Why didn't Gainey or Ramsay play centre?

[PistolPete]

I was just looking over old drafts and noticed Gainey and immediately remembered a thread that talked about centres vs wingers and the different responsibilities they had.

It occured to me that two of the top if not the top two defensive forwards in the NHL- Bob Gainey and Craig Ramsay both played on the wing rather than centre.

Any ideas as to why this is? Horrible distribution skills? Not the best skaters

 

[Price is Wright]

Gainey wasn't a good offensive player. Lemaire, Jarvis, and Carbonneau played centre instead.

 

[HansonBro]

Good old Bib

 

[PistolPete]

Good old Bib

Bob's less famous brother.

 

[Coffee]

He didn’t want that ice time. Plain and simple

 

[PistolPete]

Gainey wasn't a good offensive player. Lemaire, Jarvis, and Carbonneau played centre instead.

Jarvis didn't seem to have much in the way of offense either

 

[wetcoast]

Jarvis didn't seem to have much in the way of offense either

He id in junior though, his role was different in the NHL, Gainey just never was as offensive as Jarvis was.

Gainey had the least offense of any of the guys mentioned in this thread.

 

[BHD]

This is funny considering the Selke goes to centres more often than not.

 

[Jag68Sid87]

Positions matter. In the 70s, there were very few LW/RWs, very few LW/Cs, very few multi-position players. If you were a LW, you played LW. If you got traded, you played LW.

When you collected hockey cards, and you saw so and so was a right-winger, you could bet the house that he was playing right wing 95% of the time, if not more.

Another reason why both Gainey and Ramsay became great at their jobs was because of the great right-wingers we had in the NHL in that era. Back then, coaches did not match defensemen with wingers, it was your third-line LW versus my first-line RW, may the best team win.

It was a much much different era.

 

[PistolPete]

This is funny considering the Selke goes to centres more often than not.

Right?

So how is it two of the top defensive players were wingers?

 

[PistolPete]

Positions matter. In the 70s, there were very few LW/RWs, very few LW/Cs, very few multi-position players. If you were a LW, you played LW. If you got traded, you played LW.

When you collected hockey cards, and you saw so and so was a right-winger, you could bet the house that he was playing right wing 95% of the time, if not more.

Another reason why both Gainey and Ramsay became great at their jobs was because of the great right-wingers we had in the NHL in that era. Back then, coaches did not match defensemen with wingers, it was your third-line LW versus my first-line RW, may the best team win.

It was a much much different era.

Didn't Don Cherry start that tactic of matching wingers to defenceman?

 

[MS]

This is funny considering the Selke goes to centres more often than not.

The thing where the Selke goes mostly to Cs started literally the instant the league started recording faceoff stats.

For the first 20+ years the award was given, there was a slight skewing towards C but nothing overwhelming and the top 10 in voting every year saw several wingers. Within 5 years of the faceoff stat being recorded, you couldn't find a winger in the top 10 of Selke voting.

It's a weird thing. As a Canuck fan, Alex Burrows was a better defensive player than Ryan Kesler. But Kesler played C so ... Selke! And Burrows plateaued at 11th despite being the best defensive winger in the sport and basically a Lehtinen-equivalent a decade later.

 

[PistolPete]

The thing where the Selke goes mostly to Cs started literally the instant the league started recording faceoff stats.

For the first 20+ years the award was given, there was a slight skewing towards C but nothing overwhelming and the top 10 in voting every year saw several wingers. Within 5 years of the faceoff stat being recorded, you couldn't find a winger in the top 10 of Selke voting.

It's a weird thing. As a Canuck fan, Alex Burrows was a better defensive player than Ryan Kesler. But Kesler played C so ... Selke! And Burrows plateaued at 11th despite being the best defensive winger in the sport and basically a Lehtinen-equivalent a decade later.

And FOW% isn't even a factor in winning