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 MUCH 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.

 

[Gerulaitis]

Mike Gartner was terrific goal scorer. He is underrated, though.

I would rank Gartner in the 4th best winger of the 1980s

T1. Makarov and Bossy
3 Krutov
4. Gartner
T5. Shalimov, Kurri, Goulet
T8. Ciccarelli, Khomutov, Anderson

 

[overpass]

Murphy, I'm sure, suffered from the "toughness-fetishism" of the late-80s. He was the classic big-guy on defense who only occasionally threw big checks.

There's no other way to explain how low his stuck had seemingly fallen by 1989. It makes absolutely no sense to me, otherwise. The guy was a Norris finalist in 1987, leading a good NHL team in scoring, PP points, and plus/minus. Then, he was (in my opinion) the best Dman on Team Canada in the finals at the Canada Cup. Then, two years later... he's a tag-along for a Garnter-Ciccarelli trade...?

Were hockey execs really that stupid?

I think that's exactly right. Some coaches and GMs couldn't get past Murphy being a big guy who didn't hit.

I think Murphy was also a player who performed better with better teammates. He really thrived when he played with skilled teammates for coaches who let him do his thing. Starting as a rookie with Bob Berry as his coach and the Triple Crown line up front, then later with the Pens and the Wings for Bob Johnson and Scotty Bowman. Even in the 1987 Canada Cup he was excellent playing with stars.

But then if you sent him out with a bunch of grinders and expected him to lift the team, that wasn't really playing to his strength. I don't know if he could have done what Mark Tinordi did on the 91 North Stars, for example. But Tinordi couldn't have done what Murphy did in Pittsburgh either.

To bring this back to Gartner, I think Gartner was the opposite of Murphy in this way. Not particularly reliant on his centre to score, unlike a lot of other wingers, so he scored with anyone. In his 30s after leaving Washington he got to play with Nicholls, Gilmour, and Sundin. But he did just as well with Sergei Nemchinov.

 

[Gorskyontario]

i think he was pretty close.

There's no proof of this besides canuck fan bias.

 

[vadim sharifijanov]

To bring this back to Gartner, I think Gartner was the opposite of Murphy in this way. Not particularly reliant on his centre to score, unlike a lot of other wingers, so he scored with anyone. In his 30s after leaving Washington he got to play with Nicholls, Gilmour, and Sundin. But he did just as well with Sergei Nemchinov.

in gartner’s best goal scoring season, he was centered by darren turcotte, who i’m not even certain was really a true center at the NHL level.

Bure was first mentioned in the thread by post #30. I know this is HOH, but if you're trying to make a point about something, at least try to be somewhat factual.

not worth your time, señor. semi-related, i had this thread open on my phone and it logged me out and i realized there’s a whole other conversation i haven’t been seeing. and all i can say is, why?

back on topic, i was trying to think of what recent players we could compare gartner to. kessel was too good, imo. but maybe that run of 30 goal years by pacioretty in montreal? gartner’s career was like 18 years of that max pac run. which is incredible and very respectable, but i don’t think it’s legendary.

 

[MXD]

in gartner’s best goal scoring season, he was centered by darren turcotte, who i’m not even certain was really a true center at the NHL level.

Didn't he score 50 with the Capitals while probably playing with... Dave Christian?

 

[vadim sharifijanov]

Didn't he score 50 with the Capitals while probably playing with... Dave Christian?

but his 49 goals in 1991 were good for 5th in the league. by far his highest goal scoring race placement. if he’d scored a hat trick in his last game of the season, which from my memory he could have given the chances he had, he would have finished 2nd.

only 20 assists though. hell of a cy young season.

 

[The Panther]

I think Murphy was also a player who performed better with better teammates. He really thrived when he played with skilled teammates for coaches who let him do his thing. Starting as a rookie with Bob Berry as his coach and the Triple Crown line up front, then later with the Pens and the Wings for Bob Johnson and Scotty Bowman. Even in the 1987 Canada Cup he was excellent playing with stars.

But then if you sent him out with a bunch of grinders and expected him to lift the team, that wasn't really playing to his strength. I don't know if he could have done what Mark Tinordi did on the 91 North Stars, for example. But Tinordi couldn't have done what Murphy did in Pittsburgh either.

Interesting.

You may be right, but I'm not sure simply because I think 1986-87 (Washington) was Murphy's greatest season:
-- 1st in scoring on Capitals (81 points)
-- 1st in ES points and 1st in PP points on Capitals
-- 1st in assists in Capitals
-- 1st in plus/minus on Capitals (+25)
-- 3rd in goals on Capitals (23)

Okay, that's within the Caps, but how did he NHL-wide?:
-- 20th in overall scoring (ahead of Naslund, MacInnis, Anderson)
-- 2nd in Defence scoring (behind only Bourque)
-- 1st in Defence goals (tied with Bourque)
-- 2nd in Defence assists (behind Bourque)

Most notably, along with 1992-93, this was the only season of Murphy's career that he was 3td in Norris voting.

Not to say the '87 Caps were terrible, but there wasn't a lot of high-powered help. The top two scoring forwards had 73 and 52 points, respectively. The club finished 13th (of 21 teams) in offense, with 285 goals.

