Really? Care to evolve that? I find the opposite understanding on these boards.
On these boards? jeez. On these boards the future is rated higher than the present, forget about the past, literally, most people here wouldn't know hockey history if it kissed them on the mouth.
I honestly can't see any way in which there is anything but a modern bias on these boards. I'm flabbergasted that there is even doubt. Asside from a small handful of posters, all I see is posts about how players who played in the past are inherently inferior because they played in the past.
Number of teams has nothing to do with it, if anything, there are too many teams in the NHL today. But my point was that the number of players competeing for awards has certainly gone up.
I just think comparing those guys and their hardware is very hard, if not impossible to do so objectively.
In the 80s, Bourque, Chelios, Robinson, Potvin... were all playing. 4 of the top-10/top-15 defensemen to ever play. Winning 7 Norris trophies like Harvey did was a hard task for any of them. Winning the Hart after Gretzky came into the league was impossible.
Some of the greats had the luxury of playing on dominant teams (Harvey, Robinson, Potvin...) while some were standouts on good but not great teams (Bourque).
Based on what I've seen, with all the retro games I've seen and so on, I'd place Lidstrom below Orr, possibly a tiny notch below Potvin and Harvey, but right up there with Bourque and Shore (based solely on what I've read/heard of him).
IMHO, Lidstrom is top-5/top-6 defenseman of all time right now.
If he plays out a couple more of good years (not necessarily Norris caliber, but say, Norris finalist), he'll be top-3 in my book.
He's got all the hardware apart from a Hart and has 3 Cups in and era when dynasties are long dead and buried.
And Shore was competing against Clancy, Seibert, Conacher, Johnson, and latter converted forwards like Clapper, Goodfellow and Siebert.
Two differences due to amount of teams.
1) Oppertunity, with 8-9 teams, only a handful of defencemen get that top ice time, heck, there are very good players that never make it to the NHL, that's why guys like Shore and Nels Stewert stepped in and were stars as rookies, they had all-ready proven themself against high level pro competition before making it to the big show.
2) No weak links on the ice. Shore never beat up weak competition. He had to play against superior talent every night.
What's more, Over the course of Shore's career 26 different players were nominated for the Hart, Along with winning 4 times, Shore was nominated 3 times. Over Lidstrom's career there are 27 nominees, over 1 more season. Lidstrom is never nominated, let alone named the winner.
So not only is there no significant difference in contenders for the title of the best. If you wish to argue that the contenders then were not as strong, and I'm sure you do, concider this: Over Lidstrom's career, Jagr is nominated 6 times, Hasek 5 times and Lemieux 4 times, while, over Shore's career, Morenz with 3 times is 2nd place. So Shore had a level of domination in excess of Jagr's and Hasek's, greater than Lemieux's over that time period, and slightly greater over Lemieux's career. (Both 7 nominations, Shore won 4, Lemieux 3.) Only Gretzky and Howe dominated their era more than Shore. So, if a player is that much better than their competition, how bad does their competition have to be for them to not be better than someone who was never once concidered the best?
In other words, even if the high end competition is better now, Shore dominated in ways that no one has over the course of Lidstrom's career. Therefore, he'd logically be one of the dominant one's if born in Lidstrom's year, and Lidstrom has never been the dominant one in his career. Therefore, Shore is better than Lidstrom.
Also of note, there wasn't a single dynasty over Shore's career. One team won three cups, (Rangers) four teams one two cups (Blackhawks, Bruins, Canadiens and Red Wings), two teams won back to back cups (Canadiens and Red Wings) 3 teams one once (Maroons, Maple Leafs and Senators.) and of the multiple winners, the distances between wins was: Rangers: 5 years and 7 years, Bruins: 10 years, Blackhawks: 4 years.
this further demonstrates how much parity and competition existed in Shore's era, and yet, Shore was still definatively better than everyone else.
Also, you state that winning the Hart was impossible due to Gretzky. Gretzky won his first Hart in 79-80, and his last 88-89. So, looking at the 1980's and how many 2nd, 3rd or 4th place finishes Bourque, Potvin, Robinson and Chelios had:
79-80: 0
80-81: 0
81-82: 0
82-83: 0
83-84: 0
84-85: 0
85-86: 0
86-87: 1, Ray Bourque 2nd place
87-88: 0
88-89: 0
So, if you take Gretzky out of the picture, Bourque, Robinson, Potvin and Chelios have a combined 1 Hart and 0 nominations, compaired to Shore's 4 Harts and 3 nominations.
Of note, Rod Langway would have 1 Hart and 2 nominations over that period.
Once again, Shore was so far ahead of his era, that even if you ramp up the competition, he'd likely still be the best of his era, and only Harvey or Orr would be conceivably ahead of him.
i wouldn't say lidstrom is greater than shore, but i think hart trophy was different from today.
it seems that then, hart was much more about valuable to his team, but today it is best player. tommy anderson and al rollins probably wouldn't have a chance today, since they were on the worst teams, but they both won.
bathgate won when his team missed the playoffs, while beliveau and moore each had 1 of their best years (and on the best team). howe was 2nd and sawchuk 4th that season, and detroit was the worst team in the league.
kennedy won near the end of his career on a .500 team, while montreal and detroit dominated the league.
ebbie goodfellow: 3 time all-star, captain on SC winners, won hart in 1940, but he's never mentioned as 1 of the great dmen.
things like these lead me to believe the hart trophy was most valuable to his team, not most valuable overall.
it seems voters gave more recognition to dmen long ago. babe siebert, herb gardiner, tommy anderson, goodfellow and of course shore, all won the hart trophy in pre-original 6 era. other dmen got more votes than dmen do today. clancy got votes fairly regularly. cleghorn was runner-up (twice), ching johnson, lionel conacher, clapper and hitchman were, too. often in the 30s-40s, several dmen appear in the top 5 in hart voting, and a few times, 3 of 5 are dmen.
in the 50s, hart voting was dominated by forwards. kelly and harvey are the only dmen who appear much in the hart voting until orr. maybe because of creation of the norris trophy?
it could just be a coincidence of the era. maybe better dmen in 20s-40s and better forwards in 50s-60s.
i'm not making any judgements that shore or any of these players didn't deserve their hart votes/awards, just making observations about the hart trophy over time.
The differences were mostly slight and more a reflection of era. Because there were so few teams, each team was deeper so one great player could do less. So Rollins and Bathgate were the best players in the league their years, but, even the best player in the league couldn't overcome teams with 4+ Hall of Famers on it.
The only major difference, is, as you said, alot more respect for the contributions of defencemen, which is, more than anything, a huge black mark on the face of current Hart voters. And, I would accept that as one point of argument for Lidstrom, but his career Hart votes are (2-5-14-34-28) And only 3 times was he the top d-man in Hart voting.
Forget about Tommy Anderson. Unless you have history books that explain that one, it just doesn't seem to make sense. I just assume it's due to a war depleted talent pool he had a career year. History will remember Jose Theodore much the same way, except they'll be lots of questions as to why there was virtually no top end talent from 00-04.
There's no denying Kennedy's victory was political. No pun intended. He won because Conn Smythe demanded it.
Goodfellow played most of his career as a center and was converted when Marty Barry joined the team and was the best move Jack Adams ever made.
It is true that there weren't many stand out forwards in the 30's as compaired to defencemen, Conacher, Morenz and Cook were great, but Morenz and Cook were more late 20's early 30's. And conversely, the 60's were probably the weakest decade ever for defencemen.
