Top-100 Hockey Players of All-Time (Part 2)

[Johnny Engine]

If anything Lemieux will supersede Howe as we continue to see players play through their 40s at a star level.

Is this actually the case, or is this another one of those things where "like never before!" can be added to just about any sentence in current hockey discussion?

Using ages from Hockey Reference (which pin each season to some time in February), here are the best seasons for a 40+ player:

Goals
1. Howe - 44, 1969
2. John Bucyk - 36, 1976
3. Teemu Selanne - 31, 2011
4. Howe again - 31, 1970
5. Jaromir Jagr - 27 - 2016

Points
1. Howe - 103, 1969
2. John Bucyk - 83, 1976
3. Teemu Selanne - 80, 2011
4. Howe - 71, 1970
5. Alex Delvecchi - 71 - 2016

+/-
1. Howe - 45, 1969
2. Chris Chelios - 40, 2002
3. Tim Horton - 27, 1971
4. Zdeno Chara - 26, 2020
5. Ray Bourque - 25, 2001

Shutouts
1. Dominik Hasek - 8, 2007
2. George Hainsworth - 8, 1936
3. Hasek again - 5, 2006
4. Hasek - 5, 2008
5. Hugh Lehman - 5, 1927

Here are the number of records returned for a player over 40, by decade:
2011-2020 - 39*
2001-2010 - 50
1991-2000 - 2
1981-1990 - 5
1971-1980 - 33
1961-1970 - 19
Players over 40 were almost unheard of during the orginal 6, but there are 7 instances in 1944 or before.
*Not counting David Ayres.

Players playing well past 40 years of age is cyclical, not something that just grows and grows. If the game is indeed getting younger, it's possible the above number will slip in the next decade, maybe not. Basically, age distribution isn't really something that can "improve" in hockey - every 40 year old who is flourishing in an NHL job is occupying a younger man's roster spot, and is scoring on players who are younger than him - you could say the same thing in reverse for teenagers.

 

[Gurglesons]

Is this actually the case, or is this another one of those things where "like never before!" can be added to just about any sentence in current hockey discussion?

Using ages from Hockey Reference (which pin each season to some time in February), here are the best seasons for a 40+ player:

Goals
1. Howe - 44, 1969
2. John Bucyk - 36, 1976
3. Teemu Selanne - 31, 2011
4. Howe again - 31, 1970
5. Jaromir Jagr - 27 - 2016

Points
1. Howe - 103, 1969
2. John Bucyk - 83, 1976
3. Teemu Selanne - 80, 2011
4. Howe - 71, 1970
5. Alex Delvecchi - 71 - 2016

+/-
1. Howe - 45, 1969
2. Chris Chelios - 40, 2002
3. Tim Horton - 27, 1971
4. Zdeno Chara - 26, 2020
5. Ray Bourque - 25, 2001

Shutouts
1. Dominik Hasek - 8, 2007
2. George Hainsworth - 8, 1936
3. Hasek again - 5, 2006
4. Hasek - 5, 2008
5. Hugh Lehman - 5, 1927

Here are the number of records returned for a player over 40, by decade:
2011-2020 - 39*
2001-2010 - 50
1991-2000 - 2
1981-1990 - 5
1971-1980 - 33
1961-1970 - 19
Players over 40 were almost unheard of during the orginal 6, but there are 7 instances in 1944 or before.
*Not counting David Ayres.

Players playing well past 40 years of age is cyclical, not something that just grows and grows. If the game is indeed getting younger, it's possible the above number will slip in the next decade, maybe not. Basically, age distribution isn't really something that can "improve" in hockey - every 40 year old who is flourishing in an NHL job is occupying a younger man's roster spot, and is scoring on players who are younger than him - you could say the same thing in reverse for teenagers.

You don’t think Jagr’s career took a little bit of the shine off of Howe?

And your list clearly shows there are more 40+ players coming through the league correct?

 

[Gurglesons]

I don't think anyone's arguing he would be lost in the annals of time. We're talking about him being "downgraded" to the level of a Hull, Hasek level legend.



The problem here is that casual fans don't spend a bunch of time watching old highlights.

Right now we're talking about people in their late-20s as the definition of a "young fan". Those people aren't quite old enough to remember seeing Lemieux play, but they are old enough to have experienced him through his connections with Crosby. They would have seen a lot of Lemieux highlights in the wake of his retirement, and in tributes to him as a Cup-winning executive and mentor to the biggest superstar of the current generation.