Compare with 1992-93 in Pittsburgh, the club finished 2nd in offense with 367 goals and had five 90+ point scorers.

________________

P.S. I totally agree about Gartner, however. He seemed to be able to score anywhere, in any situation.

 

[quietbruinfan]

As was noted, not a line driver or assist man, but very much underrated. He never played with a top tier playmaker or a clear cup favorite either.

 

[NordiquesForeva]

If anything he was significantly underrated. Not a player a team would build around (as everyone in the NHL knew at the time), but a bankable, consistent, healthy 35/40+ goal scorer for ~15 years that played an honest, straightforward game and to my recollection was a good locker room guy? Yeah sign me up for that.

 

[sr edler]

back on topic, i was trying to think of what recent players we could compare gartner to. kessel was too good, imo. but maybe that run of 30 goal years by pacioretty in montreal? gartner’s career was like 18 years of that max pac run. which is incredible and very respectable, but i don’t think it’s legendary.

Yeah, the more I look at Gartner's overall production in WSH, the more pedestrian he looks from an all-time scoring perspective. In two seasons there he scores at a Dave Christian pace. In two seasons he's out-paced by Bengt-Åke Gustafsson, a very good player but not an offensive dynamo per se. One season he's neck-to-neck scoring wise with Craig Laughlin and Alan Haworth (I don't even know who these guys are). Even if we disregard the early 80s Maruk years, he doesn't even have the best goal-scoring season on those WSH teams (Carpenter does with 53 goals). In his final year there he doesn't out-pace Ridley and Courtnall. Et cetera.

And, the year he actually do crack 100 points two of his teammates steal all the Hart votes (Langway and Carpenter), which perhaps is a bit similar to Pacioretty in MTL because he was always the 3rd guy there behind Subban and Price.

 

[MadLuke]

Prime Pacioretty doing it for a very long time seem not a bad comparable

2012-2017 Pacioretty was 4th in goals, 2012-2016 was 5th, same for 2013-2017, that around Gartner 6th prime, low assist do not build a team around but can be on your first line and that not a problem player.

Never scored more than 5 goals in the playoff (often 0, never in between) his whole career, but it is not like Gartner have many big playoff run, pedestrian 43 career playoff goals.

Not sure if he make Mike Keenan team Canada too.

 

[WarriorofTime]

How many other players have their career rank in a major category (goals - 8th all time) higher than all but one single season finish (5th, 9th, 9th, 9th, 10th are best finishes).

That would have to be extremely rare and make a clear comparable difficult.

 

[MadLuke]

higher than all but one single season finish

elite long lived defenseman in assists maybe.

Ray bourque is 4th all-time, finished top 3 once (1987), but 4th and 5th at some other point, Messier third all time in assists, finished second once. Messier 9th in goals, one 8th place finish.

 

[vadim sharifijanov]

sure if he make Mike Keenan team Canada too.

this to me is the weirdest thing

keenan ran him out of town, called him an embarrassment and treated him the way he treated eddie olczyk, james patrick, darren turcotte, amonte. but he also chose both gartner and patrick for the 1987 team.

 

[namttebih]

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.

I totally agree. I was going about it from the opposite angle. Anderson was a great player, by but his status was lifted by the company he kept.

I was going to argue that they were on comparable levels.

 

[Gregor Samsa]

Probably a bit underrated here from what I see. There are many different criteria’s to judge a player’s “greatness”. Then there is judging a player’s career versus ability. Mike Gartner had a great career. I don’t think anyone can say otherwise. His longevity and what I suppose in math would be considered the mean, are very high.

 

[Stephen]

The Hall has 437 members, 300 something players I think, 263 that played in the NHL and has yet to have the McDavid-Kucherov-Malkin-Jagr-Ovechkin-Crosby, etc..., the bar of the actual HHOF we have is much lower than top 100 hockey player of all time, it is probably about Top ~330/350 of all time with all the non-eligible yet or waiting but we know they will get in or should be but are soviet or from a forgotten era.

Someone that do not think a 700 goals Gartner should not be in it, would be from the angle we should have a completely different HHOF, not the one we have or it would be underrated him.

Yeah the bar for the real HHOF is not that high and Mike Gartner easily gets in and stays in. If there’s a super elite inner sanctum of the hall, he’s not there.

 

[Gorskyontario]

Yeah, the more I look at Gartner's overall production in WSH, the more pedestrian he looks from an all-time scoring perspective. In two seasons there he scores at a Dave Christian pace. In two seasons he's out-paced by Bengt-Åke Gustafsson, a very good player but not an offensive dynamo per se. One season he's neck-to-neck scoring wise with Craig Laughlin and Alan Haworth (I don't even know who these guys are). Even if we disregard the early 80s Maruk years, he doesn't even have the best goal-scoring season on those WSH teams (Carpenter does with 53 goals). In his final year there he doesn't out-pace Ridley and Courtnall. Et cetera.

And, the year he actually do crack 100 points two of his teammates steal all the Hart votes (Langway and Carpenter), which perhaps is a bit similar to Pacioretty in MTL because he was always the 3rd guy there behind Subban and Price.

None of that is relevant to his consistency in goal scoring.

Gartner has more 40 goal seasons, than Bure has 20 goal seasons for comparison.