Sens Rule
Registered User
- Sep 22, 2005
- 21,251
- 73
And he was so damn good defensively that him winning a Norris over the likes of Potvin, Bourque, Robinson, Coffey(Who scored 96 and 126 points the years Langway won), and he finished runner up for the Hart to gretzky in 1982. He was a great leader, and true competitor. He won those Norris trophies while being a low scorer for a reason. He will go down as one of the greatest defensive defensemen of all time.
You are severely underating one of the greats.
Langway also had a realtively brief career, and shorter prime than many great D-Men. He only played 994 games and only 10 seasons when he was close to a top player. That lowers his rank among all-time players and D-Man.
Of his D peers for their career all these guys were better:
Robinson
Potvin
Bourque
Coffey
Salming
Howe
Savard
Park
Stevens
Chelios
MacInnis
Langway was closer to Lowe, McCrimmon, Wilson for his career than he was to the above peers at D. Langway was stellar for 4 or 5 years. So stellar as a Defensive D-Man that he won Norris trophies and got Hart votes. But he had a short career and a limited time as a top player.
Bob Gainey for example had a much longer career as a top player and even he is massively overrated overall by many.
Gainey and Langway are not top 100 overall players in Hockey. They were great at their roles but not great enough to be the rated top 100 all time. THey are stretching to be in the top 200.