The all encompassing "players of today vs players from the past" thread

[TheDevilMadeMe]

Re: Eddie Shore - I'm starting to think that we on the HOH section have been overrating him slightly. I've read posts from several older posters that there was somewhat of a consensus that Harvey had surpassed Shore at the time. This seems to be backed up by the THN Top 100 list, which has Harvey at #6, Shore at #10, and pre-Cup Bourque at #14.

The THN panel was full of people who watched Original 6 hockey, so they would have been aware of the Harvey/Shore consensus at the time (though perhaps biased by the fact that many of them didn't see Shore himself). The THN panel was full of media types, and I think that it very much follows general media perception of players (hence the high placements of Messier and Rocket Richard).

Also, taking into account THN's love of Cup counting, I find it likely they'd bump Bourque up a few spots after he finally won his Cup (and did, you know, finish runner up for the Norris to Lidstrom at the ripe age of 40).

Anyway, my point is that I'm starting to think of Bourque/Shore as a tossup for #3/4 defensemen, with Lidstrom possibly joining them after he retires (seriously, his season to date as a 40 year old is incredible).

 

[TheDevilMadeMe]

Hogwash.

There is no question that Bourque had tougher competition. Your argument that Lidstrom's peers are being underrated because they play in an era with Lidstrom is silly. That would mean that Sakic, Yzerman, etc. are/were being terribly underrated. Lidstrom's peers are not as highly valued as Bourque's or Orr's simply because those of us who have seen them play, know that the defensive crop was weaker during Lidstrom's time. We know that Coffey, Stevens, MacInnis, Chelios etc. are superior to Niedermayer, Pronger, and Chara....

It isn't awards/domination against his peers that makes me think Bourque is superior to Lidstrom. It is having watched them play for most of their careers...

True, but I think the difference is overstated due to the weird careers of Niedermayer and Pronger. Lidstrom wasn't competing with Scott Niedermayer's career, he was competing with his seasons. And Niedermayer from 03-04 to 06-07 was just as dominant as any defenseman Bourque faced. Nieds wasn't nearly as good until he hit the age of 30, but that doesn't mean his 3 dominant seasons (3 Norrises in a row in an all-Canadian league...) were any less dominant. Likewise, Pronger in 2000 had a regular season good as any of Bourque's competition, he just couldn't repeat it.

 

[lazerbullet]

Just a small note.

I remember that J. Lemaire (it was probably his last year as Minnesota's coach) gave an interview to Detroit's radio. He said that nowadays it's a lot harder to play for the guys. You have to give 100% every night to just make the playoffs. And that's the case for almost any team. In his days you could often take a night off against some weaker teams. Other lines on your team would do the job anyway.

Seriously... hockey is as competitive as it has ever been.

 

[Rhiessan71]

Just a small note.

I remember that J. Lemaire (it was probably his last year as Minnesota's coach) gave an interview to Detroit's radio. He said that nowadays it's a lot harder to play for the guys. You have to give 100% every night to just make the playoffs. And that's the case for almost any team. In his days you could often take a night off against some weaker teams. Other lines on your team would do the job anyway.

Seriously... hockey is as competitive as it has ever been.

More competitive for sure but the arguments saying this is because the league is more talented now is not an accurate assessment imo.

I maintain that the speed of the game dilutes the talent level and the league is not more talented now, the talent is just spread around more evenly that it was in previous "era's".

 

[BraveCanadian]

Just a small note.

I remember that J. Lemaire (it was probably his last year as Minnesota's coach) gave an interview to Detroit's radio. He said that nowadays it's a lot harder to play for the guys. You have to give 100% every night to just make the playoffs. And that's the case for almost any team. In his days you could often take a night off against some weaker teams. Other lines on your team would do the job anyway.

Seriously... hockey is as competitive as it has ever been.

This is also a factor of the greater parity in the league now.

The salary cap encourages it and also the fact that there is a talent pool large enough to support all the teams helps.

In Lemaires heyday (the 70s dynasty) there was a huge difference in the talent level between the have teams and the havenots in the NHL.

I'm sure the late 70s Habs could play at 75% and still blow out the poor teams of the day.

So while I agree with Lemaire's point, I don't think that is a good indication of how good the best player in the world now is compared to the best player of the 50s,60s,70s, 80s, 90s for example.

We generally aren't comparing averages here.. we're comparing outliers.

 

[lazerbullet]

More competitive for sure but the arguments saying this is because the league is more talented now is not an accurate assessment imo.

