HOH Top 60 Centers of All Time

[daver]

Best three years
Sakic - 107.6
Malkin - 105.0 (projected)
Malkin - 105.0 (actual)
Yzerman - 101.3

Best five years
Sakic - 101.5
Malkin - 99.6 (projected)
Yzerman - 97.4
Malkin - 95.9 (actual)

For "projected", I'm assuming Malkin finishes 2nd in scoring this year (and earns 100 points under VsX).

Is this consecutive three and five seasons or is it their best three and five seasons added together? Thanks

 

[daver]

Yzerman is a legendary two-way player, and if you're denying it, you are delusional. Everything else is not even remotely what I said or suggested.

Yzerman's Selke in 99/00 got him 8th place in Hart voting. I would say Federov in 93/94 and Bobby Clarke's multiple Harts should be considered legendary, Yzerman's 88/89 season is legendary; his 99/00 season was not.

Considering an 8th place in Hart voting to represent "legendary" 2-way play is, to use your term, "delusional".

 

[K Fleur]

So are you saying that star scorers have possession of the puck at least 50% of the time when they are on the ice?

Because in any traditional sense playing without the puck is part of defensive hockey.

Nope.

 

[daver]

The very best offensive forwards > the very best defensive forwards.

Contribution to team success by offensive production > Contribution to team success by defense

Does this mean that a forward should completely disregard defence especially a centre? Nope, it means that responsible defense is sufficient but a talent like Wayne or Mario could cheat on defense given they likely would compensate for it with production.

That being said, evaluating Malkin vs. Sakic and Yzerman should be based primarily on offensive contribution. A look at Hart and Conn Smythe voting clearly indicates their offensive production was viewed as the best indicator of their value. Ambiguous labeling of what 2-way play is or is not should not change this nor should Selke recognition be taken as gospel that a player was the absolute best defensive forward as opposed to a forward who was great defensively but also had notable offensive production.

Here is how I view their careers listed by importance:

Peak season - Yzerman's 88/89, Sakic's 00/01 and Malkin's 11/12 are all close considering Sakic's lower offensive value was offset with his Selke consideration.

Peak playoff performance - Sakic and Malkin are very close

Best second season - Yzerman's 89/90, Sakic's 95/96 and Malkin's 08/09 are close

Best 3rd season - Malkin's 07/08 is a bit better than the best of Yzerman's and Sakic's other seasons

Best playoff performer - Sakic gets the edge here with Malkin 2nd and Yzerman 3rd

Better prime - Sakic followed closely by Yzerman with Malkin considerably behind even with consideration for missed games

All around play/Leadership - Yzerman and Sakic are very close with Malkin considerably behind

Longevity - Sakic and Yzerman are very close with Sakic maintaining an elite level longer than Yzerman

 

[Staniowski]

I think Eric Lindros was better than Malkin. Should I rank him higher than Malkin, who has obviously achieved far more, based on a fantasy of what Lindros might have achieved if the circumstances had suited him better?

Lindros is a great example.

Well, I guess we can say he played 7 seasons before his major decline began (due to his multiple concussions). In those 7 seasons, he was top 5 in PPG 5 times (that's more than Yzerman in his entire career). Won the Hart, 1st Team, 2nd Team, was a very dominant player throughout this period. He played in 4 best-on-best tournaments, and performed quite well in them.

This seems to be lots of time to judge how good he was. He was 26 when he started his decline, so we probably saw him at his best.

To answer your question, yes, if I thought Lindros was better than Malkin, I would definitely rank Lindros ahead. Why would you do otherwise?

There's no need to fantasize about what Lindros would have achieved in subsequent seasons if he didn't have concussions. We saw 7 seasons of Lindros at or near his best. Why is it difficult to compare that to Malkin's 12 seasons?

The difference between us is that I would rank players according to how good they were - on the ice, playing hockey. But this is not how you rank them, as you've clearly acknowledged.

 

[daver]

Lindros is a great example.

Well, I guess we can say he played 7 seasons before his major decline began (due to his multiple concussions). In those 7 seasons, he was top 5 in PPG 5 times (that's more than Yzerman in his entire career). Won the Hart, 1st Team, 2nd Team, was a very dominant player throughout this period. He played in 4 best-on-best tournaments, and performed quite well in them.

This seems to be lots of time to judge how good he was. He was 26 when he started his decline, so we probably saw him at his best.

To answer your question, yes, if I thought Lindros was better than Malkin, I would definitely rank Lindros ahead. Why would you do otherwise?