Now, imagine cutting all of that out of the picture. Imagine someone who's being born right now, is that person likely to ever watch a bunch of Lemieux tribute reels? By the time this person is in their late 20s, Mario will be pushing 80 if he's still alive. By the time they know him as more than just a name on a plaque, he'll have a relationship to their generation similar to Howe's with the current generation.

Which leads us to...



A few weeks ago I showed by 9 and 11 year old sons video of the Canes' run in 2006. Their immediate reaction was "why do all the players look so bad?".

We look at the game with old eyes. We don't see distinctions which are immediately obvious to young people.

Even today, younger fans on the main board are absolutely brutal to early 1990s hockey. They already regard that era as being full of trash defense and incompetent goaltending. Someone in the year 2040 is absolutely not going to look at a Mario Lemieux highlight reel and think "this looks like the NHL I've grown up with".

Which doesn't mean they're necessarily going to see Mario as a lesser talent. But they simply aren't going to give him the benefit of the doubt that he receives from people who saw him play live, for the same reason that Gretzky and Orr and Howe and Morenz no longer receive that consideration either.

I think the Penguins forum pretty much unanimously views Lemieux as the more talented and accomplished player over Crosby.

And I think a good majority of them only saw Lemieux 01+

 

[Gurglesons]

Have you not seen Orr video footage?

I generally do not compare Orr with Lemieux or Howe as I believe it is already difficult to compare wingers to centers let alone defense to forwards.

Orr has plenty of video and photographic footage of amazing moments. Howe does not.

 

[Gurglesons]

I think for general perception when talking about the very best of all time, it's more about finding a lane or a niche where you can't be touched.

With Gretzky he has unparalleled offensive peak/prime/longevity.

With Orr he plays a position where there isn't nearly as much competition, which will always boost his perception, and I'd argue he has the "cut short" career argument over Lemieux given how consistent he was in those prime years.

With Howe, it's not about how many games he played but rather how consistent he was for so long. He was the hands down best player of the 50s, and then you can make a legitimate argument that he was right alongside Hull, someone a ton of people have as the 5th best player of all time, in the entire decade of the 60s after that. We've seen the longevity argument challenged with players like Jagr, Messier and Chelios since and it hasn't affected his legacy. Does Marleau potentially breaking his games record matter at all when you look at what Marleau has done in his career?

I honestly think the Crosby thing is going to be big for eating into Lemieux's legacy, even if that's an uninformed opinion. You already have Gretzky heavily eating into Lemieux's legacy given the similar times they played, at the same position, but all those arguments you see about longevity vs. dominance are just going to be amplified considering Crosby, at the same position and in the same organization, was a part of 3-2 Cup teams. I don't think it's right to think that way, but I definitely think it's going to be a thing when people reflect back.

Lemieux’s legacy is one of perseverance we frankly have not seen from a generational player. Both on and off the ice for the Penguins franchise. No player for Pittsburgh will ever have the impact on that franchise that Lemieux did. It is simply impossible. And that legacy will along with his on ice heroics throughout the late 80s and early 90s while battling cancer and back trauma is the uniqueness to his historical context. He’s the greatest what if in hockey.

 

[tarheelhockey]

I think the Penguins forum pretty much unanimously views Lemieux as the more talented and accomplished player over Crosby.

And I think a good majority of them only saw Lemieux 01+

And rightfully so.

That being said, don't think for a second that the views of 2020 are going to stay static over time.

 

[Johnny Engine]

You don’t think Jagr’s career took a little bit of the shine off of Howe?

And your list clearly shows there are more 40+ players coming through the league correct?

Hard to say how we frame Jagr's longevity in relation to Howe going forward. While he was still playing, I believe the prevailing opinion among casual fans was that Jagr would be good forever, to the point where people didn't believe what they were seeing when he played his way off the Flames. It certainly took some shine off of Howe if you just knew that Jagr would still be good in his 50s, regardless of what happened. As it is, we now know Jagr outlasted Chelios and Bower (if you believe Bower's official age), but missed Howe by a few years. We can all draw our own conclusions, but Jagr's still incredibly impressive in my books.

And no, the 2010s have had fewer 40+ seasons than the 2000s, and are closer to the 70s in total number of 40+ seasons. Only 2 players have played past 43 in the past decade (Jagr and Selanne), versus 5 in the 2000s. 3 of the 4 goalies to play past 43* wound up their career in the early 70s. If you divided those numbers by the number of available NHL jobs, the 70s would stand out even more.

Comparing that list with seasons 18 or younger shows a roughly inverse relationship.
40+: 39, 50, 2, 5, 33
18: 39, 23, 38, 88, 5

Given a choice, I think most hockey fans would expect the game to swing younger rather than older in the next few years, though I can't say that with any certainty.

