All-time underrated players

[TheDawnOfANewTage]

I have trouble calling a current player over/underrated because reasons, but historically I feel like some guys get overlooked.. who's a guy you don't think gets enough cred?

Mark Recchi- Ya, the dude played forever, but he's 12th in career points. 1500 points spanning the entirety of the dead puck era, my man retired at age 42 after a 48 point season- just the picture of consistency, not enough love for the 67th overall pick in the '88 draft.

Ziggy Palffy- Top 5 hockey name. Scored 40 goals 3 seasons in a row. Over 600 games and a ppg player. Idk, I think we all know he was good, but no one ever says "ya he was great." He was, for a time.

Luc Robitaille- 22nd all-time in points, somewhat similar to Recchi. Just consistently great.

So who ya got on your list?

Click to read more...

 

[NHL WAR]

Tony Esposito
John LeClair
Marcel Dionne
Charlie Conacher
Borje Salming
Peter Stastny

 

[brachyrynchos]

Steve Larmer
Peter Bondra
Brian Leetch
Reijo Ruotsalainen
Dirk Graham
Rick Tocchet

 

[Eye of Ra]

tomas sandström

 

[VanIslander]

Bill Cowley

1940-41 NHL Hart Memorial Trophy

1942-43 NHL Hart Memorial Trophy

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Honors

1937-38 NHL All-Star Team (1st)

1940-41 NHL All-Star Team (1st)

1942-43 NHL All-Star Team (1st)

1943-44 NHL All-Star Team (1st)

1944-45 NHL All-Star Team (2nd) Assists 1938-39 NHL 34 (1st) 1939-40 NHL 27 (3rd) 1940-41 NHL 47 (1st) 1942-43 NHL 45 (1st) 1943-44 NHL 41 (5th) 1944-45 NHL 40 (2nd) [TBODY] [/TBODY]

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[Nick Hansen]

Loui Eriksson.

 

[KingTux]

Gilbert Perreault ?

 

[johan f]

Steve Larmer, Tony Amonte

 

[Vachon23]

Dany Heatley

 

[BigBadBruins7708]

Phil Esposito

People incorrectly write him off as just a beneficiary of Orr

 

[The Panther]

When we look at high-scoring forwards, the "all-time underrated" players probably are:

Bill Cowley
Peter Stastny
Pat Lafontaine

Cowley didn't get going until he was 24 or so, and only contributed a lot to one Cup win in Boston, but still he had four 1st-team All Stars and 2 Hart trophies, and nobody but hockey historians seem to have heard of him. I don't think I've ever heard his name mentioned on Hockey Night in Canada, or on SportsCenter, or whatnot. I sometimes hear about Howie Morenz, or Eddie Shore, but I never hear anything about Cowley.

Peter Stastny has the 7th (or 8th, as McDavid is slightly ahead of him since a few weeks ago) highest PPG average of all time, and is the second-highest scoring NHL player of the 1980s and, indeed, from 1980-81 to 1992-93. For all of that, the only major NHL award he ever won was the Calder trophy, and despite seven 100+ point seasons in eight years, he never received a 1st or 2nd-team All Star, though it's a bit hard to see why he didn't for 1982-83. (As a reminder that PPG doesn't tell us the whole story, however, we should note that just behind Stastny is Kent Nilsson, who is also ahead of Guy Lafleur and Joe Sakic on the list!)

I feel like I'm beating the Pat Lafontaine drum lately, but holy hell he was talented! He outscored Mario Lemieux in the QMJHL in 1982-83 with 234 points in 70 games. (That's incredibly impressive. Yes, Lafontaine was draft-eligible a year before Mario, but he was born only 7.5 months before Lemieux, and was about three feet smaller!) The problem Lafontaine faced with getting his recognition in the NHL was that just as he really started hitting his prime (around his third season), the Islanders were starting to crap out. He started peaking just as the Isles hit rock bottom. Then at age 26, he went to Buffalo, a middling team but with high-end talent upfront, and then we saw what he could really do. In the 1991-92 and 1992-93 seasons combined, Patty scored 1.71 PPG -- second only to Mario, and well ahead of Gretzky, and Selanne in his rookie year. After that, concussions ended him, and he really only had one more full-ish season in 1995-96 (still scored 40 goals and 91 points despite missing six games). Lafontaine is in the top-20 PPG players of all time, and yet I'm seeing people putting Barrasso and Roenick ahead of him on American-player lists...? Really? Career-wise, I can see that, but in 'pounds-per-square-inch', if you will, it's Patty by a mile.


Looking at defencemen, I sometimes feel Larry Robinson might be a bit under-rated. Not that he isn't rated very high, because he is, but with six 1st/2nd-team All Stars, six Stanley Cups, multiple Norrises, a Conn Smythe, a really long prime, and the highest accumulated plus/minus of all time, I never hear his name in the "best D-man ever" talk. Sure, he's clearly behind Orr and two or three other guys (maybe more), but I think he's right up there. He's basically the prototype model defenceman. Chara is sort-of the modern version of him. I've seen people putting Brad Park over Robinson. I just don't see it.