There's no need to fantasize about what Lindros would have achieved in subsequent seasons if he didn't have concussions. We saw 7 seasons of Lindros at or near his best. Why is it difficult to compare that to Malkin's 12 seasons?

The difference between us is that I would rank players according to how good they were - on the ice, playing hockey. But this is not how you rank them, as you've clearly acknowledged.

It should be obvious that having talent and what you accomplish with that talent are two different things. A "Top Player" ranking should be weighted towards the latter thus:

Sakic/Yzerman > Malkin >=Forsberg > Lindros

 

[bobholly39]

I mostly bolded for my own reading, as I tend to jump around a little bit, I'm not picking apart those specific sentences as a forewarning. Helps me hit your main points (as I see them, feel free to point out anything I didn't address as I'm not attempting to cherry pick you're argument)

I'll be clear and say I do not have any issue looking at PPG when you're evaluating the players, all other things being equal. My main argument was that you're putting to much weight into it for those specific seasons at least.


PPG vs Point finishes is a pretty clear cut area IMO, because I find final results more impressive than extrapolating numbers. Its like when people argue Lemieux is better than Gretzky overall in my mind, sure when he played there is a definite argument that Lemieux was a better player for one reason or another. The only issue is, Gretzky was at that level for much longer and having a larger body of work (when the comparison is close) does get my credit.

I don't see it as career "value" as much as career impact, though it could be splitting hairs. My main issue that I detract for not only malkin, but all players that lose time to injury often in their career (Lemieux, Orr, Lindros, Forsberg, Malkin, Kariya as some examples compared to their respective peers) is that when they are in the game they are having a larger impact on the game if they scored or not compared to if they were in the press box.

When you're looking at a season by season comparison like your first post, games played is a larger factor considering it is a small sample size to begin with. You only have so many opportunities to make an impact, that if you miss 20 games its a big hamper to your resume (for that particular season). When you go into your example over an entire career, I'm leaning towards agreeing with you (though there are some very limited information) that if it was just based on those two, with the one with more seasons/less games having higher ppg MAY have been better. IF the player that had less games hadn't won awards, and the player with full seasons had then its a different story. My big issue with not only this, but hypotheticals in general, is that its always a case of "what if" and a rabbit whole of statements prefaced as such.

I would definitely say I find it impressive that Malkin does have hardware, but in context of who they played with it holds less weight to me. Yzerman in particular having the highest amount of points of anyone not named Gretzky or Lemieux in a season holds as much weight as one art ross to me.

Malkin adding longevity, even if its 5 more 60-70 game seasons, if he plays as well as he has would definitely put him above sakic. Yzerman is a tougher one for me to say, but malkin could definitely get there potentially. Yzerman is definitely more subject to the mystical and stat defying leadership and defensive abilities in his late career, as well as his complete 180 from offense only to one of the best two way centers of all time. I try and avoid arguing "but he was captain!!!111!", but leadership does hold weight because its not easy, its not for everyone, and a good or bad captain does effect a team greatly.

IF both sakic and malkin had 800 games played, then yes I'd say PPG can weigh into the argument more heavily (though there is more to give credit for defensive play to sakic) but you're mixing reality with hypotheticals and, again, I'm not a huge fan of hypotheticals. If you keep malkins PPG the exact same and he had 1000 games played more or less, I'd definitely be more inclined to say malkin is better. But he doesn't, so in my opinion hes not at this point in time.

My issue with Sakic 94 vs. Malkin 15, is that in the end its the same result for points (its not extremely far off). Sure malkin played better in a per game basis, but overall I'd rather have Sakic on the ice and not getting a point than having Malkin in the press box having an AHL call up take his spot on the roster. I honeslty can't fault you for liking malkins season more.

I don't think sakics season adds more or malkins season adds more to be quite honest, their essentially passenger seasons on their career as a whole and I think thats where the issue is. My main argument is for sakic or against malkin. I don't think malkins season adds more simply because results, in the end, matter and neither really does Sakics. Neither alone are impressive, neither won awards, and neither really gets the ticker going. Sure 7th in ppg is impressive, but the guy already won a couple art ross trophies. Does it really matter all that much that he had another season in which he could have been better if he'd played more? The difference between the two players isn't so little that one higher PPG season at this point in time.

I pretty much agree with most of your post.

The one thing i'll say is concerning your last paragraph - I don't think Malkin's season in 2015 "adds more" than Sakic in 1994. I'd argue neither season really adds anything. How much can a player's 8th, 9th 10th best season really add to their resume after all (in Sakic's case might be lower than 10th).

