Crosby current all time center ranking?

[bambamcam4ever]

Well, to be honest, Apps career spanned 12 seasons.... Crosby was drafted less than 11 years ago.

I honestly prefer to compare Crosby to Apps than to Boucher, Schmidt and Richard. With Crosby getting the "tiebreak" for being a slightly more complete player over Apps.

Apps played fewer seasons than Crosby, never led the league in points, and played a league with a smaller talent pool.

Saying that his career spanned 12 seasons reeks of bias when he only played 10

 

[daver]

On Gilmour? Nope.
(It indeed doesn't make a difference)

On Apps? Hard to tell without hard data on Apps years. My gut says Apps still slightly better, but I might be completely off.

(And that's the problem with giving two minutes to a question that would probably deserve more)

Meant compared to Yzerman.

 

[MXD]

Meant compared to Yzerman.

Humm... I'd go for "no" as well. But 28-Crosby is certainly ahead of 28-Yzerman, if that makes any sense.

 

[seventieslord]

On the other hand, even if you completely ignore the "per game" argument, he's working on his 7th season top-3 in points. If we fairly remove Gretzky and Lemieux, Yzerman only has three such seasons himself (and already fewer top-10s than Crosby, too) and even Sakic, who's clearly a cut above Yzerman, only has three as well.

Sakic has more top-10s (by a margin of 10-8) but consider that Crosby also has 116 games played across three seasons in which he was once 2nd, and twice 1st by a huge margin in PPG. It's not a what-if argument, just pointing out the level he was playing at, even when he wasn't finishing top-3 in points.

Yzerman has one such season (1988) and Sakic has two (1999,2000), though he played enough games to finish 5th and 8th in points those years.

The longevity argument for Yzerman is already a shaky one, and Sakic's won't be on solid ground for much longer, if it even still is at this point.

Yzerman's 11 year prime has him 1st in PPG when Lemieux and Gretzky are removed: http://www.hockey-reference.com/pla...&c4val=&threshhold=5&order_by=points_per_game

I also set the bar at 500 points so that Selanne and Lindros fell off. Yzerman's closest competitors, Messier and Lafontaine, are 5% and 9% behind him.

Sakic's 11 year prime:

http://www.hockey-reference.com/pla...&c4val=&threshhold=5&order_by=points_per_game

Again, Gretzky and Lemieux are disregarded, but Sakic was marginally behind the likes of Lindros and Jagr and even Lafontaine over this time, and just a bit ahead of Selanne and Forsberg.

Crosby since entering the league (this might not even be his 11 year prime when all's said and done, it just happens to be his only 11 years currently):

http://www.hockey-reference.com/pla...c4comp=gt&c4val=&threshhold=5&order_by=points

As you can see, in the post-lockout era, the bar for "consistent star/superstar scorer" over this extended period is about 1.0 PPG (Datsyuk, St. Louis, Spezza, Sedins). Only four players at the top really separate themselves from the others, and from eachother. Thornton is clearly ahead of Kovalchuk, Ovechkin/Malkin clearly ahead of him, and Crosby miles ahead of them. How far? 13% ahead of his next closest competitor, Evgeni Malkin, a guy who's won two scoring titles and has finished top-10 in points per game over twice as many times as he hasn't. Again, Remember that Yzerman could only top a player like Lafontaine by 9%, and Sakic was similar to Lindros/LaFontaine/Selanne/Forsberg.

If a Gretzky/Lemieux existed, I'm sure Crosby would be well behind them, but he's still 13-15% ahead of two players, one of whom most would call a generational talent and one who might be called one if not for injuries. He's definitely more dominant in his era than Sakic and Yzerman were in theirs, and the gap there is too wide that no "competition" argument can overcome it, either. I'm huge on longevity and career value but I'm pretty uncomfortable being too hard on a guy who is about to have as many seasons in the top-3 in scoring as Jean Beliveau and one fewer than Stan Mikita, and yet is an even better player than his number of top-3 finishes indicates because of a couple of poorly-timed and badly diagnosed injuries.

 

[seventieslord]

Well, to be honest, Apps career spanned 12 seasons.... Crosby was drafted less than 11 years ago.

I honestly prefer to compare Crosby to Apps than to Boucher, Schmidt and Richard. With Crosby getting the "tiebreak" for being a slightly more complete player over Apps.

I'm not talking "span", I'm talking about number of seasons actually played. We're at the point where we need to say "hey wait, what possible argument does this guy have now that Crosby has played as long as him?" much like in the last few years where in the ATD we all kinda realized together Shea Weber had passed players like Ken Reardon.