*not counting one game of Moe Roberts in the 50s.

 

[Gurglesons]

And rightfully so.

That being said, don't think for a second that the views of 2020 are going to stay static over time.

I don’t see a generation of Penguins fan ever changing that view though.

 

[ted2019]

You don’t think Jagr’s career took a little bit of the shine off of Howe?

And your list clearly shows there are more 40+ players coming through the league correct?

No it doesn't. Jagr could only beat you with one thing, skill, while Gordie could score, and be the toughest and most physical player on the ice at any single time.

 

[Gurglesons]

No it doesn't. Jagr could only beat you with one thing, skill, while Gordie could score, and be the toughest and most physical player on the ice at any single time.

This isn’t a comparison of them as players this is a comparison of Howe’s biggest X factor which is his consistency over his age.

 

[Vilica]

@Vilica, good on you for stepping forward with some contributions. Another even-keeled voice in the discussion is welcome.

Having said that, though, I don't know which one of these two jars me more...I believe that there are only two ways you get there from here. The more likely explanation is that someone who holds this position likely pretty much self-presents as a non-eyewitness to what they did on-the-ice.

With regards to Hull and Harvey specifically, when you're analyzing all these great players, you start to nitpick, and the flaws with both of them push them down. But I will provide a couple blurbs on my thought process on both. We don't have as much data on older players as we do modern ones, but we do have enough data to try and analyze their numbers.

For Hull, he was a bit of a flat-track bully, breaking mostly even against good opposition and running up the score against bad opposition moreso compared to a few of his competitors. My data has him at 0.502/0.455/0.957 GPG/APG/PPG in 470 games against +GD teams, while he was 0.650/0.592/1.242 in 566 games against -GD teams. That's driven a bit by expansion, but the gap is still there pre-expansion (GPG is more like 0.480 to 0.603).

For Harvey, it's more of an indirect argument, because trying to use points for defenseman is quite flawed. Harvey didn't establish himself full-time until he was 25, though he was a #1D at that point. The Habs in his age 25-28 prime were a good team, though their forward skill was on the wing in that period (they lacked the prime-age centers in the middle). Then, Jean Beliveau shows up, and his ability to be that #1C pushed everybody else into the right place, and Harvey benefited like everybody else. I'm not saying his Norrises were undeserved, or that he wasn't a great defenseman, I'm saying that the data shows he didn't drive on-ice results like a Red Kelly (though because both Kelly and Howe didn't miss any time during their joint prime, it is quite hard to parse exactly how much each individual did) in that same time frame.

Using a cherry-picked year for Harvey, 54-55, here's how just looking at his 6 goals and 43 assists for 49 points in 70 games can miss the details. Montreal outscored the Rangers 33-8 at home that year, and Harvey had 1 goal and 15 assists for 16 points in those 7 games. In 35 games on the road that year, Harvey had 3 goals and 13 assists for 16 points, while in the 28 other home games, he had 2 goals and 15 assists for 17 points. Why should I give Harvey much credit for those points against the Rangers that made no real material difference to the outcome of those games?

[Incidentally, this is why I love Ray Bourque so much. He drove play at even strength against good teams like a #1C for more than 15 years. I have a bunch of fun facts from my deep dive into Bourque's numbers, but one of the most fun numbers is Boston with/without Bourque GF/GA numbers. Here's a small table, the first row is all games for Boston against +GD opponents between 79-80 and 98-99, the second row is just games Bourque played in, and the third row is the results in the games he did not play.

Games	GF	GA	GF/G	GA/G
829	2685	2742	3.239	3.308
760	2467	2458	3.246	3.234
69	218	284	3.159	4.116

[TBODY] [/TBODY]

80-81 3, 81-82 11, 82-83 8, 83-84 1, 84-85 6, 85-86 5, 87-88 1, 88-89 8, 89-90 2, 90-91 3, 92-93 4, 93-94 6, 96-97 10, 98-99 1 is the games missed each year against +GD opponents, which does have a bit of a bias towards the 80s rather than the 90s, so the GA numbers might be overstated a bit.]

 

[Nathaniel Skywalker]

A guy who scored 199 points while never be forgotten.

 

[Trap Jesus]

A guy who scored 199 points while never be forgotten.

Hart Finalist Mario Lemieux. Pretty wild.

 

[ContrarianGoaltender]

With regards to Hull and Harvey specifically, when you're analyzing all these great players, you start to nitpick, and the flaws with both of them push them down. But I will provide a couple blurbs on my thought process on both. We don't have as much data on older players as we do modern ones, but we do have enough data to try and analyze their numbers.

