Howe: Best forward ever IMO. Better than Gretz and Mario. Not as good offensively, but the gap between them in the offensive zone is offset by all that Howe brought to a team. Still not as good as Orr, though. Nobody did more at such a high level than Bobby Orr.
On the Schmidt front: I think he's unquestionably top 50 material, and a good case can be made for him in the top 25. (Trust me, pappy did it). Just an incredible two-way player. Very, very similar to Bryan Trottier. Point-per-game seasons in his time were like 120-point seasons in the 80s. A tremendous offensive player who was likely one of the top five defensive forwards voted into the top 100. (Clarke, H. Richard and Keon are the only ones who stand out in Schmidt's class). After the war, he was often the only real offensive threat that the Bruins had.
Dit Clapper was one of my toughest omissions from the top 50. I don't know if there was any player, ever, who did it all like Dit Clapper. The only thing he wasn't great at was face-offs. And that's because he was a winger. He could be a scoring winger. He could be an offensive defenceman. He could be a defensive stalward as a winger or a defenceman. He hit. He was a great leader. He was a tremendous competitor. He was an excellent fighter, but nobody wanted to challenge him. There's never been another one like him. There might never be another one like him. Everything you could ever want in a player, he brought it.
I would say that Shore was the better player than Morenz, but Morenz had a greater impact on the game. He's been labelled hockey's first superstar and the Babe Ruth of hockey. After the last great western league folded in 1926, it meant that almost all of the game's best were in the NHL. Morenz became the focal point for the league, it's top draw, it's top star. The Habs weren't a powerhouse before Morenz arrived. Some credit Morenz for saving big league hockey in Montreal. He transcended the game in ways that Shore never did, and few - Gretzky, Orr, Howe, Lemieux, Richard, maybe Hull - ever have.
As for Savard: it's true that his contempories, like any other defenceman, can't be evaluated based on stats. But with Savard, it goes to another level. There isn't a stat to measure what Savard does so well. The PP ice time is a factor, although I'd have Lapointe on the point for the PP than Savard, too. But I'd take Savard five-on-five or on the penalty kill. I'd love to have him on the ice for every single minute that he was lined up against the opponent's top line. One of the best defensive defencemen of all-time. And one of the best playoff performer defencemen of all-time. Love that Conn Smythe. His offence rose in the playoffs, while not taking away from his leadership or his contributions in his own zone.
I think Thornton's on to something when he talks about Langway getting that extra prominence, not normally reserved for defensive defencemen, because of his impact on the Washington franchise. Would he have received the same notoriety if he would have starred in Montreal or the Islanders or the Bruins, or if he was in hockey obscurity in LA in the early 80s? Probably not. But his arrival (along with that of Bryan Murray the year before) resulted in a dramatic reversal of fortune (at least in the regular season) for an organization that had never won more than 27 games, so people stood up and took notice.
