Was Mike Gartner underrated?

[WarriorofTime]

career counting stats are a funny thing (especially considering how much of an effect eras play)

We use counting stats, nearly exclusively for forwards, as an overall hockey community.

Im trying to think of a dman who got in, and has quite a lot of people defending him, who was considered to have peaked at about 10th best in his spike year (this could be seen in Norris votes of course) and spent a good portion of his career considered a top 20, and thats it.

Its actually a little nuts. Or maybe I am.... for a poster who IS into this subforum, i tend to not pay much attention to the HOF...

But, I guess with a dman who is like Gartner or Marleau..... he would just be considered a good, steady dman, and at the end of his long, solid career, he would have between 400-800pts and literally nobody would make a case for him.... but he would have spent as much time being 'top 10' at his job, and been an arguable top 20 (best dman on his team?) for much if his career?

Like, Ohlund, Numminen, Timmonen, Adam Foote.... Letang looks like a bonafide ultra superstar from this perspective.... I guess Lowe is in, already, largely due to 'being a winner' though..... there seems like there must be dozens of these guys who are the 'Gartner of D' but dont have any career stats worth having a conversation about.

A 20th best forward would be about equivalent of a 10th best defensemen, there are twice as many forwards in the lineup as defensemen. So a 20th best defensemen would be more like a 40th best forward. Honestly based on consensus best rankings and how teams structure their salary cap, that's probably a bit generous to defensemen. 33 Forwards, 13 Defensemen, 4 Goalies are in top 50 highest paid players in League right now.

 

[MXD]

career counting stats are a funny thing (especially considering how much of an effect eras play)

We use counting stats, nearly exclusively for forwards, as an overall hockey community.

Im trying to think of a dman who got in, and has quite a lot of people defending him, who was considered to have peaked at about 10th best in his spike year (this could be seen in Norris votes of course) and spent a good portion of his career considered a top 20, and thats it.

Its actually a little nuts. Or maybe I am.... for a poster who IS into this subforum, i tend to not pay much attention to the HOF...

I think he doesn't QUITE meet the requirement as stated, because he didn't make the HHOF and it could be argued that his spike year happened by riding the coattails of a better D-Men (but he also peaked higher than 10th so it's somewhat mitigated), something Gartner never quite did, but like Gartner, he was also arguably never the best player at his position on his own team WHEN PLAYING ON A NOT TERRIBLE TEAM (and I mean forward here, not RW), despite sometimes being the better scorer, while probably hovering around 20th best in the NHL. Was also statistically productive for a long time because he could do one thing really well, that thing being offence.

Meet Matthieu Schneider.

 

[FissionFire]

Garter was a good player but never an impact guy or line driver. He always felt like a Modin/Gagner/Skinner type just more durable/consistent. Never saw him as an all-timer. Nobody was putting out their best defensemen or checkers out there to try and stop him. You weren’t winning a Cup if Gartner was your best or even 2nd best forward. Maybe even 3rd best.

 

[namttebih]

Did not rank.

Interesting

 

[Midnight Judges]

When it goes for Gartner his goals scoring look really good in the era he was in, if Gretzky does not exist, goalscoring from 1980 to 1999 look like this:

Gartner: 708
Lemieux: 613
Messier: 610
Ciccare: 608

Is he viewed differently if he dominated a 20 years window goalscoring by that much ? Gartner goalscoring is maybe very similar to say Crosby-Stamkos career wise.

Gartner still lacks the peak goal scoring of Stamkos by a very large margin and trails Crosby by a significant margin as well.

Stamkos peaked at 68 adjusted goals.
Crosby 56
Gartner 44.

 

[MadLuke]

Yes his peak is a good clean tier below, career total not that far era adjusted would be my guess, 571 from 09 to 2025 being similar ball park than over 700 when Gartner did. Stamkos peak during Ovechkin "downtime" he was the best or second best scorer in the league.

 

[seventieslord]

Interesting

The history of hockey is 140 years long now, and includes many leagues other than the NHL. A top-200 with those parameters is a tough list to crack. The bar for the existing list is Ryan Getzlaf/John Leclair for forwards, and that's a list that has no MacKinnon, Draisaitl, Matthews, Panarin, Marner, Pastrnak or Marchand on it. Assuming those guys are safely in now, that means the bar to clear is now Michel Goulet, a direct contemporary of Anderson's who I think 95%+ of people would agree is better.