For Hull, he was a bit of a flat-track bully, breaking mostly even against good opposition and running up the score against bad opposition moreso compared to a few of his competitors. My data has him at 0.502/0.455/0.957 GPG/APG/PPG in 470 games against +GD teams, while he was 0.650/0.592/1.242 in 566 games against -GD teams. That's driven a bit by expansion, but the gap is still there pre-expansion (GPG is more like 0.480 to 0.603).

Interesting stuff, which goes along with what Overpass recently posted in another thread. I am completely prepared to be convinced that Hull was a flat-track bully, and in fact I want very much to find out which players have that tendency because it matters quite a bit in my personal evaluation scheme. However, I'm not entirely sure you're fairly comparing him to everybody else in this regard. This is not at all meant to be negative or dismissing your work in the least, just trying to offer some potentially constructive criticism and/or share some thoughts as someone who also loves playing around with splits and is still trying to figure out his own top 100 list (which will likely also have some major deviations from the group consensus on HOH).

First of all, I'm always at least a bit skeptical when a player shows a trend that seems to reverse or at least decrease substantially in the playoffs, which seems to be somewhat the case for Hull (particularly when it comes to his scoring against the Montreal Canadiens as well as the Bruins/Rangers). It might be a small sample size fluke, of course, but it could also indicate that there were different incentives at play, and in that case I think the playoff result is more likely to be representative (at least if we're evaluating talent). (Incidentally, Harvey's playoff scoring looked really strong to me when I analyzed it during the top 100 debates, which is why even though I think some of the critiques of his regular season performance are fair, I'm not sure they really reflect as much on him as a hockey player at his best).

Secondly, I'm not sure the +GD/-GD split is conceptually the right comparison. Those choices are always tough because every time you bin data you run the risk of obscuring meaning, but if you don't group data at all then you tend to produce a single number that is difficult to interpret and obscures the underlying detail. Personally, I tend to care about how a player does against the very bad teams (say, bottom 20% or so), and the elite teams (top 20-25%), because the first is meaningless in that it doesn't really impact winning, while the latter is meaningful because those are the teams you are likely going to run into at the business end of the playoffs. In the middle there's lots of room for variance in terms of style of play, dedication to matching lines, etc. Perhaps most importantly, though, a team's record is only an approximation of its talent level, and it's very easy for a team's GD to swing by 10-20 goals just based on injuries or backup goaltending or an extended streak of running hot/cold by the percentages. As a result, to me it makes more sense to set lower and upper bounds where you have a higher degree of confidence that anybody who falls into those groups definitely deserves to be there (although of course I understand if others disagree).

And finally, are you making any adjustments between eras at all in your analysis? Just based on your Lafleur/Ovechkin comparison in terms of team goals from another thread I'm assuming you aren't, and I wonder if that might be helping/hurting particular players? Bobby Hull seems to me to be a player that is going to be particularly disadvantaged by a +GD/-GD analysis, given that he spent his mid-'60s goalscoring peak in a period where there tended to be four good teams and two awful teams. As a comparison, in the 1950s ('50-'59), 14 out of 40 playoff teams had a negative goal differential (35%). However, from 1960-67 just 6 out of 32 did (19%).

If you take the average of every +GD opponent from Hull's entire Original Six career (1958-1967), you get a Hockey-Reference SRS rating (designed to reflect team strength) of 0.51. The negative GDs come out to -0.52. To put that into today's perspective, the average +GD team Hull faced was the equivalent of last year's Boston Bruins in terms of estimated strength, and the average -GD team that Hull faced was the equivalent of last year's Edmonton Oilers in terms of estimated strength. If you're comparing across eras, some guys are going to have more extreme splits as a reflection of the environment they played in. But if you've already taken that into and Hull still shows poorly relative to guys playing in exactly the same environment, then I do think that is important information for assessing his value.

 

[Dennis Bonvie]

Hart Finalist Mario Lemieux. Pretty wild.

85 goals and +41.

Yep, that voting was pretty bad.

 

[Dennis Bonvie]

Interesting stuff, which goes along with what Overpass recently posted in another thread. I am completely prepared to be convinced that Hull was a flat-track bully, and in fact I want very much to find out which players have that tendency because it matters quite a bit in my personal evaluation scheme. However, I'm not entirely sure you're fairly comparing him to everybody else in this regard. This is not at all meant to be negative or dismissing your work in the least, just trying to offer some potentially constructive criticism and/or share some thoughts as someone who also loves playing around with splits and is still trying to figure out his own top 100 list (which will likely also have some major deviations from the group consensus on HOH).

