"Better Career" Esposito or Crosby?

[OzzyFan]

Say Sidney Crosby's career ended today, how would he stack up career wise to Phil Esposito overall?

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[JackSlater]

Crosby's ahead already, and pretty comfortably to me.

 

[BigBadBruins7708]

It'll be unpopular, but its Esposito. The man is so written off as "product of Orr" that its insulting and not true. No other all time great gets knocked down so much for playing with other greats as Esposito does.

No one writes off Crosby because of Malkin, no one writes off Messier/Coffey because of Gretzky, no one writes off Hull because of Mikita, no one writes off Beliveau because of Richard.

717-873-1590
2x Hart (5x finalist, 1,1,2,2,3)
5x Ross
6x Rocket
6x AS-1
2x AS-2
2x Cup
3x led the playoffs in scoring w 8-10-18 in 10, 13-14-27 in 14, and 9-15-24 in 15
72 Summit Series MVP

His scoring exploits rewrote the history books.

1st to score 60 in a season
1st to score 70 in a season
1st to score 150 points in a season
retired #2 all time in goals, assists, and points behind only Howe

His 6 year stretch from 1968-69 to 1973-74 is criminally underappreciated and frankly has only been matched by Gretzky. In 6 straight years he never finished below 2nd in goals, assists or points winning 5 Ross and 5 Rockets in that span.

Here's his finishes in goals/assists/points in those 6 years

year	goals	assists	points
68-69	2	1	1
69-70	1	2	2
70-71	1	2	1
71-72	1	2	1
72-73	1	1	1
73-74	1	2	1

[TBODY] [/TBODY]

and the years before and after that run would be considered all time efforts despite falling short of the above standard.

1967-68: 4th in goals, 1st in assists, 2nd in points
1974-75: 1st in goals, 5th in assists, 2nd in points

 

[tarheelhockey]

I find Esposito to be one of the hardest players to rank.

There are so many negatives associated with him -- teammate effects, expansion effects, his un-rounded style of play. And then there's 717 goals, two Harts with three more finalist seasons to boot, a prime extending well into his 30s, years where he won the goals race by nearly 50%.

The positives are just as extreme as the negatives. How can you NOT agree with both ranking him very high and deflating his achievements, in the same breath?

 

[TheDevilMadeMe]

I find Esposito to be one of the hardest players to rank.

There are so many negatives associated with him -- teammate effects, expansion effects, his un-rounded style of play. And then there's 717 goals, two Harts with three more finalist seasons to boot, a prime extending well into his 30s, years where he won the goals race by nearly 50%.

The positives are just as extreme as the negatives. How can you NOT agree with both ranking him very high and deflating his achievements, in the same breath?

Agree with everything you say. My thoughts on Espo: Just comparing his status among 1970s players: He's definitely below Orr and Lafleur. Then he has Clarke and Potvin* in a similar range.

*I realize Potvin edged out Lafleur on the HOH Top 100 list.

But regardless, I think Espo's status among his peers is clearly a step below Crosby's, as great as Espo was.

 

[BigBadBruins7708]

Agree with everything you say. My thoughts on Espo: Just comparing his status among 1970s players: He's definitely below Orr and Lafleur. Then he has Clarke and Potvin* in a similar range.

*I realize Potvin edged out Lafleur on the HOH Top 100 list.

But regardless, I think Espo's status among his peers is clearly a step below Crosby's, as great as Espo was.

his career accomplishments are higher than Lafleur, Clarke and Potvin. by what standard/metric are you raking them higher or even?

Crosby doesnt have the separation that some believe he does. There's a legitimate argument to be had between him and Ovechkin.

Metric	Crosby	Ovechkin
Hart	2	3
Ross	2	1
Rocket	2	9
Pearson	3	3
AS-1	4	6
AS-2	4	4
T10 pts	11	8
T10 goals	4	13
T10 assists	10	3

[TBODY] [/TBODY]

 

[TheDevilMadeMe]

his career accomplishments are higher than Lafleur, Clarke and Potvin. by what standard/metric are you raking them higher or even?

Crosby doesnt have the separation that some believe he does. There's a legitimate argument to be had between him and Ovechkin.

