post-war days.

We can see that Toronto's 40s dynasty gets their last Cup in 1951, but after that, Detroit is really the only powerhouse team in the way - and the Wings take a nosedive after 1957.

Then it's a much clearer path for Montreal at that point. There are a few years where their opponents aren't particularly impressive. (There's also some good luck thoughout in that they face a lot of 3 and 4 seeds. 1 and 2 seeds have a habit of falling off before the Finals in this wacky 1v3, 2v4 setup.)

A Norris-winning Doug Harvey is present for the fin de dynasty against the 1961 Chicago Black Hawks. And when he's on the ice, he's not scoring while the Black Hawks are. In a more competitive NHL, the 75 point Hawks are probably more of a challenge than the 80-point 1957 Bruins.

There's not just a Beliveau/Richard duo anymore. Looking at a team's top 2 lines, there Howe/Ullman, Hull/Mikita, Keon/Kelly 1-2 punches.

I know we have this fight about the 70s and 80s, but I'll also go in for the 1960s being a more competitive era with better overall talent.

 

[Michael Farkas]

I don't think we can look at 4 first round exits and say that's just because they miss Harvey.

Yeah, I don't want to do that either. But it's spurred by the "immediate improvement of Montreal after Harvey's departure" sentiment. The "improvement" comment meets an immediate dead end. It's met with an over-simplification of the situation. So, now the cross-roads is whether or not it's worth pursuing or is able to be pursued.

Assuming we have the video, will the claim of the would-have-been 9 (?) time Norris winner having not that great of an impact, despite the immediate half-season Hart win on the worst franchise in NHL history well past retirement age at that point really hold up to the degree that would be necessary to unseat him as the generally-considered number 2ish best d-man of all time?

Whether you're right or wrong about Shaky Charlie and Cold Eggplant or whatever those little mini dishes were haha, is it enough to even question Harvey at all? Or is it just enough to question his retirement-age impact (without going too much further, assumedly)?

And I'm asking that legitimately, because I'll go down the road on virtually anything because of my love for the game...but what's gonna happen, ya know?

This kind of feels like attacking Mario for falling below 2 points per game because he came back to play for a hundred more games with Konstantin Koltsov as a linemate haha - like, does it really matter? Is it really going to impact this player's legacy?

 

[Melrose Munch]

Lindros is better than you think he was
Bettman has been good in some aspects, but bad in others.
The behaviour of those involved in the junior hockey system, and not demographics has led to the sport's decline.

 

[Staniowski]

Lindros is better than you think he was
Bettman has been good in some aspects, but bad in others.
The behaviour of those involved in the junior hockey system, and not demographics has led to the sports decline.

What decline are you referring to?

 

[MadLuke]

probably the participation decline:

https://www.cbc.ca/sports/hockey/youth-hockey-canada-declining-participation-1.7231607

I think the usual suspect that soccer-basketball are so much easier to play in everyway (and why any team sport be better than an other to start with?) make a lot of sense to me, which maybe hockey cost a lot in part because of the involved behavior obviously, not just the nature of ice being complicated to maintain (but that would always be true regardless).

And youth sport decline in general, would have affected hockey regardless (once any other sport get popular, exact same parents and action would have been there):

https://www.cbc.ca/sports/sports-participation-canada-kids-1.3573955

 

[Mike C]

Mine is that all things being equal, gun to head, live or die, one game, pick a goalie.

 

[Nogatco Rd]

I'd rather have the glow puck than the obnoxious labels hovering over players on the power play with their last names on them. Not sure which broadcasts do it but it's incredibly distracting

 

[Mike C]

I'd rather have the glow puck than the obnoxious labels hovering over players on the power play with their last names on them. Not sure which broadcasts do it but it's incredibly distracting

C--None of the above

 

[patnyrnyg]

Another of mine: The Original 6 is completely overblown and this is coming from a fan of an Original 6 team. 1) the league was run like the WWF back in those days. 2) Networks like to play up some huge rivalry amongst all 6 teams and it is non-sense. Yes, Habs-Leafs, Habs-Bruins are great rivalries. BHawks-Wings was at one point. Bruins-Leafs due to the recent play-off series, not the O6 days.

 

[Melrose Munch]

probably the participation decline:

https://www.cbc.ca/sports/hockey/youth-hockey-canada-declining-participation-1.7231607

I think the usual suspect that soccer-basketball are so much easier to play in everyway (and why any team sport be better than an other to start with?) make a lot of sense to me, which maybe hockey cost a lot in part because of the involved behavior obviously, not just the nature of ice being complicated to maintain (but that would always be true regardless).

And youth sport decline in general, would have affected hockey regardless (once any other sport get popular, exact same parents and action would have been there):

https://www.cbc.ca/sports/sports-participation-canada-kids-1.3573955

yes this

What decline are you referring to?