First of all, I'm always at least a bit skeptical when a player shows a trend that seems to reverse or at least decrease substantially in the playoffs, which seems to be somewhat the case for Hull (particularly when it comes to his scoring against the Montreal Canadiens as well as the Bruins/Rangers). It might be a small sample size fluke, of course, but it could also indicate that there were different incentives at play, and in that case I think the playoff result is more likely to be representative (at least if we're evaluating talent). (Incidentally, Harvey's playoff scoring looked really strong to me when I analyzed it during the top 100 debates, which is why even though I think some of the critiques of his regular season performance are fair, I'm not sure they really reflect as much on him as a hockey player at his best).

Secondly, I'm not sure the +GD/-GD split is conceptually the right comparison. Those choices are always tough because every time you bin data you run the risk of obscuring meaning, but if you don't group data at all then you tend to produce a single number that is difficult to interpret and obscures the underlying detail. Personally, I tend to care about how a player does against the very bad teams (say, bottom 20% or so), and the elite teams (top 20-25%), because the first is meaningless in that it doesn't really impact winning, while the latter is meaningful because those are the teams you are likely going to run into at the business end of the playoffs. In the middle there's lots of room for variance in terms of style of play, dedication to matching lines, etc. Perhaps most importantly, though, a team's record is only an approximation of its talent level, and it's very easy for a team's GD to swing by 10-20 goals just based on injuries or backup goaltending or an extended streak of running hot/cold by the percentages. As a result, to me it makes more sense to set lower and upper bounds where you have a higher degree of confidence that anybody who falls into those groups definitely deserves to be there (although of course I understand if others disagree).

And finally, are you making any adjustments between eras at all in your analysis? Just based on your Lafleur/Ovechkin comparison in terms of team goals from another thread I'm assuming you aren't, and I wonder if that might be helping/hurting particular players? Bobby Hull seems to me to be a player that is going to be particularly disadvantaged by a +GD/-GD analysis, given that he spent his mid-'60s goalscoring peak in a period where there tended to be four good teams and two awful teams. As a comparison, in the 1950s ('50-'59), 14 out of 40 playoff teams had a negative goal differential (35%). However, from 1960-67 just 6 out of 32 did (19%).

If you take the average of every +GD opponent from Hull's entire Original Six career (1958-1967), you get a Hockey-Reference SRS rating (designed to reflect team strength) of 0.51. The negative GDs come out to -0.52. To put that into today's perspective, the average +GD team Hull faced was the equivalent of last year's Boston Bruins in terms of estimated strength, and the average -GD team that Hull faced was the equivalent of last year's Edmonton Oilers in terms of estimated strength. If you're comparing across eras, some guys are going to have more extreme splits as a reflection of the environment they played in. But if you've already taken that into and Hull still shows poorly relative to guys playing in exactly the same environment, then I do think that is important information for assessing his value.

One way of looking at Hull in the 60s is that 40% of the games he played each season were against Montreal & Toronto. That would be like playing 40% of your games against the 1997-98 Devils and Stars. For most of the decade those two teams were that good defensively. In the playoffs the percentage of games against those two teams was probably much higher.

 

[Vilica]

Secondly, I'm not sure the +GD/-GD split is conceptually the right comparison. Those choices are always tough because every time you bin data you run the risk of obscuring meaning, but if you don't group data at all then you tend to produce a single number that is difficult to interpret and obscures the underlying detail. Personally, I tend to care about how a player does against the very bad teams (say, bottom 20% or so), and the elite teams (top 20-25%), because the first is meaningless in that it doesn't really impact winning, while the latter is meaningful because those are the teams you are likely going to run into at the business end of the playoffs. In the middle there's lots of room for variance in terms of style of play, dedication to matching lines, etc. Perhaps most importantly, though, a team's record is only an approximation of its talent level, and it's very easy for a team's GD to swing by 10-20 goals just based on injuries or backup goaltending or an extended streak of running hot/cold by the percentages. As a result, to me it makes more sense to set lower and upper bounds where you have a higher degree of confidence that anybody who falls into those groups definitely deserves to be there (although of course I understand if others disagree).

And finally, are you making any adjustments between eras at all in your analysis? Just based on your Lafleur/Ovechkin comparison in terms of team goals from another thread I'm assuming you aren't, and I wonder if that might be helping/hurting particular players? Bobby Hull seems to me to be a player that is going to be particularly disadvantaged by a +GD/-GD analysis, given that he spent his mid-'60s goalscoring peak in a period where there tended to be four good teams and two awful teams. As a comparison, in the 1950s ('50-'59), 14 out of 40 playoff teams had a negative goal differential (35%). However, from 1960-67 just 6 out of 32 did (19%).

