Edgar Laprade is definately better than Tomas Steen. Offensively, they appear to be fairly comparable.
Eh? Both guys peaked offensively in the 10-20 range in league points, and both guys peaked for about as long (Steen's peak twice has to be measured in PPG because he missed about 15 games in two of his three best offensive seasons). The difference in eras and strength of competition, however, is not small. Laprade's best years all came in the late 40's when the NHL was still pretty suck. Translate his scoring finishes into the 1980's NHL, and he's behind Thomas Steen.
Ouside of Hooley Smith, you really don't have much toughness. Guerin, Balon, and Paiement are tough, but nothing overly special. The rest are average at best or below average.
See my posts in the Dirt thread on Frank Foyston. His toughness has been pretty well underrated around here. You are also terribly underrating Thomas Steen's toughness and physicality. He was really quite a tough, aggressive player. This is what John Ferguson (a guy who knows something about toughness)
had to say about Steen:
"Thomas Steen is the toughest and bravest of all the Swedes in the NHL. I've seen Thomas involved in more physical confrontations than most of the Canadian players in the league. He looks like a choirboy, but he can play as tough as anyone in the league."
So now we're up to six of the nine top-9 forwards who are a plus in toughness, and two more of them - Fredrickson and Heatley - are quite big and strong. Fredrickson, in particular, was a man child for his time - at various points described as "musclebound", "a giant", etc. Edgar Laprade would have very little chance against a guy like Fredrickson along the boards. He was one of the most physically imposing players of his era. The problem that your third line has here is simply winning the puck. Outside of Frank Boucher (who was an extremely tricky stickhandler), all of Gwinnett's top-9 forwards are either plus physical players or big and strong enough to protect the puck from soft defensive players like those that populate the Monsters' third line. It's just a bad matchup for your team.
Hy Buller played 9 excellent years in the AHL before he was given a chance to jump to the NHL. As was already discussed, there are many reasons to beleive he was only held back due to antisemitizem. The fact that he was able to jump and perform as one of the elite defensemen in the league right away suggests he was ready long before he was given the chance.
Yeah, except your evidence of antisemitism is empty speculation from a single source called Jews In Sports Online. That same source suggested that Cecil Hart could see through walls and crap candy canes, but you don't see me using that as an argument, now do you? Seriously, I doubt if you've won over any converts to the "Buller was really awesome but the NHL hated Jews" school of thought. What he did in the AHL is wholly meaningless to me, though maybe other GMs see it differently. I see a guy who came into the league, had one very good season, and was quickly back out of the league. I don't know that this is really an ATD player, or at least a starter. He's an old-time Drew Doughty with a longer minor league career.
Mark Tinordi was just a decent defenseman during his career. He was nothing special. He played most of his career during the 90s, and looking at the list of defensemen who also played in the 90s, Tinordi is like the 50th best defenseman.
You really don't know much about Mark Tinordi, do you? It was obvious to me already when you mentioned that Hooley Smith was the only tough guy on the team. To begin with, Mark Tinordi was
really tough - and was a legitimate goon (the first time I've ever used that as a compliment) in the early part of his career. Second, he was an outstanding penalty-killer. I've already posted this, but it bears repeating. Using overpass' special teams
metrics, here are Tinordi's closest ATD comparables in terms of penalty killing:
Tinordi: 663 GP // 47% PK // .89 TmPK+
Morrow: 550 GP // 48% PK // .87 TmPK+
Ramsey: 1070 GP // 49% PK // .88 TmPK+
That's some very good company. Both of those guys are first unit PKers in this ATD, and not bad ones. Finally, Mark Tinordi at his peak was a solid #1 defenseman who was used extensively in defensive situations for a good Northstars/Stars team. seventies already posted his usage rates at his peak
here. I will quote him:
according to TOI estimates, Tinordi ranked 24th, 19th, and 5th in TOI in the 1991-1993 seasons, not too shabby at all.
Those were the only years he got significant PP time, which boosted his TOI more into the range you don't normally see defense-first guys in. In 1991-1994, he ranked 17th, 24th, 2nd, and 26th in non-PP TOI.
I don't know where Tinordi ranks during his two good years in Washington, but my guess is it's similar to the above. He was a good #1 defensive defenseman at his peak - well better than the 50th best blueliner of the 90's. He never really came around offensively, but he was always strong in his own end. You don't post career PK numbers on the same level as guys like Morrow and Ramsey unless you can play some D.
Agreed that Timonen was Nashville's best player for a stretch... but there's a reason this is the first year they've ever been out of the 1st round.
Yeah, but the reason was not Kimmo Timonen.
Timonen is a solid, but unspectacular, offensive guy. I think that is also a fair description of Ken Randall.
Actually, Timonen is a pretty spectacular powerplay QB - extremely similar to Dan Boyle in terms of career value. Using 10 powerplay points as an arbitrary cutoff, here are Timonen and Boyle's career powerplay points totals:
Timonen: 38, 30, 29, 28, 28, 26, 24, 19, 16, 16, 14
Boyle: 37, 32, 29, 27, 27, 25, 15, 14, 13, 10
Yeah, Timonen's been that good, but nobody noticed (except the voters who put him in the all-star game four times) because he played in Nashville. He's actually a tick better than Boyle on the powerplay.
Timonen is also a reliable defensive player. I think that also is a fair description of Randall.
You're trying to slip a fast one by us here. Your evidence for Randall's defensive skill is very thin. There's plenty of evidence that Randall was tough and that he could handle the puck, but all you've got on his defensive play is a couple of quotes from individual games, which tells us very little. Considering how much time Randall spent at forward throughout his career, I'm not at all sure that he really was that good defensively.
Randall played an incredibly long career for his era. Timonen is only half done his career. Basically, what they brought to the table was pretty similar, but Randall brought it for twice as long.
Simply playing for a long time is meaningless.
