What is the "of all people" part of that sentence supposed to mean? Nighbor is better than Schmidt, and easily better than Lach and Abel. I don't understand why you even included Jean Beliveau in this list; Beliveau's 1st full season in the NHL came during Kennedy's last. Beliveau belongs to a later generation. Suggesting that Kennedy made his defensive reputation checking Jean Beliveau is...inaccurate, to put it nicely.
You’re wrong about Beliveau and Kennedy only playing one season in the NHL against each other. They were in the league together for 3 full seasons (including both Kennedy’s ‘55 and Beliveau’s ’56 Hart trophy winning seasons) and parts of a 4th season. And besides the fact it’s very debatable whether Nighbor was better than those other players, the argument you originally made was for skating ability. To say Nighbor was a much better skater than those players is not clear at all. Kennedy was able to play against them among others and still excel despite his skating, so how is Nighbor going to take advantage of it? I don’t see it happening.
This is a non-argument. If anyone still voting gives a damn about the 1st round HOH results or THN (for the love of god), I would be very surprised. The bottom line is that Frank Nighbor is better than Ted Kennedy in all zones of the ice. I've already shown that over his 7 year offensive peak (which doesn't even include his Hart trophy), Nighbor was on roughly the same offensive level as Lalonde, and his two best seasons had him finishing 1st and 2nd. Kennedy was a top-10 scorer four times in his career, and peaked at 4th overall. Both in terms of peak and career offensive value, Nighbor beats Kennedy easily. Comparing their defensive reputations is not fair to Kennedy, who was known as a good checking forward, but in no way belongs in a discussion of the best of all time. Nighbor has two great Cup runs (statistically) to Kennedy's three, and both men skated for 5 Cup winners. What is Kennedy's advantage here, exactly? Frank Nighbor is unequivocably the better player.
Kennedy’s biggest advantage over Nighbor is his record of stepping up to be “the guy” in big playoff series’.
Of Kennedy’s 5 Stanley Cup wins, there are 2 in which he was undoubtedly the best player for his team (’47, ’48), 1 in which he was undoubtedly the best skater for his team (McCool could be considered for MVP in ’45, although it’s likely still Kennedy), and 2 other very good ones where he led his team in scoring and was likely the best skater (’49 – Broda MVP) and finished 3rd in team scoring (’51).
Nighbor’s ’15 Cup series was very good, but the entire Millionaires team fired away on Ottawa outscoring them 26-8, and Cyclone Taylor was probably the best player in that series with 8 goals and 10 points. An argument could be made that Nighbor was the best player, it’s certainly possible, but that Cup win was a cakewalk and there were plenty of great performances on his team including Barney Stanley and Mickey MacKay. I guess if you could show he factored in some of the more important goals in that series, I’d accept this one as a top performance, but it looks very debatable.
1920 was the only other good showing Nighbor had in his 5 Cup wins. But again, it looks like he came up 2nd to Darragh who had all 3 game winning goals and a hattrick in the deciding 5th game. On defense Ottawa had Gerard, Cleghorn, and Boucher who could have all had MVP performances as well.
In 1921 Nighbor’s performance was a dud as he contributed 1 assist in a hard fought 5 game series. Ottawa scored 12 goals in that series.
1923 Nighbor came up with another dud scoring 2 points in a 6 games series, to go along with his 10 penalty minutes which were probably 5 minors considering it’s the gentlemanly Nighbor. Again his team scored 12 goals.
1927 Nighbor again contributed 2 points in a 6 game series. Although this one looks a bit better as his whole team only scored a total of 7 goals, and Nighbor was over 30, it’s still not a great showing.
Nighbor did not consistently step up in the Cup series/playoffs, and is well behind Kennedy in this aspect. Nighbor’s very best playoff performance likely rates somewhere between Kennedy’s 4th and 5th best. So when a game in this series is tied towards the end of the 3rd, I believe there would be a much better chance Kennedy would be scoring that key goal on Fuhr, than Nighbor putting one by Hasek.