Metric	Crosby	Ovechkin
Hart	2	3
Ross	2	1
Rocket	2	9
Pearson	3	3
AS-1	4	6
AS-2	4	4
T10 pts	11	8
T10 goals	4	13
T10 assists	10	3

[TBODY] [/TBODY]

Team effects are the main reason why I have Lafleur as a step up from Espo. Basically, all the stuff tarheelhockey had as negatives mean a little bit at least

 

[Passchendaele]

Esposito set the all-time NHL record with 126 points when Orr finished 4th in scoring on that team, with half the points.

Twist it any way you like, it won't work. Orr loses quite a bit of points (and the 1975 scoring title) if Espo is taken off that roster.

 

[TheDevilMadeMe]

Esposito set the all-time NHL record with 126 points when Orr finished 4th in scoring on that team, with half the points.

Twist it any way you like, it won't work. Orr loses quite a bit of points (and the 1975 scoring title) if Espo is taken off that roster.

Espo was a great player. Was there anyone in this thread denying it?

 

[Midnight Judges]

Team effects are the main reason why I have Lafleur as a step up from Espo. Basically, all the stuff tarheelhockey had as negatives mean a little bit at least

Seems to me few, if any, players have benefitted from the team effect more than Guy LaFleur. Compare his teams to his playoff opponents:

Lafleur	Hall Of Famers on team	Hofers in their prime (under age 32)	Playoff Opponent HOFers	Playoff Opponent HoFers Prime
75	10	9.00	0, 1	0, 1
76	9	8.00	2, 4, 3	0, 4, 3
77	9	8.00	1, 4, 4	1, 4, 1
78	9	6.00	1, 3, 3	0, 3, 1
79	9	7.00	3, 3, 1	3, 1, 0

[TBODY] [/TBODY]

 

[TheDevilMadeMe]

Seems to me few, if any, players have benefitted from the team effect more than Guy LaFleur. Compare his teams to his playoff opponents:

Lafleur	Hall Of Famers on team	Hofers in their prime (under age 32)	Playoff Opponent HOFers	Playoff Opponent HoFers Prime
75	10	9.00	0, 1	0, 1
76	9	8.00	2, 4, 3	0, 4, 3
77	9	8.00	1, 4, 4	1, 4, 1
78	9	6.00	1, 3, 3	0, 3, 1
79	9	7.00	3, 3, 1	3, 1, 0

[TBODY] [/TBODY]

Lafleur regularly outscored his teammates by enormous margins.

That team was loaded with defense and scoring depth, but Guy Lafleur was their offensive engine.

 

[JackSlater]

It'll be unpopular, but its Esposito. The man is so written off as "product of Orr" that its insulting and not true. No other all time great gets knocked down so much for playing with other greats as Esposito does.

No one writes off Crosby because of Malkin, no one writes off Messier/Coffey because of Gretzky, no one writes off Hull because of Mikita, no one writes off Beliveau because of Richard.

That's a pretty bad comparison. Crosby doesn't share the ice with Malkin most of the game, Messier didn't share the ice with Gretzky most of the game, Hull didn't share the ice with Mikita most of the game, and Beliveau didn't share the ice with Richard most of the game. Esposito did play with Orr most of the time. Coffey and Gretzky were on the ice together a lot, and you do hear from time to time how Coffey benefitted from Gretzky and later Lemieux. Esposito was able to spend his best years playing with a clearly superior player who compensated for Esposito's weaknesses better than pretty much any player in history could. That doesn't make Esposito any better or worse as a player, but it is a valid consideration when assessing what he did.

Additionally, no one writes off Esposito. He was a great player and had a good run as the best forward in the NHL. He isn't as good as his resume indicates though. Crosby has been a somewhat better player than his resume indicates. I don't really see what edge Esposito has unless someone draws up a checklist, takes everything completely at face value, and maybe concludes that his peak is better.

 

[vadim sharifijanov]

Agree with everything you say. My thoughts on Espo: Just comparing his status among 1970s players: He's definitely below Orr and Lafleur. Then he has Clarke and Potvin* in a similar range.