You raise good questions, and I'm going to try to answer some of them, but I'm still lacking some data based on how I started my research and started building my spreadsheets. I started with team splits, and I have them for most all of the top 100 players prior to that 1988 cutoff in hockey-reference. That was before the NHL website added the ability to do splits, so it was a lot of year over year transcribing of game logs. Then I moved deeper on specific players (like Hull), and left others (like Harvey) alone, so I have deep dives in some places. Then I went back and did the +GD/-GD stuff, but it was all manual for a bit. I've managed to create enough formulas that the splits come quickly now, but I still have to go back for a whole lot of players. Some players I looked at playoffs, other players not so much. Also, because it was all manually entered, there are undoubtedly a few bad entries where I mis-typed something.

I want to concentrate in particular on these two points, and endeavor to provide some answers to your points. I'll start with the second part, and say that I have adjusted in some places, but this particular analysis doesn't use it. The gap in PPG vs +GD/-GD teams is larger in higher-scoring eras, but I've moved to using team goals/game rather than league goals/game, because that's what really matters in looking at player point scoring. [That doesn't really answer your question, but consider this in the Hull/Ovechkin comparison - Chicago scored 3381 goals in 1082 games during Hull's career, 3.125 per game, while Washington has scored as I stated, 3367 goals in 1114 games, 3.022 per game. Do we need to adjust for the fact that Hull's teams were higher-scoring than Ovechkin's teams, or just accept that their eras are similar scoring. With the exception of some of the mentioned players, most everybody else in this discussion falls in that 2.9 to 3.2 goals per game window.]

With regards to Hull, if you breakdown his +GD/-GD splits from 59-60 through 66-67, he actually played 238 games against +GD teams, and 296 games against -GD teams (though a large portion of that gap is driven by the 66-67 season - it was 225 to 243 prior to that year, and since only Chicago and Montreal were +GD that year, the gap grew by 40 that year). Also with Hull playoffs, I have him playing 12 playoff series prior to expansion, 5 against Montreal (20 points in 28 games), 5 against Detroit (41 points in 31 games), and 2 against Toronto (14 points in 12 games).

To your first question, I started with just +GD/-GD, and I got into a Ted Kennedy kick that lead me to try and categorize teams based on if they were above or below 0.5 GD/G on both sides, essentially your quartering suggestion. So in a 70 game season, any team that was +35 or higher got placed into the highest bracket, between 0 and 35 the next one, and so forth. For clarity of labels, let's call those four brackets Great, Good, Poor, Abject. I have a bunch of numbers from that, though it is based on player age, rather than a full overview of years. I'm struggling with how I want to display these numbers (it's a full page summary sheet in a large spreadsheet), but we'll start with this table of wingers (and a center) [I also have another list of 10 centers (and a winger) that covers the same time period, but we'll stick with the Hull/Ovechkin comparison for now]:

					Team	Team
		Games	Points	PPG	Goals For	Games	Tm GF/G
Maurice Richard	46-47/54-55	562	539	0.959	1606	600	2.677
Gordie Howe	46-47/54-55	572	581	1.016	1869	600	3.115
Ted Lindsay	46-47/54-55	564	524	0.929	1869	600	3.115
Bill Mosienko	46-47/54-55	557	352	0.632	1556	600	2.593
Alex Ovechkin	11-12/18-19	609	597	0.980	1865	622	2.998
Sidney Crosby	11-12/18-19	530	644	1.215	1729	550	3.144
Bobby Hull	64-65/71-72	554	686	1.238	2003	592	3.383

[TBODY] [/TBODY]

I started with trying to cover this 46/47-54/55 era, and matched the more modern players by age after that, so that is Maurice Richard's age 25 to 33 seasons, Howe's 18 to 26, Lindsay's 21 to 29, Mosienko's 25 to 33, Ovechkin's 26 to 33, Crosby's 24 to 31 and Hull's 26 to 33. From there, we have two tables, one covering the split in +GD teams, the other the -GD teams. The names are missing from these tables, but each line corresponds to the previous one.