You mentioned Nighbor’s top-10 scoring finishes but looking at his numbers in the NHL (I don’t have NHA stats) from 1917-1924 with just 4 teams (and two years only 3 teams) and 9 skaters per team there are only 27-36 players in the league. So really how impressive is a top-10 finish out of 36 players? Plus the NHL at that time was lacking a lot of the top talent that was playing in the PCHA and the Western Leagues. There were also 3 of those seasons when Nighbor wasn’t even among the top-10 in scoring in that 36 player league. Playing on the forward line of one of the 4 (or 3) teams gave Nighbor an extremely good chance to finish in the top-10 year after year. As soon as more teams started joining the league (1924-25), Nighbor disappeared from the top-10 scoring charts, although age definitely played a factor here.
It was much harder to consistently finish top 10 in scoring in Kennedy’s time when there was more competition in scoring and ice time had to be shared with 3 lines. In Kennedy’s case, with lines centered by Syl Apps and Max Bentley.
I don’t want to start another long era debate but you guys are pointing to Nighbor being the 3rd best player offensively of his time, and using this as evidence for him being a better player. So Nighbor was the 3rd or 4th (as I believe a case could be made for Denneny) best forward in a league that contained 20 forwards, and was lacking talent from the PCHA and Western Leagues. Kennedy was somewhere in the 5th-10th best forward during his time in a league that had the best 54 forwards in all of NA and included the likes of Howe, Richard, Lindsay. That’s a significant difference in competition, and another factor that leads me to view Kennedy (and Schmidt, Lach, etc.) as better players than Nighbor.
As far as defensive ability, how can you really conclude who was better? Ultimate Hockey’s retro Selkes is a very poor measuring stick, and Nighbor’s reputation seems to come from his poke check. You’ve read that they were both very good so how can you reasonably conclude that one was better than the other? There were other good defensive forwards at Nighbor’s time including Jack Walker, Rusty Crawford, and Louis Berlinquette. He was not obviously the best. On a somewhat related note, Kennedy’s faceoff abilities would probably come in handy quite often throughout the series, and I believe he was clearly a better leader than Nighbor as well.
Another telling example of Kennedy’s extreme importance and his value as a player is that the Leafs won Stanley Cups in ’45, ’47, ’48, and ’49, but during the ’46 season when Ted Kennedy was injured and only played 21 games (playing through the injury, no less), the Leafs missed the playoffs entirely. They had a dynasty those years, but without Kennedy they didn’t even reach the playoffs.
seventieslord mentioned something similar about Nighbor getting injured and the Senators missing the playoffs in 1919. I believe he meant 1918, as the Senators made the playoff and lost in 1919 with Nighbor playing. Taking a closer look at 1918, the Senators had the 3rd best record out of 3 teams through the first half of the season going 5-9 in 14 games and the 2nd best record in the 2nd half going 4-4 in 8 games. Nighbor played in the first 10 games of that season. It looks like unless they started the year 5-5, then overall they actually improved their record that season after Nighbor was injured. Either way, it does not look as though losing him had a great effect on their record.
The same argument could be made against Gordie Howe and Wayne Gretzky. As broad, sweeping arguments go, this one is a loser.
Yes I suppose you could, and I’m sure it’s brought up in Lemieux/Gretzky or Hull/Beliveau debates.
It’s a valid point, especially when you’re bringing up top-10 scoring totals comparing Kennedy/Nighbor’s offensive abilities. It’s a lot easier to be in the top-10 scoring playing on lines with the likes of Broadbent, Cyclone Taylor, Cy Denneny, Mickey Mackay, Hooley Smith, and Jack Darragh than on lines with Vic Lynn and Howie Meeker, or Sid Smith and Mackell/Sloan.
Nighbor also had two of the 3 best defensemen of his era playing behind him in Georges Boucher and Eddie Gerard (Cleghorn also played a few seasons with him) helping his point totals while Kennedy was ‘blessed’ with the core of Jim Thomson, Gus Mortson, Barilko, and Boesch. In a very high scoring era Nighbor also had undoubtedly the best goaltender of the time (Benedict) playing behind him many of those years, hindering the stats of scorers on the opposing 3 teams in the league. This would make a significant difference in a 4 team league. Nighbor had every advantage possible in making his offensive numbers look as good as possible.