Per-game arguments are often used in Apps' favour, but it's not like he was that dominant in that regard, either:

http://www.hockey-reference.com/pla...&c4val=&threshhold=5&order_by=points_per_game

Clearly behind Lach and Richard (who, yes, probably benefitted from eachother, and there's no shame being behind the Rocket anyway), and even if I ignore Bentley and Mosienko, whose GP samples are less, there's still Cowley ahead and Doug Bentley a nut hair behind. That's not as dominant as Crosby, not by a long shot.

 

[bobholly39]

As I said before - Sidney Crosby is just a superior hockey talent to guys like Yzerman/Sakic, and almost anyone else really in hockey history as far as centers. Very few guys compare favorably to him.

His low ranking is affected a bit due to the fact that:

1. He's still only 28

2. He's missed a lot of time to injuries (including during his "best" stretch of hockey)

So I understand why he was previously ranked 22, and why some people still want to rank him so low today, and compare him to someone like Apps or Yzerman, etc.

But if you compare Crosby at age 28 - he's #3 behind Lemieux and Gretzky in my opinion as far as centers go compared to anyone else by age 28. Who else would be ahead? If there is anyone - I can't expect it's more than 1-2 players at most.

 

[MXD]

70ies... I'm pretty sure all those Top-3 finishes for Yzerman came before 94-95, right?

I mean... Yzerman arguably brought his biggest value starting from that season. Reducing him to top-3 finishes is reducing his career to 1984-1994, period during he was... let's say a rich-man Lafontaine (give very little thoughts to the comparison). Of course Crosby-up-to-March-15th-2016 is Superior to "Rich Man's Lafontaine", I can't even see how that could be an issue.

 

[daver]

Humm... I'd go for "no" as well. But 28-Crosby is certainly ahead of 28-Yzerman, if that makes any sense.

I think Crosby has the better peak playoff performance which, IMO, should be heavily weighed when comparing playoff resumes.

And a clearly better regular season resume, which Crosby arguably has now or will very soon, should, IMO, be the primary differentiator between players unless one has a playoff resume that is off the charts i.e. Belliveau. That's is not the case here.

 

[seventieslord]

As I said before - Sidney Crosby is just a superior hockey talent to guys like Yzerman/Sakic, and almost anyone else really in hockey history as far as centers. Very few guys compare favorably to him.

His low ranking is affected a bit due to the fact that:

1. He's still only 28

2. He's missed a lot of time to injuries (including during his "best" stretch of hockey)

So I understand why he was previously ranked 22, and why some people still want to rank him so low today, and compare him to someone like Apps or Yzerman, etc.

But if you compare Crosby at age 28 - he's #3 behind Lemieux and Gretzky in my opinion as far as centers go compared to anyone else by age 28. Who else would be ahead? If there is anyone - I can't expect it's more than 1-2 players at most.

It's hard to argue with this. I mean, instinctively I want to think that Beliveau, Morenz, Mikita had better pre-age-28 resumes, but they really didn't, at least not as regular season scorers. They're ahead right now literally only because they aged gracefully and had good/great seasons in their 30s. (Well, Beliveau and Mikita are, I guess. Morenz is another story, he gets bonus points for being the defining player of a generation).

If Crosby's career path continues in the most likely way for a player of his caliber, in 8 years he will likely be at a point where the matter of Crosby vs Beliveau is a question of how much we value playoffs and O6 cup-counting relative to scoring dominance over the long haul.

 

[MXD]

I'm not talking "span", I'm talking about number of seasons actually played. We're at the point where we need to say "hey wait, what possible argument does this guy have now that Crosby has played as long as him?" much like in the last few years where in the ATD we all kinda realized together Shea Weber had passed players like Ken Reardon.

Per-game arguments are often used in Apps' favour, but it's not like he was that dominant in that regard, either:

http://www.hockey-reference.com/pla...&c4val=&threshhold=5&order_by=points_per_game

Clearly behind Lach and Richard (who, yes, probably benefitted from eachother, and there's no shame being behind the Rocket anyway), and even if I ignore Bentley and Mosienko, whose GP samples are less, there's still Cowley ahead and Doug Bentley a nut hair behind. That's not as dominant as Crosby, not by a long shot.

C'mon, all of those players, with the possible exception of Richard (with a much smaller sample) would be below Apps without a complete 42-43, 43-44 and 44-45...

