Who was a better player: Vincent Damphousse or Eric Staal?

[Cup or Bust]

Off topic but just looking at Damphousse on hockeydb, the '92 Oilers just look weird. Made it to the 4rd round lead by a25 and under core of Vincent Damphousse, Joe Murphy, Craig Simpson, Bernie Nicholls, and Dave Manson, plus 30 year old Bernie Nichols? Simpson aside none of those guys you'd associate with Edmonton from either the 80's or 90's.

That '92 team was exciting to watch, it's too bad they couldn't have kept that team intact and added to it.

 

[Ace Card Bedard]

I rate them about even.

Both great players, team leaders, can take over games, etc.

 

[Shroud of Orrin]

But this poll is about how good they were as hockey players in general.

Whenever anyone is comparing players close in impact, the irrational usually creeps in. In this case, Staal was a guy I wanted to punch right on the button and Vinny was guy I’d introduce my sister to. I think - lol. At least that was my perception (which may not be fair!).

 

[tarheelhockey]

Essentially, it requires you to get traded between three relatively low-scoring teams, so yes. It's quite obscure.

It also requires a team to consider you expendable despite being their leading scorer. TWICE.

There are certain players like this in the NHL, where having them as your top scorer isn’t really helping you get anywhere. It’s better than being their 3rd scorer or something, but these players are more highly regarded if they go to a better team in a support role.

 

[Albatros]

To Damphousse's credit he did win the cup in year three and one could even argue in good faith that he was the team leader among skaters, even if the margins are inevitably really narrow here.

 

[Mulletman]

Damphousse is really getting underrated here. But I guess most here don't have the hockey knowledge to realize that Damphousse is the last guy to lead a Canadian team to the Stanley cup and the only player to lead all 3 big Canadian teams in scoring. It's a real shame he isn't in the Hall of fame yet!

 

[TheGoldenJet]

Eric Staal, quite comfortably.

 

[Regal]

It also requires a team to consider you expendable despite being their leading scorer. TWICE.

There are certain players like this in the NHL, where having them as your top scorer isn’t really helping you get anywhere. It’s better than being their 3rd scorer or something, but these players are more highly regarded if they go to a better team in a support role.

Edmonton went to the conference finals and Montreal won the cup in those years though. Having him as their top scorer did help them get somewhere.

 

[pandro]

It also requires a team to consider you expendable despite being their leading scorer. TWICE.

There are certain players like this in the NHL, where having them as your top scorer isn’t really helping you get anywhere. It’s better than being their 3rd scorer or something, but these players are more highly regarded if they go to a better team in a support role.

Paul Coffey was traded three times by teams that continued on (Edmonton, Pittsburgh) or started (Detroit) winning without him. And he's considered a top 5 defenseman ever by many.

 

[tarheelhockey]

Edmonton went to the conference finals and Montreal won the cup in those years though. Having him as their top scorer did help them get somewhere.

And, again, they considered him expendable despite being a statistical leader on those teams.

Glen Sather on trading Damphousse: “I wasn’t prepared to get into another situation where we’d have to coddle someone to play on the hockey club. We never really got to the point of me saying, ‘I won’t pay you what you want.’”

Montreal, fair enough, but contextually he was what, actually maybe the 3rd best forward on that team? Kirk Muller (there’s a guy whose peak reputation has been forgotten over the years) was considered the clear cut leader with only a couple fewer points, Guy Carbonneau built a big part of his HOF case during that run, they had a ton of depth in all roles, and of course it was the Patrick Roy show a lot of the time. A bit of the “Ryan O’Reilly as top scorer” approach to winning the Cup which, while not impossible to succeed, is an approach most GMs would avoid.

Paul Coffey was traded three times by teams that continued on (Edmonton, Pittsburgh) or started (Detroit) winning without him. And he's considered a top 5 defenseman ever by many.

And despite having been such a prolific scorer, Coffey absolutely was criticized at the time for being less than his stat line would suggest. He had to do a lot of proving himself and pumping his numbers before the critics stopped accusing him of being a net-negative. Very much like Karlsson today, a player who’s widely viewed as worth less than his stat line suggests.

Still, Coffey wasn’t traded out of Edmonton because he was deemed expendable, he was traded because the franchise was going broke and he wanted literally twice as much money as they could afford.

Same story in Pittsburgh. The team had been sold to a tighter-fisted ownership group who couldn’t afford him. Trading him for futures wasn’t a hockey move, but an accounting move. In combination with Edmonton winning Cups after he left, it definitely did re-open the debate about what Coffey brought to Stanley Cup teams on balance.

That came to a head in Detroit where he was explicitly shunted aside as being a drag on their Cup chances. And that narrative was driven home even more when they beat Coffey’s Flyers in the Finals.

His reputation has improved tremendously in recent years as people forget how much of a critical firestorm seemed to follow Coffey from city to city. There was a period of maybe 5 or so years where he was beyond reproach because the numbers were just so good, but that was bookended by a lot of years where this definitely was a debate.