5th Greatest all time

[Kyle McMahon]

The other thing that's crucial for Harvey's case is watching footage of him play. His hockey sense is off the charts - there's only one player in history who I think clearly has better a better hockey IQ than Harvey, and that's Gretzky.

There are some shifts - not every one of course, but a fair number - when it almost feels like I'm watching a grown man play against children. Everyone else is playing checkers, but Harvey's playing chess. You get the same feeling when watching Lemieux, except Harvey's skillset is much more balanced between offense and defense.

I keep going back and forth between Bourque and Harvey as the 2nd greatest defenseman ever. A more analytical or accomplishment-based approach probably favours Bourque. But, as great as he was, I never got the same sense of total mastery of the game from Bourque that I do when watching footage of Harvey.

As impressed as I am with Bourque's consistency and longevity as one of the premier players in the sport, I just can't see an argument for him at #5 (which isn't to say he doesn't have an argument against Harvey). His inability to separate himself from a guy like Messier in the eyes of contemporary observers is a bit of a sticking point for me. Putting him into that Beliveau class of players is just a tad too much for me, though I think I'm still probably as high or higher on Bourque than the majority.

One can say, what if he was part of a dynasty, how would he then be viewed? Perhaps more favourably by some, though one of the things that impresses me most about Bourque was his insane workload on some pretty average Bruins rosters year after year. Being a team's best offensive and defensive player at the same time is not a common situation, but Bourque excelled in the role. Put him on a dynasty team and he very likely loses that distinction.

 

[Kyle McMahon]

'
I don't think "offensive driver" is really what you mean, is it? Red Kelly was statistically quite a bit more involved in the offense than Harvey was; Kelly was even called a "4th forward" in the press, and it was meant as a compliment at that time!

Likewise, Harvey's contemporary Bill Gadsby was involved in the offense at even strength moreso than Harvey was.

What I think made Harvey unique was how he controlled the flow of the game from the backend WITHOUT necessarily joining the rush.

Maybe that's the wrong term, since it conjures up images of Paul Coffey or Bobby Orr.

Your last paragraph is what I was getting at. Harvey's brilliant management of the puck in the defensive zone was the starting point of the Montreal offense. I guess not everyone views those traits as "offensive" in the traditional sense though, which is why Harvey isn't always thought of in the same vein as Kelly for example.

 

[Kyle McMahon]

That begs the question what were Jean Beliveau, Maurice Richard, Henri Richard, Bernie Geoffrion, and Dickie Moore doing (!?), but OK.

Standing around probably.

But seriously, the elder Richard was a legend before Harvey ever showed up, and the younger Richard and Beliveau were long after he was gone.

Geoffrion definitely has some right place, right time vibe to him. Moore had an injury-plagued career and is one of the more enigmatic players to evaluate IMO. But these two are accordingly held in lesser esteem than those other names.

 

[BenchBrawl]

Bernard Geoffrion was a superstar in junior, so he doesn't come from out of nowhere at least.

Canadiens1958 was very high on Dickie Moore.

We shouldn't punish them because they peaked during the dynasty. That's why it was a dynasty; all great players peaking together.

 

[wetcoast]

Harvey was traded to a sub-.500 team and still won the Norris. He controlled the game through his puck control, vision and by being tough to deal with man-to-man. Lidstrom was about anticipation, positioning, a great stick, vision. Lidstrom gets denigrated because he didn't use his body, but players have said you couldn't get around him and you couldn't dump it in either because he'd anticipate it and would always get there first. Dmen play more and more like him these days seems like.

Hard to single out either guy from the monster teams they played on.

I don't know if he deserved it or not as I wasn't even alive then but it is interesting that the Habs actually surrendered 20 fewer GA, than the year before, in the same season without Harvey and the guy he was traded for, Dman Lou Fontinato actually led the entire NHL in plus minus that year.

Harvey was also the coach of the NYR that year so perhaps he had an unfair advantage in both Norris and Hart voting but once again it's hard to say with any certainty.

