Note to HV and your misuse of any and all existing data from the O6 era.
First suggest that you use the playoffs as well, where you will clearly see that the centers played 8,8,8,7 games respectfully. Ralph Backstrom missing a game.
Also note that Don Marshall, listed as a LW in 1959-60 had NHL experience as a center and at the other forward positions. HR credits him as playing center for the 1956-57,1957-58, 1958-59 seasons.
Also Marcel Bonin played both wings, while Bob Turner played forward on the PK with Don Marshall. Little Toe Blake gambit to get three defensemen on the ice in PK situations.
How was my interpretation of the positions and hockey reference cite misused?
We were talking the regular season here and not the playoffs and the bottom line is that we don't have any accurate information on playing time for the 06 period.
We ahve alot more information about Stevie Y and his role on the Red Wings, we can see that his SOG totals started to drop after the 93 seasons from the regular 300 plus SOG to the 225ish range.
We also know that his TOI from age 33 in 1999 was still close to 22 MPG.
It's not hard to conclude that his drop in SOG wasn't because of less playing time but rather a shift in his role on the team, the stats support what we saw.
Unfortunately we don't ahve stats like that for Jeans time but to even suggest that Blake was rolling 4 lines, in any kind of equal manner, is not supported at all by the information we do have or the intuition that hockey coaches use their best player more than their lesser ones.
Just using your logic let's look at another of Jean's seasons here.
In 58-59 the Habs centers played in
64, 63,64,70 games, what happened in the games were 3 centers were playing? Marshall played in all 70 games and had a stat line of 70-10-22-32, man he must have been one heck of a lousy player if the Habs were really rolling 4 lines at that point, given all of the extra shifts he must have had when the 3 top centers were out.
Same thing in the playoffs, both Henri and Ralph and Marshall played in all 11 games.
Jean played in 3 and Ken Mosdell played in 3 (in an extremely small role since he was 36 at the time).
Were the Habs still rolling over 4 lines at the time with 3 centers for 5 games, and a largely ineffective Marshall on the 3rd line or were guys doubling shifting and playing a majority of the minutes here?
From all the available evidence we have it's pretty clear Jean was getting prime minutes and prime role and a very strong team for basically his entire career.
How much that matters when compared to Steve is up for everyone to decide but it's frankly quite embarrassing the lengths people are going to here to suggest otherwise.
I think one thing to consider ehre when comapring the 2 players is the impact of Yzerman in the NHL and on Detroit was much greater than Jean's on the Habs and NHL before their 22nd birthdays.
Jean had his first elite NHL season at the age of 23 when Steve was having his 6th NHL year and his 5th excellent to elite seasons up to that point.
Jean would go on to ahve 16 more good to excellent NHL seasons from that point on but Steve would have at least 12 excellent to elite NHL seasons after that as well.
I still have Jean ahead at this point but the case can be made that Yzerman is pretty close here.