Interesting. I think I would have Tikkanen and Weight easily above Lowe and Smyth. Smyth tends to a bit over-valued, I think, for reasons I don't understand.
I half agree with you. I had them Lowe-Weight-Smyth-Tikkanen. Lowe's longevity and dynasty contributions (not to mention the status he enjoyed in the league's pecking order as perhaps the 8th-15th best defenseman in the NHL for a good 5-7 years) make him an easy "best" in this sub-group. From there, I'd definitely agree Tikkanen was a better all-around player than Smyth. But was he so good that he can make up for Smyth playing nearly twice as many games as an Oiler? That's where you lose me. Weight, on the other hand? He was Smyth's teammate and clearly superior the whole time they played together. I tend to give the better player the benefit of the doubt in those cases so I had him above Smyth.
My main problem with the list is Wendel Clark’s placing. How can you possible justify placing him at 40, with players like Curtis Joseph who played 5 years there, and Bryan McCabe, (Bryan mccabe are you kidding me?) above him, along with a bunch of mediocre players from the 60’s. Clark deserves atleast top 20 and probably closer to top ten. Also there was too heavy emphasis on the 60’s for the leafs. 10 players who played in the 60’s in the top 25? Team success does not equal individual player greatness and I think that is even more true when there are 6 teams in the league and lots is based on winning cups. Wendel Clark bleed blue for the leafs and seeing him at 40 is a disgrace.
First of all, thank you for joining hfboards just to comment on the list! I hope you stick around.
I love Wendel, he was my favourite player growing up. He created so many of my favourite childhood and teenage memories, perhaps more than anyone except Gilmour and Sundin. When making a mental list, I quickly came to the conclusion that Wendel probably deserved to be about 20th. However, the history of the team is 100 years long and quite successful. The fact is that the team has had enough players who were elite or near-elite to push Clark that far down, and my emotions (and yours) should not be that important in an objective discussion.
What does Clark have on these players? (note to new hfboards users including yourself: VsX is a type of adjusted scoring metric that compares a player's points total to that of the #2 scorer in the league - there are more nuts and bolts than that, but that's all you need to know for the moment - the numbers quoted are each player's most favorable five year scores).
Babe Dye: 7 seasons, 90 VsX, (no all-star voting existed but was usually league's top scoring RW), 1 cup
Gord Drillon: 6 seasons, 87 VsX, 1st/1st/2nd/3rd/3rd in RW all-star voting, 1 cup
Norm Ullman: 7 seasons, 76 VsX, 3rd/5th in C all-star voting
Phil Kessel: 6 seasons, 77 VsX, 3rd/4th/5th in RW all-star voting
Harry Watson: 8 seasons, 58 VsX, 3rd/4th/5th in LW all-star voting, 4 cups
Sid Smith: 8 seasons, 68 VsX, 1st/2nd/2nd/3rd/3rd in LW all-star voting, 3 cups, 1-season captaincy
Ron Ellis: 15 seasons, 58 VsX, 4th/4th in RW all-star voting, 1 cup
Rick Vaive: 7 seasons, 63 VsX, 6th/6th/6th in RW all-star voting, 5-year captaincy
Reg Noble: 7 seasons, 70 VsX, (no all-star voting existed)
Lanny McDonald: 7 seasons, 64 VsX, 2nd/4th/5th in RW all-star voting
Tod Sloan: 9 seasons, 65 VsX, 2nd/3rd/6th in C all-star voting, Hart runner-up, 1 cup
Ace Bailey: 8 seasons, 70 VsX, (most of his prime was before all-star voting), scoring champion, hart runner-up, 1 cup
Dick Duff: 9 seasons, 51 VsX, 6th in LW all-star voting, 2 cups
Wendel Clark: 9 seasons (I'm not counting 88 or 89, and yes I did the same for other players), 50 VsX, no significant all-star votes, 3-year captaincy
Looking at this group of players, Clark has the weakest offensive output, and only Dick Duff is close (and Duff actually ended up behind him, anyway). Only Ellis and Watson, at 58, are remotely close. But Ellis had a remarkably long tenure with the team, and was very good defensively. I can't see any case for Clark over Ellis. Watson was very good defensively as well, and one of those rare breeds of very physically effective, yet very clean players. He was the team's top LW throughout the 40s dynasty. Every single one of these players, save for Duff, was considered among the very best in the league at their position as a Leaf, multiple times. Clark was not.