You're quoting the great hockey mind Kevyn Adams here in a total fluff piece in which a huge laundry list of players are mentioned. Iginla's speed lies mainly in his first step, which is quite good; he's a classic "power skater". In terms of top-end speed, he's nothing special. I have serious doubts about Iginla's ability to check Delvecchio in transition.
Saying Iginla is a bad skater was simply false, so I picked the first google hit I got for “Iginla fast skater” (something like that). If you want to dismiss this one, I’m sure I can find some more sources for you. It’s quite evident that skating is not a weakness for Iginla at all. Delvecchio was a great skater from what I’ve read but I don’t see him being so good as to have an advantage over Iginla.
Your comparison between Goldham and Pronovost is a masterpiece of mangled context. Goldham was fully in his prime when Pronovost was breaking in with the Wings in his early 20's. Pronovost didn't begin peaking until after Goldham retired. Could Bob Goldham move the puck as well as a raw Marcel Pronovost? Sure, but a 22 year old Marcel Pronovost wouldn't be a good 2nd pairing puckmover, either. Actually, I think you put your finger on it exactly when you said "(Goldham's) numbers aren't so bad." Somewhat like my criticism of Leo Boivin as a primary puckmover on a 2nd pairing, it's not so much that Goldham is incompetent offensively, it's that he's far below the mean for his offensive role in an ATD context. Let's see - Goldham tallied 102 assists in the 50's, which places him 14th among defensemen for the decade. OF course, Goldham retired in 55-56, so maybe looking at his average helps...no, not really. He averaged 15.1 assists, which was good for 17th in the decade, and that's not counting Ken Reardon and Carl Brewer, who played only 1 and 2 seasons in the 50's respectively. Bob Goldham was not a high-end offensive defenseman in the real NHL - he is not even close to a high-end 2nd pairing puckmover in an all-time context.
It’s not a mangled context, Goldham was into his 30’s and towards the end of his career while Marcel Pronovost was in his mid 20’s, and the assist numbers Pronovost put up during those seasons were as good as any he had over the course of his career. He actually had his career high in ’55 and his 3rd best season assist-wise in ’53 so your argument to discredit that point is not very good.
And I’m not trying to sell Goldham as a high end puckmover, he’s clearly a defense-first defenseman, but could quite obviously make a forward pass and quite well from his assist numbers, contrary to the problems you foresee he’d have in transition.
Goldham's resume actually compares quite well to that of Jim Neilson. Both have some all star (both once 2nd teamers) and Norris love (Goldham placed 5th once - Neilson placed top-5 twice, at 4th and 5th), and both were competent but not high-end puckmovers. Goldham's top-10 defensemen scoring finishes go: 2nd, 5th, 8th - though it should be noted that the 2nd place finish was in 45-46, which was still a war year in terms of competitive level in the NHL. Neilson's top-10 defensemen scoring finishes go: 4th, 5th, 8th, 8th. Both were very big for the era (6'2" with Neilson at 205 lbs. and Goldham at 195 lbs. - from the best data I've found), could take the body, and were primarily stay-at-home types who scored by outlet passing. There seems to be very little to seperate Goldham and Neilson in general. In the context of this series, Neilson is a secondary puckmover behind one of the best offensive defensemen you're ever likely to find on an ATD 2nd pairing, and Goldham is skating next to...Edward Ivanov.
I suppose the biggest difference would be the 4 Stanley Cups that Goldham won and played a big part in compared to Neilson’s 0. Goldham was one of only 3 defensemen Detroit had to play the entire ’52 Finals. A series where Montreal scored just 2 goals in 4 games.
“That’s the first year I was up for the whole season (’52). We had Bob Goldham, Red Kelly, Leo Reise and Marcel Pronovost on defense. But in the playoffs, Red Kelly got hurt; broke his hand. And Leo Reise got hurt; he had a bad knee or something. So that left just the three of us. Tommy Ivan didn’t put anyone else out there. They dressed Red Kelly, broken hand and all, for three of the four games, but Goldham and I and Pronovost played pretty much the whole Final against Montreal.” –Benny Woit
Everyone remembers the benching of Gordie Drillon in playing a part of Toronto’s comeback from down 0-3 in games to Detroit in the ’45 Stanley Cup Finals, but another important change Hap Day made was benching Bucko McDonald in favour of playing rookie Bob Goldham.
