pdd
Registered User
- Feb 7, 2010
- 5,572
- 4
Great thread, although one small point:
There's really zero chance that Messier gets the Hart in 1996 if Lemieux didn't play that year, IMO.
Jagr or Sakic likely would've won the scoring title and would have been the front-runners. Or maybe Lindros. I dunno, it was a little weird that Messier was #2 in Hart voting that year as it was.
This is exactly the kind of phenomenon I believe could have caused Yzerman to end up with the 1988 1st team selection and/or the 1991 2nd team selection in a no Gretz/Lemieux league. He actually DID end up 4th in Hart voting in 1987, AHEAD of Savard (who was 3rd in C voting), and was just a shade behind Sakic (who would have been 2nd without Gretz and Lemieux in 1991). It's admittedly a bit of supposition, but different voters vote the way they do for different reasons.
Oftentimes the runner-up to the Hart is a weird pick, but that doesn't mean they would've definitely won if the first-place guy had never existed. Would Rod Langway really have snagged the Hart in 1982 if Gretzky hadn't existed? No, it probably would have gone to Mike Bossy posting the second-highest point total of all time. Same goes for Mike Liut in 1981. Etc.
Liut almost beat Gretzky, and Dionne was third with only 24 points. Of 27 voters, I can account for 15 third-place votes definitively by point totals listed in the awards thread (from guys with totals that don't divide by 5 or 3) including at least 2 for Gretzky and 1 for Liut. He takes it home if Gretz isn't around, it's just that a split vote between Dionne and Bossy would have been much closer to him (remember, Bossy was actually 4th in Hart voting - with Trottier 5th and Potvin 9th).
Not taking away anything from Messier--I think I'd probably vote for him in this poll--but that 1996 season seems a tad overrated.
A little bit. As I said before, I rank six or seven centers above him in performance that season (I still put him among my top ten forwards; that season is one of the more center-heavy years in recent memory.)
I think you're getting hung up on 1984 (particularly since all of Trottier's offense was from one game...), when he was credited with stopping Trottier in 1983 as well. Whereas with or without Yzerman in the lineup, Gretzky was putting a real hurt on the Red Wings in 1988.
The Wings had to rely on a battery of John Chabot and Shawn Burr to do Yzerman's defensive work. While they were decent, they weren't Yzerman in ANY zone.
That seems like an odd jump to a conclusion. Coffey credits Messier for demythicizing the Islanders' superiority in the 1984 Finals after bowling over Denis Potvin.
I was speaking with regards to the comment about "talking to make noise." That sounds almost like a veiled stab at Messier. I wonder if Coffey and Messier were on bad terms when PC left Edmonton, or if that perhaps spurred the initial trade? Remember, Messier was also shopped before Coffey was traded, but not again until he himself was traded.
of course. but my point was that messier's game was so defined by his physicality that, like scott stevens, it becomes almost impossible to talk about his defensive play without focusing on the physicality. all i'm saying is that it seems like jumping to conclusions to assume that writers discussing messier's defensive play were confusing physicality with defensive ability, as you suggest.
Many do confuse defense and physical play. While physical play can be an effective form of defense, that does not mean a physical player is effective defensively. People have started to realize this over the years, but we still see lapses in judgement (Rob Blake in 1998, Dion Phaneuf in 2008, Sheldon Souray and Kevin Bieksa being considered good defensively at any point in their careers, etc.)
i don't think i suggested that yzerman did or did not shut down gretzky. all i was saying is that the same team did just as well the next year, which might suggest that it was as much demers' coaching as yzerman's stellar play. i don't doubt that yzerman was great. whether it was messier in '84 great... well if it was, that's conn smythe great.
If Yzerman had enough support to top Edmonton in that 1987, he likely would have won the Smythe that year. He was scoring at a higher rate than any Flyer forward and had shut down Gretzky; that would have earned him the Smythe barring a complete collapse by Yzerman individually in the Finals. It was a Smythe-level performance on a non-Finals team.
we would do well to notice that outside of one single game where the islanders won, trottier scores one point in four oilers wins. that's a LOT lower than his playoff average. which is to say, you need four games to win a playoff series. messier neutralized trottier four times out of five.