I maintain that the speed of the game dilutes the talent level and the league is not more talented now, the talent is just spread around more evenly that it was in previous "era's".

Yes, talent is spread. But lets assume if in the old times you had to play against stacked Team A and a crappy Team B. Top defenseman plays 25-30 minutes per night. While against Team A he mainly faces one top line. He rarely plays against the other one (who might be just as good). In next game he plays against crappy Team B. Again he will play against the top line, but it's much weaker this time.

Nowadays talent is spread. Both teams are equally good. Team B has essentially Team A's other top line. Our top defenseman plays games against Team A and Team B top line. Now he faces both strong lines, not just one.

In which case it's harder to play, dominate, put up good numbers, etc?

 

[Rhiessan71]

Teams don't even want overly talented players on their bottom lines today. They want fast players to perform defensive tasks that are cheap and fit into the salary cap.

If you're a talented player that can't crack a teams top 6, it's a real good possibility that you won't be dressing while you watch less talented, faster, much cheaper, more defensive minded players taking up the bottom 6 spots.

It's not that teams couldn't employ 3 scoring lines today like they did in the past, it's that they can't afford to.

We generally aren't comparing averages here.. we're comparing outliers.

This is by far the point that is lost the most on the "newer is better" crowd.

 

[Infinite Vision*]

Changing averages helps skew the results of the outliers, but once again the average isn't all that's changed though.

 

[lazerbullet]

Changing averages helps skew the results of the outliers, but once again the average isn't all that's changed though.

This is based on what? I would say that your average top defenseman, or forward is better trained and coached than x years ago. It's harder to separate yourself from the pack, if others can learn what is natural to you. It's harder to gain extra advantage in conditioning with that extra drive and natural willingness to take care of your body, if your average top player can hire a coach, who will keep pushing his lazy butt.

Will you still dominate? Yes, but the gap with others will be much smaller.

 

[Rhiessan71]

Here's the other issue I have with people ready to put Crosby past all these other great players already.....he hasn't even passed a player that came into the league at the exact same time, trailing said player in points including a whopping almost 80 goals heh.

 

[BraveCanadian]

Changing averages helps skew the results of the outliers, but once again the average isn't all that's changed though.

If you are implying again that this makes "newer faster better", this isn't true. The whole curve can be shifted upwards and an extreme outlier from an earlier time can still be better than any player today.

There are human limits that cannot be surpassed at any given time frame and even with training/equipment/nutrition etc. we can see from an example like the 100m records that the improvements are small and incremental over a long period of time in a mature sport.

So while those improvements might have the average shifted on the bell curve a bit higher, an extreme outlier (superstar player) on the original curve is still going to be ahead of say.. 95% of the current curve. Diminishing returns set in because as I said there are finite limits to human ability at any given time.

A super extreme outlier like a Gretzky/Orr/Lemieux for example might be soooo far along the original curve mapping human ability that they are in fact still out in front of the new curve simply because people that are that extremely outside normal ability are very rare and not guaranteed to exist at any given time.

The fact that they show up occasionally at all is like winning the lottery.

 

[BraveCanadian]

Re: Eddie Shore - I'm starting to think that we on the HOH section have been overrating him slightly. I've read posts from several older posters that there was somewhat of a consensus that Harvey had surpassed Shore at the time. This seems to be backed up by the THN Top 100 list, which has Harvey at #6, Shore at #10, and pre-Cup Bourque at #14.

This is going to be more and more a problem as the tendency here is to use statistics and awards as a way to rank players without that first hand knowledge (most of us here are too young).

So much is lost because hockey statistics are really pretty poor at showing overall player value in such a complex situational game.

 

[Derick*]

If you are implying again that this makes "newer faster better", this isn't true. The whole curve can be shifted upwards and an extreme outlier from an earlier time can still be better than any player today.

There are human limits that cannot be surpassed at any given time frame and even with training/equipment/nutrition etc. we can see from an example like the 100m records that the improvements are small and incremental over a long period of time in a mature sport.

So while those improvements might have the average shifted on the bell curve a bit higher, an extreme outlier (superstar player) on the original curve is still going to be ahead of say.. 95% of the current curve. Diminishing returns set in because as I said there are finite limits to human ability at any given time.

A super extreme outlier like a Gretzky/Orr/Lemieux for example might be soooo far along the original curve mapping human ability that they are in fact still out in front of the new curve simply because people that are that extremely outside normal ability are very rare and not guaranteed to exist at any given time.