 

[wetcoast]

The other thing that's crucial for Harvey's case is watching footage of him play. His hockey sense is off the charts - there's only one player in history who I think clearly has better a better hockey IQ than Harvey, and that's Gretzky.

There are some shifts - not every one of course, but a fair number - when it almost feels like I'm watching a grown man play against children. Everyone else is playing checkers, but Harvey's playing chess. You get the same feeling when watching Lemieux, except Harvey's skillset is much more balanced between offense and defense.

I keep going back and forth between Bourque and Harvey as the 2nd greatest defenseman ever. A more analytical or accomplishment-based approach probably favours Bourque. But, as great as he was, I never got the same sense of total mastery of the game from Bourque that I do when watching footage of Harvey.

I agree with this but it also presents as a problem as well.

The first one is the obvious one in that some players look excellent but the results can be mixed, Kent Nilsson is the prime example here as an all time elite talent matched by so few yet the results are lacking.

Note that I'm not comparing Harvey to Nilsson, one is an all time great in every sense and the other is really just a tease and the historical record shows that..

Now to the second point.

Harvey despite his IQ and team situation was a relatively meh 5 on 5 Dman offensively in his era, someone (going off memory and I'm quite drunk right now I think it was Black Gold extractor has a detailed post about this somewhere). This is where the eye test doesn't really match up with the stats for me. Just because a certain player looks like something doesn't necessarily mean they are that all of the time.

This is a crude thought and no doubt when I'm sober I'll be able to articulate it better but it is something that always bothers me about Harvey (and dynasty players in general to be frank) and others that I was not able to view live.

 

[Vilica]

I think the biggest issue I have with Harvey is when you look at Montreal's 49-50 through 53-54 seasons, basically Harvey's first full 5 seasons, his age-25 through 29 years, that also represent Maurice Richard's age 28 through 32 seasons. The point I'm trying to make is that you have 5 consecutive years of prime Harvey+M. Richard, two players who at the very worst are top 20 of all time, in what really is a weak era for hockey beyond Detroit, and Montreal's yearly goal differentials for those 5 years were +22, -11, +31, +7, and +54. Over that period, Montreal was -1 vs Boston, -40 vs Detroit, -4 vs Toronto, +83 vs Chicago, and +65 vs New York.

That +54 season corresponds to Beliveau's first partial season, and the next time Montreal had a goal differential lower than +31 was the 64-65 season. If you look at Montreal's yearly goal differential against each team in Beliveau's 8 year peak from 54-55 through 61-62, an even differential against Detroit in 54-55 and Chicago in 60-61, as well as a -3 against Boston in 56-57 are the only blemishes in their positive goal differentials over the entire period. Perhaps even more impressive, of those 37 positive goal differentials, only 8 were in single digits. Now part of that was all the talent in Montreal beyond Beliveau - your Plantes, Geoffrions, Moores, Olmsteads, H. Richards - but the supercharging of the offense that Beliveau provided is the biggest factor.

That's why for me Beliveau has a legitimate argument for #5 all-time, and Harvey and M. Richard get pushed down my list. I still lean Bourque for 5th though, just because of what he did as a #1D for so many years.

 

[Midnight Judges]

"Doug Harvey controlled the puck entirely despite barely touching it in the offensive zone."

"Doug Harvey was primarily responsible for the Habs +68 goal differential in 1961. The Habs goal differential immediately jumped to +93 after Harvey left in 1962, but again, Harvey was the primary reason why they were good enough to be +68 in 1961."

"Doug Harvey controlled play entirely as a Hab, but then went to the Rangers and immediately lost that capability, which is why he was a minus player and his new team had a losing record and went nowhere. But still he was the biggest reason for the Habs success."

"The 1957 Canadiens had a better winger, better center, better defenseman, and a better goaltender than anyone in the entire NHL from the past two decades. Except they were all riding Doug Harvey's coat tails. But at the same time they were all better than everyone playing today."

"With Doug Harvey, you have to rely heavily on the eye test to override the facts and data. Except none of us have actually seen him play all that much."

 

[Dennis Bonvie]

I agree with this but it also presents as a problem as well.

