My knock on the Neely thing
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Bring Back Bucky
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silver_made said:
He certainly does, provided he's willing to buy a ticket like the rest of us..
David said:acr said:What do Cups have to do with anything?
of course, b/c hockey is a solo sport, not a team sport, and we all know fredrik olausson, based on his 1 cup, is a greater hockey player than pat lafontaine, 0 cups.
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silver_made said:of course, b/c hockey is a solo sport, not a team sport, and we all know fredrik olausson, based on his 1 cup, is a greater hockey player than pat lafontaine, 0 cups.
Obviously, it's understood that the individual has to have an outstanding career first!
x 10 x 10 x 10Having a Cup isn't the only criteria since you wouldn't put someone like Mario Roberge into the Hall just because he's got a Cup...but I thought most would be smart enough to figure that out their own without someone having to spell it out for them...sheesh!
David said:Obviously, it's understood that the individual has to have an outstanding career first!
Having a Cup isn't the only criteria since you wouldn't put someone like Mario Roberge into the Hall just because he's got a Cup...but I thought most would be smart enough to figure that out their own without someone having to spell it out for them...sheesh!
So let's say if Bourque hadn't won a cup his last year he wouldnt have been inducted into the hall. Same with Hasek? I dont get it. Cups are a team award nothing more nothing less.
KOVALEV10 said:
Yeah, although with the inclusion of some of the questionable names like Patty Lafontaine (who deserved it much more than Neely) the bar for induction into the Hall has been lowered significantly. Bourque's induction would have been up in there air if Bourque had not won that Cup...and Ray and many others knew it too...that's one of the reasons why it was so important for him to get the Cup even if he had to leave his beloved city Boston to do it. Even that SOB Sinden recognized it and gave Ray every chance to win the Cup by sending him to Colorado!
Same goes for Lucky Luc...he needed that one Cup to be considered truly great, hence his move to Detroit and accepted a much lesser role so that he could finally hoist that Cup and cement his place in history with his name perma etched on the Mug. And this goes even doubly for Hasek since his tenur of excellence has not been as long as Luc or Ray or even Lafontaine.
Sure, you only get to drink out of the Stanley Cup after an effort by the entire team but if you've followed hockey long enough, you'll realize that strangley there are winner who win the thing year after year and there are those who try and try and cannot win it...and it doesn't have to do with the skill level of a player but rather a combination of a lot of things. Winners win and losers lose. Some losers finally figure out how to win (like Hasek and even Ray and Luc) and then they are truly great because of that journey and that accomplishment.
You get recognized as great for a combination of your individual accomplishments and your team accomplishments. The truly greats like Wayne Gretzky and Bobby Orr and the Flower and the Rocket and (grudgingly) Pepe Lepieux have done that on both accounts and deserve their place in the Hall.
In the case of Patty Lafontaine and now Neely, it's looking more and more like they received their passes into the Hall because of sympathy arising from their immense popularity and pre-mature career ending injuries.
Both Patty and Neely are one of my favorites to play the game of hockey so I am happy for them but do they deserve to be in the Hall? Based on accomplishments, perhaps yes for Patty because of his steller individual accomplishments, for but Neely? Definitely not!! As I said before Wendy did just as much as Neely and was as popular in the city that he played in...except that he didn't have his career end short by some turtling idiot!
So once again, as much as I loved Cam Neely during his time in NHL, he does not belong in the Hall and should not have been inducted.
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David said:
I have to disagree there, Bourque's HoF status was not in doubt, he is widely recognized as one of the 20 best players of all time, to keep him out because of having no cups would have been insane.
kruezer said:
You can say this now because he has that Cup under his belt and now rightfully recieve that kind of reverence and respect but until he won it, he was not regarded with such high esteem despite the fact that he was one of the best defensemen in hockey history during regular seasons.
Also, I would argue even today with your claim that Ray is one of the top 20 of all time...truthfully, there was and still is not alot separating Ray Bourque from someone like Chris Chelios...and since Chelios had won a Cup before in Montreal, at that time, many would have argued back before Ray won the Cup that Chris Chelios was greater than Ray without a Cup!
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I really don't think that there were many arguing that Chelios was better Bourque, despite the Cup issue, Bourque was ahead in Norris' 5 - 3 during much the same time period. Bourque's the highest scoring defenseman of all time and had a stellar post season career despite not winning a cup. Chelios is not in that range, and I do not consider Chelios to be superior to Bourque defensively, he's only ahead in terms of physical play and that is not enough to justify putting him in Bourque's range.David said:
Bourque is one of the top 3 defenseman of all time, most people recognized this, even before he had a cup. I don't think anybody is arguing that Chelios is better than Ray, cups or not.
kruezer said:
I would disagree with you here.
