ATD #11 - Red Fisher Conference Final: Boston Bruins (1) vs. Detroit Red Wings (2)

[Know Your Enemy]

....

There were other good defensive forwards at Nighbor’s time including Jack Walker, Rusty Crawford, and Louis Berlinquette. He was not obviously the best.

Even if we consider Nighbor the best forward of his time defensively, there is still the fact that there were no checking line players or players that devoted their games to shutting down scorers in Nighbor’s time. Nighbor was a top defensive forward from a league of scoring forwards.

 

[seventieslord]

I was referring to 22-23 when he was 30, not the Cup series in '27.

Sorry... the way I see it, he was 7-1-2-3 that year. Not great, not bad. I'm not sure why you want to isolate it like that. They were all playoff games against top pro competition.

His stats look a lot better when you add in league playoff games. I was only referring to Cup series stats earlier.

I'm not sure why would want to do that. These are small sample sizes as it is. Eliminating games for no good reason will only take you further from the truth, not closer.

But reading your post, I don't think Nighbor played more games than any of these players past his prime. Darragh was born in 1890, Walker in 1888, and Pitre in way back in 1883. Heck, Pitre was already 33+ in 25 of those 27 games. Walker played 36 playoff games at 30+, and Darragh is about even with Nighbor playing 16 of those games at 30+. Nighbor played 18 of those games at 30+. Nighbor actually has an advantage over all three of them here in playing less playoff games past his prime. Foyston only played 8 games at 30+ so Nighbor did play more playoff games past his prime than him.

Looking at playoff games 30 and under, he doesn't look to be much better:

Foyston 27-32-6-38
Nighbor 29-15-17-32
Pitre ----
Darragh 14-8-0-8 (his best playoff years came after turning 30)
Walker 14-11-2-13 (several years do not record assists, and he had good years after 30)

Yes, you're right, Walker played a ton after his prime, and Foyston is awesome any way you slice it. Still, Nighbor's prime numbers are better than all but Foyston, are they not?

(BTW, I accidentally omitted walker's WCHL/WHL 8-4-0-4 so his career playoff stats are 46-19-11-30.)

That's fair enough. Do you have the Senators roster/stats from that series by any chance? Who was the C he was shutting down?

It seems that the Sens changed their lineup each game. Here are the players who played forward at all in that series:

Gerard (R1, LW2, R3)
Duford (C1, C2)
Broadbent (RW1, RW2, RW3)
Graham (LW1, LW3)
Darragh (C3)

Nighbor played LW all season but apparently played RW in this series. the Trail says "The outstanding star was Nighbor. He combined both offense and defense and had the senators quite bewildered."

The Sens got smoked. They had 8 goals - In game 1, it was Ross from coverpoint, and Darragh, a RW sub. In game 2, all three were by Broadbent, a RW. In game 3, it was Gerard, the Rover, Darragh, the center, and Graham, the LW.

So half the goals came from the side of the ice furthest from Nighbor. Only one was scored by an actual LW and Nighbor was on the right.

So are these using some method to combine the two leagues' stat boards? Or just from the league Nighbor was playing in? For supposedly the best playmaker of his day those aren't the most impressive finishes. Who are the players finishing above him?

Can you link me this thread?

In a nutshell, yes, that's what it is. I did not just use raw totals to determine this; I judged intuitively who was dominating their league the most, i.e. if Taylor had 22 assists and the next best had 12, but in the NHA, the top 3 had 16, 17, 18, Taylor was clearly more dominant.

As for who beat him, I just don't have the time to do that. i still have my own series arguments to do. But you should not be so concerned with that. Sometimes, yes, I'm sure some nobody beat him out, or he was 4th behind three superstars, with two nobodies right behind him. But the reason those guys are nobodies, is they didn't do it EVERY SINGLE YEAR like Nighbor did.