Now to the second point.

Harvey despite his IQ and team situation was a relatively meh 5 on 5 Dman offensively in his era, someone (going off memory and I'm quite drunk right now I think it was Black Gold extractor has a detailed post about this somewhere). This is where the eye test doesn't really match up with the stats for me. Just because a certain player looks like something doesn't necessarily mean they are that all of the time.

This is a crude thought and no doubt when I'm sober I'll be able to articulate it better but it is something that always bothers me about Harvey (and dynasty players in general to be frank) and others that I was not able to view live.

In the 1950's, only Gadsby and Kelly produced more at even strength than Harvey.

 

[Hockey Outsider]

"Doug Harvey was primarily responsible for the Habs +68 goal differential in 1961. The Habs goal differential immediately jumped to +93 after Harvey left in 1962, but again, Harvey was the primary reason why they were good enough to be +68 in 1961."

"Doug Harvey controlled play entirely as a Hab, but then went to the Rangers and immediately lost that capability, which is why he was a minus player and his new team had a losing record and went nowhere. But still he was the biggest reason for the Habs success."

I'll address these two points because I think they're fair and interesting questions. (The other three points, I think, are misrepresentations).

It's not accurate to say that Harvey didn't help improve the Rangers. The year before he arrived, the Rangers allowed 248 goals (38 more than the league average), and in Harvey's first year that dropped to 207 (4 fewer than the league average). The crucial fact here is, aside from Harvey, the Rangers' rosters were otherwise pretty similar (HOF goalie Gump Worsley played 59 and 60 games those two years). Star scorer Bathgate was his usual consistent self (77 points and 84 points). Low-end HOF defenseman Harry Howell played 70 and 66 games those two years. The biggest change from 1961 to 1962 (aside from Harvey's arrival) was that the Rangers lost Hall of Fame defenseman Bill Gadsby (though he was past his prime by that point).

In other words - in front of the same goaltending, and after losing an (aging) HOF defenseman, Harvey helped the Ranger reduce their goals against by 42 goals relative to the league average, in one year, with a 70 game schedule. They jumped ten points in the standings and made the playoffs for the first time in four years. Is all of that due to Harvey? No; but it's the most obvious change on an otherwise stable roster. And the people who witnessed this season agreed - Harvey was runner-up for the Hart trophy.

I agree Harvey didn't have a great plus/minus on the Rangers, but nobody here has been using plus/minus as an argument in his favour. (Incredibly, he was only on the ice for 9 more ES goals against in his first year in New York - the reason his plus/minus dropped is because the Rangers were a much weaker team offensively than the Habs).

====

As to the question about why the Canadiens allowed fewer goals right after Harvey left - they allowed 22 fewer goals than the league average in 1961, and 45 fewer than the league average in 1962 (a swing of 23 goals). Again, we need to look at the roster changes rather than attribute everything to one player.

In 1961, Plante had the worst season of his career to date. He had torn cartiledge in his knee and he was even sent down to the minors mid-season (I think it was an EPHL team). In 1961 (Harvey's last year on the Habs), Plante posted a 90.4% save percentage (easily the worst mark in his career at that point - he averaged 92.2% over the past five season). And he spent nearly half the season in the minors, forcing the Habs to start Charlie Hodge (a competent goalie, but not a HOF'er).

Plante recovered in 1962. He played literally every minute of the season. And his save percentage (92.3%) was almost exactly what it had been in the five years leading up to his injury (1956 to 1960). Plante won the Hart trophy that year.

Can this be used to argue that the Habs didn't need Harvey, since a healthy Plante had a great season without him? Sure - but nobody has taken the position that Plante "needed" Harvey to be successful. The 1950's Habs were such a strong team that they probably would have won several Stanley Cups even if you removed any one of their top players (just like how the Oilers won a Cup without Gretzky, and two without Coffey).

