A 2nd liner with two peak seasons out of 7, (the first and last with single digit goal scoring) right after WW2 in the O6 is fine on the 1st line and trumps a solid two-way, 3rd liner in the middle of a stacked pack of a number of international tournaments and domestic league, over a 15 yr stretch, a guy in the top 20 among his countrymen in goals/game internationally, a guy who's EV minutes were pared down because he was a known PK specialist to boot?
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Kaleta’s not an outstanding 1st liner here but he has the upside. He was 9th and 16th in points in the NHL, and was in the top-40 four other times. While it is a legitimate concern that his peak was during the post-WW2 recovery era and that he doesn’t bring much else to the table to help the line, this is still the NHL we’re talking about, and Kaleta was about as dominant in the NHL as Mishakov was in the soviet league. Offensively, it’s no contest comparing these two players.
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You’re not listening to me at all if you’re still touting his top-20 among soviets in career goals per game internationally. In his
best effort he achieved half of the leader’s point total. Any list of the top per-game soviet international scorers is going to disproportionally include guys from those 68-71 teams because the Soviets just scored so much across the board. Put into context, the numbers aren’t very impressive and I’m much more concerned with where he ranked in scoring in those tournaments than the raw numbers.
Here are the scoring finishes (USSR league and tourneys) of a number of undrafted soviets I’m considering going forward, and I’m not padding this with 1950s players, either:
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2, 3, 4, 4, 8, 9, 12, 12, 13
2, 2, 4, 4, 10
8, 8, 8, 9, 9, 12
1, 2, 7, 9, 11
4, 4, 6, 10
2, 6, 9, 11
6, 6, 9
8, 9, 9, 11
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And there are more like this, too.
Seriously?
Only a mediocre role player? He doesn't earn a higher slot at the AAA level? He has to stay as a role playing 3rd line specialist?
LW is one of the hardest slots to fill and if you look around this AAA you'll see many role playing and/or flawed and/or one-dimensional first liners who never made top 10 in anything....goals, pts, hardware, etc.....
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I’m sure this is true. However, the implication you’re making when you say “Mishakov was never top-10? Well so what because neither were a bunch of other guys!” is that the soviet league was on par with the NHL (as the NHL is where most LWs in this draft are sourced from). If it is, then I have a guy on my 2nd line right now who should be a 6h round ATD pick in the Luc Robitaille or Paul Kariya range (which is absurd). Down here in the AAA, if you were never top-10 in the NHL, that’s
par for the course. we need to take deeper looks than that – and we do – at how close to the top-10 they were, how often they were, and what percentage of the leaders they attained. *Not being top-10 in the soviet league, that’s weak.
In fact, many weren't 1st liners themselves except maybe for a brief few seasons, and then by default, and many had a spiked season or two and then went back to their standard output and/or left the game or upper echelon leagues shortly thereafter.......but my guy is only mediocre at this level?
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It would be a lot easier to comment on this if we knew what players you were singling out. It’s obviously well within the realm of possibility that Mishakov is a more solid bet offensively than a few other first line wingers here. It’s difficult to compare them being in different leagues, but at least having the starting point of knowing that the NHL is a good deal better than the USSR league makes it worth a try. *(earlier up in this thread I mentioned multiplying soviet finishes by 3 to translate roughly to NHL finishes in the late 70s, and maybe by 4 or 5 in earlier seasons in Mishakov’s range – maybe that’s a starting point? What do you suggest?) All that said, I realize it’s tough and it’s guesswork, but you know what isn’t that tough or guesswork? Comparing him to
other soviets. and that’s specifically where I find his offense to be lacking.
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Two counterpoints, because I’m not here to just drag a guy through the mud:
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1.****** It’s possible that both sides can be right. Mishakov could be an OK AAA 1st line role player but if so, all the players I listed earlier are, by comparison, greatly overqualified for the AAA draft and should be scattered throughout the MLD and even the 2nd half of the ATD. It would have far-reaching implications.
2.****** Yes, his offensive record is weak compared to a lot of easily comparable recently-selected and unselected players, but that doesn’t necessarily mean he shouldn’t have a place here. If you look all over the ATD, MLD and AAA drafts they are full of players who are less talented than those around them, some by a significant degree, and yet they belong because they bring a boatload of intangibles and other skills at an elite level. They are the “next best” at something other than scoring. It’s arguable that Mishakov has more intangibles than any soviet forward selected recently or remaining. In fact, finding soviets from the era with any mention of intangibles is quite difficult. On the other hand, it’s debatable how prominent those intangibles are considering the context of the quotes (and PIMs) and it’s even more debatable whether those intangibles are enough to justify selection over much more talented players.
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You can completely ignore this fantasy exercise if you like because it’s guesswork but Mishakov is a good testing ground for my attempted establishment at a “system” to compare soviet league offense to the NHL.
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If you take his points finish in the soviet league and multiply it by 4 every season, then assign him an NHL points total based on his “imaginary” NHL ranking, here’s what you get for point totals, starting in 1965:
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30-42-0-44-39-32-41-34-38
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The “0” represents 1967, when his ranking in the soviet league was low enough that when multiplied by 4 it was higher than the number of players who even played in the NHL. Interestingly, this is a realistic scenario that a lot of players went through. Battle your way up through the minors, establish yourself as a decent player, get caught in a numbers game and spend a season (or more) in the minors before firmly* re-establishing yourself as an NHL player after expansion. A player with these point totals would have exactly 300 points in 600 games. I think that’s fair, actually.
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Who does he compare to? The first player I thought of was Ken Schinkel. He’s a guy whose career straddled expansion and who was pushed out of the NHL in a super-competitive era, then came back and had his best seasons after expansion. He was a workmanlike player but not a guy who would make anyone’s best defensive forwards or toughest players lists. He had some PK credibility but was not a star at it either. A character player and 2nd tier scorer. A guy who was likely more competitive than his low PIM totals indicated. And he finished with 325 points in 636 games. It’s almost a perfect comparison. *That sounds like an AAA bottom-sixer to me. Not a guy who’ll absolutely
kill a scoring line if he’s on it, but certainly one who should be questioned if placed on one, as to whether or not he truly has the upside for that role.
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If you don’t like that as a shorthand for comparison, what do you suggest? I’m open minded. The methodology I’ve used seems to pass the smell test for Mishakov and other soviet forwards. For example, under this methodology, Boris Mikhailov would score, starting in 1966, 42, 5, 60, 70, 72, 75, 70, 81, 55, 116, 82, 85, 91, 107, 93, 0 in the NHL, for a total of about 1100 points scored mostly in the 1970s. as a tough winger known as an inspirational leader, that would make him likely a low-end top-100 player, which the majority of us currently perceive him as. Around Bucyk-caliber, or a better Barber McDonald, Cournoyer or Gilbert with more intangibles, even more than McDonald or Barber.
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Anyway…