“Goldham looked on in frustration as his teammates lost 3 straight games to the Red Wings…Hap Day made some desperate moves. He benched scoring ace Gordie Drillon and veteran defenseman Bucko McDonald, and called on Goldham…In game 4, Goldham excelled on defense and the Leafs came from behind for a 4-3 victory. The Leafs added rookie Gaye Stewart to the lineup for game 5 and cruised to a 9-3 win, Goldham contributed a goal and an assist. In game 6, Goldham scored a key goal in a 3-0 win and the series was suddenly even. Detroit took a 1-0 lead into the third period of game 7, but Goldham set up another huge goal en route to a 3-1 win as the Leafs engineered the greatest playoff comeback in NHL history.” –Brian McFarland (The Red Wings)
I know how much you dislike teammate/coach comments so I’ll leave those out. I think his results are good enough.
That quote from Joe Pelletier is about the only thing you've got on Ivanov's offensive abilities, right? Of course it is, because there's nothing much more to say. Ivanov had one shining moment as an offensive producer in the 1964 Olympics, but other than that, appears to have been a fairly unspectacular player in an era (early to mid 60's Europe) of weak competition. There just isn't much to say about Ivanov because there isn't much that we know about him. If the voters want to take a leap of faith that this guy can be the puckmover than Bob Goldham is not, that is up to them.
I’m not counting on Ivanov to provide offense, the Goldham-Ivanov pair are meant to stop goals being scored against us first and foremost, and any offense Ivanov provides is a nice bonus and it’s very likely he would. His offensive numbers are actually quite good for a defensive defenseman too. Ivanov scored 40 goals in 300 Soviet league games. Looking at his contemporaries, Ragulin had 63 goals in 427 games, Davydov had 18 goals in 548 games, and Kuzkin had 71 goals in 530 games. I believe those 4 made up the top 4 Soviet defensemen of the time, and Ivanov’s total stacks up well enough. His International numbers stack up even better and place him first in goals per game among those four defensemen.
Ivanov was a top pairing defenseman with Ragulin and the Soviets went 29-1 in the games he played at the WC/Olympics, and won Gold all 4 years. He could be a better puck mover than Goldham or he could be worse, it’s hard to tell, but either way I don’t think he’s a bad one, and puck moving from the 2nd unit D will not be a problem.
As far as Jan Suchy goes, he was far from a one-dimensional player. In addition to puck-rushing, Suchy also revolutionized shot-blocking in the European game, and had a reputation as a great 2-way player. There are lots of quotes about Suchy's all around greatness, but here is a new one: It comes from the 68-69 World Championships page on
this site. For those of you who don't read French, the quote says: "Before the second match (against the USSR), the Czechoslovaks lost Jan Suchy, perhaps the best player of the tournament, who had broken his leg against the Americans." That's right, not only did Suchy win his first Best Defenseman award (and place 10th in tournament scoring) missing part of the tournament with a broken leg, but he was also described as "perhaps the best player of the tournament" (which looks like an understated way of saying that he was the best) in a year in which the top-10 scorers included Firsov, Mikhailov, Holik, Kharlamov, Nedomansky and Maltsev. Jan Suchy did not make his reputation playing Phil Housley hockey.
That says nothing about his play in his own zone, just that he was “perhaps the best player” at a World Championships tournament. I believe you that he wasn’t Housley-esque in his own zone but I also don’t see anything to make me believe he excelled in his own zone either, battling for the puck in the corners or in front of the net, etc.
Suchy’s 1972summit bio also mentions that he was frequently injured from his shotblocking, and your post mentions his broken leg in the tournament. Was he an injury prone player?
You seem to be forgetting Doug Harvey and Bill Cook, as well as Jan Suchy (who scored the opening and game-winning goal against the Soviets in the biggest game in Czechoslovak history) and Vladimir Martinec, who was the undisputed leader of the mid-70's mini-dynasty Czech teams. Ed Sandford actually has a retro Conn-Smythe for what that's worth, and Jim Pappin led the 67 Champion Leafs in scoring by a healthy margin.
