Round 2 Voting Results (HOH Top Defensemen)

[Dennis Bonvie]

IMO, it was a little of both.

I think you're a little bit right.

 

[Dreakmur]

Because I thought the other 10 players were better than him?

Based on what?

 

[Hardyvan123]

One thing that I find interesting about this is that when people are considering the older era great players (that no one has even laid eyes on) those players are given the benefit of the doubt regarding their ability to adapt their game.

Meanwhile a guy like Coffey, who was certainly a product of his time, and who struggled after he really slowed down (and the game became the literal antithesis of his style) has it held against him.

This despite the fact that he did adapt his game well enough to win Norris trophies across a complete decade span against competition that this board constantly gives other players extra credit for..

If he had simply retired or blown out a knee after 1995 he'd probably be held in much higher esteem.

Shouldn't matter. This has nothing to do with guys getting into time machines and playing for the Leafs next week. This is about how great a player was, so the style of play during a player's era should not factor in.

I think these two posts are quite telling.

There is no way around the fact that we can actually watch almost every minute played by players recently and then try to compare that with very limited media reports( with a problem that the journalistic standards were quite different that I won't dwell on here) that gives us a complete record of player A and an incomplete one for player B and then we are making direct comparisons between the two.

Sure peer play is important but so are other considerations and too often peer play is directly compared without the necessary context IMO.

 

[seventieslord]

the journalistic standards were quite different

the game reports were incredibly detailed, certainly much more than today. This is a huge positive! I know that some reporters were almost like paid employees of the team, but this was widespread so didn't it affect all players equally? Can't we still make educated judgements about these players based on what their biggest fans and harshest ctritics had to say about them?

 

[tarheelhockey]

the game reports were incredibly detailed, certainly much more than today. This is a huge positive!

I agree. As long as we read with a reasonably critical eye, articles from the early period can be extremely helpful. Sure, they can be a bit editorial, but there's also not a background of bloggers, Milbury-type analysts, Eklunds, and other such nonsense. The information might be more sparse, but I'd wager the expertise-to-drivel ratio was a lot higher back then.

Also, perhaps the most important thing is to find content from outside a player's home city. When the Ottawa scribes say Cleghorn played perhaps the best game of hockey they'd ever seen (prior to his signing there), I'm taking them on their word for it. They have no reason to falsify that information.

 

[MXD]

One thing that I find interesting about this is that when people are considering the older era great players (that no one has even laid eyes on) those players are given the benefit of the doubt regarding their ability to adapt their game.

Meanwhile a guy like Coffey, who was certainly a product of his time, and who struggled after he really slowed down (and the game became the literal antithesis of his style) has it held against him.

Actually... Not really, as far as I'm concerned.

There are quite a few players actually who plays a game which is somewhat similar to King Clancy (... as much as it can be, obviously). I also can't really see how a guy like Seibert would fail. Big D-Men who plays a very good shut down games AND were able to contribute to a decent offence, all the while playing a rather disciplined game, would be like... the thing every team would look for. On the other hand, I somewhat punished Cleghorn (to a certain extent -- there should be some kind of adjusted craziness factor).

As for Coffey, there's another old-timer (who could be up for voting at a certain point) and whose case is pretty much like Coffey (albeit was much less effective). Coffey already had some kind of questions marks over him as well (LA, Pittsburgh).

I, for one, somewhat "punished" Sprague Cleghorn for this. His game just doesn't seem to translate that well for every era. Ended up a Top-5 in round 3 nonetheless (for me, actually), but that probably cost him a rank (to Brad Park) and maybe even another (Earl Seibert).

 

[Dreakmur]

I, for one, somewhat "punished" Sprague Cleghorn for this. His game just doesn't seem to translate that well for every era.

How does his game not translate? He's great offensively, defensively, and physically. He's big, skates extremely well, handles the puck well, and has a great shot.

His only weaknesses would be taking bad penalties and being an *******.

 

[Johnny Engine]

Anyone else think that if a player as talented as Sprague Cleghorn came along today with a similar personality, teams would spend the farm on psychiatrists for him?

I don't think there's been any shortage of latter-day players who come into the league looking like absolute sociopaths, and straighten up as soon as they find a team that actually wants to use them (see: Downie in Tampa Bay).

Cleghorn got away, relatively speaking, with some ridiculous behaviour in the 1910s and 20s, but seeing as he did function well enough to play good hockey for a long time, could the supposed mental problems he started off with have been any worse than what Theo Fleury, to name one, dealt with?

 

[Dennis Bonvie]

Based on what?

Based pretty much on what I've read here.

To be honest, a guy playing in the era Cleghorn played in is pretty hard to gauge. I knew a lot more about guys like Clancy and Shore before getting on this site than I did about Cleghorn. Seems his biggest claim to fame is his willingness to cross the preverbial line.