I do think Sakic's 94 season should "subtract" from his resume though. The same way that Ovechkin's 2011 and 2012 seasons hurt him, and the same way that Jagr's year in washington hurts him.

I don't think Malkin has any such year that hurts him too. In every (almost) full season, he's always performed well.

I don't think when judging a career it's fair to subtract points to a players legacy for injuries within a season. So Malkin doesn't lose any points for missing games in 2015, as injury is outside of a player's control. I only look at injuries when looking at overall career longevity.

So Lindros? Only 700 games - too small sample size to compete with Sakics and Yzermans. Forsberg? 700 games, too small sample size to compete with Sakics and Yzermans.

If Malkin ends up with enoug longevity career wise (say 1000+ games) - I won't really mind that he missed 15-20 games in many seasons, so long as everything else that matters is there.

 

[Staniowski]

I think if two players are similarly talented, a marginally lesser on-ice performer could be considered better by virtue of being more resilient. So I would still be ranking the best, but my definition of best factors in such things (I've seen others alternate between best and greatest to make the distinction).

If your definition does not, I'd have no quarrel until we end up in discussions about how Player A in Situation B could accomplish Accolades X, Y, Z. Player A pulled a groin during X, lost a spleen during Y, and had a concussion while Joe Sakic was doing Z.

To be clear, you are saying that you don't rank players based on who's better on the ice, playing hockey. That's all I want to know.

In your example, Player A is a better hockey player than Player B. Player A suffers a concussion, therefore Player B is rated higher (as long as they were somewhere in the same ballpark prior to the concussion).

 

[bobholly39]

Lindros is a great example.

Well, I guess we can say he played 7 seasons before his major decline began (due to his multiple concussions). In those 7 seasons, he was top 5 in PPG 5 times (that's more than Yzerman in his entire career). Won the Hart, 1st Team, 2nd Team, was a very dominant player throughout this period. He played in 4 best-on-best tournaments, and performed quite well in them.

This seems to be lots of time to judge how good he was. He was 26 when he started his decline, so we probably saw him at his best.

To answer your question, yes, if I thought Lindros was better than Malkin, I would definitely rank Lindros ahead. Why would you do otherwise?

There's no need to fantasize about what Lindros would have achieved in subsequent seasons if he didn't have concussions. We saw 7 seasons of Lindros at or near his best. Why is it difficult to compare that to Malkin's 12 seasons?

The difference between us is that I would rank players according to how good they were - on the ice, playing hockey. But this is not how you rank them, as you've clearly acknowledged.

I think you're just confused as to how most "all-time rankings" work. And this is general across all sports I would guess. It's usually always about greater career, vs how good a player was at his best.

Now if you're particularly high on "peak ability" - that can count for more in your assessment of how great a player's career was. Example - you might like Lemieux more than Howe because of how much importance you give his peak.

But if all you're looking to do is rank players in terms of who were the "best" - it seems like you're looking to do a peak only ranking, which is simply not what is being discussed here.

 

[Hockey Outsider]

Is this consecutive three and five seasons or is it their best three and five seasons added together? Thanks

Non consecutive.

 

[Canadiens1958]

Nope.

Tossing make believe numbers around for effect does not go far.

 

[Kyle McMahon]

Aging well doesn't mean you start retroactively reassessing a player's earlier years. They are simply are adding longevity. Sakic's 2004 season was hardly anything special anyways. Thornton had just as strong a season at age 36 and St. Louis won the Art Ross at age 38. This doesn't mean the seasons they were in their peak form become that much stronger or we view their primes any differently.

The main point is, against their respective peers (the other Top 20 scorers less outliers like Wayne and Mario), they have had similarly effective seasons offensively. I don't see any reason to believe that any of the three players would not be as effective in any other era using this metric. I disagree with Bobholly39 that Malkin's raw point finishes should be compared straight up with Sakic's and Yzerman's. I think their peak seasons are all very close. What Malkin is lacking is more quality raw point finishes vs. the other two at this point, and to a lesser degree, the all around game and leadership that could keep him behind those two.

Yes, that's exactly the point. A season that we agree was "nothing special" almost won the Art Ross. The 2004 leaderboard simply wasn't very strong. Sakic had better seasons than 2004 that were nowhere close to winning an Art Ross due to stronger competition at the top of the leaderboard in those years. This is problem with just counting up Top X points finishes, or points per game finishes in the case of the poster I was originally responding to. They aren't all created equal.