Goalies? Don't know, I don't really care about goalies. Well, maybe Henrik Lundqvist. He kind of hit his stride around the time goalies were getting less dominant, and he doesn't have the single-season super flashy results to show off. But his sustained level of consistent excellence is pretty amazing, I think. Statistically, you can barely tell any one of his seasons from another between 2005 and 2016, and he had a great winning record, too, as well as two trips to the Finals in the playoffs.

 

[VMBM]

Anatoli Firsov

 

[wetcoast]

Fedorov, Larinov, Lemaire, Dionne, Peter Stastny, Joe Thorton, Salming, Trevor Linden come to mind as players in my lifetime.

And as much love as Rod Langway does, how many other great defensive Dmen get as much love as him?

Also Craig Ramsay who was a much better player than Bob Gainey.

 

[trentmccleary]

I think people focus too much on the warts and ignore that Tkachuk was an incredible player for a decade along with guys like Kariya, LeClair, Shanahan and Naslund.

 

[BenchBrawl]

Underrated by whom?

Clearly outside this forum the most underrated player is by far Frank Nighbor.

 

[BenchBrawl]

Here's some completely random names to consider:

George Boucher
Harry Cameron
Joe Malone
Joe Hall
Frank Boucher
Ted Kennedy
Red Kelly
Art Duncan
Jacques Lemaire
Serge Savard
Mike Modano
Jonathan Toews
Dave Keon
Henri Richard
Ryan Getzlaf
Charlie Gardiner

Yes, Toews.

 

[wetcoast]

Here's some completely random names to consider:

George Boucher
Harry Cameron
Joe Malone
Joe Hall
Frank Boucher
Ted Kennedy
Red Kelly
Art Duncan
Jacques Lemaire
Serge Savard
Mike Modano
Jonathan Toews
Dave Keon
Henri Richard
Ryan Getzlaf
Charlie Gardiner

Yes, Toews.

I dunno, in this forum a lot of those guys are rated pretty high and Frank Nighbor went 14th in the current ATD (5th center taken) so while he will obviously be under rated by those not very historical but he might be getting over rated around these parts.

 

[Neutrinos]

Curtis Joseph would make my list for the simple fact that some people don't think he should make the Hall of Fame

 

[BobbyAwe]

Derek Sanderson. People only tend to think about the controversy and trouble that surrounded his career, not how good a player he was. He was the best defensive forward, or 2-way forward (depending on how you define the difference, if any) of his day. I am convinced he was the 3rd most important "cog" in that Bruin's machine behind Orr and Esposito. Watch some whole game vids from those years and count how many times he breaks up plays and/or steals the puck and then makes a crucial offensive play.

 

[wetcoast]

Derek Sanderson. People only tend to think about the controversy and trouble that surrounded his career, not how good a player he was. He was the best defensive forward, or 2-way forward (depending on how you define the difference, if any) of his day. I am convinced he was the 3rd most important "cog" in that Bruin's machine behind Orr and Esposito. Watch some whole game vids from those years and count how many times he breaks up plays and/or steals the puck and then makes a crucial offensive play.

I'm not sure about this as Clarke, Craig Ramsay, Don Luce were all really good 2 way forwards as well.

If anything Sanderson isn't rated higher primarily because of his lifestyle affecting his play.

 

[MadLuke]

Until recently Malkin had a good case, Luongo feel like an other one if we would have done what he did relative to is pear has a forward during is career, is status would be quite different.

When you look the all-time point share list:

Rank	Player	Years	PS
1.	Wayne Gretzky*	1979-99	251.01
2.	Ray Bourque*	1979-01	242.69
3.	Gordie Howe*	1946-80	217.11
4.	Jaromir Jagr	1990-18	217.05
5.	Roberto Luongo	1999-19	215.76
6.	Nicklas Lidstrom*	1991-12	211.77
7.	Martin Brodeur*	1991-15	206.97
8.	Patrick Roy*	1984-03	198.34
9.	Al MacInnis*	1981-04	195.01
10.	Paul Coffey*	1980-01	185.74

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Luongo do not seem close in how he is rated to all the other names there.

 

[VanIslander]

Elmer Lach.

In terms of two-way greats, passers, speedsters, clutch performers... his name almost never comes up.

He led in playoff assists the first two cups and when he was the runner-up to Gordie Howe for the 1952 Hart (having won it and been a finalist before) he led the league in assists for the third time, becoming the NHL all-time career points leader (until Gordie passed him a couple of years later). Elmer went on to score the OT cup-clinching goal for his third Stanley.

 

[sr edler]

Anatoli Firsov

Who?

 

[wetcoast]

Elmer Lach.

In terms of two-way greats, passers, speedsters, clutch performers... his name almost never comes up.

He led in playoff assists the first two cups and when he was the runner-up to Gordie Howe for the 1952 Hart (having won it and been a finalist before) he led the league in assists for the third time, becoming the NHL all-time career points leader (until Gordie passed him a couple of years later). Elmer went on to score the OT cup-clinching goal for his third Stanley.

It's kind of ironic that this section seems to really favour complete centers over less complete wingers at times but the gap between Richard to Lach and Lafleur to Lemaire is way too large IMO.

 

[Dennis Bonvie]

Underrated by whom?

Clearly outside this forum the most underrated player is by far Frank Nighbor.

Because most fans outside this forum don't even know who he was, its not the same as underrating.