I disagree, lots of skilled players, let alone HOFers, could finish second in assists playing with Wayne and Mario, what kind of argument is that really? Ironic you’re accusing me of arguing in bad faith. As a Dman being the top dog on a mediocre team with Bobby Ryan as your best teammate and finish league #1 in assists, now that speaks in favor of Karlsson.
If you want to argue how relevant/useful it is to count leading league in assists - or how much it helps/hurts to have stronger teammates - fine, we can discuss this. And of course playing in Edmonton was helpful to Coffey.
But on your last post you were using Karlsson leading league in assists and Coffey not as some sort of statistical differentiator, while not recognizing that he should actually trail Coffey. Any sensible statistical counting usually excludes peak Lemieux/Gretzky from the equation because of how much of an outlier they are offensively.
Without Lemieux/Gretzky - it's advantage Coffey 3 to 1 vs Karlsson for leading league in assists.
How meaningful/valuable that is is up for debate.
Despite Karlsson’s injuries and barely having 3 consecutive healthy seasons his entire career, EK’s 2015 to 2017 seasons are as good or better than any 3 years stretch for Coffey (Norris + runner up + runner up, and you’d have to be a real hater to not acknowledge EK deserving those other to Norrises, + the monster playoff run in 2017) and doing it on a mediocre Ottawa team with a lot lesser teammates than Coffey ever played with.
I don't care about consecutive seasons for peak. Coffey just happened to have 3 consecutive great seasons, which is why I used the term consecutive. My point is best ~3 years I give the edge to Coffey. Better playoff peak - also Coffey.
Peak Karlsson is pretty good - Coffey was just better and had the better seasons. You can talk about 2017 playoffs for Karlsson all you want - obviously great - but Coffey 1985 playoffs is definitely better.
Maybe without any major injuries Karlsson could have put together a better career, with less dips, and matched/surpassed Coffey. Maybe. I don't think at their best they're very far off per se - but it doesn't change the fact that Coffey has the better peak, prime, career and playoff resume than Karlsson does.
They aren't a wash statically and Coffey ahs a very long consecutive prime.
Also just to be fair Coffey wouldn't have been second fiddle in his prime years to an older Burns would he?
I'm surprised that the voting is only 39-15 for Coffey here really as it's not close at all.
Don't be too surprised. It's weird on HF - but anytime you talk about 90s players (Fedorov, Forsberg, Lindros, Lidstrom, Pronger, Hasek, etc) nostalsgia kicks in and they often get overrated.
Whenever you talk about 80s players - it seems like it's too far off and they often get underrated (Bourque, Coffey, Roy, etc).