Decline of minor hockey.

 

[JackSlater]

If I stole Bill Simmons' championship belt gimmick for NHL goaltenders I'd have a fair number of unpopular choices. No Dryden, Liut for a few years, Markstrom as the heir to Price etc.

 

[blogofmike]

Yeah, I don't want to do that either. But it's spurred by the "immediate improvement of Montreal after Harvey's departure" sentiment. The "improvement" comment meets an immediate dead end. It's met with an over-simplification of the situation. So, now the cross-roads is whether or not it's worth pursuing or is able to be pursued.

That is an oversimplification, but it's shorthand for what was his actual impact on creating and preventing goals?

I think his offense is overrated, if we're saying Harvey > Bourque, a guy who was his team's best offensive player and/or occasionally their leading scorer.

I don't see a huge impact for Harvey's contribution to the Geoffrion-led powerplay. Yet because of the era, many other defenders were on the bench watching 4 or 5 forwards on the PP.

How'd they do at even strength?

ES Point Leaders, 1955 - 62 (D-men)

While he's winning the Norris, here are the top ES scorers. He's playing with the best collection of forwards and the highest scoring offense in the league in Montreal, and he's pretty far down the list for a winner of 7 Norris Trophies in this span. It makes sense for Kelly and Gadsby to beat him, but how is he behind Horton and Stanley? Chicago was terrible for the first half of this span, and Pilote started late, yet he's 7 ES points back of Harvey in 95 fewer games.

Is it a Montreal thing? Then how does Talbot score 28 ES points, outscoring Harvey's best season, while Harvey's winning the Norris on the pair above him? How is Talbot only 11 ES points back in 53 fewer games? If Harvey is playing on the best offensive team in the league, you'd expect him to outscore Allan Stanley over time, or have at least one season where he matches peak Fern Flaman.

But maybe we're saying no to the offense, and that Harvey's defensive game compensates for that. That claim seems overblown too. Sawchuk shows that teams have a strong impact on goaltending results, but within Montreal's system we also see that goaltending has a large impact on GA counts.

Assuming we have the video, will the claim of the would-have-been 9 (?) time Norris winner having not that great of an impact, despite the immediate half-season Hart win on the worst franchise in NHL history well past retirement age at that point really hold up to the degree that would be necessary to unseat him as the generally-considered number 2ish best d-man of all time?

The last sentence is key. If you want to say he's the #2 defender of all time, I don't care if he's good. I care if he's better than Ray Bourque.

The Half Hart is what it is, but if we go by it then 3 months later, he's 2nd in Hart voting on his team (and to an earlier point, it's harder to say Plante won a "rare goalie MVP" when in 1961 Bower wins a 1st half Hart, Plante wins the 2nd half in 1962, and Sawchuk wins the 1st half in 1963. In this era, high scoring forwards are still undervalued in Hart voting, for a little while longer.)

New York wasn't quite the worst at that point, it was Boston. The Rangers made the playoffs by 4 points, which comes down to maximizing the points from the beatdowns of Boston, going 10-2-2, to Detroit's 8-4-2.

Whether you're right or wrong about Shaky Charlie and Cold Eggplant or whatever those little mini dishes were haha, is it enough to even question Harvey at all? Or is it just enough to question his retirement-age impact (without going too much further, assumedly)?

It's only worth questioning if someone wants to argue the merit of that season, or say hey 7 Norrises is a lot more than 5.

And to his credit, Super Charlie wins a half Hart in 1964. These voters hated the Art Ross winner.

And I'm asking that legitimately, because I'll go down the road on virtually anything because of my love for the game...but what's gonna happen, ya know?

This kind of feels like attacking Mario for falling below 2 points per game because he came back to play for a hundred more games with Konstantin Koltsov as a linemate haha - like, does it really matter? Is it really going to impact this player's legacy?

I'm not saying we should kick the guy out of the Hall of Fame. I'm saying I don't see how he's the #2 defender of all time, when there are guys who seemingly made a bigger impact than Harvey did. For me that's Bourque, but whoever it is competing for your #2 has a good case, be it Lidstrom/Potvin/Shore/Fetisov or even Kelly as an overall player.

And really, it's closer to saying Orr's Norris in 1968 doesn't mean much (Harvey's wins were better than that. They were full seasons.) Or if taken to the extent of reconsidering Kelly, it might be akin to scratching our heads at Ted Kennedy's Hart, or counting what Martin St. Louis did against the Southeast division, or trying to figure out whatever the hell happened to allow Derek Jeter to win five Gold Gloves.

 

[Michael Farkas]

I think his offense is overrated, if we're saying Harvey > Bourque, a guy who was his team's best offensive player and/or occasionally their leading scorer.