Goalscoring: http://hfboards.com/showthread.php?t=614595
Playmaking: http://hfboards.com/showthread.php?t=633070"

No not quite, but where is the line drawn? Trihey, Bowie, these guys were the stars of their time, do they belong right up there in the top 50 too? Nighbor was the 4th-6th best player of his time, does the 4th-6th best player from the amateur era belong next to Nighbor on all-time lists?

There is the point that there is such small competition for these top-10s, with just 3-4 teams in the league which are for all intents and purposes one-line teams. With 9-12 forwards, a top-10 just doesn't mean a whole lot. Those are the only players he is competing with, because there are no extra lines. These make a huge difference when you think of what results in other eras would look like if only one of Malkin/Crosby, Beliveau/Richard, Yzerman/Fedorov, etc. were playing. Even if you add the leagues together, placing 10th puts you about just in the top third.

Well yes, I assume that's why they get taken in the 200's and 300's. Or I suppose you could use the same 'Nighbor was the Bobby Clarke of his day' argument to say Jack Walker was the Milt Schmidt of his day and Foyston was the Maurice Richard of his day. So why are they so far back if you believe Nighbor belongs right behind Clarke? I think they go a bit later than they should but not that much. Regardless, there shouldn't be such a huge gap between Nighbor and these two, surely.

Not to completely ignore this, but this is just too much for me at the time, for reasons mentioned above.

best of luck to both participants. This is perhaps my favourite series ever, that didn't include my own team. Unfortunately, I've made myself appear partisan thanks to my great appreciation for Frank Nighbor.

 

[Sturminator]

Does the Trail not also praise the defensive ability of Jack Walker, and his shutting down Newsy Lalonde in the ’17 Cup series? It’s the only bad series Lalonde had, I think it’s debatable Nighbor was better.

In truth, it is highly debatable that Bobby Clarke was the best defensive forward of his time, as a strong case could easily be made for Gainey or Ramsey for that honor. But what's perfectly clear is that Clarke was by far the best 2-way forward of his time, which can also be said of Nighbor.

I'm a little bit shocked by how much work you put into that season-by-season analysis of Nighbor's career. Obviously, this is your first time actually researching this era, so I'm going to take your impressions with a grain of salt. It is a weak effort to discredit Nighbor's offensive value, but it is at least an effort. Regarding your question about the overall value of this era, I think there is strong reason to consider Lalonde / Malone / Taylor / Nighbor / Pitre / Foyston / MacKay / Denneny / etc. as the first true "great generation" of offensive talent. It is not as shallow a pool of players as you seem to be making it out to be.

I have already shown quite convincingly just how close Frank Nighbor's offensive production was to Lalonde's at their respective peaks. No, he was not as good an offensive player as Lalonde, Malone or Taylor, but your attempt to lump Nighbor in with the mass of players far below that level is simply dishonest, and at any rate unconvincing. Bobby Clarke was also almost certainly not as good an offensive player as Taylor/Lalonde/Malone, but does that relegate him to the level of a Bob Gainey? Of course not, because his offense was at a very high level - a notch below the best of his time, but still outstandingly good. The exact same can be said for Nighbor, and you know it.

Regarding a comparison of Nighbor and Kennedy's respective defensive values, the descriptions of their checking are far, far apart. Kennedy is described as "a proud defensive player" (Pelletier) and a guy who "...had the ability to score the important goal, to make the right check at the right time..." (Legends). This is as far as the praise of Kennedy's defensive game goes. He was a solid two-way forward. With Frank Nighbor, the superlatives regarding his defensive game are on another level, entirely, but I'm sure the voters are aware of that. I just wanted to point out that praise for Kennedy's defensive value is actually fairly lukewarm, and is in no way even comparable to Nighbor's. I'm surprised that this even needs to be said, but my opponent seems to want to argue this point.

Novy has a big advantage with 4 Championships, and 6 scoring titles in the Czech league to Martinec’s 1 championship and 0 scoring titles though. But regardless, you’re right that Martinec is the best from a group of Holik, Hlinka, and Novy.