What I looked at was how he was ranked in previous Top 100 votes here. He was consistently behind Park, Pilote, Coffey, Seibert and Horton. The rest were pretty close except for Leetch, who I think is underrated.

Seems he's gained some ground with the current voters.

 

[TheDevilMadeMe]

Here are the results of Vote 4. Feel free to discuss them in this thread.

There were 20 of a possible 23 voters in this round.

Player | Total | 1st | 2nd | 3rd | 4th | 5th | 6th | 7th | 8th | 9th | 10th | none Earl Seibert |162|7|2|5|4|0|1|0|0|0|1|0
Tim Horton |158|3|7|1|4|4|1|0|0|0|0|0
Al MacInnis |156|3|2|8|2|5|0|0|0|0|0|0
Scott Stevens |141|2|5|2|3|3|2|2|1|0|0|0
Chris Pronger |121|3|0|2|3|2|4|4|2|0|0|0
Bill Gadsby |82|1|0|0|1|1|4|3|7|3|0|0
Brian Leetch |79|1|0|0|2|1|3|4|3|4|1|1
Borje Salming |77|0|1|1|0|2|3|5|2|2|3|1
Dit Clapper |65|0|2|1|1|2|1|1|0|2|7|3
Valeri Vasiliev |40|0|1|0|0|0|1|0|3|6|5|4
Serge Savard |19|0|0|0|0|0|0|1|2|3|3|11

 

[TheDevilMadeMe]

Notes:

• Earl Seibert, despite finishing 9th in Vote 3, lept 3 spots and finished 1st in Vote 4
• Al MacInnis had fewer top 2 finishes than anyone else in the top 4, but finished a very strong 3rd by being the only player in everyone's top 5

 

[MXD]

Here are the results of Vote 4. Feel free to discuss them in this thread.

There were 20 of a possible 23 voters in this round.

Player | Total | 1st | 2nd | 3rd | 4th | 5th | 6th | 7th | 8th | 9th | 10th | none Earl Seibert |162|7|2|5|4|0|1|0|0|0|1|0
Tim Horton |158|3|7|1|4|4|1|0|0|0|0|0
Al MacInnis |156|3|2|8|2|5|0|0|0|0|0|0
Scott Stevens |141|2|5|2|3|3|2|2|1|0|0|0
Chris Pronger |121|3|0|2|3|2|4|4|2|0|0|0
Bill Gadsby |82|1|0|0|1|1|4|3|7|3|0|0
Brian Leetch |79|1|0|0|2|1|3|4|3|4|1|1
Borje Salming |77|0|1|1|0|2|3|5|2|2|3|1
Dit Clapper |65|0|2|1|1|2|1|1|0|2|7|3
Valeri Vasiliev |40|0|1|0|0|0|1|0|3|6|5|4
Serge Savard |19|0|0|0|0|0|0|1|2|3|3|11

* Wow.... There's some kind of major splits, if we compare to the earliers rounds. Seibert, even though he finished 1st, got a 10th place vote. Vasiliev, finishing 10th, got a 2nd place vote. I think we'll see much more of this as the project goes on.

* Nobody placed MacInnis below 5th. It was somewhat to be expected, however -- 3rd time, after all.

* The Top-5 is pretty much my top-5, except for the switch of Chris Pronger and Scott Stevens.

* It's safe to say that the Top-3, and spots 6-7-8, could have been affected if we would all have voted.

* Now... next round

 

[tarheelhockey]

I think the scoring system is working well, BTW.

 

[TheDevilMadeMe]

To make next round even more interesting, someone just tried to vote (right after I had just posted the results) and he had Clapper in 1st.

(The vote wouldn't have changed anything in the top 5).

 

[overpass]

We've been debating Tim Horton vs Al MacInnis since the 2008 Top 100 project, and still can't get any separation between them.

Next round should be interesting with Gadsby vs Salming vs Leetch.

 

[JaysCyYoung]

Here are the results of Vote 4. Feel free to discuss them in this thread.

There were 20 of a possible 23 voters in this round.

Player | Total | 1st | 2nd | 3rd | 4th | 5th | 6th | 7th | 8th | 9th | 10th | none Earl Seibert |162|7|2|5|4|0|1|0|0|0|1|0
Tim Horton |158|3|7|1|4|4|1|0|0|0|0|0
Al MacInnis |156|3|2|8|2|5|0|0|0|0|0|0
Scott Stevens |141|2|5|2|3|3|2|2|1|0|0|0
Chris Pronger |121|3|0|2|3|2|4|4|2|0|0|0
Bill Gadsby |82|1|0|0|1|1|4|3|7|3|0|0
Brian Leetch |79|1|0|0|2|1|3|4|3|4|1|1
Borje Salming |77|0|1|1|0|2|3|5|2|2|3|1
Dit Clapper |65|0|2|1|1|2|1|1|0|2|7|3
Valeri Vasiliev |40|0|1|0|0|0|1|0|3|6|5|4
Serge Savard |19|0|0|0|0|0|0|1|2|3|3|11

Incredibly fascinating totals and really shows the amount of parity amongst the voters in this particular round.