Great				Team	Team			Good				Team	Team
% of Games	Games	Points	PPG	Goals For	Games	Tm GF/G		% of Games	Games	Points	PPG	Goals For	Games	Tm GF/G
0.242	136	105	0.772	309	146	2.116		0.132	74	68	0.919	193	80	2.413
0.131	75	55	0.733	191	78	2.449		0.219	125	100	0.800	343	134	2.560
0.129	73	55	0.753	191	78	2.449		0.222	125	93	0.744	343	134	2.560
0.300	167	93	0.557	423	186	2.274		0.233	130	82	0.631	305	134	2.276
0.110	67	73	1.090	207	69	3.000		0.429	261	245	0.939	747	268	2.787
0.104	55	57	1.036	178	58	3.069		0.453	240	294	1.225	761	251	3.032
0.265	147	135	0.918	432	158	2.734		0.213	118	142	1.203	384	124	3.097

[TBODY] [/TBODY]

Abject				Team	Team			Poor				Team	Team
% of Games	Games	Points	PPG	Goals For	Games	Tm GF/G		% of Games	Games	Points	PPG	Goals For	Games	Tm GF/G
0.244	137	170	1.241	529	146	3.623		0.383	215	196	0.912	575	228	2.522
0.238	136	163	1.199	584	146	4.000		0.413	236	263	1.114	751	242	3.103
0.238	134	155	1.157	584	146	4.000		0.411	232	221	0.953	751	242	3.103
0.066	37	25	0.676	115	40	2.875		0.400	223	152	0.682	713	240	2.971
0.164	100	116	1.160	349	102	3.422		0.297	181	163	0.901	562	183	3.071
0.160	85	124	1.459	326	88	3.705		0.283	150	169	1.127	464	153	3.033
0.282	156	235	1.506	686	170	4.035		0.240	133	174	1.308	501	140	3.579

[TBODY] [/TBODY]

That's a lot of data to process, and I don't necessarily think it is a great argument to distinguish players, but the reason I went to all this trouble to paste this spreadsheet is to show the percentage of games each player had against each bracket, and the different scoring levels for the team. You'll notice that it is true that older players tended to face more "Great" teams as well as more "Abject" teams, but the modern players actually face more +GD teams, while the older players face more -GD teams. You can also see the limiting effects of a 6 team league, as both Howe and Lindsay never had to face themselves, while Mosienko never got to face himself.

This is getting way too long, and I'm not really satisfied with how I've tried to answer your points, but I'm going to post it anyway rather than spend any more time on it.

 

[daver]

One way of looking at Hull in the 60s is that 40% of the games he played each season were against Montreal & Toronto. That would be like playing 40% of your games against the 1997-98 Devils and Stars. For most of the decade those two teams were that good defensively. In the playoffs the percentage of games against those two teams was probably much higher.

What is this based on?

 

[Dennis Bonvie]

What is this based on?

How good they were defensively?

Based on how few goals they allowed.

 

[Vilica]

How good they were defensively?

Based on how few goals they allowed.

Dallas 97-98 167 GA, New Jersey 97-98 166 GA, ~2.02 per game

Year over year Goals For Chicago against Montreal from 59-60 through 66-67: 27, 40, 38, 29, 39, 44, 39, 47 for 303 total over 112 games, 2.70 per game
Year over year Goals For Chicago against Toronto from 59-60 through 66-67: 38, 30, 33, 25, 29, 34, 40, 55 for 284 total over 112 games, 2.53 per game

Prorated to an 82 game season, that equates to 221 goals against or 208 goals against. Let's not get too carried away about defensive prowess without looking at the actual numbers involved.

 

[Staniowski]

There will always be some people who rank Howe #1, #2, or #3. And if you were to poll only people aged 80+, a majority might say Howe is #1. That age group would certainly be very favourable to Gordie.

But, right now, I think a majority of the entire hockey world would have Howe at #4. And among the younger half of the hockey world, Howe is behind Lemieux by quite a significant margin.

I don't think it makes any sense that this is going to change.

-----------------------

Lemieux obviously has a lot going for him. But one of the biggest pluses for him is that he's the most recent megastar in the sport. Everybody knows how dominant he was as a scorer. And everybody knows that nobody has approached his dominance since he played.

How long will it be before another player of Lemieux's caliber comes along? Connor McDavid is 32 years younger than Lemieux, and it doesnt look like McDavid is going to do it.

The longer we go without a super-dominant player, the better Lemieux looks.

------------------

If Crosby has 5 more elite seasons, I think most people will have him ahead of Howe. But Crosby will never, for the vast majority of people, get to Lemieux.

-------------------

Mr. Hockey

Gordie might be Mr. Hockey to those of us who are really into hockey. But, to the general population, he's not. Gretzky is.

Gretzky is both Mr. Hockey and hockey's equivalent to Babe Ruth.

Gretzky is untouchable at #1, probably for a hundred years.

This hurts Howe a little bit (but not very much).