 

[seventieslord]

As far as playoffs go, don't forget that Crosby has the most playoff points over his career despite being just 22nd in GP in that time. His PPG is 7% ahead of Malkin's and 20% ahead of anyone else who has gotten into at least 60 post-lockout playoff games. He's certainly disappointed lately in a few smaller samples, but over the long haul, he's been a consistent and dominant producer, by basically the same margin he's done so in the regular season.

 

[MXD]

As far as playoffs go, don't forget that Crosby has the most playoff points over his career despite being just 22nd in GP in that time. His PPG is 7% ahead of Malkin's and 20% ahead of anyone else who has gotten into at least 60 post-lockout playoff games. He's certainly disappointed lately in a few smaller samples, but over the long haul, he's been a consistent and dominant producer, by basically the same margin he's done so in the regular season.

Not saying you're wrong -- I just have problems identifying a peak, and I have no problems giving specific seasons where Yzerman and Gilmour were better.

If we're talking about playoff prime... well... That's different.

(And at some point I just to be a contrarian. At least you and daver and bobholly are polite enough and worth replying to).

 

[seventieslord]

C'mon, all of those players, with the possible exception of Richard (with a much smaller sample) would be below Apps without a complete 42-43, 43-44 and 44-45...

In points per game? If he played those seasons? I'm thinking no, but it would be close.

Actually it was silly of me to include 44 and 45. It would take more work to remove them, but they absolutely should not count for the other players.

I'm not going to speculate on what Apps would have done in those two years, but if you remove them for Richard, he's at 1.07, Lach is 0.95 and Cowley is 1.01. If you want to call Richard an outlier (as a point scorer he really isn't, but whatever...) that still has Apps just a percent ahead of Cowley when they're on an even playing field.

 

[BenchBrawl]

Good posts by seventieslord, I won't quote them all to save some space.

It's very clear to me that prime Crosby is in the same tier offensively as prime Lafleur and prime Jagr.Depending how you judge prime Esposito, he might be in this tier too.So only Howe, Orr, Lemieux and Gretzky were clearly better offensive players than Crosby in their prime.That's huge.

That's ignoring the goalscoring factor and how much you weight goals.

 

[BenchBrawl]

In points per game? If he played those seasons? I'm thinking no, but it would be close.

Actually it was silly of me to include 44 and 45. It would take more work to remove them, but they absolutely should not count for the other players.

I'm not going to speculate on what Apps would have done in those two years, but if you remove them for Richard, he's at 1.07, Lach is 0.95 and Cowley is 1.01. If you want to call Richard an outlier (as a point scorer he really isn't, but whatever...) that still has Apps just a percent ahead of Cowley when they're on an even playing field.

When I did my VsX PPG system, Apps scored very high for what it's worth.Basically like Maurice Richard for the best 7 years.But I'm aware of most problems coming from this.Still, it was impressive.

Non-exhaustive list here (stopped running numbers for lack of interest): http://hfboards.mandatory.com/showpost.php?p=113445459&postcount=3

 

[seventieslord]

Good posts by seventieslord, I won't quote them all to save some space.

It's very clear to me that prime Crosby is in the same tier offensively as prime Lafleur and prime Jagr.Depending how you judge prime Esposito, he might be in this tier too.So only Howe, Orr, Lemieux and Gretzky were clearly better offensive players than Crosby in their prime.That's huge.

That's ignoring the goalscoring factor and how much you weight goals.

BTW, as far as goals go, Crosby is actually the 2nd best goal scoring center of his career, not too far behind Stamkos, who gets literally half as many assists per game.

It's arguable that Crosby in his prime is a better goal scorer "for a center" than Jagr or Lafleur was "for a winger".

Not sure if that matters, but...

(I do think goals are more important than assists, I see guys with statlines like Henrik Sedin and I don't see them as being equal to guys with similar points but more balanced, but at the same time if Crosby and Stamkos were equal in points but they were 35-65 and 60-40 I'm not sure I'd consider Stamkos better; I think there are diminishing returns on the whole "goals are more important" thing, especially with centers. Goals-biased centers seem to have a tendency to be limited or flawed players for whatever reason.

 

[bobholly39]

Not saying you're wrong -- I just have problems identifying a peak, and I have no problems giving specific seasons where Yzerman and Gilmour were better.

If we're talking about playoff prime... well... That's different.

(And at some point I just to be a contrarian. At least you and daver and bobholly are polite enough and worth replying to).

What do you mean when you say you have problems identifying a peak? Are you talking playoff peak for Crosby, or regular season?

And are you saying Gilmour/Yzerman had better playoff peaks than Crosby, or regular season?