 

[Staniowski]

I think you're just confused as to how most "all-time rankings" work. And this is general across all sports I would guess. It's usually always about greater career, vs how good a player was at his best.

Now if you're particularly high on "peak ability" - that can count for more in your assessment of how great a player's career was. Example - you might like Lemieux more than Howe because of how much importance you give his peak.

But if all you're looking to do is rank players in terms of who were the "best" - it seems like you're looking to do a peak only ranking, which is simply not what is being discussed here.

Thanks for the response.

No, I'm not confused. I just don't particularly like these types of rankings. I'm well aware that most sports do rankings this way. My problem is that it is sometimes difficult to understand what such rankings mean. I think the people who are doing the individual rankings (which are incorporated into the final ranking) are using a lot of various subjective criteria that renders the result problematic. And there are also a lot of other factors, including comparing eras, evaluating players you haven't seen play, etc.

But I don't mind them so much as long as I understand the reasoning used. When I see someone like Lindros so far down the list, I guess it's fine as long as I understand that nobody actually believes all the players ranked ahead of him were actually better hockey players than him (and in some cases, anywhere close to him).

 

[bathdog]

That being said, evaluating Malkin vs. Sakic and Yzerman should be based primarily on offensive contribution. A look at Hart and Conn Smythe voting clearly indicates their offensive production was viewed as the best indicator of their value. Ambiguous labeling of what 2-way play is or is not should not change this nor should Selke recognition be taken as gospel that a player was the absolute best defensive forward as opposed to a forward who was great defensively but also had notable offensive production.

Why is Hart/Smythe votings criteria an indisputable truth? Hart/Smythe votings aren't affected by reputation and team success in the slightest?

I do think Sakic's 94 season should "subtract" from his resume though. The same way that Ovechkin's 2011 and 2012 seasons hurt him, and the same way that Jagr's year in washington hurts him.

I don't think when judging a career it's fair to subtract points to a players legacy for injuries within a season. So Malkin doesn't lose any points for missing games in 2015, as injury is outside of a player's control. I only look at injuries when looking at overall career longevity.

Seriously? Substract? Injuries and adding nothing should now be valued above participating but not performing up to expectations? For all you know the player playing is playing through injury. Value the below par performance lowly, or void it... but substract?

 

[bobholly39]

Seriously? Substract? Injuries and adding nothing should now be valued above participating but not performing up to expectations? For all you know the player playing is playing through injury. Value the below par performance lowly, or void it... but substract?

Semantics I guess. Subtract, add less, it's all in the wording.

I like the fact that Malkin has not had a "bad" season where he under-performed by a lot.
I don't like the fact that Sakic has had a "bad" season where he underperformed (maybe more than 1).

+1 for Malkin
-1 for Sakic

Whether you add more/less or subtract is semantics.

I only evaluate health/games played in overall career, not individual seasons.

 

[quoipourquoi]

To be clear, you are saying that you don't rank players based on who's better on the ice, playing hockey. That's all I want to know.

In your example, Player A is a better hockey player than Player B. Player A suffers a concussion, therefore Player B is rated higher (as long as they were somewhere in the same ballpark prior to the concussion).

I'm not talking one injury. I'm talking about players who have a coin flip's chance of being healthy throughout their careers: Forsberg, Malkin, Hasek, Lindros, etc. Yes, I would rate a player with similar on-ice performance to be better hockey players. Part of playing hockey is playing hockey.

To paraphrase Oscar Wilde, to lose a parts of one season is a misfortune; to lose large chunks of seven looks like carelessness.

 

[Staniowski]

Sakic/Yzerman > Malkin >=Forsberg > Lindros

I appreciate your response. However when I look at the names of these 5 great players, I just can't imagine ranking these players this way (based on "accomplishments"). To me, Yzerman (as good as he was) is the 5th best player of this group. I couldn't bring myself to rank him 1st, just because he played the longest, had good health, adapted quite well to a changing role, and played for a great team.

Anyway, I'll mostly just follow the discussions. Some of these comparison discussions are quite interesting.

 

[K Fleur]

Tossing make believe numbers around for effect does not go far.

How you came to this conclusion is beyond me.

Appreciate the ever condescending tone.

 

[bathdog]

Semantics I guess. Subtract, add less, it's all in the wording.

I like the fact that Malkin has not had a "bad" season where he under-performed by a lot.
I don't like the fact that Sakic has had a "bad" season where he underperformed (maybe more than 1).