Martinec also beat out greats Holecek, Pospisil and Nedomansky on numerous occasions. Strange that you saw fit to leave those names out. He also beat out at least one (sometimes two) of Kharlamov, Mikhailov and Maltsev (to say nothing of lesser lights Yakushev and Petrov) for IIHF all-star honors for four consecutive years during the mid-70's. You make it sound like Martinec was dominating weak competition, which is clearly not the case.

Regarding Czech league scoring, let's also not forget that Martinec played for a weak Pardubice team that had very little for talent besides Vlad, himself, and in a league that didn't tabulate second assists, which hurts a playmaker like Martinec. We see the same effect in the Soviet league when we compare the scoring and MVP voting records (domestic and international) of Petrov and Kharlamov. If you look only at scoring, Petrov appears to be the better player, and by a wide margin. Yet when you saw them on the ice, there is no question that Kharlamov was far superior, and the voters (both Soviet and international) rewarded Kharlamov for his play far more than Petrov. European MVP voting results from this era (both in IIHF competition and league competition) are for this reason far more reliable as an indicator of a player's success than is raw scoring.

During Peter Stastny's last season in the Czech league (in which he won the Golden Stick), Novy outscored Stastny 36-30-66 to 26-26-52 - a fairly healthy margin of difference, and yet Stastny won the MVP award. Are you trying to suggest that Milan Novy was better than Peter Stastny, as well, or that the rules are somehow different for a comparison of Novy vs. Martinec and Novy vs. Stastny? Like Vladimir Petrov, Milan Novy was clearly good at scoring, but also like Petrov, the people who watched him play (both at home and on international ice) obviously considered him lacking in comparison to the true greats of his era. Vladimir Martinec was clearly the best Czech skater of his generation (leaving Holecek out of the debate), and the hardware only reinforces that point.

 

[Spitfire11]

Yes, you're right, Walker played a ton after his prime, and Foyston is awesome any way you slice it. Still, Nighbor's prime numbers are better than all but Foyston, are they not?

If you go past 30 to take the prime years numbers of the other players you end up with this:

Nighbor 29-15-17-32
Foyston 27-32-6-38
Darragh 30-23-2-25
Walker 42-24-11-35 (no assists recorded for 6 of these games)

It looks like you’re right his ppg totals are best after Foyston, though Darragh’s goal totals are very impressive. Where he places in postseason numbers is right on par with where he places in the regular season over his era.

Pitre is an oddball case as all but two playoff games come when he’s over 33 and would surely be past any prime. His numbers are extremely impressive when you consider his age. He’s a whole decade older than Nighbor when we’re looking at these scoring charts.

It seems that the Sens changed their lineup each game. Here are the players who played forward at all in that series:

Gerard (R1, LW2, R3)
Duford (C1, C2)
Broadbent (RW1, RW2, RW3)
Graham (LW1, LW3)
Darragh (C3)

Nighbor played LW all season but apparently played RW in this series. the Trail says "The outstanding star was Nighbor. He combined both offense and defense and had the senators quite bewildered."

The Sens got smoked. They had 8 goals - In game 1, it was Ross from coverpoint, and Darragh, a RW sub. In game 2, all three were by Broadbent, a RW. In game 3, it was Gerard, the Rover, Darragh, the center, and Graham, the LW.

So half the goals came from the side of the ice furthest from Nighbor. Only one was scored by an actual LW and Nighbor was on the right.

Well it's understandable when the right side has Broadbent/Darragh and the left, some guy named Graham, and Gerard for 1 game. Duford is another no-name at C.

And you can see why the Sens got smoked so badly with that lineup up against a team of Cyclone Taylor, Mickey MacKay, Frank Nighbor, Barney Stanley, Si Griffis, Lloyd Cook, and Hugh Lehman. Just how impressive is this series?

