No. Not even close. My main point is that Yzerman's skillset better suits the playstyle he adopted later in his career. He was an extremely skilled offensive player early in his career that had the talent to see plays develop and find players out of his line of sight, but he was always under such pressure to score that he would try to force plays that weren't there. His talent level made those plays higher percentage than normal, but it lead to giveaways and wasted possessions. That's why even though he scored 101 EV points that year, he was only a +17. I understand that +/- is a team stat, but as the top line center your contribution to team defense is substantial. Early in his career he had a burst in his acceleration and an added level of precision to his passes that he lost as he entered his 30s. As he matured, his mental game developed to the point where he didn't need either of those attributes to generate scoring opportunities. His team was way better at this point, but he is one of the top cerebral players in history and understood exactly how he fit into that juggernaut in every zone. He was the top line center on one of the best teams in history, and that defines the peak of his career. Do you seriously expect me to just ignore the team success as though he didn't contribute? Okay, by your logic, let's discount his 155 point season too because his teammates have to pass him the puck and finish his plays. Before you cling to this point again, let me reiterate for the last time that his team success is a tertiary part of my reasoning.
Let me give you an example:
This is a really simple play that a young Yzerman would have handled differently. He knows Kozlov is breaking to the net and wants to get him the puck. A young Yzerman knows he can beat his man to the outside and slide a pass through the middle for the redirect on the short side or the tap in on the far side. The problem is this play is easy to read and only scores when a defender fails to recognize it. Instead, he draws two defenders to himself and slides the puck over to a teammate that he knows is going to have a clean passing lane to Kozlov. In this case, a smarter Yzerman who trusts his teammates created a safe, very high percentage play, whereas a younger Yzerman would have tried to do it himself and was so skilled he very well might have succeeded. The problem is, you're not going to find highlights on youtube of the countless times he failed to do that and gave the puck away.
Part of Bowmen's philosphy for that Detroit team in transitional offense was to find who was covering you, and draw them away from an area of the ice, so that a teammate can fill that area. You don't need to be fast or precise to execute that, you just need to be smart and understand the game-plan. That's why I'm not so sure a young 155 point Yzerman would have fitted into this team nearly as well as the older Yzerman did -- he probably would have been in the doghouse most of the time for trying to brute force his way through the defense with raw skill.
Here's another example from the same series against the Stars:
A young Yzerman I think would probably have done the same thing here, to be honest. He was always really good at turning a defender one direction and beating them to the other side. However, you could be 40 and still pull off this play if you understand your own offense and what the defense is trying to do to stop you. He was trying to do stuff like this constantly, and it didn't always work. The difference here is when it didn't work he didn't force the play. He would pass it off to a teammate or dump it into a safe place so he and his linemates could try it again another shift. The more you stress the defense the more likely they are to accidentally give you a lane. If you don't have a lane, you don't need to take the chance. That's how that roster was able to find so much success against Dallas and Colorado who had rosters that matched up with Detroit top to bottom. If you think a young Yzerman could have had the same success ... you could not be more wrong. He would have likely scored as many points, probably more, but if you're giving the puck away and letting Forsberg and Sakic take shots on Osgood over and over, you are going to lose the series.
The rest of this translates roughly to "he had 155 points therefore he was better." If you didn't watch him in the 80s, just say so. If you did, give me something I don't already know that justifies your point of view. I feel it necessary to reiterate that the only thing you have done so far in this thread is attack my position, and the only justification you have provided for yours is point totals and awards. It's ridiculous and a waste of both of our time.
His style in his early days was just fine, he was the team. He was the scorer, the guy that lead the way. His style change better suited the team because that’s how the teams system was, very defensive oriented. Not to mention he finally had talented players around him, and by talented...I mean some of the best of all time. Yzerman was always there by that point of his career, he was just getting flack for being a chocker and not a great leader. You say how bad his plus/minus was, how his play resorted to give aways, and All this....yet you forget how young a player he was, how much he had the puck, and how he was still developing, but it’s kinda hard to develop a solid defensive game when the system doesn’t call for that, and you have to score more for your team to have a better chance of winning....I wonder....
Yzerman wasn’t bad defensively in his early days. He just didn’t have the opportunity to fully focus on it, like his later days. He HAD to score, and he had to compete every night for a win. Again, your giving Yzerman this odd credit, as if the team around him and the system he played in had absolutely NOTHING to do with his success during that time frame. He had top notch linemates, he had less responsibilities, he did have to carry anything anymore, a player (who is already amazing especially) would thrive in that environment, if they were willing to learn. Yzerman was, and by that point, in his early to late 30s, he was just exiting his prime.
The Yzerman with the better defensive game was not more impressive, nor better than 155, or ‘88-‘93 Yzerman. Teaching a player to play a more defensive role doesn’t take more talent than scoring as many, especially for a guy like Yzerman who wasn’t bad defensively like his stats somehow show in your opinion. It’s pretty straight forward, score more to get wins for your team, drive your line, and he did this ALOT....so how is defense going to help?
Overall, what your saying is all speculation, but your also proving my point in the end. Yzerman was in the right place in the right time, at the right point of his career, with the right system and team. His offense wasn’t as strong as it once was, as well as his overall physical self. But that’s how he is an all time great, he was still a great player, but the role shifted. Yzerman was given a very different role when he was younger, and a much harder one at that.....help a struggling franchise, lead the team, be their best player. And he did that for a majority of his career....by the mid 90s, they didn’t need him to be that role anymore, they finally got the help that he deserved. Yzerman was exiting his offensive prime during this time and was giving a different role, play a more defensive game, and he was of course able to do that, and he among the best.
But that Yzerman wasn’t even close to one of the best players in the league, like he was when he was younger. That alone tells you everything. He wasn’t close to be a Lester B. Award winner, and he certainly got farther and farther away from being one of the most dynamic offensive players in the league. But he saw success and continued to being a great playoff warrior, but he was always good in the playoffs. From ‘84-‘93, he had 62 points in 57 games, and with one deep run. From ‘94-02, he had 113 points in 120 games. He was great, but you talk as if he suddenly developed this playoff mode when he decided to start playing defense. The different was that those wings teams were deep, and the new driving force of the offense was Fedorov, with a gifted playmaker and PP QB in Lidstrom, and goal scoring down the middle.