Clark would have scored better on this list if not for injuries, but I projected his 5 best seasons to full seasons (86, 87, 92, 94, 97) and he'd still have a score of just 63, and he only played 78% of the games it'd have taken to get there. Note that everyone else on that list above whom I haven't already mentioned has that score or better, and they all missed a few games here and there themselves.
I watched Clark as much as you did. I'm well aware he had "intangibles". He was one of the best fighters in the league, perhaps the best fighting skilled player of his time after Rick Tocchet. He was a devastating open ice hitter and had a few clutch playoff moments. He also had his downsides, though. His reckless play led to far too many injuries that crippled him and the team. His (sometimes, when healthy) flashy goal stats were in stark contrast to his weak assist and point totals because he was unimaginative offensively. He was poor defensively and had very little hockey sense. The team was very bad for a large portion of his time there. He was never the team's best, or even 2nd best player. He was only three times even the 3rd or 4th highest scorer on the team. He specialized in the three things that will get attention and create memories - goals, hits and fights - but he was not more valuable to the team than the guys in the above list. I know that if you ask a living Leafs fan where Wendel would rank, they reflexively will tell you, "oh, Wendel's great, he should be like, top-20 or something!" but when you really put pen to paper and look at the data and the history, he's just not close to that. He played for only 10% of the franchise's history, was only their 3rd-5th best player most of that time, and it was for almost the worst possible time in franchise history - 5 of the team's worst 10 seasons ever, to be exact, and 8 of the worst 18.
More about intangibles. let's start by putting Dye, Drillon, and Kessel aside because they're so significantly ahead offensively that it shouldn't matter that they're extremely one-dimensional offensive players (and they definitely are/were). Ullman, Watson, Ellis, Vaive, Noble, McDonald, Sloan, Bailey and Duff, these guys all had intangibles of one kind or another. Sid Smith is the one other exception - to my knowledge, he was pretty offense-only.
- Vaive was a very physical, very fiery power forward who was just as tough as Clark and even more effective a scorer. He was a captain too, though not really a good one.
- Noble's time in Toronto is not well-documented, but in Montreal and Detroit, when he went to play defense, he was known as an outstanding defender and a devastating hitter. It appears he was a two-way forward as a leaf, the safety valve for Denneny and especially Dye.
- McDonald was gritty and excellent in the corners.
- Sloan was a little fireball.
- Bailey had some guts and guile, and was arguably the league's best penalty killer thanks to his puck-ragging.
- Duff was solid defensively, a tough spunky little guy, and very clutch in the postseason (many think he made the hall on that basis alone, because it sure wasn't for offensive stardom).
So, as much as Clark was beloved (and I know, because I loved him to death), wasn't Lanny loved? Wasn't Vaive loved? Wouldn't Leafs fans have really appreciated Noble's no-nonsense work ethic? Watson and Duff's grit and responsible up-and-down the wing style? Ullman's relentless work ethic and near-elite defense? there are more people living who can remember Clark's whole Leaf tenure than that of Ullman or Sloan, but that doesn't change what happened on the ice or how much the fans and observers in those times appreciated those players.
As far as defensemen like McCabe and goalies like Cujo go, I think I can leave that alone for now, unless you insist. I think the point is well made by using the group of 14 forwards that I did. Naturally, there are going to be some defensemen and some goalies slotted in proportionally with the forwards, and I'm pretty comfortable with which ones were included and how they were slotted.
Saying Clark belongs in the top-20 and maybe even top-10 is just reflexive. I know because it was my own reflex, too.