The other significant change is the Habs top forwards, in general, were much less productive in 1962 than in 1961. Geoffrion dropped from 95 points to 59. Moore dropped from 69 to 41 points in the same number of games. Beliveau had 90 points, then dropped to 41 points in 43 games. Beliveau was obviously injured, but Geoffrion and Moore struggled in their first year without Harvey. Hard to say if that's a coincidence or not.

====

This has turned into a much longer post than I intended. But the point I'm trying to make is Harvey immediately helped his new team reduce their goals against significantly (with no other significant changes in the roster). And although the Habs improved as well, that's due to Plante having an all-time great comeback season, and the premise implicitly blames the Habs' unusually high goals against in 1961 on Harvey, rather than Plante being injured.

 

[Midnight Judges]

the premise implicitly blames the Habs' unusually high goals against in 1961 on Harvey, rather than Plante being injured.

What you describe as "unusually high" was a whopping 10 goal (or 5.6%) difference from the year before.

The Habs save percentage went from .915 to .908 (whereas league wide scoring increased 1.6%). It's not some huge difference.

 

[Midnight Judges]

The other thing that's crucial for Harvey's case is watching footage of him play. His hockey sense is off the charts - there's only one player in history who I think clearly has better a better hockey IQ than Harvey, and that's Gretzky.

There are some shifts - not every one of course, but a fair number - when it almost feels like I'm watching a grown man play against children. Everyone else is playing checkers, but Harvey's playing chess. You get the same feeling when watching Lemieux, except Harvey's skillset is much more balanced between offense and defense.

I keep going back and forth between Bourque and Harvey as the 2nd greatest defenseman ever. A more analytical or accomplishment-based approach probably favours Bourque. But, as great as he was, I never got the same sense of total mastery of the game from Bourque that I do when watching footage of Harvey.

How many full games of Doug Harvey have you watched? It must be quite a bit. 200? 300?

 

[overpass]

"Doug Harvey was primarily responsible for the Habs +68 goal differential in 1961. The Habs goal differential immediately jumped to +93 after Harvey left in 1962, but again, Harvey was the primary reason why they were good enough to be +68 in 1961."

The thing about the Original 6 NHL is that there was a lot of talent packed into 6 teams. So no one player could make a huge impact on team success. For the years when we have plus-minus data (1960-1967), no one player posted huge plus-minuses like the stars of every subsequent post-expansion decade did. Even when star players moved teams, you don't see a huge change in team success like you do in the post-expansion NHL. So no, Harvey was not primarily responsible for the Habs goal differential, but in a league packed with so much talent on the average team, no one player could have an impact on goal differential and winning like players of earlier and later eras did.

"The 1957 Canadiens had a better winger, better center, better defenseman, and a better goaltender than anyone in the entire NHL from the past two decades. Except they were all riding Doug Harvey's coat tails. But at the same time they were all better than everyone playing today."

They obviously weren't all riding Doug Harvey's coattails. I don't think anyone with any knowledge of that team and those players would make that claim. Beliveau, Moore, Geoffrion, Maurice, and Henri were all superstar level forwards. Beliveau was a Crosby-level prospect and developed into a superstar who some rated as the best player ever. Moore and Geoffrion were junior hockey superstars, probably comparable to Stamkos and Tavares as prospect talents but with a much more favourable NHL development environment. Maurice Richard was like late-career Ovechkin, without the burst he had when he was younger but still an amazing finisher. Henri Richard was a skating, stickhandling, checking and puck possession superstar who was almost certainly posting great advanced stats against top competition if we had those numbers. Like a combination of Brad Marchand and Patrice Bergeron with jets.

What would you expect a team with those players to do? They won the Stanley Cup every year for five years, going 40-9 in the playoffs without ever playing in an elimination game. That's exactly what you would expect a team of superstars to do. So why is it hard to believe that they had a lot of all-time great players? There was no draft or salary cap at the time to prevent them from building a team loaded with all-time great players.

With a team like this that played in a tough, deep league and just dominated, it's very hard to evaluate player quality using statistics, especially with a player like Doug Harvey who had the reputation of only exerting himself offensively when necessary. No, he didn't push the attack all the time like Raymond Bourque did on weaker teams in a weaker league, but he didn't have to. The eye test is almost the only way to evaluate his quality under these unusual circumstances.