During any stretch of time in the 80's or even for a big chunk of 90's if I had to choose between having Chelios on my team or Bourque on my team, I would have chosen Chelios over Bourque every time. Chelios may have not scored as much but he did score almost as much as Ray on a season by seaon basis...just not as long...and Chelios did so many other things better than Bourque.
This is not even counting the fact that Chelios was better defensively and was hell of a lot grittier but he was a better leader, he was able to play incredible amounts of time with very little rest in between, he did little things like delaying the game with deliberately breaking his stick during the last minutes of the play in a close game so that his best players can get rest so that they can be double shifted, and many and many little things that you can't see on TV but none the less are so incredibly valuable to the team!
True, Chelios aged very poorly and has stayed around too long to tarnish what he has done earlier in his career but to not recognize his greatness by saying that he's not even in Ray's range is madness!
reckoning
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David said:
Brad Park never won a Stanley Cup or a Norris Trophy- he was inducted the first year he was eligible.
Borje Salming never came remotely close to winning a Stanley Cup and never won a Norris Trophy- he was inducted the first year he was eligible
Ray Bourque wins 5 Norris Trophies, yet his induction would be "up in the air" if he didn`t win a Cup????
reckoning said:
Once again, this is the failings of the Hall. It's become pretty much a popularity contest instead of whose deserving of the induction.
Brad Park was much more worthy of induction than Salming who was good but not great but was loved by Toronto fans...also his place was secure because of his pioneering work that he did in NHL as one of the first European players who were stars...
reckoning said:
Enjoyed talking with you...but gotta go to bed...not as young as I used to be...only if some of the other posters on this board were able to carry on an intelligent conversation like we just did!
Until next time...
DKH said:David, I'm assuming your atleast early 30's and therefore had a clue when Lafontaine and Neely were playing and therefore can make a valid judgement and aren't just holding open a book looking at stats. And since your atleast 30 you understand that you couldn't find 10 people to agree what planet we live on. I have good news for you- I saw both your favorite players many times and they are deserving of the Hall- and even better news for you: by a long shot. Don't listen to all those 25 year-old Hockey Register toting know it alls who make can't think without looking at some statitistic. Put it this way- it would take you along time to find a contempory that disagreed and if so list their name. But on this board, the first teenager who has never seen either play with a stat book will say otherwise.
So who do you believe?
Son, I can't even understand your last two sentence but if you are saying that I don't know my hockey because I'm not 30 yet then you would be completely wrong. I can only wish that I were 30 years old again!!!!
I'm pretty sure that I've seen much more hockey than you in my lifetime including Cam Neely and he does not belong in the Hall. PERIOD.
Good night!
David said:
I guess we'll have to agree to disagree on this one, but thats fine
. I just don't see Chelios as being in Bourque's universe offensively. Chelios hit 70 points three times, and never put up a point a game season, in contrast Bourque had 14 season where he put up at least a point a game and hit 90 points 4 times, not to mention goal scoring where Chris had one 20 goal campaign in relation to Bourque's 9. I just don't see them as close offensively at all, and I think Chelios was a very nice offensively, Bourque was just on another level.As for the physical play, I agree, Bourque wasn't soft, but he was certainly not Chelios tough. I don't think, however, that that means that Chelios was better defensively than Ray. I also don't know about the leadership and so called 'little things' Bourque knew what he was doing on the ice as for leadership, tough to say, Bourque was no fool as a captain.
I definetaly appreciate Chelios' greatness though, I don't want to degrade him at all, he's a top 50 player all time IMO, but not in Bourque's range.
DKH
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I would bet any amount of money you have not been to or played as much hockey as me. And to be honest, your comments were so far off I can't believe you have ever seen either in their prime if at all. Ridiculous. I've been on this board for about 4 years and no post have I ever thought was more off base than yours.David said:
BTW- you can think what you want, its a free country but I'm probably older than you- son. And if you don't agree on Cam or Pat thats fine. I'm in no way trying to change your opinion (after all, your the one with all the know how); but just like you think I know diddly, I too return the thought. PERIOD.
Bring Back Bucky
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reckoning said:
Bernie Federko is a Hall of Famer. Suffice to say I'll agree with you on the head scratching on this one, reckoning..
To say that Cam Neely's career is similar to that of Martin, Vaive, or Kerr because their career totals look similar is like saying that Bobby Clarke has the same claim to the HHOF as Bernie Nicholls' because their career totals are amost identical. There's more involved here than stats. And to say that Neely's career is similar to Wendel Clark's is just bizarre.
doc5hole
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MS said:
Bravo. It's not the Hall of Stats. That's what makes hockey better than baseball -- the numbers are only indicators of results dependent on many circumstances, but they play the game on ice and, in hockey more than any other sport, fans are blessed with the tendency to evaluate talent through pure observation. One night I was arguing about a player's plus-minus with an NHL pro scout for a team that had improved its season record about six straight years when he looked at me and said, "You want to know what my stats are?" And then he does like Dinero in Meet the Parents, the "I'm watching you Focker" fingers.
