Um dude very underrated player key defensive piece to the hurricanes stanley cup win in 2006 dude he has more points than lanny mcdonald and he's in the hall he only has 1006 points Whitney has 1064 points. Propp is surprisingly two back from lanny and he'll never get in I mean playing on those flyers teams in the late 80s meant something didn't they
defensive piece????
Superficially, one could make the case that Whitney is better than Propp, because he scored the same amount of points but just played in a lesser era. In fact, for peak offense their results are basically identical when compared to the offense of their eras.
However:
- It took Whitney over 300 more games to achieve the same career point total
- Whitney's point totals were padded with assists; 36% of his points were goals, 42.5% of Propp's points were goals
- Propp was the top offensive player on a very defensive yet very successful Flyers team over a period of 10 years. Why is it important that they were defensive? Because he scored less there than he could have in a more offensive environment (see Rick Middleton, Patrik Elias). From 1979-1989 he led the team in points twice, in points per game two other times, and four times was within three points of the leader. Over the decade he easily led the team in points. (true, this was because he was the only top player to spend the whole decade there, but out of players with more than 250 GP as a Flyer, only Kerr had a higher GPG and only Clarke had a higher APG - no one had a higher PPG - same story in the playoffs over this time) Whitney is not an all-time great player for any franchise, and tended to be a "bad team scorer".
- Propp went to the finals five times with three teams, leading the finalist 1985 Flyers in points by four points, in 1987 by a point, and had two other 23 point playoff runs in 1989 and 1991. Whitney missed the playoffs more than he made them, was 8th in scoring on the 2006 Hurricanes, only had one other 10+ point playoff, and finished with under half a point per game on his career. Propp played in 52 more playoff games, but had 95 more points in those games.
- Propp was a significantly more physical player
- Propp was a significantly better defensive player
- Propp killed as many penalties in just the 1984 and 1985 seasons as Whitney did in his entire career.
hmm, you weren't comparing Propp to Whitney, were you? Well anyway, there it is, in case anyone is wondering.
FWIW, I'd also take Propp over McDonald but it's close. Lanny is a weak HHOFer and Propp is among the better players left out.