Re: Fleury vs Barrasso
I did a Penguins-only ATD back in late 2012. Fleury was close then, but it was still Barrasso by a nose. Since then, Fleury added four above average (at worst) seasons and half of a Conn Smythe worthy playoffs. That ought to have been enough to get him over Barrasso by now. If nothing else, his back-to-back seasons (plus the 2017 half playoffs) of being not insignificantly in the middle of the pack in All-Star Team voting is a string of three noteworthy years (on this scale) that Barrasso never put together. Barrasso had had two...and a half? Maybe? Really good playoffs. Fleury can reasonably cancel Barrasso's 1992 run with his 2008 run (honestly, I think I'd take Fleury's '08 over a lot of performances in that surrounding era league-wide). The '91 run with his '09 run. And then Fleury's 2017 was better than anything else Barrasso put together. Including being on the wrong end up two pretty historic game 7 upset losses.
Barrasso had two higher regular season peaks...years and years apart...and most of that time was without Mario and adjustments were made to protect Barrasso. Not that all goaltenders don't rely on good defensive play to post numbers - they do in almost every case of course - but we see Barrasso's impact before, during and after when his teams weren't buttoned up. He was just a standard-issue goalie.
Feel free to check out my Barrasso profile where I detail a little more about him and the teams surrounding him here:
http://www.letsgopens.com/scripts/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=60027&start=175#p2254616
Four, five years ago, in the prime of Fleury-panic - when he had that uncoached series vs. Philadelphia and that similar debacle against the Isles, yeah, Barrasso was ahead of him and Fleury was probably adding a bit of distance on his behalf...he rebounded, he matured his game, and he registered a number of noteworthy seasons (again, on this scale) in a row that sufficiently moved him past Barrasso, fairly comfortably I might add - in my usually-humble opinion...
I agree Fleury has added four above average regular seasons since then, as well as 15 very good playoff games this year. He's definitely got the longevity going for him as well.
"not insignificantly in the middle of the pack in all-star team voting"? Sure, I'll give him 2016. But 2015 was four 3rd place votes and 2014 was two 3rd place votes. I don't think you're usually the type of person who makes a big hubbub about things like that, are you?
As a guy who considers the Pens his 2nd team (not sure if you knew that), I still feel burned by Fleury's 2010-2015 playoffs... don't you? They had to undo at least some of the goodwill he earned in the previous few years. Was Barrasso ever that bad at any one time? I mean he had his ups and downs, but not like that. Overall in the playoffs, Barrasso's Pittsburgh tenure saw him allow goals at 96% of the league rate. Fleury's had him allow 108%. That's a 12% swing and is difficult to overcome with any other metric. I know as well as you do (ok, maybe not quite as well as you do, but work with me here), that teams will affect sv%. But I honestly think this favours Fleury. The Penguins of Fleury's eras have been more defensively-oriented, allowed fewer shots and had better defensive defenseman overall, have they not? That's the impression I get, anyway (Fleury's shots against were below average consistently from 2010-2016, FWIW). And as of around 2012 (not sure if things have changed since), Barrasso's 1991 and 1992 were the two highest shots/60 averages of any cup winning goalie in the sv% era.
I read your bio and it sure doesn't sound like Barrasso was a standard issue goalie. Fleury was more consistent (though, consistently slightly above average) and had the longevity, and consistency is something I really value in a goalie, but in this case the peak difference was too much for me to ignore. Fleury was not a "vezina candidate" kind of goalie, or really even close. I don't think there's a lot we fundamentally disagree on here, it's just about how we weigh those factors.
i hope having read my many years of naslund-slandering posts made you drop him below linden and luongo, hehe.
looking fwd to picking up the mag, seventies. congrats on what looks like a wonderful publication.
Haha! I actually had him 3rd after the obvious, but they had him 4th and left him there.
For the record, I find 3-7 on that team to be an unsortable mess. It could go a lot of ways. And if the Sedins had left in, say, 2012 rather than padding the career numbers a few more years, you could probably throw them in that pile, too.
