Your Mt.Rushmore of OVERRATED and Mt.Rushmore of UNDERRATED ... all time

[tabness]

Heaven forbid that people discuss things with more rigor than when you were growing up. And on a discussion forum, no less.

Hang on, what exactly makes an emphasis on stats and awards more rigorous in your mind?

 

[Bear of Bad News]

Hang on, what exactly makes an emphasis on stats and awards more rigorous in your mind?

A discussion including statistics (along with other points of view) is more rigorous than the same discussion sans statistics.

And if you think things were magically better in the era where we saw a small fraction of the games that we have available today, where we watched the highlights that networks declared to show us, and numbers were hard to get, then behavioral economics would like a word with you.

 

[JaegerDice]

Yeah I tend to agree.

My comment was timely as Florida allowed the fewest goals in the NHL this season, and actually the correlation of total team defense (measured by goals against) with Stanley Cups over the past 15 or so years seems to be reasonably strong.

Goals against isn't a measure of total team defense, it’s a measure of total team defense plus goaltending.

Shots, chances against are a better measure of total team defense.

 

[tabness]

A discussion including statistics (along with other points of view) is more rigorous than the same discussion sans statistics.

And if you think things were magically better in the era where we saw a small fraction of the games that we have available today, where we watched the highlights that networks declared to show us, and numbers were hard to get, then behavioral economics would like a word with you.

I don't even necessarily disagree that incorporating statistics makes discussions "better" in a various senses (although I'm still unsure how it adds any "rigor" per se unless you're using that in place of "quantifiable" or whatever).

In which case, I'd simply ask for a more charitable reading of what I'm trying to say rather than chirping about "grammar school" or whatever.

I don't think it's any sort of stretch to make a claim that lots of discussions here, including on this very subforum, naively list the stats (or derived things like scoring placements/Vsx what have you) and awards voting and leave it mostly at that even as lip service may be paid to contextual factors.

I can point to the Bossy/Gretzky goal scoring discussion a while back on this very forum, where @overpass made the case that Bossy was a better goal scorer. Now I wasn't with it, and even bought up some points against the thesis (using stats no less and of course my first real active engagement on HF was in the Beyond the Numbers forum after all), but you can just go through and see how by straight reputation or straight surface level stats the case was dismissed outright. Gretzky is Gretzky and 92 goals to 60 whatever and so on. That is exactly the sort of thing I'm sort of bringing up in this topic, no?

I'm well aware of the issues of watching and seeing what you wanna see and memory and so on by the way, it's a big part of my line of work.

 

[Bear of Bad News]

For what it's worth, I'm not the one who said "grammar school".

 

[tabness]

For what it's worth, I'm not the one who said "grammar school".

I know, which is why I gave a fuller response to you

 

[The Panther]

Overrated: Scott Niedermayer, Jari Kurri, Ken Dryden, Justin Williams

Underrated: Brad Park, Mike Gartner, George Hainsworth, Jason Allison

Kurri is a terrible mention here.

The guy scored 71 goals (in 73 games) and almost won the Selke in the same season.

He was a playoff stud.

When he left Edmonton, he was the #1 playoff goal scorer in NHL history.

He was an amazingly good penalty killer.

He was a great passer / playmaker.

He was a 2nd-team All Star without Gretzky (should have been 1st, in my opinion), and a year later was a top contributor to yet another Stanley Cup.

When Gretzky was injured and out in autumn 1992, Kurri stepped in to play center (having never done so before) and scored 46 points in 22 games.

If anything, he's hugely underrated.

 

[MadArcand]

Overrated: Malkin, Lundqvist, Niedermayer, Vernon
Underrated: Worters, Modano, Bergeron, Robitaille

 

[Dennis Bonvie]

As I said, pretty sure the reason I would instinctively say Gretzky back then was popular acclaim (which obviously encompasses both hockey people and media including the awards) as well as stats, and let me tell you, awards and stats are the bread and butter of HF lol

I'm having trouble grasping your point. Getting old and the reading comp gets harder all the time.
If you are saying stats and awards shouldn't be the bread & butter of player analysis (especially for the players in the distant past), what should it be?

 

[Voight]

Overrated - Carey Price.

He was obviously one of the better goalies in the league but Habs fans try to hype him up like hes a top five or ten goalie of all time. Yes, 2015 was a great season but stats wise there's plenty of other goalies who had comparable seasons post lockout. & thanks to a low scoring year, there wasn't really a forward or even defensemen with a strong case for the Hart/Pearson so Price was able to win. Copy & paste his play to the year before or year after 2015 and he doesn't win any MVP award.

As it stands, he was nominated for the Vezina only one other time in his career. Two nominations isn't anything impressive even if he did win of those times.

 

[Michael Farkas]

Copy & paste his play to the year before or year after 2015 and he doesn't win any MVP award.

Highlights the folly of relying too heavily on award voting. Maybe something about proper talent evaluation will follow...

he was nominated for the Vezina only one other time in his career.

Damn.

 

[MXD]

How are players rated in the first place?

I mean, it's a thing to claim Carey Price is overrated, but justifying this by claiming he's overrated because a part of a fanbase that you dislike because they hurt your feefees is ranking Carey Price a Top-10 goalie of all-time probably says more about you than about the perception of Carey Price in the greater hockey world.

I'm not calling Auston Matthews overrated because a non-negligible part of the Leafs fanbase call him equal to McDavid... But then again, that team and that fanbase never hurt my feefees.

I have absolutely no clue as to where Price is ranked in these by the way. My hunch is, he's ranked somewhere between Henrik Lundqvist (who is a tad underrated, I think) and Pekka Rinne (who is ALSO himself a tad underrated, I think), with none of these being Top-10 netminders (though Lundqvist is very close, and I'd be totally ready to listen to an argument to this effect, despite not really agreeing with it). ... And that's pretty much where I'd have him as well.