I left out Doug Harvey (and Red Kelly) because neither were clearly the best in any one Cup run although they both had years where a would-be Smythe could have gone to them. Bill Cook was never the best player on a Cup winner, as it was quite clearly Frank Boucher in ’28 and Cecil Dillon in ’33. Sandford’s effort was in a losing cause, and I doubt he actually would have won it that year, very debatable, and in ’67 Keon won the Smythe. Even if you cancel out Simpson and Pappin, that still leaves us with Kennedy, Barry, Watson, Walker, and Foyston to perhaps Nighbor.
Apropos nothing, your description of Pappin as "a plugger" is also quite weak. Pappin's top-20 goals finishes go 6th, 14th, 15th, 16th - making him very nearly as good a goal-scorer as Ron Ellis, who I made a point of praising in my last post.
That wasn’t meant as a slight to either player sorry if it sounds like it, I was describing their style of play which does not seem to compliment Irvin at all if you’re expecting him to be a point producer which you were mentioning in your original post.
Regarding Vlad Martinec, his results speak for themselves. Here is Martinec's Czech league MVP voting record:
1st (72-73), 1st (74-75), 1st (75-76), 1st (78-79), 3rd (73-74), 4th (76-77), 5th (79-80), 6th (80-81)
The names of the players against whom Martinec competed for these honors include: Vaclav Nedomansky (for the first few years), Jiri Holecek (his toughest competition), Jiri Holik, Ivan Hlinka, Frantisek Pospisil and Peter Stastny (briefly), among others. Martinec utterly dominated a quality Czechoslovak league during his prime, and backed that up with a run of 4 consecutive IIHF all-star nods (competing against the Soviet Army line, among others) and a Best Forward award in 1976 in which he crushed the field. He was the undisputed leader of the Czechoslovak national team that won back to back world championships in 76 and 77 at the height of Soviet power.
Martinec was chosen in a recent poll in the Czech Republic as the 3rd greatest Czech player in history, behind (predictably) Jagr and Hasek. Jan Suchy was chosen as the 4th best. You can read about it
here. Any way you slice it, Martinec's career stands up very well against his European contemporaries. There is a very good argument that he was better than Nedomansky (the Czechs seem to think so), Yakushev and Petrov, and not far below the likes of Maltsev, Mikhailov and Kharlamov. Martinec was the greatest Czech player of his generation almost without a doubt, and the single opponent that the Soviets feared and hated the most.
I'm not going to make a direct comparison between Martinec and Foyston (whose reputation around here is in some ways the product of my own research), at least in part not to waste my time with Spit's strange ad-hominem ramblings about Frank Nighbor and Milan Novy, but mostly because Vladimir Martinec's career stands up well enough on its own, without the need for any kind of comparisons. I think the players are on roughly the same level (and played mostly the same style of game, as well), but that is simply an instinct based on my overall understanding of the history of hockey. When comparing talents from such disparate periods, there is a lot of guesswork involved, and the voters will make up their own minds, at any rate.
All that link says is: “Team of the Century poll published in Friday’s edition of the newspaper Sport. Winger JaromÃr Jágr, the most successful Czech player in the history of the NHL, received the most points in the poll, followed by goaltender Dominik Hašek, winger VladimÃr Martinec and defender Jan Suchý.”
How credible is that? Do you have the actual results from the poll, or who was answering it? Martinec and Suchy could be listed and Nedomansky omitted because Nedomansky is Slovak. I’m guess that is the case as Stastny is not on there either and it appears to be a Czech article/paper. Overall, not very impressive.
I guess what I meant to say with regards to Milan Novy was that he dominated in the Czech league about as much as Martinec and around the same time, with 3 MVPs, and had the same International success as Martinec. Having success in the Czech league and having to beat the 70’s Soviet teams in one or two games at the World Championships is a lot different than winning a 7 game series, and from the PCHA and Cup series’ that Foyston had great success in. But you’re right, this is a tough one to compare and everyone has to decide for themselves. But be honest Sturm, if Foyston and Martinec are both available when you need to pick your 2nd line RW do you really go with Martinec? He’s was no doubt a great player but I don’t think he was at Foyston’s level.