As to whether all these players on the Canadiens were better than anyone in the past 2 decades--well, time will tell to some degree because the book is not yet written on the past 2 decades. Sidney Crosby, Alex Ovechkin, and Connor McDavid are still building their cases. But there are a couple of reasons why there may have been more all-time greats in the 50s than now. The development system with affiliated junior teams had a lot of advantages over the later, post-entry draft system where junior hockey development was disconnected from the NHL. And it was possible for the top prospects to join the best organizations and get the best development while playing with and learning from great players, as opposed to the current system where Steven Stamkos has to join the Tampa Bay Lightning and play for Barry Melrose.

"With Doug Harvey, you have to rely heavily on the eye test to override the facts and data. Except none of us have actually seen him play all that much."

I'm sure we would all prefer that there were more games available to watch from Doug Harvey's prime. But what can you do?

 

[Hockey Outsider]

How many full games of Doug Harvey have you watched? It must be quite a bit. 200? 300?

Certainly not that many. Perhaps fifty altogether. Surely you're not suggesting that you need to watch 200-300 games to have an informed opinion about a player?

 

[danincanada]

"Doug Harvey controlled the puck entirely despite barely touching it in the offensive zone."

"Doug Harvey was primarily responsible for the Habs +68 goal differential in 1961. The Habs goal differential immediately jumped to +93 after Harvey left in 1962, but again, Harvey was the primary reason why they were good enough to be +68 in 1961."

"Doug Harvey controlled play entirely as a Hab, but then went to the Rangers and immediately lost that capability, which is why he was a minus player and his new team had a losing record and went nowhere. But still he was the biggest reason for the Habs success."

"The 1957 Canadiens had a better winger, better center, better defenseman, and a better goaltender than anyone in the entire NHL from the past two decades. Except they were all riding Doug Harvey's coat tails. But at the same time they were all better than everyone playing today."

"With Doug Harvey, you have to rely heavily on the eye test to override the facts and data. Except none of us have actually seen him play all that much."

The stories don't really add up with the results and I've watched enough of Harvey to see he was no Orr. He was a lot more like... Lidstrom. Great in his own zone, very calm/patient/collected, great first pass to his stable of star forwards, etc.

Let's hear another example of a defenseman who controlled play so much but then scored 30 points in a season on a powerhouse team where he was the QB of their vaunted PP. And yeah, small talent pool but he still gets outscored overall by Kelly and Gadsby? How is that a top 10 player of all-time? It's these stories that don't make sense that seems to have elevated him to that status. It's always been a different standard for the O6 stars, which is why this section has a top 10 with half of the players coming from this domestic league version of the NHL before hockey spread and grew. Something is definitely off.

 

[vadim sharifijanov]

Certainly not that many. Perhaps fifty altogether. Surely you're not suggesting that you need to watch 200-300 games to have an informed opinion about a player?

let’s be honest, how many al macinnis games have most off us seen? i have seen more than most because he was in my division for years, but how about eastern time zone fans?

or hell have any of us seen 50 keith yandle games? but we’ve all seen enough to know you can’t compare hm to doughty even though they numbers are comparable.

 

[danincanada]

I don't claim it's "always" the pro-modern side that leans heavier on the awards/top 10s/etc, just more of a general observation. I'm sure there are plenty of examples to the contrary. But "Ovechkin>Hull because Rocket Richards", "Lidstrom 2nd best dman of all time because Norrises", and "Hasek best goalie ever because Harts" are not exactly uncommon claims. Does it happen with pre-expansion players too? Sure, but it seems less common in my observations.

Then feel free to jump in weekly when somone on "your side" of the debate posts comparisons like they did with Crosby/Beliveau earlier in this thread.

Fetisov is an interesting case to bring up. It's a fairly uncontroversial opinion that he was the best defenseman in the game for a few years in the early to mid 80s. Yet the Soviet Union was surely a smaller talent pool than the rest of the world combined was. It would seem the smaller talent pool could claim the best defenseman, something that you've argued would be highly improbable.