*I realize Potvin edged out Lafleur on the HOH Top 100 list.

But regardless, I think Espo's status among his peers is clearly a step below Crosby's, as great as Espo was.

i have a bit of trouble with this because other than ovechkin have any of crosby's contemporaries been at, or even close to, the level of a lafleur or a potvin?

and to be fair to espo, his and lafleur's peaks were basically consecutive; they didn't meaningfully overlap. without being able to point to a year or two where they both were at their best and the record shows that one was generally considered to be better than the other, i don't know that i'm ready to say that lafleur was definitely above espo, especially given the obvious wart on lafleur's own resume.

the way i see it, the thing espo and crosby have in common is each guy had a run as the best scorer in the league by crazy near-howe/mario margins. but with espo there are questions about the degree to which orr helped those numbers and with crosby he kept getting hurt and never did it over a full season.

but you take that common achievement away, you have playoff resumes that are pretty close, international (72 + 76 vs 2010 + 2014) are basically even, and the difference might just be that even with espo's longevity, crosby has already had longer staying power as a top five scorer. then i'd have to really start to think about how long a scoring prime would reasonably be expected to be for someone of crosby's generation, vs espo's generation.

i think for espo, he's a little awkward in that he's younger than the generation where the best guys peaked forever: hull and mikita, but really i mean the 50s guys like howe, beliveau, richard. but he's a good decade or more older than potvin, trottier, lafleur, and other guys who really fell off around thirty.

with crosby, i think we'll have to wait and see how much of a longevity outlier he is. the two generations before him both played at a high level for-freakin'-ever. but we're still seeing what the shelf life of a pat kane or a kopitar, or even maybe a getzlaf, is going to be.

 

[Midnight Judges]

Lafleur regularly outscored his teammates by enormous margins.

That team was loaded with defense and scoring depth, but Guy Lafleur was their offensive engine.

During his peak seasons, that team was so good that it had all of their playoff opponents massively outgunned with or without LaFleur.

 

[TheDevilMadeMe]

i have a bit of trouble with this because other than ovechkin have any of crosby's contemporaries been at, or even close to, the level of a lafleur or a potvin?

and to be fair to espo, his and lafleur's peaks were basically consecutive; they didn't meaningfully overlap. without being able to point to a year or two where they both were at their best and the record shows that one was generally considered to be better than the other, i don't know that i'm ready to say that lafleur was definitely above espo, especially given the obvious wart on lafleur's own resume.

the way i see it, the thing espo and crosby have in common is each guy had a run as the best scorer in the league by crazy near-howe/mario margins. but with espo there are questions about the degree to which orr helped those numbers and with crosby he kept getting hurt and never did it over a full season.

but you take that common achievement away, you have playoff resumes that are pretty close, international (72 + 76 vs 2010 + 2014) are basically even, and the difference might just be that even with espo's longevity, crosby has already had longer staying power as a top five scorer. then i'd have to really start to think about how long a scoring prime would reasonably be expected to be for someone of crosby's generation, vs espo's generation.

i think for espo, he's a little awkward in that he's younger than the generation where the best guys peaked forever: hull and mikita, but really i mean the 50s guys like howe, beliveau, richard. but he's a good decade or more older than potvin, trottier, lafleur, and other guys who really fell off around thirty.

with crosby, i think we'll have to wait and see how much of a longevity outlier he is. the two generations before him both played at a high level for-freakin'-ever. but we're still seeing what the shelf life of a pat kane or a kopitar, or even maybe a getzlaf, is going to be.

I strongly disagree with the bolded. While it's hard to call Esposito a bad playoff performer, that Bruins team did somewhat underperform in the playoffs, and Espo was definitely more at fault for it than Orr was. I view Esposito's playoff record as similar to Jagr's - pretty good for the most part, but still somewhat disappointing for a player of that calibre.

 

[TheDevilMadeMe]

During his peak seasons, that team was so good that it had all of their playoff opponents massively outgunned with or without LaFleur.

You sure about that?

NHL.com Stats

91-70 points lead over Shutt, who most people think was at least somewhat a product of Lafleur. Clarke and Potvin are next with 63 points, then other Lafleur linemate Lemaire with 62. All in a similar number of games.