The fact that they show up occasionally at all is like winning the lottery.

Very important insight and frankly I really hope it doesn't go over people's heads.

If there's a larger talent pool today, and development is better, it makes sense that the ~100th best player would be better than the ~100th player when it was smaller and inferior. But when you're looking at a class of player that has a 1 in 100 million ability, the sample size is smaller and the randomness of when they were born becomes more of a factor and it's quite possible you could get two in the smaller talent pool and none in the larger talent pool.

 

[seventieslord]

This thread is against the rules

 

[finchster]

Re: Eddie Shore - I'm starting to think that we on the HOH section have been overrating him slightly. I've read posts from several older posters that there was somewhat of a consensus that Harvey had surpassed Shore at the time. This seems to be backed up by the THN Top 100 list, which has Harvey at #6, Shore at #10, and pre-Cup Bourque at #14.

In my opinion, Shore gets underrated by these groups of people because he was an *******. His talent was undeniable and he was the best player of his generation, but personality wise he was like Ty Cobb. Even some posters here have stated they think Shore should “punished†for his negative impacts on hockey. I believe even you mentioned it in the HOHHOF, to punish Shore by not electing him his first year of eligibility.

There are arguments for Harvey over Shore, I don't really take issue with anyone putting Harvey over Shore. I don't believe some overate him, some choose to overlook the negative side to Shore.

 

[JackSlater]

I agree with you in part, but at some point, hockey basically began to resemble the modern game with very few differences.

29-30: forward pass allowed in all 3 zones (and around this time guys stopped playing the whole game; which meant no "loafing for large parts of it)

43-44: The introduction of the red line allowed for passes between zones.

Basically, every player who played hockey after 43-44 has been playing more or less the same game. Even the game from 29-30 until today is very similar.

I think that any successful player who played after 43-44 would be successful in today's game, if given time to adapt to the various smaller changes that have occurred since then. There are questions about guys who played between 29-30 and 43-44, but the game was mostly the same.

Especially the guys who played after 1955 or so, when the league talent pool recovered from WW2. In the old days, the game changed rapidly and you saw that a new generation completely replaced the old. The Cyclone Taylor/Newsy Lalonde/Joe Malone generation completely outclassed the previous generation on the ice. Then when Joe Malone retired, he talked about how different the game was with substitutions, rather than 60 minute players "loafing" to conserve energy.

Gordie Howe dominated the early 50s (when the talent may still have been thinned from WW2) and very few of the stars from the early 50s made much of an impact once the Jean Beliveau/Bobby Hull generation game around. But once those guys came around, you never again saw a generation gap, with a "better" generation taking over for an older one.

Sure the game is faster now. But so much of that has to do with better skate technology and the super-short shifts pioneered by Mike Keenan in the 1980s. I really don't see why a Gordie Howe, Jean Beliveau, or Bobby Hull couldn't adapt to these changes, when the basic nature of the game itself hasn't changed.

This post sums everything up nicely. The changes in hockey over the last few decades are generally extraneous with regard to how good players are. Players today may have superior fitness, take shorter shifts and have access to superior equipment but this does not prove that players today are inherently better than players from the past. Some people may wish to compare players from previous decades with players today in an absolute sense, as in pulling them out of a time machine and dropping them into the game today, but to me this approach is pointless as it gives the more modern players many advantages. The relative approach is far more interesting to me, and I would also say that it is far more fair, provided the competition is taken into account.

 

[Unaffiliated]

This thread is against the rules

Nah, this is now the official "Evolution of Hockey" thread. This is the only one allowed.

 

[Hawkey Town 18]

True, but I think the difference is overstated due to the weird careers of Niedermayer and Pronger. Lidstrom wasn't competing with Scott Niedermayer's career, he was competing with his seasons. And Niedermayer from 03-04 to 06-07 was just as dominant as any defenseman Bourque faced. Nieds wasn't nearly as good until he hit the age of 30, but that doesn't mean his 3 dominant seasons (3 Norrises in a row in an all-Canadian league...) were any less dominant. Likewise, Pronger in 2000 had a regular season good as any of Bourque's competition, he just couldn't repeat it.

You make a good point about Niedermayer and Pronger giving Lidstrom strong competition some years, but there are still some signs that Bourque's competition was a clear level up.