Unfortunately, I've made myself appear partisan thanks to my great appreciation for Frank Nighbor.

Meh don't worry about it. I was aware you’re big fan of his and that it was only a matter of time before you joined in. Your posts helped add a lot to the discussion too. Good luck in your series.

 

[Spitfire11]

Regarding your question about the overall value of this era, I think there is strong reason to consider Lalonde / Malone / Taylor / Nighbor / Pitre / Foyston / MacKay / Denneny / etc. as the first true "great generation" of offensive talent. It is not as shallow a pool of players as you seem to be making it out to be.

No it’s not that shallow, but it’s not exactly as deep as the many future eras either, is it? It’s also tricky to try and place the two leagues together when making rankings/score charts/etc.

I have already shown quite convincingly just how close Frank Nighbor's offensive production was to Lalonde's at their respective peaks. No, he was not as good an offensive player as Lalonde, Malone or Taylor, but your attempt to lump Nighbor in with the mass of players far below that level is simply dishonest, and at any rate unconvincing.

When did I ever try to do such a thing? I clearly stated that he places behind the elite talent of Malone, Taylor, Lalonde, and a head of the Pitre, Darragh, Corb Denneny group. Which is true and exactly where he goes, no? What you showed were points placements which look good when you’re listing off 1st, 3rd, 6th, 8th, 9th, etc. and one of the reasons I looked at his seasons to see what was behind his numbers. It’s not like there’s consistently a group of Lalonde, Malone, Nighbor, then everyone else way behind, either. Nighbor actually places closer to that lesser group than he does to Malone/Lalonde most years. Then there’s the ‘prime years’ factor as well, as Nighbor is significantly younger than these other players during his ‘prime years’ you chose (and this being a good thing for Nighbor as many of the other players are 30+). Then there are the other variables I brought up in the earlier post that factor into his numbers such as teammates, competition, 2 leagues, 1 line teams, etc.

Bobby Clarke was also almost certainly not as good an offensive player as Taylor/Lalonde/Malone, but does that relegate him to the level of a Bob Gainey?

No it doesn’t and when have I ever come close to saying Nighbor’s a Bob Gainey? I don’t see how you could have come under that impression at all, but sorry if I made it sound like that to you. I'm not trying to totally discredit Nighbor's accomplishments. I realize he's one of the greats and it’s nice he’s finally getting his due after being underrated for so long, but I think he's starting to get overrated and what I’ve been objecting to is your belief that he belongs 30-40th on all-time lists, and the certainty with which you’ve been stating he belongs in a Clarke-Nighbor-Schmidt range.

Of course not, because his offense was at a very high level - a notch below the best of his time, but still outstandingly good. The exact same can be said for Nighbor, and you know it.

Yes, but this can be said of many players. Schmidt, Petrov, heck, Datsyuk, Zetterberg too are all just behind the top scorers of their time and bring the intangibles. This doesn’t somehow place them in the same area as Bobby Clarke. Saying “Frank Nighbor is the Bobby Clarke of his era†and using this as logic to place him right behind Bobby Clarke on an all-time list is as frivolous as saying “Frank Foyston is the Maurice Richard of his era†and trying to use it as evidence to place him there (well not quite, but you get the idea). I just don’t see it that way at all.

Martinec also beat out greats Holecek, Pospisil and Nedomansky on numerous occasions. Strange that you saw fit to leave those names out. He also beat out at least one (sometimes two) of Kharlamov, Mikhailov and Maltsev (to say nothing of lesser lights Yakushev and Petrov) for IIHF all-star honors for four consecutive years during the mid-70's. You make it sound like Martinec was dominating weak competition, which is clearly not the case.