To answer the question: They were pretty close from '02-'07 and then McCabe really fell off after 2007. However, McCabe had the best year by far out of the two in 2004. I liked Kaberle as well personally, but he was somewhat of a whipping boy back when McCabe was at his best. In actuality, he was a good albeit flawed defenseman just like McCabe, and neither was really a true number one over a sustained period of time. Toward the end of his tenure with the Leafs, McCabe was a lightning for criticism himself and at that point, Kaberle may have been more popular.
Obviously Kabby played for the team longer. Actually, I would rank Kaberle higher on an all-time list merely because he had more longevity with the team and McCabe really fell off toward the end of his stint with the team. But again, McCabe's 2004 was definitely better than any of Kaberle's seasons and McCabe had better raw statistics that season than Niedermayer (the Norris winner) and Chris Pronger.
Oh, and I'd rank both of them much higher than Dion Phaneuf... not surprisingly.
Ha! I'd rank them higher than Phaneuf, too. Though Phaneuf did receive some consideration from me, ultimately the team has been around a long time and he saw us through a pretty bad time as the #1 all-around defenseman. More longevity, a better peak, or at least a few playoffs as captain might have seen him sneak on.
Your summary isn't far off either. McCabe was a lightning rod towards the end. I remember it well - I never hated him as a player, but I hated him being on the roster, keeping us decent when we really badly needed to tank, and I hated his salary and NMC, but he was good for what he was. McCabe often seemed like he was all over the ice trying to do everything, and Kaberle more cerebral, but for all his faults, McCabe DID do more out there. He was the only one with any physical game, he wasn't afraid to shoot the puck and I don't think Kaberle was the reason this pairing was the only one Quinn/Maurice ever felt comfortable putting up against the opposition's best.
I am surprised at the Kaberle/McCabe reactions here. They were two completely different players who complemented eachother well, but I feel like Quinn, Maurice and award voters spoke pretty clearly about who was better. McCabe played 25.5 minutes in the seasons they were together, and Kaberle 25.0. These were guys who probably were able to play more minutes with the right partner than they otherwise might if carrying a lesser player, but McCabe did have multiple 24+ minute seasons before he was paired with Kaberle, and the McCabe years were Kaberle's only 24 mintue seasons. When the going got tough in the playoffs, he played 28.8 minutes to Kaberle's 25.2 in the 51 playoff games they both played. Voters thought he was better: He was 4th and 9th for the Norris, with 67 total votes earned as a Leaf to Kaberle's 13. He was better recognized by seemingly everyone for that snapshot in time, and it's revisionist to say he wasn't a decade later.
Kaberle still ended up ahead, because he played almost 900 games with the team. the meat of it was the time with McCabe, and the rest of it is just padding, but I think it's enough padding.
Again, haven't had a chance to pick up the issue yet, but I'm prepared to disagree somewhat with McCabe's placement, whether he goes ahead of Kaberle, or too closely behind. I've definitely known 70s to have a somewhat systematic way of ranking defensemen at what you might call the MLD-tier, where the question "how many minutes did he average, and on what quality of teams", carries a huge amount of weight.
McCabe finished ahead of Kaberle in ATOI in 5 of the 7 seasons they played together, and about 2 minutes more over both of their entire Leafs tenures*. But McCabe was the kind of defenseman who could be overrated by ice-time - his physical strength let him eat up minutes as a big bully on the penalty kill, and of course he was a singular powerplay weapon. Kaberle always looked consistently better all over the ice to me, but ATOI doesn't really show that when both of them were on the top pair anyway.
Again, I haven't picked up the issue, so I'm not sure if I'm totally mischaracterizing how 70s feels about these two. But I can totally see the argument framed that way.
*This would include Kaberle's lightly-used rookie season, as well as the stretch at the end where he was starting to take a back seat to players like Phaneuf, Beauchemin, etc.
see above.