------------------

In Gretzky's shadow

Lemieux was in Gretzky's shadow in the sense that Lemieux is 4 years younger, and also because Gretzky was the biggest "star" in the history of the sport.

But this also helps Lemieux (a lot, I would say), in the minds of most people, because for the large majority of their common seasons, Lemieux was either in the same ballpark as Gretzky, or about the same in quality, or better. Really, from CC '87 onward.

 

[Dennis Bonvie]

Dallas 97-98 167 GA, New Jersey 97-98 166 GA, ~2.02 per game

Year over year Goals For Chicago against Montreal from 59-60 through 66-67: 27, 40, 38, 29, 39, 44, 39, 47 for 303 total over 112 games, 2.70 per game
Year over year Goals For Chicago against Toronto from 59-60 through 66-67: 38, 30, 33, 25, 29, 34, 40, 55 for 284 total over 112 games, 2.53 per game

Prorated to an 82 game season, that equates to 221 goals against or 208 goals against. Let's not get too carried away about defensive prowess without looking at the actual numbers involved.

You are comparing Montreal and Toronto's GAA against the top offensive team of the decade, but NJ and Dallas against the whole league.

What was New Jersey and Dallas' GAA against St. Louis and Detroit that season? They were the best offensive teams.

 

[Dennis Bonvie]

2008 vote

Wayne Gretzky	74	11	7	4	1
Bobby Orr	68	11	4	5	2
Gordie Howe	55	1	10	9	3
Mario Lemieux	32	0	2	5	16

[TBODY] [/TBODY]

2019 vote

	Ballots	Points	1st	2nd	3rd	4th	5th	6th	7th	8th	9th	10th	NR
Wayne Gretzky	31	293	23	3	4				1
Gordie Howe	31	267	3	16	9	3
Bobby Orr	31	263	5	9	13	4
Mario Lemieux	31	225		3	4	22	2

[TBODY] [/TBODY]

Howe is improving.

Orr's dropping like a rock.

 

[Hockey Outsider]

For what it's worth:

• The Hockey News's "Greatest Debates" issue from 2005 surveyed 41 professional hockey writers. Lemieux didn't receive a single vote in the "best player of all-time" category. Gretzky, Howe and Orr received 15, 13, and 11, respectively. Link - THN - Hockey's Greatest Debates (from 2005)
• The Hockey News did a Top 100 players project back in 1998. We have the complete voting results. Lemieux was ranked 4th, and was closer to Beliveau in 7th place than he was to Howe in 3rd place. Link - The Hockey News 1998 list of Top-100 NHL Players voting results

One advantage that Lemieux has over just about any player in history is his highlights reel is amazing. But highlight reels are also in the eye of the beholder. Around a decade ago (maybe even longer), there was a short video clip that circulated on HFBoards, showing Orr scoring a goal while sliding down the ice on his back, using the stick to direct the puck through the goalie's five-hole. Most people dismissed it as proof that defense and goaltending was terrible then. Then Ovechkin scored a very similar goal, and dozens of people cited it as proof that Ovechkin was amazing. It was basically the same play - yet people can subjectively interpret if it's proof of a great skater or terrible goaltending.

My point is - we'll see how people judge Lemieux's highlights twenty or thirty years from now. It wouldn't surprise me if a lot of his "step through the defense"-type goals are dismissed as dated products, scored against athletically and tactically weaker players.

 

[Vilica]

You are comparing Montreal and Toronto's GAA against the top offensive team of the decade, but NJ and Dallas against the whole league.

What was New Jersey and Dallas' GAA against St. Louis and Detroit that season? They were the best offensive teams.

Devils 2 games against Detroit - 7 GF 6 GA, 2 games against St Louis 5 GF 7 GA
Stars 5 games against Detroit - 11 GF 13 GA, 6 games against St Louis 12 GF 21 GA

Such a small sample really tells you nothing about the actual comparison you're trying to make. I feel like we're both talking past each other a bit, because here's Montreal's year over year GA/G for the time period - 2.54, 2.69, 2.37, 2.61, 2.39, 2.64, 2.47, 2.69, and here's Toronto's - 2.79, 2.51, 2.57, 2.57, 2.46, 2.47, 2.67, 3.01. Because Chicago makes up 20% of that, it's always going to be closer to that range, compared to New Jersey against your suggestions of Detroit and St Louis, where those 4 games represent ~5% of the Devils schedule. Even the Stars games only total around 13.5%. That's why I've gravitated towards +GD/-GD when handling modern teams, the variance in one matchup gets smoothed out by aggregating 15 or so.