I left out Holecek and Pospisil because counting MVPs to determine a forward is better than a D or G is not exactly solid evidence. Is Clarke clearly better than Potvin? As for the WC all-star nods, the only Soviet player he is beating out is Mikhailov (and possibly Maltsev), as those went by position so there’s no use mentioning Petrov, Kharlamov, Yakushev. Comparing to Nedomansky, who also dominated at the WC isn’t clear as Nedomansky won 3 WC all-star nods himself and a best forward award. Every single one of Martinec’s 4 RW all-star placements were won after Nedomansky defected and stopped playing for Czechoslovakia at the WC. 3 of Martinec's 4 Golden Sticks also come after Nedomansky defected. I don’t believe Martinec is clearly better than him, so I left him off that list. There are only those 3 I mentioned earlier that he is clearly better than.


At any rate, it looks like we’re finally at an end with voting on Saturday, and I’ll be gone for over a week out west starting later tomorrow so I doubt I’ll be able to post any more. It’s been a good discussion Sturm.

 

[Sturminator]

I left out Holecek and Pospisil because counting MVPs to determine a forward is better than a D or G is not exactly solid evidence. Is Clarke clearly better than Potvin?

Your seeming ignorance of the fact that Czech voters actually favored defensemen before Martinec's run of Golden Sticks is frustrating. I dislike the feeling that I'm doing all of the research for you. How on earth could you even make an argument like this if you knew that from 68-69 to 71-72, the four seasons before Martinec's first Golden Stick, a defenseman won the award 4 years in a row (Suchy x2, Pospisil x2)? During Martinec's four year run of absolute dominance in the Czech league, the only player who actually beat him for the Golden Stick was Holecek, who also twice finished in 2nd place.

Here's one for you: from 1968-69 through 1975-76 (eight seasons), the only Czech forward to win the Golden Stick was Vladimir Martinec. Somehow, Spit, I think you are profoundly lacking in perspective on the Czech league.

As for the WC all-star nods, the only Soviet player he is beating out is Mikhailov (and possibly Maltsev), as those went by position so there’s no use mentioning Petrov, Kharlamov, Yakushev.

That is unclear, though possible. At times, it appears true, and at times false. Until we have a definitive answer to the position question vis-a-vis 70's IIHF all star nods, it's sort of up in the air. At any rate, I am more than comfortable with Martinec only beating out Mikhailov and/or Maltsev for four straight years.

Comparing to Nedomansky, who also dominated at the WC isn’t clear as Nedomansky won 3 WC all-star nods himself and a best forward award. Every single one of Martinec’s 4 RW all-star placements were won after Nedomansky defected and stopped playing for Czechoslovakia at the WC.

This is false. Martinec and Nedomansky were all-stars together in 1974. Again, Spit, I don't mind honest debate, but you seem to be poorly informed about these Czech players, from claiming Nedomansky is a Slovak, to foisting an NHL bias on Golden Stick voting, to this all-star team business. It is frustrating to debate with someone who is simply mistaken about many points of fact.

 

[Sturminator]

I'm not trying to totally discredit Nighbor's accomplishments. I realize he's one of the greats and it’s nice he’s finally getting his due after being underrated for so long, but I think he's starting to get overrated and what I’ve been objecting to is your belief that he belongs 30-40th on all-time lists, and the certainty with which you’ve been stating he belongs in a Clarke-Nighbor-Schmidt range.

Again, you are suffering from a perspective problem here. Much like you did in your comparison of Goldham and Pronovost, you're making reference to an ATD sacred cow (in this case Bobby Clarke) without really knowing much about his career. After all you now know about Frank Nighbor, if you still think Bobby Clarke's offensive resume is so much better that's probably because you've never taken a critical look at Clarke, himself. When I equated Nighbor's offensive accomplishments to Clarke's long ago, I assumed that the reader was intimately familiar with Clarke's career, although I see that in this case that is not true. I suppose if I want to make this comparison, it was always going to come to this.