Also, if McCabe was more useful on special teams, why shouldn't that be an important consideration? I wish the 2017 Leafs had a guy I could refer to as
"a big bully on the penalty kill"!
I won't get into the ranking numbers themselves especially when the rankings were not done by someone who watched the team year after year. Not much sense in debating that.
There's no need to be so dismissive. Just because someone wasn't there to see every game doesn't mean they can't read what others who did watch thought. It would certainly help any project like this to have the input of dozens of fans from each fanbase provide their thoughts to ensure each group is heard, but on the other hand, it's really hard to ensure everyone shares the same vision. As I'm sure you know, there are people who over-romanticize their own era, those who think everything newer is automatically better, those who have no idea how to proportionally place in some goalies and defensemen among the forwards, those who will treat stats from 1986 the same as they would from 2016, those who think popularity as as important as actually being a good player, and so on.
I will say having Jack Brownschidle & especially Murray Baron in the Top 50 is embarrassing to say the least.
I think I have a pretty good read on what kind of player Brownschilde was and how he was regarded. He wasn't anything too special, that's for sure, but he did get a lot of minutes from three coaches - Plager, Francis and Berenson, not exactly bad hockey guys - and is 7th all-time in games by Blues' defensemen. Being a highly-utilized player on its own isn't enough to get on the list and playing for the team for a good, long time isn't enough on its own, either, but together - it makes it pretty hard to leave a guy off. (the teams that employed him were among the best and worst that the Blues ever iced, a quite inconsistent set of seasons, but in all, they were .465 in his five full seasons - below average, but not terrible, either) There's room for 15 defensemen - a guy who played the 7th longest, for 22-23 minutes a game and twice led the team's blueline in scoring, can't make it on?
Baron I can take or leave - he was a below average NHL player. But his best NHL seasons were in St. Louis, when he matured into a passable 2nd pairing guy in 94, 95 and 96. In all, he was a 19.5 minute player there. Not great but useful enough. His tenure length is 12th longest all-time for the team, on a list with room for 15 defensemen. Arbour, Bouwmeester, Cavallini, Brown and Brewer passed him on the basis of being better at their peaks - in Arbour's case much better - despite less time put in. And Baron passed Salvador and Polak, less impressive players with more GP. That nets him 15th spot among defensemen. He could probably be a few higher or lower depending on one's personal values but I think this is pretty much fair for him.
This is a much better list of Top 50 players for the Blues.
https://graphics.stltoday.com/apps/blues50/
I'm not seeing any numbers - is this ordered in any way? It would make it easier to comment on.
Let's look at the differences between the two. The THN list has Oshie, Brownschidle, Bouwmeester, Brewer, Berglund, Millen, Cavallini, Baron, Perron and Allen (26, 32, 34, 34, 37, 39, 47, 48, 49, 50). In their place, this list has Gassoff, Lefley, Wickenheiser, Plante, Turnbull, Chase, Roberts, Stevens, Young and Twist.
The description says, " This is not a list of the most talented players in NHL history who played here briefly toward the end of their career, so you will not see Wayne Gretzky, Martin Brodeur, Doug Harvey or Guy Lapointe." - but then it has Plante and his 69 games, and Stevens and his one (very good) season. I'm not sure we value the same things here.
Brownschidle, Bouwmeester, Brewer and Cavallini have 321-455 game tenures with the team and have all been relied on for more than their share of minutes - from Cavallini's 21.0 to Brewer's 23.6. Those are numbers that #2-3 defensemen typically get - that's a pretty important role on a team. Gassoff and Stevens are the only defensemen on the other list to compare to. Gassoff's death was tragic, and he was hugely popular, and his accident can only have helped his legend, in a very Bob Barilko kind of way, but he had just finally in his last season become a true top-4 defenseman on the team. He had a bright future considering he was a 24 year old getting 22 minutes, but the door was abruptly closed on his career and if we only look at what he did for the team, it wasn't enough to get on a top-50, popular or not. Stevens, of course, put up what was probably the best season by any STL defenseman until 1999, but it was just one season. If he had a season like that for one of the franchises with a 25-season or less history, he might have a case, but this is St. Louis and they've been around 50 years. Give me 5-6 solid seasons of a #2-3 defenseman over one from Stevens.