 

[BigBadBruins7708]

Lafleur regularly outscored his teammates by enormous margins.

That team was loaded with defense and scoring depth, but Guy Lafleur was their offensive engine.

so did Esposito.

In this time with Boston (1967-78 to 1974-75)

He had 20.1% more points than Orr (996 vs 829)
He had a higher ppg at 1.62 vs 1.48

He outscored the #3 scorer, Bucyk, by 52.8% (996 vs 652)
He had a higher ppg as 1.62 vs 1.08

He scored 84% more goals than Orr (453 vs 246)
He scored 69% more goals than Bucyk (453 vs 268)

After Orr, he had 4 full seasons in NY. Despite being ages 34-37 in those 4 years, he led the Rangers in scoring every season and put up 1.00 ppg over that span

 

[vadim sharifijanov]

I strongly disagree with the bolded. While it's hard to call Esposito a bad playoff performer, that Bruins team did somewhat underperform in the playoffs, and Espo was definitely more at fault for it than Orr was. I view Esposito's playoff record as similar to Jagr's - pretty good for the most part, but still somewhat disappointing for a player of that calibre.

i can't say i've ever sat down and watched those boston series, but in '70 espo set the playoff scoring record that mahovlich would tie the next year in six more games, and which no one would break until the playoffs expanded to four rounds. the closest guy was lafleur with one fewer point in '77, and we all acknowledge lafleur to have one of the greatest playoff scoring peaks of all time.

but are you putting a lot of stress on '71 and '69/'73/'75? just looking at numbers, '73 does look pretty ugly.

 

[Midnight Judges]

You sure about that?

NHL.com Stats

91-70 points lead over Shutt, who most people think was at least somewhat a product of Lafleur. Clarke and Potvin are next with 63 points, then other Lafleur linemate Lemaire with 62. All in a similar number of games.

Those Habs teams won a cup before Lafleur was a player of consequence (age 21 he had 3 goals and 8 points in 17 playoff games when they won it all). Then they won another one immediately after he left.

So yeah, confidence doesn't get much higher than that in terms of rating the team around him (yes it changed over those years).

 

[BigBadBruins7708]

I strongly disagree with the bolded. While it's hard to call Esposito a bad playoff performer, that Bruins team did somewhat underperform in the playoffs, and Espo was definitely more at fault for it than Orr was. I view Esposito's playoff record as similar to Jagr's - pretty good for the most part, but still somewhat disappointing for a player of that calibre.

ummm, what?

8-10-18 in 10 games
13-14-27 in 14 games, Cup
3-7-10 in 7 games (71 choke to Montreal)
9-15-24 in 15 games, Cup
9-5-14 in 16 games
4-1-5 in 3 games

where does he falter or be the reason they failed? So you're saying the Bruins couldn't win in the 70s unless Esposito went superhuman, that sounds like he was the key driver of the team's success to me.

 

[vadim sharifijanov]

Those Habs teams won a cup before Lafleur was a player of consequence (age 21 he had 3 goals and 8 points in 17 playoff games when they won it all). Then they won another one immediately after he left.

So yeah, confidence doesn't get much higher than that in terms of rating the team around him (yes it changed over those years).

the '71 team was a very different team than the '76 to '79 teams. the '71 team had beliveau as its number one center, its best scorer was frank mahovlich, its top two defencemen were jc tremblay and jacques laperriere. all were long gone by '76. and savard, robinson, gainey, the other mahovlich, none of them were there yet.

the '86 team was a completely different team of course. very late prime robinson and ancient gainey led by a core of bobby smith, mats naslund, young chelios, young carbonneau, and young green and ludwig, with roy, claude lemieux, richer, skrudland (and kjell dahlin and mike lalor) all rookies.

 

[TheDevilMadeMe]

8-10-18 in 10 games
13-14-27 in 14 games, Cup -
3-7-10 in 7 games (71 choke to Montreal)
9-15-24 in 15 games, Cup
9-5-14 in 16 games
4-1-5 in 3 games

where does he falter or be the reason they failed? So you're saying the Bruins couldn't win in the 70s unless Esposito went superhuman, that sounds like he was the key driver of the team's success to me.