It is less likely that a smaller talent pool would produce the best defender of all-time for really obvious reasons but it doesn't mean it's impossible. The point is EVERYONE here must compare said player with his own peers because those are the only guys he was on the ice with. So if the talent pool is really smaller than it is even more likely that overall there will be less great players pushing the limits, which will reflect in these peer to peer comparisons one must take part in as a starting point for every era. We get into questions like how much did they dominate their peers so we must scrutinize their peers they dominated. Were Fetisov's peers and main top competition at the top in the RSL top quality? Probably not when compared with todays NHL. Were Harvey's? I'd say it's a similar answer.

We've made our opinions on Harvey and Lidstrom clear in multiple past discussions, I'm not interested in rehashing it again. Do you think Lidstrom has any argument at all as the #5 player of all time? I haven't seen you suggest this, so what is your motive for bringing him into the debate?

I think Lidstrom has more of an argument for top 5 and top 10 than Harvey. I already explained why I brought up Lidstrom/Harvey and it's because it's probably the best example of what I'm talking about with these cross era comparisions that are clearly favouring the o6 guys when they shouldn't be.

I can't really pinpoint any one thing that I base my opinion on. I've tried to take in as much information as possible since I was 6 years old and began to read. As it pertains to Harvey specifically, and why I do think he at least deserves his case as the #5 player ever examined, is probably most heavily influenced by two things:

1) The hockey establishment pretty firmly believed he was the greatest defenseman of all time before Bobby Orr.

2) In an era where defensemen usually had little to do with the offense, Harvey was considered an offensive driver in a way that nobody was previously. Shore and other pre-war players were known to rush the puck, but Harvey was said to control the tempo and flow of play entirely. When Harvey was doing this, his team enjoyed an unprecedented run of success, winning 5 consecutive Cups during 10 consecutive trips to the Final. [And yes, I am aware that league dynamics makes it almost impossible that a post-1990 player could achieve a similar run of team success, and I wouldn't hold them to this exact standard.]

# 1 is just about peoples perception and labelling it as such. In reality Harvey was the best of his era, Orr the best of his, followed by Bourque and then Lidstrom. The problem for you is that the NHL clearly got better, deeper, bigger, and more diverse over time so these feats and eras aren't all equal and only Orr dominated his peers in a different stratosphere than the other three.

# 2 Kelly pretty consistently outscored Harvey early on and all 4 generations of top defeseman listed above at least drove their teams offense in a similar way, too. Obviously, again, Orr brought it to a diferent level but they all surpassed Harvey in offensive production. Harvey had arguably the best centre, goalie, group of wingers, a Norris guy playing behind him, and the best coach. There was a lot more to the 5 Cups than just one guy and the O6 had what, 2 or 3 teams a season who could seriously challenge? Again, it's more like Fetisov's RSL teams than what the NHL is now.

 

[Sentinel]

Bernard Geoffrion was a superstar in junior, so he doesn't come from out of nowhere at least.

Canadiens1958 was very high on Dickie Moore.

We shouldn't punish them because they peaked during the dynasty. That's why it was a dynasty; all great players peaking together.

C1958 was very high on that whole dynasty. If it were up to him, they would constitute Top 5. And he put Gretzky at #7. That's all you need to know.

 

[Hockey Outsider]

let’s be honest, how many al macinnis games have most off us seen? i have seen more than most because he was in my division for years, but how about eastern time zone fans?

or hell have any of us seen 50 keith yandle games? but we’ve all seen enough to know you can’t compare hm to doughty even though they numbers are comparable.

Actually, I was going to bring up the Sedin's. Most of their games were played after I'm in bed. I still feel like I have a pretty strong understanding of their strengths/weaknesses (not as strong/nuanced as you'd have, of course, but enough to have an intelligent opinion).