In net, there are Allen and Millen versus Plante. Did Plante play at a higher level, even at his advanced age, than Allen and Millen? Of that I'm sure. However, Allen has played over twice as many games as a Blue, and has actually been a starter for the team. Millen played three times as many (and he was a solid 3rd all-star team behind Roy and Vernon in 1989, and Plante never earned any recognition; he wasn't getting enough of a workload to merit any). Honestly, it almost wouldn't matter how good Plante was in 69 games across two seasons in a 1B type situation - it's just too small a sample. Allen barely snuck onto the list with 2.5X as many games.
At forward, THN has Oshie, Berglund, and Perron. The other list has Lefley, Wickenheiser, Turnbull, Young, Chase, Twist, Roberts. (or should Roberts count as a defenseman? Really tough to say, he switched so much). Here are their basis hockey card stats:
Oshie: 443 GP, 310 Pts
Berglund: 637 GP, 296 Pts
Perron: 422 GP, 244 Pts
Lefley: 233 GP, 187 Pts
Wickenheiser: 230 GP, 118 Pts
Turnbull: 396 GP, 238 Pts
Roberts: 395 GP, 157 Pts
Young: 377 GP, 254 Pts
Chase: 345 GP, 40 Pts
Twist: 294 GP, 21 Pts
First off, there's a fundamental difference of philosophy when you want to make room for a player like Chase or Twist on the Blues' list and THN doesn't. Personally, I think if it's between them and guys like Oshie, Berglund and Perron, it's no contest. These guys played longer and were obviously better players. "Popularity" can't bridge this - not at all. There are lists where some goons snuck on, but it's typically cases where the longevity was impossible to ignore and/or the team's history wasn't quite as long.
The other four were legit players, of course. Roberts honestly could have made it. I wish I had an exact breakdown of how many games he spent at forward and how many on defense, because that would really help gauge his value better, but yes, I think he would look better here than 50th place Allen for sure, regardless of which positions he was at more often.
So what do Wickenheiser, Turnbll and Lefley have on Oshie, Berglund and Perron? They're all behind them in longevity - only Turnbull is close. In offensive results, Lefley averaged 0.8 PPG but that's closer to .64 in today's era, well behind Oshie and not far enough ahead of Perron to account for the massive longevity difference (nearly 2X). Turnbull's production is barely better than Berglund's after era adjustments, and he has far less time with the team. Wickenheiser played the shortest time of all, and was the lowest producer, too, but at least he killed some penalties - however, Oshie was an outstanding penalty killer for the blues, at a time when their penalty kill was much more successful than in Wickenheiser's mid-80s. I really can't see the cases for any of these forwards over Oshie, Berglund or Perron. I mean, Oshie seems like so much a no-brainer for this top-50 that you should really reconsider your position here.
Young has a case to sneak on the list at the bottom - I don't see him passing Berglund and certainly not Oshie, but he's pretty similar to a Perron or a Courtnall. Hey, it's tough, there's only room for 50.
I campaigned for older guys to get their due - always - but the presence of Oshie/Perron/Berglund over Gassoff/Wickenheiser/Lefley/Turnbull isn't just recency bias. I'd have campaigned for them if their records merited it. I mean, to be 88th, 92nd and 99th in career games for the team, you have to be a
really special player to make the top-50 all-time players, don't you? And Gassoff, Wickenheiser and Lefley weren't really special. Arbour? Hell yeah he was! I'm very pleased to see him there for his peak and his role in the team's formative years, despite his short tenure.
All in all, from those 50 I could see Roberts and Young replacing two of those bottom four - take your pick - but that's hardly reason to call the list embarrassing! I don't think the other list is better - it's different though, that's for sure.