+1 for Malkin
-1 for Sakic

Whether you add more/less or subtract is semantics.

I only evaluate health/games played in overall career, not individual seasons.

Certainly doesn't look that way.

Malkin's ppg finish of 38th in 10/11 where his ppg was 53.4% of leader (Crosby, partial season) is a lot better than Sakic's 93/94 ppg finish of 33rd where his ppg was 65.5% of leader (Lemiuex, partial), why exactly?

 

[bobholly39]

I appreciate your response. However when I look at the names of these 5 great players, I just can't imagine ranking these players this way (based on "accomplishments"). To me, Yzerman (as good as he was) is the 5th best player of this group. I couldn't bring myself to rank him 1st, just because he played the longest, had good health, adapted quite well to a changing role, and played for a great team.

Anyway, I'll mostly just follow the discussions. Some of these comparison discussions are quite interesting.

If we were talking Ron Francis instead of Yzerman i'd agree with your assessment.

But I think you are undervalying Yzerman's peak, or "best" ability if you will. His 155 point season might be better than anything Lindros ever put together. And it's not his only good season either, offensively.

Lindros has too few actual accomplishments to overtake someone like Yzerman.

At least with Malkin (and Forsberg) - even though he too has a ton of partial seasons - he also has enough actual accomplishments. Ross, Hart, Lindsay, Smythe, etc. Lindros's accomplishments are quite lacking.
Lindros also lacks both longevity and consistency compared to even Malkin or Forsberg. So it's really, really weak his resume.

Using math. If total career = 10. Assign values to each component that makes up a career, with whatever important you want, such as:

if you like Peak a lot, Peak = 4
Prime = 1.5
Career = 1.5
Intangibles = 1
Playoffs = 2

Yzerman scores good almost everywhere, including peak. Lindros is weak in many of those - even if you value peak more than most (most would count peak for less than 4 on 10 i assume), and so easily comes out behind Yzerman. Francis - because his peak is quite weak, can maybe still end up behind Lindros overall.

I don't know the case for Yzerman over Lindros is an easy slam dunk to me. Lindros "could" easily have been better, but he wasn't, and in the end in all time ranking we rank on what was, not what could have been.

Regarding Malkin. I think he has much less weakness in his resume than Lindros, which is why i'm tempted to have him close/above Yzerman already.

 

[bobholly39]

Certainly doesn't look that way.

Malkin's ppg finish of 38th in 10/11 where his ppg was 53.4% of leader (Crosby, partial season) is a lot better than Sakic's 93/94 ppg finish of 33rd where his ppg was 65.5% of leader (Lemiuex, partial), why exactly?

His only 2 "bad" seasons he played 43 and 31 games. They are bad seasons I agree (2011 is worst than Sakic 94 on a per game level for example). But because they are very small sample sizes I give him benefit of the doubt and don't really count it much. He's not had a bad season in any of his mostly full seasons.

Sakic doesn't really have any such short/weak seasons, but if you look at Yzerman in 1986 he only played 51 games. In 2001, 2002 and 2003 he played 54, 52 and 16 games total. All 4 of those seasons aren't particularly great for him on a per game basis at first glance, but i wouldn't give too much importance to them because of small sample size, and rather look at the more full seasons. And technically, 51, 54 and 52 games are already slightly bigger sample sizes than 43 and 31, closer to territory where maybe we shouldn't give as much benefit of the doubt.

So no I don't hold 2011 against Malkin as much as I hold 1994 against Sakic in a negative way.

 

[Epsilon]

Thanks for the response.

No, I'm not confused. I just don't particularly like these types of rankings. I'm well aware that most sports do rankings this way. My problem is that it is sometimes difficult to understand what such rankings mean. I think the people who are doing the individual rankings (which are incorporated into the final ranking) are using a lot of various subjective criteria that renders the result problematic. And there are also a lot of other factors, including comparing eras, evaluating players you haven't seen play, etc.

But I don't mind them so much as long as I understand the reasoning used. When I see someone like Lindros so far down the list, I guess it's fine as long as I understand that nobody actually believes all the players ranked ahead of him were actually better hockey players than him (and in some cases, anywhere close to him).

The problem with the approach you're taking is that it's based way too much on the "eye test" (which is the most subjective evaluation of all) and specifically "appearing dominant" which is going to be biased in favor of players with specific styles/traits and also towards those who peaked younger/came in guns blazing.