Before Neely ever scored 50 goals, Don Cherry called him "a direct descendant of Gordie Howe." I was thankful for that because I didn't see Howe in his prime and, for the first time, I got Howe. Because of the way Neely was running over Montreal in the 88 playoffs and because of what Cherry said, Howe is no longer a face on a dollar bill to me. And, after all that Neely accomplished while injured, he's clearly a rare player, an all-time great whose stats will never stand the test of the society for baseball research.
IMO, Anderson is also a Hall of Famer. His spectacular play in the playoffs was a key ingredient to the Edmonton attack. Without the rawness of talent like his and Messier's, the cunning of Gretzky and Kurri would not have created the juggernaut that the Oilers were. He actually was the player I was most excited to see play when the Oilers were at the top. He pushed the envelope and gave the opponent something to think about every time he was on the ice. Not a passenger.
There are guys who get in on career achievement, and there are guys who get in greatness. Neely gets in on greatness. Anderson should, too.
mcphee
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Many posts back, Trenton 1 explained how many GM's drooled and projected about the next 'Neely'. When you talk hockey with people, and some of the group is younger, Neely is one of the guys that you tell them, 'Man you should have seen Neely at his best.' He wasn't dominant for as long as B [and hockey fans] would have liked,it took him a few years to become 'Cam Neely', as it did Lafleur actually, but for a time, he was something to see. Sometimes,that has to count.
DKH
The Bergeron of HF
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btw- Happy (belated) B'day to one of the bestmcphee said:
interesting that you find from what was reported an overwhelming selection by the 18 man committee; ledgendary tough guy Nilan, alltime great Roy, and Gavin/Tippett all list Neely as the toughest opponent in THREE different areas- yet you get a small faction armed with Hockey Register and agendas that think they know it all. not suprised though- if you asked that crew what day it was, you'd get a couple of Saturday's and probably even a Tuesday.
First of all, let's get this out of the way: Ray Bourque was a gimmie as a first-ballot HHOFer when he was 30, and had a Calder Trophy, three Norris Trophies, two Hart runner-ups and 11 post-season all-star selections. He's a consensus top-five defenceman in the history of the game. He didn't need a Cup, just like Marcel Dionne, Gilbert Perrault and many others didn't need a Cup to get in on their first crack.
Back to Neely. He's considered one of the top 100 players in the history of the game by many knowledgable hockey historians. He was one of the defining players of his generation. He was a four-time post-season all-star, going against very strong fields of RWs, and in fact, was an all-star in the last three seasons he was healthy. (Wasn't healthy in 1994, and still scored 50 goals in under 50 games). He was, at his peak, one of the top 5 or 10 players in the game, put together one of the most remarkable seasons in the last 25 years. He didn't have a long career, but he's one of those special cases who was so good for such a short period of time, and didn't ruin in with some mediocre seasons between those great seasons (like say, Pavel Bure), or kill his chances by hanging around longer than he should have. (Like say, Eric Lindros). He's 12th all-time in regular season goals per game, and even more impressive, 4th in playoff goals per game.
This wasn't a "media pick." Cam had a lot of class off the ice, but he was never Boston's media darling. Plus, the media makes up a small percentage of those on the committee, and of those that are, some (ie: Dick Irvin and John Davidson) had other prominent places in the game before joining the press.
Back to Neely. He's considered one of the top 100 players in the history of the game by many knowledgable hockey historians. He was one of the defining players of his generation. He was a four-time post-season all-star, going against very strong fields of RWs, and in fact, was an all-star in the last three seasons he was healthy. (Wasn't healthy in 1994, and still scored 50 goals in under 50 games). He was, at his peak, one of the top 5 or 10 players in the game, put together one of the most remarkable seasons in the last 25 years. He didn't have a long career, but he's one of those special cases who was so good for such a short period of time, and didn't ruin in with some mediocre seasons between those great seasons (like say, Pavel Bure), or kill his chances by hanging around longer than he should have. (Like say, Eric Lindros). He's 12th all-time in regular season goals per game, and even more impressive, 4th in playoff goals per game.
This wasn't a "media pick." Cam had a lot of class off the ice, but he was never Boston's media darling. Plus, the media makes up a small percentage of those on the committee, and of those that are, some (ie: Dick Irvin and John Davidson) had other prominent places in the game before joining the press.
God Bless Canada said:
This is the simplist, soundest argument for why Neely should be in the HHOF.
IMO The Hall of Fame isn't about numbers production entirely, but factors an intangible like their impact to their team and the sport. Neely had that, and all the comparisons of players not in the hall vs. him fail to cite that
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