As MXD noted, there were some truly interesting splits this time around: seven different players on this list received a first-place vote and you had guys such as Salming, Clapper, and Vasiliev receiving a respectable number of votes as high as second-place all the way down to Savard, who was a distant eleventh.

I was (pleasantly) surprised to see Pronger get some love in this round as it had been building from the previous round of voting, but to see him have more first place voters than Stevens comes as a minor surprise to me. The two are very comparable so perhaps it's not surprising, but I thought that TDMM's impassioned defences in favour of Stevens would carry a little more weight. I myself actually switched Stevens and MacInnis around for the first time in the voting this past round largely as a result of the efforts of the Stevens defenders. It certainly had an impact on my mindset.

Seibert winning by the margin that he did also came as a mild surprise. I had him ranked third, which was were his second-largest number of individual votes came from, but it seemed inevitable that he would be ranked as the top defender available in this round based on his impressive post-season all-star team record (ten selections in a row) and immaculate reputation amongst the hockey public and his peers. Lots of interesting snippets about his defensive play and ability in leading Chicago to the unexpected 1938 Stanley Cup title probably played a role in his finishing first.

For the next round of voting I have hopes that Leetch will at last end his slide and start to receive the benefit of the doubt for his outstanding 1994 post-season performance with the Rangers and also for his incredibly high peak, despite the brevity of it. It will be quite the battle between him and Salming given their similarities as defenders by the looks of it.

 

[TheDevilMadeMe]

What did I say about Stevens that was so persuasive? I remember talking about his 1995 playoffs and how it easily could have been the first of two Conn Smythes and about how great his 93-94 regular season was. Just curious.

 

[JaysCyYoung]

I had forgotten how completely dominant he was in the 1995 post-season, but the one thing that stands out in my memory now upon having it re-charged was just how badly Stevens managed to neutralize Philadelphia in the Eastern Conference Finals. For whatever reason it seemed like that series never happened, and it certainly does not resonate in my mind the way the completely unexpected manner in which the Devils stunned Detroit in the Finals. But reading through the various newspaper articles and seeing just how effective Stevens was in that series really gave him bonus points in my mind. He was probably about the only defenceman in the league at the time that ever gave Lindros major difficulties (this was Hart Trophy, best power forward in the world Lindros), and the associated material was enough to persuade me to rank him first on my list in this round.

Most of us are aware of how good he was in 1993-94 (although unfortunately for Stevens it coincided with one of Bourque's finest efforts), but it was really looking back on the underrated performance he had in the 1995 playoffs that convinced me to give him a higher spot in the rankings.

 

[chckie]

Since I'm being quoted, I think I should explain myself.
I think DerKaiser understood me relatively well.
The Lidstrom case may be similar to Annika Sorenstam, regarding being sort of more recognized in North America than in her home country. She arguably is the best female golfer ever, and seems to sort of finish higher on international votings regarding "best female athlete/sportswoman in the World", than on lists about "best Swedish female athlete/sportswoman". (In her case, it also hurts her that some don't even consider golf a sport.)
Kenny Jonsson is very favoured now, because he recently played his last seasons outside of NHL and therefore became much more visible to his domestic audience - playing in domestic league, for national team, etc. But, he may also be considered having outplayed a prime Lidstrom when the two were on the same team (2006 Olympics). That may make one wonder a bit about which player actually was the best of them. Career wise, Lidstrom is of course way way ahead of Kenny Jonsson.

Another thing I find interesting, but may not put forward very well, is Kenny Jonsson being elected best defenceman during the 2006 Olympics. In his case, it actually seems as if his NHL career (which was good, but not All Star like) hurts him. Based on the 2006 Olympics, he was the best player of them all, in the whole World, including NHL players. But that seems to get pretty much downplayed as "just one tournament". He's an internationally great player, who was probably not elite in the NHL. Other internationally great players (Suchy, Svedberg, Vasiliev, partly Fetisov, but maybe more guys like Tretiak, Charlamov, Holecek) never got to play in the NHL and is harder to judge. It seems as if more weight are being put on international accomplishments during the 1970s and 1980s than today. And yes, it's probably natural as the best Europeans (not all of them) nowadays plays in the NHL. Today, we can probably make much better judgements about European players compared to NHL players, than when they were on different continents. (However, we are still not able to know how they best NHL:ers would do in today's KHL. If it had been possible, I think the best think would be to watch all players play both NHL style and KHL style hockey, as I suspect some NHL stars wouldn't do as good in KHL.)
I'm not saying there is something wrong with how most here seem to focus. I'm just observing it. Kenny Jonsson may not be the best example.