A lot of people would claim that Lindros looked "better" or at least "more dominant" that Sidney Crosby, but there's absolutely no way he was actually a better hockey player, and the results bare that out.

 

[bathdog]

His only 2 "bad" seasons he played 43 and 31 games. They are bad seasons I agree (2011 is worst than Sakic 94 on a per game level for example). But because they are very small sample sizes I give him benefit of the doubt and don't really count it much. He's not had a bad season in any of his mostly full seasons.

Sakic doesn't really have any such short weak seasons, but if you look at Yzerman in 1986 he only played 51 games. In 2001, 2002 and 2003 he played 54, 52 and 16 games total. All 4 of those seasons aren't particularly great for him on a per game basis at first glance, but i wouldn't give too much importance to them because of small sample size, and rather look at the more full seasons. And technically, 51, 54 and 52 games are already slightly bigger sample sizes than 43 and 31, closer to territory where maybe we shouldn't give as much benefit of the doubt.

So no I don't hold 2011 against Malkin as much as I hold 1994 against Sakic in a negative way.

"Good", "bad", importance, small sample size.

This would go both ways though?

For instance, if Malkins season where he played 43 is of too small sample size to be of importance because he never had a full season so bad, Crosby's partials of less than 43 games would similarly not be of importance because he never had a full season so good?

 

[Staniowski]

If we were talking Ron Francis instead of Yzerman i'd agree with your assessment.

But I think you are undervalying Yzerman's peak, or "best" ability if you will. His 155 point season might be better than anything Lindros ever put together. And it's not his only good season either, offensively.

Lindros has too few actual accomplishments to overtake someone like Yzerman.

At least with Malkin (and Forsberg) - even though he too has a ton of partial seasons - he also has enough actual accomplishments. Ross, Hart, Lindsay, Smythe, etc. Lindros's accomplishments are quite lacking.
Lindros also lacks both longevity and consistency compared to even Malkin or Forsberg. So it's really, really weak his resume.

Using math. If total career = 10. Assign values to each component that makes up a career, with whatever important you want, such as:

if you like Peak a lot, Peak = 4
Prime = 1.5
Career = 1.5
Intangibles = 1
Playoffs = 2

Yzerman scores good almost everywhere, including peak. Lindros is weak in many of those - even if you value peak more than most (most would count peak for less than 4 on 10 i assume), and so easily comes out behind Yzerman. Francis - because his peak is quite weak, can maybe still end up behind Lindros overall.

I don't know the case for Yzerman over Lindros is an easy slam dunk to me. Lindros "could" easily have been better, but he wasn't, and in the end in all time ranking we rank on what was, not what could have been.

Regarding Malkin. I think he has much less weakness in his resume than Lindros, which is why i'm tempted to have him close/above Yzerman already.

Yeah, that's fine, I'm not going to quarrel about "all-time" rankings (which I don't like). I don't have any problem if somebody puts Yzerman ahead in a ranking of accomplishments, etc. He was a great player. I was around for his entire career, so I'm familiar with his game.

Yzerman was very good during his prime offensive years - and also very good during subsequent years - but I think the other 4 guys were somewhat better in their prime years.

Lindros was very dominant in the mid and late '90s, finishing in the top 5 in PPG 5 times. Yzerman only did this 4 times in his long career. As well, Yzerman did relatively little in best-on-best tournaments. He certainly was not close to being dominant in any of these tournaments.

I'm not saying Lindros had more accomplishments. I'm just saying he was better during the 7 seasons in the '90s prior to his decline due to concussions.

 

[86Habs]

Yeah, that's fine, I'm not going to quarrel about "all-time" rankings (which I don't like). I don't have any problem if somebody puts Yzerman ahead in a ranking of accomplishments, etc. He was a great player. I was around for his entire career, so I'm familiar with his game.

Yzerman was very good during his prime offensive years - and also very good during subsequent years - but I think the other 4 guys were somewhat better in their prime years.

Lindros was very dominant in the mid and late '90s, finishing in the top 5 in PPG 5 times. Yzerman only did this 4 times in his long career. As well, Yzerman did relatively little in best-on-best tournaments. He certainly was not close to being dominant in any of these tournaments.

I'm not saying Lindros had more accomplishments. I'm just saying he was better during the 7 seasons in the '90s prior to his decline due to concussions.

Yzerman probably did more than Lindros internationally, actually. Besides 1991 (when he was 18 years old), Lindros was an average to poor international performer. Yzerman was good in 1996, and fairly critical in 2002.