That's 2 bad playoffs out of 6 - in the early 1970s, a player like Espo being under a point per game is pretty bad. And 2 great Cup winning performances, where Orr won consensus Conn Smythes. It's not bad per se, but compared to his peers, he doesn't rank as high as a playoff performer as Crosby does.

 

[Hockey Outsider]

Seems to me few, if any, players have benefitted from the team effect more than Guy LaFleur. Compare his teams to his playoff opponents:

Lafleur	Hall Of Famers on team	Hofers in their prime (under age 32)	Playoff Opponent HOFers	Playoff Opponent HoFers Prime
75	10	9.00	0, 1	0, 1
76	9	8.00	2, 4, 3	0, 4, 3
77	9	8.00	1, 4, 4	1, 4, 1
78	9	6.00	1, 3, 3	0, 3, 1
79	9	7.00	3, 3, 1	3, 1, 0

[TBODY] [/TBODY]

(I wrote this response thinking that you were suggesting that Lafleur's offensive numbers were boosted due to his team - but I'm not sure that you're saying that. I'll post my response anyway, since this topic comes up from time to time).

You're right that Lafleur played with a ton of Hall of Famers (10 across those five seasons, by my count). But keep in mind their roles. One of them was a goalie (Dryden), four of them were defensemen (Robinson, Savard, Lapointe and about half a season of rookie Langway) - and although Robinson was very good offensively, he wasn't a Coffey, or a Bourque/Potvin level scorer either. Then you have one forward who's in the Hall strictly due to his defensive performance (Gainey), and then you have a 38 year old Henri Richard (who played 16 regular season and 6 playoff games).

When you look at the HOF forwards that Lafleur played with (exclude Gainey and H. Richard), it's a short list. Yvan Cournoyer was 29-33 during these seasons and never placed in the top 20 in scoring - he's a solid secondary contributor like an Anderson or Nieuwendyk. Jacques Lemaire was a great two-way centre but he wasn't an offensive catalyst (better offensively than Bergeron, but probably not at Kopitar's level). Finally there's Steve Shutt (who I have a fairly low opinion of - his numbers dropped as soon as Lafleur's did). It's not a terrible supporting cast of course, but it's not like Lafleur was playing with a bunch of players who are really boosting his offensive numbers either.

Lafleur had the luxury of not having to worry about defense, practically at all, because the rest of his team was so strong. But he didn't have a ton of help offensively relative to other superstar forwards. He led the team in scoring by 52 (!), 35, 34, 31 and 20 points those years, so he was obviously the driver. (If the argument is Lafleur won a lot of Cups because he had such a strong group of defensive players - goalie, defensemen and defensive forwards - then yes, that obviously played a role).

 

[TheDevilMadeMe]

Esposito playoffs 1969-1975 - he led the league in scoring, but by only a 99-90 margin over Orr, who did so much more without the puck: NHL.com Stats

 

[Hockey Outsider]

Also, for those questioning whether Lafleur was really that valuable to the Habs - in 1980 (after winning four straight Stanley Cups), Lafleur missed the 2nd round due to injury. Despite the Habs finishing 17 points higher in the standings, they were upset by Minnesota. (Dryden was gone by then as well, so it's not all due to Lafleur of course, but it's one point in his favour).

In 1981, Lafleur was practically invisible in the playoffs, and the Habs were swept in the first round. (it's not good that Lafleur was MIA, but he was past his prime by then, and this also speaks to his value to his team).

It's misleading to say that the Habs won the Cup right after Lafleur left. Obviously, one of the reasons is due to a historically good performance from Patrick Roy, who almost everyone here ranks as a better player anyway. And it's not really accurate to treat Lafleur as though he was contributing to the Habs in any meaningful sense in 1985 - he scored all of 5 points in an injury-shortened regular season and missed the playoffs entirely.

There are valid things to criticize Lafleur for - after his six big years he has very little meat to his resume for a player of his calibre - but I don't think there's much use in questioning his value to the Habs.