Who was doing that on the backline in the O6 era? Was anyone even close? How come no one today plays 40 minutes per game? How come there weren't more 100 point scorers in the 60's? That's not the bar for me.

Also, while we're in the unpopular opinions thread with drive-bys...I think Bourque is a little overrated defensively.

I don't see a huge impact for Harvey's contribution to the Geoffrion-led powerplay. Yet because of the era, many other defenders were on the bench watching 4 or 5 forwards on the PP.

Geoffrion didn't lead ****. He's one of the more overrated players out there. He pounded the puck from distance and all that...but he wasn't the key to anything.

How'd they do at even strength?

ES Point Leaders, 1955 - 62 (D-men)

While he's winning the Norris, here are the top ES scorers. He's playing with the best collection of forwards and the highest scoring offense in the league in Montreal, and he's pretty far down the list for a winner of 7 Norris Trophies in this span. It makes sense for Kelly and Gadsby to beat him, but how is he behind Horton and Stanley? Chicago was terrible for the first half of this span, and Pilote started late, yet he's 7 ES points back of Harvey in 95 fewer games.

Is it a Montreal thing? Then how does Talbot score 28 ES points, outscoring Harvey's best season, while Harvey's winning the Norris on the pair above him? How is Talbot only 11 ES points back in 53 fewer games? If Harvey is playing on the best offensive team in the league, you'd expect him to outscore Allan Stanley over time, or have at least one season where he matches peak Fern Flaman.

But maybe we're saying no to the offense, and that Harvey's defensive game compensates for that. That claim seems overblown too. Sawchuk shows that teams have a strong impact on goaltending results, but within Montreal's system we also see that goaltending has a large impact on GA counts.

It depends on how you divide it up. From 55 to 62, he's this way. From 52 to 63, he's second among d-men. I'm not gonna go crazy over it because of the styles at the time. Weaker center teams, might have to get more from their D. I haven't dug in on it though. Since 2016, Jaccob Slavin is just about top 10 in EVP among d-men...you probably wouldn't expect that, right? But it's also more than Barrie, Klingberg, Orlov, Morrissey, Krug, etc. who are offensive guys...

Maybe Slavin is better offensively than Morrissey or Orlov...maybe...or maybe we gotta take a deeper look at how these stats got compiled after the fact.

The last sentence is key. If you want to say he's the #2 defender of all time, I don't care if he's good. I care if he's better than Ray Bourque.

That's fair.

The Half Hart is what it is, but if we go by it then 3 months later, he's 2nd in Hart voting on his team (and to an earlier point, it's harder to say Plante won a "rare goalie MVP" when in 1961 Bower wins a 1st half Hart, Plante wins the 2nd half in 1962, and Sawchuk wins the 1st half in 1963. In this era, high scoring forwards are still undervalued in Hart voting, for a little while longer.)

New York wasn't quite the worst at that point, it was Boston. The Rangers made the playoffs by 4 points, which comes down to maximizing the points from the beatdowns of Boston, going 10-2-2, to Detroit's 8-4-2.

That may be true. The Rangers are just my default for "worst franchise in NHL history" - it's possible it wasn't totally true yet in 1961, but it's true now haha

It's only worth questioning if someone wants to argue the merit of that season, or say hey 7 Norrises is a lot more than 5.

And to his credit, Super Charlie wins a half Hart in 1964. These voters hated the Art Ross winner.



I'm not saying we should kick the guy out of the Hall of Fame. I'm saying I don't see how he's the #2 defender of all time, when there are guys who seemingly made a bigger impact than Harvey did. For me that's Bourque, but whoever it is competing for your #2 has a good case, be it Lidstrom/Potvin/Shore/Fetisov or even Kelly as an overall player.

And really, it's closer to saying Orr's Norris in 1968 doesn't mean much (Harvey's wins were better than that. They were full seasons.) Or if taken to the extent of reconsidering Kelly, it might be akin to scratching our heads at Ted Kennedy's Hart, or counting what Martin St. Louis did against the Southeast division, or trying to figure out whatever the hell happened to allow Derek Jeter to win five Gold Gloves.

That's all well and good. I don't mind that at all. I think the best thing for that is to get some shift by shift videos produced for these guys. Maybe when we sit there and compare them back to back, we go, "ehhh...ya know, he's great...but #2 great? I'm not sure. I'm not sure that Kelly isn't better than him actually. And hell, Kelly isn't even that much better than Pronovost. Maybe we ought to knock this whole block down a peg."

I'm very open to that notion. I'm just not gonna get there on even strength points from d-men or the GAA of backup goalies...so that's kind of the nature of my question, respectfully, is: "are we really doing this?" haha and I hope this doesn't come off as sarcastic because it's not...but if we're gonna go down this road, let's go all the way and try to make an impact...let's really learn something. Because we can only chop up or re-upholster the statistics so many more ways at this point...