Again with the ignoring Trottier's playoff average against other teams that season. He scored MORE per-game against Edmonton that year than in other playoff series. Despite Messier "shutting him down".
chabot was capable of filling Yzerman's defensive role to finish out the season. Also, Oates had missed 17 games that year and scored 19 points in the 15 games he played without Yzerman; that's compared to 35 in 48 before the injury. A young center about to break out and become an elite center taking advantage of a severe injury to Yzerman to show his wares... sound familiar? Except Oates wasn't quite "there" yet, it would take another year or two. Fedorov could probably have hit that 1994 level a year earlier given the chance.right. the point is, if the team can add john chabot to fill yzerman's role and not miss a beat... well you connect the dots. john chabot, for the record, played his entire relatively brief career in the 80s and never scored more than 60 points in any season.
Ok, and I'll refer you to the 2008 and 2009 Finals, or the 1983 and 1984 Finals. The team remained almost identical in roster (Hossa was actually on the other side in 2009, which should have made it more lopsided) yet the result was that the team which proved significantly better the first year was not the winner in the second year. In the two Det/Edm series, it was similar except instead of one team being better, it was a matter of closeness. Detroit was very close to Edmonton all series in 1987 and wasn't close in 1988. Far enough away that an injured Yzerman came to play for three games and scored 4 points. Which should illustrate how important he was to the team.oates, klima, probert, they were all there in '87 too.
i can buy that. i mean, not that yzerman in '93 was as great as lafontaine, gilmour, or oates, but i can buy that he was starting to become underrated after fedorov came onto the scene. classic what you have done for me lately syndrome.
"best hockey player hardly anyone has heard of" is a little much though, considering that his face was on the upper deck box alongside gretzky, messier, and hull.
but all of this is okay. we all acknowledge that yzerman was a phenomenal player. and i acknowledge that his '93 season was excellent. but the suggestion several pages back that he should have been the second team all-star center would have seemed ridiculous at the time, and seems ridiculous in retrospect.
What's so ridiculous about it? LaFontaine didn't have a defensive game to speak of. Yzerman's defensive game was noticeably better than that of Oates. He outscored Gilmour by ten points while putting up 26 more goals. Gilmour was the only other "all-around" center anywhere among the scoring leaders, and it's difficult to justify leaping him over LaFontaine or Oates. Yzerman was close enough to them in points (and better in goals, with worse linemates) that his defensive game can legitimately be argued as a "jumper" reason.
i mean, the guy had a scorching hot end to the season, played in an original six market that was newly reinvigorated, was the captain of a marquee first place team. seems like if he was really as good as those other three centers (and yeah, maybe in most years stevie's '93 season would be a second team all-star year in many other years, but '93 was a very very special season for four other centers), all the pieces were in place for him to take that second team all-star spot. it's not like he was playing on a last place team in hartford.
LaFontaine played on a highly touted line with 76-goal Mogilny. And he had Andreychuk for half the year (before Gilmour got him). Oates played in Boston, which gets infinitely more media attention than Detroit did at the time.
I take Sakic over Yzerman, let alone Messier.
And this is what's wrong with HF. People remember post-2000 Yzerman and Sakic, but not the 90s of either or 80s Yzerman. They look at 80s Yzerman and think "yeah but high scoring..." and then think about the idea that he changed his game to become a better defensive player (which means to many people that he was Pavel Bure at center until 1994, when he suddenly became Guy Carbonneau to those people). The idea that a top scorer who is alo good defensively can get BETTER defensively is apparently unheard of. Unless you're Sidney Crosby, in which case wanting to be better defensively makes you a Selke candidate in some fans' eyes, regardless of ACTUAL defensive performance or responsibilities (or being on the ice).