Sorry for the amount of "Kenny Jonsson" recently. It's probably I who bring him up now and then, due to above reasons. I don't expect to see him being voteable within the next few weeks, or perhaps ever in this project. I basically thought of him as an interesting comparison case.

In Sweden and Europe national competition is considered the highest. Best you can do is win for your country. A lot of players have been better, played more and been greater "stars" in the swedish national team than Lidström. Forsberg and Sundin without a doubt and others. Jönsson had some really good years and games and was considered better than Lidström in 06. Those in Sweden will remember that there was a lot of debate as to why Lidström did not play well in the national team up to 06 and that the tournament and the goal was something of a revenge for him.

That said, when he hangs up the skates all papers will say one thing: best swedish defender of all times and so on.

No swede who loves hockey will forget about King Kenny though!

 

[TheDevilMadeMe]

Here are the results of Vote 5. Feel free to discuss them in this thread.

There were 20 of a possible 23 voters in this round.

Player | Total | 1st | 2nd | 3rd | 4th | 5th | 6th | 7th | 8th | 9th | 10th | none Bill Gadsby |166|7|2|3|6|2|0|0|0|0|0|0
Borje Salming |153|5|4|4|1|3|2|0|0|0|0|1
Brian Leetch |148|3|7|3|2|1|1|1|0|1|0|1
Dit Clapper |131|4|3|1|3|4|1|1|0|1|0|2
Valeri Vasiliev |115|1|3|1|4|3|2|1|2|2|0|1
Bill Quackenbush |78|0|0|1|1|2|4|6|0|2|3|1
Mark Howe |78|0|1|1|1|2|4|3|2|1|2|3
Serge Savard |63|0|0|2|1|1|3|0|4|2|3|4
Rod Langway |53|0|0|1|1|1|1|1|5|3|2|5
Jack Stewart |41|0|0|2|0|1|0|2|1|3|2|9
Guy Lapointe |39|0|0|0|0|0|0|5|3|2|6|4
Scott Niedermayer |35|0|0|1|0|0|2|0|3|3|2|9

 

[TheDevilMadeMe]

Biggest surprises to me:

1) The large gap between the top 5 and the rest this far into the project.

2) The "not top 10" votes for Leetch and Salming

 

[MXD]

Here are the results of Vote 5. Feel free to discuss them in this thread.

There were 20 of a possible 23 voters in this round.

Player | Total | 1st | 2nd | 3rd | 4th | 5th | 6th | 7th | 8th | 9th | 10th | none Bill Gadsby |166|7|2|3|6|2|0|0|0|0|0|0
Borje Salming |153|5|4|4|1|3|2|0|0|0|0|1
Brian Leetch |148|3|7|3|2|1|1|1|0|1|0|1
Dit Clapper |131|4|3|1|3|4|1|1|0|1|0|2
Valeri Vasiliev |115|1|3|1|4|3|2|1|2|2|0|1
Bill Quackenbush |78|0|0|1|1|2|4|6|0|2|3|1
Mark Howe |78|0|1|1|1|2|4|3|2|1|2|3
Serge Savard |63|0|0|2|1|1|3|0|4|2|3|4
Rod Langway |53|0|0|1|1|1|1|1|5|3|2|5
Jack Stewart |41|0|0|2|0|1|0|2|1|3|2|9
Guy Lapointe |39|0|0|0|0|0|0|5|3|2|6|4
Scott Niedermayer |35|0|0|1|0|0|2|0|3|3|2|9

* It's not a surprise that Gadsby was a unanimous Top-5, but the further we go, the rarer this will be.

* Howe and Vasiliev nearly went for the caroussel.

* A bit surprised at Nieds getting a Top-3 vote.

 

[Hardyvan123]

Biggest surprises to me:

1) The large gap between the top 5 and the rest this far into the project.

2) The "not top 10" votes for Leetch and Salming

Yes Salming and Leetch both being left off someones top 10 is surprising.

I know that Nieds doesn't get much love here but left off 9 ballots really?

 

[TheDevilMadeMe]

Yes Salming and Leetch both being left off someones top 10 is surprising.

I know that Nieds doesn't get much love here but left off 9 ballots really?

Well, Nieds had the worst longevity as an elite player by a pretty large margin of the guys available last round. And his peak, while great, didn't exactly stand out when compared to some of the other guys available.

 

[Hardyvan123]

* It's not a surprise that Gadsby was a unanimous Top-5, but the further we go, the rarer this will be.

* Howe and Vasiliev nearly went for the caroussel.

* A bit surprised at Nieds getting a Top-3 vote.

I still have my suspicions about Gadsby but without more information he made my top 5 given the parameters of this project.

His longevity is what clinched it for me.

If the terms of the project were different it might have been different.

It will be very interesting going forward.