One is depth. There were just more Norris-caliber defensemen competing against Bourque. Even if you want to say Niedermayer from 04-07 was just as dominant as the runner-ups/winners against Bourque, what about the guys finishng 3rd, 4th, and 5th? The Norris isn't just a two horse race. Bourque had more guys to lose votes to, and a greater chance of one of these guys having a "great" season.

The second is how well some of these guys were doing in their older years. I don't care what anyone says, 40 year old Chris Chelios and 39 year old Al MacInnis finishing runner-up for the Norris were not as good as the 10-15 years younger versions of themselves Bourque was beating.

 

[TheDevilMadeMe]

In my opinion, Shore gets underrated by these groups of people because he was an *******. His talent was undeniable and he was the best player of his generation, but personality wise he was like Ty Cobb. Even some posters here have stated they think Shore should “punished†for his negative impacts on hockey. I believe even you mentioned it in the HOHHOF, to punish Shore by not electing him his first year of eligibility.

There are arguments for Harvey over Shore, I don't really take issue with anyone putting Harvey over Shore. I don't believe some overate him, some choose to overlook the negative side to Shore.

Well, "best of his generation" is debatable, depending on if you consider Morenz part of Shore's generation, but your overall point stands.

And yes, the actual HHOF did make Shore wait until the second class.

 

[BraveCanadian]

The Bourque vs. Lidstrom competition argument loses a lot of weight as soon as you keep in mind that pretty much half of Bourques career overlapped with Lidstrom.

I do agree that earlier Bourque probably faced tougher competition from the Potvin's/Coffey's/MacInnis etc... but I think by this point people are regurgitating it a little quickly.

Lidstrom is still going strong and has been the only constant key player on the ice during an amazingly long period of strong Detroit Red Wings squads.

 

[Regal]

The Bourque vs. Lidstrom competition argument loses a lot of weight as soon as you keep in mind that pretty much half of Bourques career overlapped with Lidstrom.

I do agree that earlier Bourque probably faced tougher competition from the Potvin's/Coffey's/MacInnis etc... but I think by this point people are regurgitating it a little quickly.

Lidstrom is still going strong and has been the only constant key player on the ice during an amazingly long period of strong Detroit Red Wings squads.

But Lidstrom didn't won a Norris until Bourque's last season (And Bourque was second). The competition argument is more in relation to the second half of Lidstrom's career, when he was in his prime and won his 6 Norrises, though the competition was already slowing down in the latter half of the 90s. I wouldn't say Bourque's early days or last few seasons were particularly strong in terms of competition, but the late 80s to early 90s, during Bourque's prime there was a very good crop of guys all around their primes.

 

[unknown33]

Interesting that you bring up the 100m race. Jesse Owens set a new world record in 1936 that took 20 years to break. Since then over a hundred runners have beat Jesse Owens' time. Even the last place finishers in races today will often beat Owens record. Does that mean Jesse Owens should not be on a list of the best runners ever? Does that somehow mean that a guy that finishes 20th in the next Olympics is a better runner than Owens?

Take a look at Owens' shoes, the non existend starting blocks and the cinder track then try again.

Could Carl Lewis beat Jesse Owens in a 100-meter race? You’d think so if you looked at nothing but their times, but look again.

Jesse Owens ran 100 meters in 10.2 seconds. Carl Lewis won the Olympics in 9.99. What you have to look at again is the surface they each ran on. Owens ran on a cinder track. The final layer on all tracks of that era was made of the brittle, pebbly, porous residue of the iron smelting process. Carl Lewis won the Olympic 100-meter on a surface made of rubber and polyurethane.

Jesse Owens dug tow holes in the cinder track behind the starting line and planted the toes of his spiked track shoes in those holes as a brace for his feet in the starting position. Carl Lewis used carefully designed starting blocks planted on the surface of the track. We’ll never know how fast Jesse Owens could have run on a rubber track with starting blocks.

 

[JackSlater]

The Bourque vs. Lidstrom competition argument loses a lot of weight as soon as you keep in mind that pretty much half of Bourques career overlapped with Lidstrom.

Lidstrom was only a legitimate Norris threat during the last quarter of Bourque's career though.

 

[TheDevilMadeMe]

Take a look at Owens' shoes, the non existend starting blocks and the cinder track then try again.

Wow, that's a great point and one I never thought of.

 

[unknown33]

Wow, that's a great point and one I never thought of.

I can smell the sarcasm, but I can't see it being mention here in this thread already.