Here is Bobby Clarke's complete regular season top-20 scoring resume, with top-10 finishes bolded:

Points: 10th (71-72), 2nd (72-73), 5th (73-74), 6th (74-75), 2nd (75-76), 8th (76-77), 8th (77-78)

Goals: 13th (71-72), 16th (72-73), 12th (73-74)

Assists: 17th (71-72), 3rd (72-73), 10th (73-74), 1st (74-75), 1st (75-76), 6th (76-77), 4th (77-78), 9th (78-79), 8th (79-80), 5th (82-83)

...and now for Frank Nighbor, I'll be as uncharitable to his scoring finishes as possible, and simply multiply his actual placement by two for every season in which he finished in the top-10 in any category (completely ignoring finishes outside of the top-10). This means that in the cases in which Nighbor finished first, he'll have a 2nd place finish recorded on the following list. Here it is:

Points: 8th (12-13), 6th (14-15), 14th (15-16), 2nd (16-17), 18th (17-18), 4th (18-19), 6th (19-20), 10th (20-21), 16th (23-24), 16th (25-26)

Goals: 8th (12-13), 6th (14-15), 14th (15-16), 2nd (16-17), 6th (18-19), 6th (19-20), 10th (20-21), 20th (23-24)

Assists: 12th (14-15), 12th (17-18), 4th (18-19), 2nd (19-20), 4th (20-21), 16th (21-22), 6th (23-24), 2nd (25-26)

*the reader should note that no assist totals are available (to me, at least; I am not an SIHR member) other than PCHA totals (one season for Nighbor - 14-15) before the inaugural NHL season in 1917-18. Nighbor's "scoring" finishes before that time reflect only his goal-scoring. No adjustment has been made to reflect where he would have placed in a modern-style scoring table given that he was clearly the second greatest playmaker of his era behind Taylor.*

They come out quite nearly even. Clarke has one more top-10 scoring season, but Nighbor 4 more in the top-20, and this is using only goal-scoring to calculate Nighbor's points for the better part of his prime years. Nighbor kills Clarke in goals, and probably after correction for the missing data comes fairly close though short of Clarke in assists. This is using very stringent criteria for Nighbor - multiplying all of his finishes by 2 and not adjusting for how badly he was hurt in the points race by the lack of assist totals - and he still comes out with nearly identical offensive value to that of Bobby Clarke.

Now to address questions of competitive quality. The top peak forwards against whom Nighbor competed were:

Lalonde, Malone, Taylor, Foyston, MacKay, Broadbent, Denneny, Pitre, Noble, Darragh, Dye, Cleghorn and Hyland - leaving out the Joliat/Morenz generation against whom Nighbor competed towards the end of his career (including his last assists crown in 25-26). Now, not all of these players were active during every season of Nighbor's career, but most of them were active and at their peaks during Nighbor's prime scoring years. As we've discussed before through the course of ATD#11 (a discussion to which Spit was not a party, though he could have joined in), this is quite a big generation of talent - on an entirely different level from the pre-NHA generation. When discussing top-10 placements, this is in no way a thin universe of scoringline forwards, and I see no reason to devalue scoring achievements from this era once the two-league effect is accounted for (which I do quite brutally for Nighbor by multiplying his scoring finishes by two).

It's not like Bobby Clarke's era was so much stronger. The mid-70's were a lowpoint for the NHL between the O6 and 80's eras, and Bobby Clarke, himself, got outscored during his prime by names like Pete Mahovlich, Tim Young, Terry O'Reilly, Ken Hodge, Wayne Cashman, Vic Hadfield, etc. Does it make Bobby Clarke any less an offensive force because he sometimes fell short of guys who weren't all time greats? No, just like it doesn't make Nighbor any less a scorer because he occasionally got outscored by the Corb Dennenys of hockey. If these guys had been able to do it for as long as Nighbor and Clarke, they'd be all-time greats, as well.