 

[MadArcand]

My hunch is, he's ranked somewhere between Henrik Lundqvist (who is a tad underrated, I think) and Pekka Rinne (who is ALSO himself a tad underrated, I think), with none of these being Top-10 netminders (though Lundqvist is very close, and I'd be totally ready to listen to an argument to this effect). ... And that's pretty much where I'd have him as well.

And this is why I have Lundqvist as overrated. How can he be anywhere close to top-10 goalies? Hasek, Roy, Plante, Hall, Brodeur, Sawchuk, Dryden, Tretiak, Vezina, Benedict, Gardiner, Durnan, Broda, Belfour. 14 ahead of him on the top-100 project, where he ended up grossly overrated, somehow miraculously ahead of Esposito, Bower, Holecek, his superior contemporary Luongo... hell, is he better than Price? I don't think so.

 

[gretzkyoilers]

Overrated: Jonathan Toews

 

[MXD]

And this is why I have Lundqvist as overrated. How can he be anywhere close to top-10 goalies? Hasek, Roy, Plante, Hall, Brodeur, Sawchuk, Dryden, Tretiak, Vezina, Benedict, Gardiner, Durnan, Broda, Belfour. 14 ahead of him on the top-100 project, where he ended up grossly overrated, somehow miraculously ahead of Esposito, Bower, Holecek, his superior contemporary Luongo... hell, is he better than Price? I don't think so.

I mean, thanks for proving my point about Lundqvist...

 

[MadLuke]

I mean, thanks for proving my point about Lundqvist...

That what make those conversation so strange.

X is overrated
Everyone disagree with you
You are maybe right then, but impossible to know

Y is overrated
People agree with you
Now that people agree with you, you know you are proably wrong, if everyone say Y is overrated, Y cannot really be that overrated, more likely that they became underrated even.

As it stands, he was nominated for the Vezina only one other time in his career. Two nominations isn't anything impressive even if he did win of those times.

Which could be used in the opposite direction, NHL GMs did not overrate him when voting for the vezina and because of that low vezina track record Price is not likely to be overrated by people.

Being a need to have him see claim to be great (made a lot by people that were goaltender themselve), without much hardware-numbers (long stretch of continuous clean one at least) to back it up, that type of player can easily get underrated (Toews for example could risk it, Niedermayer as well)

 

[MadArcand]

I mean, thanks for proving my point about Lundqvist...

I like this idea of mutual point-proving, it leads to Schrödinger's Lundqvist

 

[Soundgarden]

Overrated - Carey Price.

He was obviously one of the better goalies in the league but Habs fans try to hype him up like hes a top five or ten goalie of all time. Yes, 2015 was a great season but stats wise there's plenty of other goalies who had comparable seasons post lockout. & thanks to a low scoring year, there wasn't really a forward or even defensemen with a strong case for the Hart/Pearson so Price was able to win. Copy & paste his play to the year before or year after 2015 and he doesn't win any MVP award.

As it stands, he was nominated for the Vezina only one other time in his career. Two nominations isn't anything impressive even if he did win of those times.

I don't think a lot of people realize how close Rinne was stat wise that same season until he got injured.

 

[M88K]

Overrated is hard there's so many but my top 4-5 would be
Datsyuk, Crosby, Toews, Messier, Lidstrom

Underrated
Zubov, Lindros, Coffey, Jagr

 

[JackSlater]

Overrated - Carey Price.

He was obviously one of the better goalies in the league but Habs fans try to hype him up like hes a top five or ten goalie of all time. Yes, 2015 was a great season but stats wise there's plenty of other goalies who had comparable seasons post lockout. & thanks to a low scoring year, there wasn't really a forward or even defensemen with a strong case for the Hart/Pearson so Price was able to win. Copy & paste his play to the year before or year after 2015 and he doesn't win any MVP award.

As it stands, he was nominated for the Vezina only one other time in his career. Two nominations isn't anything impressive even if he did win of those times.

Eh I think you're comparing Price's trophy case rather than Price the player. Price was an excellent goaltender on some generally crappy teams. I certainly think that playing in Montreal played a role in getting him that Hart but other than that I'd say you mainly highlighted the failure of the Vezina voters and the quality of goaltending stats on the individual level.

Price's trophy case is overrated if you transpose that onto Price's reputation. Not sure that Price is overrated though. Then again, goaltenders are weird and talking about them is weird, but Price is certainly one of the interesting recent cases where a guy's reputation (in Price's case among NHL personnel even) doesn't match the easily accessible measures.

 

[Albatros]

If Price was Czech and played in Nashville or Florida we'd debate whether he has a case against Vokoun (probably not).

 

[Michael Farkas]

In Nashville, he'd have Trotz defense and Mitch Korn...he'd be considered the bar none, slam dunk best goalie of the generation in that situation. He could be Albanian, he could be Hungarian, he could be Australian, he could be an alien...in that situation, it'd launch him into another level of the atmosphere.

 

[MXD]

What's with these posters that are, by their very arguments, basically proving the point they're arguing against?

 

[Garbageyuk]

Overrated?

Scott Niedermayer... I get it he won cups and all the international tournaments but he just not close to a top 10 D like Canadian media like to pump him up (sometimes top 5)

Canadian media? He played for the Devils and the Ducks lol. Besides, he won everywhere he went and pretty much won everything there is to win in juniors, the NHL, and internationally. Incredible career. If anything, he’s underrated.

 

[K Fleur]

Overrated:

90’s hockey, the Save percentage statistic, Mark Messier, Chris Pronger

Underrated:

Star players ability to adapt, goaltenders with strong puck handling/passing skills, Sergei Gonchar, Patrick Elias.