 

[TheDevilMadeMe]

I think the biggest issue I have with Harvey is when you look at Montreal's 49-50 through 53-54 seasons, basically Harvey's first full 5 seasons, his age-25 through 29 years, that also represent Maurice Richard's age 28 through 32 seasons. The point I'm trying to make is that you have 5 consecutive years of prime Harvey+M. Richard, two players who at the very worst are top 20 of all time, in what really is a weak era for hockey beyond Detroit, and Montreal's yearly goal differentials for those 5 years were +22, -11, +31, +7, and +54. Over that period, Montreal was -1 vs Boston, -40 vs Detroit, -4 vs Toronto, +83 vs Chicago, and +65 vs New York.

That +54 season corresponds to Beliveau's first partial season, and the next time Montreal had a goal differential lower than +31 was the 64-65 season. If you look at Montreal's yearly goal differential against each team in Beliveau's 8 year peak from 54-55 through 61-62, an even differential against Detroit in 54-55 and Chicago in 60-61, as well as a -3 against Boston in 56-57 are the only blemishes in their positive goal differentials over the entire period. Perhaps even more impressive, of those 37 positive goal differentials, only 8 were in single digits. Now part of that was all the talent in Montreal beyond Beliveau - your Plantes, Geoffrions, Moores, Olmsteads, H. Richards - but the supercharging of the offense that Beliveau provided is the biggest factor.

That's why for me Beliveau has a legitimate argument for #5 all-time, and Harvey and M. Richard get pushed down my list. I still lean Bourque for 5th though, just because of what he did as a #1D for so many years.

Appreciate this post. I wish more unconventional (for this forum) opinions were this well supported. I wonder if this post would have changed some minds if you made it during the HOH Top 100 list discussion.

 

[TheDevilMadeMe]

C1958 was very high on that whole dynasty. If it were up to him, they would constitute Top 5. And he put Gretzky at #7. That's all you need to know.

Mostly OT, but C1958 was really low on Bernard Geoffrion.

 

[Sentinel]

Mostly OT, but C1958 was really low on Bernard Geoffrion.

So it would be Richard, Beliveau, Plante, Harvey, and Moore. Geoffrion would round up the Top 20

 

[ted2019]

I think the biggest issue I have with Harvey is when you look at Montreal's 49-50 through 53-54 seasons, basically Harvey's first full 5 seasons, his age-25 through 29 years, that also represent Maurice Richard's age 28 through 32 seasons. The point I'm trying to make is that you have 5 consecutive years of prime Harvey+M. Richard, two players who at the very worst are top 20 of all time, in what really is a weak era for hockey beyond Detroit, and Montreal's yearly goal differentials for those 5 years were +22, -11, +31, +7, and +54. Over that period, Montreal was -1 vs Boston, -40 vs Detroit, -4 vs Toronto, +83 vs Chicago, and +65 vs New York.

That +54 season corresponds to Beliveau's first partial season, and the next time Montreal had a goal differential lower than +31 was the 64-65 season. If you look at Montreal's yearly goal differential against each team in Beliveau's 8 year peak from 54-55 through 61-62, an even differential against Detroit in 54-55 and Chicago in 60-61, as well as a -3 against Boston in 56-57 are the only blemishes in their positive goal differentials over the entire period. Perhaps even more impressive, of those 37 positive goal differentials, only 8 were in single digits. Now part of that was all the talent in Montreal beyond Beliveau - your Plantes, Geoffrions, Moores, Olmsteads, H. Richards - but the supercharging of the offense that Beliveau provided is the biggest factor.

That's why for me Beliveau has a legitimate argument for #5 all-time, and Harvey and M. Richard get pushed down my list. I still lean Bourque for 5th though, just because of what he did as a #1D for so many years.

Great post. I really like the way you looked inside the numbers and the talent that those Montreal teams had.

 

[Dennis Bonvie]

So it would be Richard, Beliveau, Plante, Harvey, and Moore. Geoffrion would round up the Top 20

C1958 had Boom Boom at 50th.

Dickie Moore at 47th.

Henri Richard at 36th.

 

[BenchBrawl]

Mostly OT, but C1958 was really low on Bernard Geoffrion.

And Guy Lafleur.