Look at the top-end competition in Nighbor and Clarke's respective eras. Was Lafleur better than Lalonde? The biggest difference in their careers seems to be Lafleur's playoff performances, not his regular season numbers. Esposito vs. Taylor? I'd probably give it to Espo, but it's debatable. Perreault vs. Malone. Again, highly debatable, and I think Malone probably wins this one. Broadbent vs. Lemaire; Foyston vs. Martin; MacKay vs. Ratelle; Dye vs. Shutt; Denneny vs. Barber, etc. Compare the forward talent between the eras, and it doesn't look particularly different unless you're the kind of person who doesn't realize how great a scorer Mickey MacKay was. The high-end forward talent was probably a bit thicker in the 70's than it was in the teens and Bobby Orr was playing, but a non-biased comparison of eras does not show huge differences in the competitive level among the top scorers. There were a lot more players in the 70's, but the top layer of talent doesn't appear to have been particularly superior.

Only an extremely biased and unfair appraisal of Nighbor's scoring credentials can place him much below Clarke in this area, and there is certainly an argument that Nighbor was actually the better scorer (value of goal-scoring vs. playmaking, etc.). Clarke's goal-scoring credentials are quite weak. How would pure playmaker Bobby Clarke have looked in NHA scoring tables that only counted goals? Offensively, Nighbor and Clarke are on the same level, and defensively, they exist in their own special class, which includes only Bobby Clarke and Frank Nighbor. There simply are no other scoring forwards in hockey history whose defensive games approach this level of dominance.

Yes, but this can be said of many players. Schmidt, Petrov, heck, Datsyuk, Zetterberg too are all just behind the top scorers of their time and bring the intangibles. This doesn’t somehow place them in the same area as Bobby Clarke. Saying “Frank Nighbor is the Bobby Clarke of his era” and using this as logic to place him right behind Bobby Clarke on an all-time list is as frivolous as saying “Frank Foyston is the Maurice Richard of his era” and trying to use it as evidence to place him there (well not quite, but you get the idea). I just don’t see it that way at all.

And here we come to your problem. None of these players, including Milt Schmidt, have a defensive value even close to that of Bobby Clarke. Frank Nighbor does. Your unwillingness to even address the topic of Nighbor's defensive value is telling, because you know he's arguably the best of all time. The biggest thing holding Nighbor back from more recognition in the ATD was not his defensive value, on which there is virtually unanimous agreement. The biggest thing keeping Nighbor off of ATD 1st lines and out of the HOH top-50 was a lack of perspective on his scoring feats, due mostly to limited information on NHA scoring and postseason contests during the era. That blind spot has been corrected, and now we know why so many of Nighbor's contemporaries considered him the best player in hockey. Now it makes sense. Now we understand why he got more votes than Lalonde in the "Player of the Half-Century" poll, why he won the 1st Hart trophy in a season in which he placed 8th in points. Frank Nighbor was one of the titans of his era - qualitatively different, but on the same level as Taylor and Lalonde.

 

[seventieslord]

No it’s not that shallow, but it’s not exactly as deep as the many future eras either, is it? It’s also tricky to try and place the two leagues together when making rankings/score charts/etc.

Just to defend my method a bit here:

It never placed two leagues together to the extent of being able to say "Lalonde was 1st, 2nd, 5th, 6th in the NHA so he was 1st, 3rd, 8th, 11th in all of hockey". I don't feel that the conclusions you can draw are that definite. But I would be totally comfortable saying "Lalonde was top-2 once, top-5 twice, top-10 three times, and top-15 a total of four times"

The method that Sturminator used for quick comparison does Nighbor few favours, and it was still quite easy to show he was as good as Bobby Clarke offensively, or better. "Just multiplying his placements by two" is quite similar to what my method approximated, although my way was more intuitive, I'd like to think more accurate, and consequently, took about 100 times as long.

Sturm, I know you don't have NHA assist leaderboards, but I did provide Nighbor's year-by-year assist placements earlier in this thread - feel free to multiply the rankings for 1914, 1916, and 1917 by two and use them in your mini-comparison.