I'm not sure I understand exactly what you mean but i'm curious to find out because i think Crosby would actually look quite good in any of those comparisons. He has 2 conn-smythe worthy playoff runs after all

 

[seventieslord]

When I did my VsX PPG system, Apps scored very high for what it's worth.Basically like Maurice Richard for the best 7 years.But I'm aware of most problems coming from this.Still, it was impressive.

Non-exhaustive list here (stopped running numbers for lack of interest): http://hfboards.mandatory.com/showpost.php?p=113445459&postcount=3

That certainly makes Apps look better than I have been making him look.

It does pass the smell test - Gretzky, gap, Lemieux, gap, Howe, gap, Orr and his passenger (I kid, I kid, but seriously folks...), then "the pack" starts with Crosby, Lafleur and Jagr virtual equals.

 

[BenchBrawl]

BTW, as far as goals go, Crosby is actually the 2nd best goal scoring center of his career, not too far behind Stamkos, who gets literally half as many assists per game.

It's arguable that Crosby in his prime is a better goal scorer "for a center" than Jagr or Lafleur was "for a winger".

Not sure if that matters, but...

(I do think goals are more important than assists, I see guys with statlines like Henrik Sedin and I don't see them as being equal to guys with similar points but more balanced, but at the same time if Crosby and Stamkos were equal in points but they were 35-65 and 60-40 I'm not sure I'd consider Stamkos better; I think there are diminishing returns on the whole "goals are more important" thing, especially with centers. Goals-biased centers seem to have a tendency to be limited or flawed players for whatever reason.

I agree with you, Crosby is a strong goalscoring center.But by the eye-test we know the second best goalscoring center is Malkin (right?), which makes him very impressive from that point of view.But Crosby is just behind.

Edit: Actually looking at the stats it's not even that clear that Malkin is better at scoring goals than Crosby, but I sure feel that way when I watch them.

 

[MXD]

In points per game? If he played those seasons? I'm thinking no, but it would be close.

Actually it was silly of me to include 44 and 45. It would take more work to remove them, but they absolutely should not count for the other players.

I'm not going to speculate on what Apps would have done in those two years, but if you remove them for Richard, he's at 1.07, Lach is 0.95 and Cowley is 1.01. If you want to call Richard an outlier (as a point scorer he really isn't, but whatever...) that still has Apps just a percent ahead of Cowley when they're on an even playing field.

Bad wording from my part.
All the players you named would rank below Apps in PPG if you substract 43-44 and 44-45 (and consider the missed games in 42-43), EXCEPT Richard. Richard was not really a point-outlier, as you and I both know.

And then again, no shame in being only one hair above Cowley, who was not quite as complete as Apps and who did lead the league in scoring in 40-41 by some obscene margin.

But then Richard's sample would be really, really small.

 

[bobholly39]

BTW, as far as goals go, Crosby is actually the 2nd best goal scoring center of his career, not too far behind Stamkos, who gets literally half as many assists per game.

It's arguable that Crosby in his prime is a better goal scorer "for a center" than Jagr or Lafleur was "for a winger".

Not sure if that matters, but...

(I do think goals are more important than assists, I see guys with statlines like Henrik Sedin and I don't see them as being equal to guys with similar points but more balanced, but at the same time if Crosby and Stamkos were equal in points but they were 35-65 and 60-40 I'm not sure I'd consider Stamkos better; I think there are diminishing returns on the whole "goals are more important" thing, especially with centers. Goals-biased centers seem to have a tendency to be limited or flawed players for whatever reason.

I always felt that Crosby's goal scoring is underrated. So I understand exactly what you mean when comparing him to Lafleur/Jagr and I agree.

I just remember how easily he was scoring goals from 09 to 12 till he got injured. Not saying he's as good a goal-scorer as Ovi or anything - but i feel as though he could score more. Maybe he's playing more as a playmaker and shooting less?

 

[Iceman]

I think I had him right around Ullman and Gilmour in my round 1 list in the centers project (both who I had rated higher than most people) but by the time it was his turn in round 2, he looked really good compared to the other players that round.

I can't see him being "only" an Apps at this point - he's so far ahead of his contemporaries on a "per game" basis and over a longer period than Apps even played. At the same time, even though he's easily peaked higher than Yzerman I find it unfair on a playoffs and longevity basis to put Crosby ahead of him. So I could see him 14th right now.

Yeah, I can't place him ahead of Stevie either. I just can't do it.

 

[BenchBrawl]

That certainly makes Apps look better than I have been making him look.

It does pass the smell test - Gretzky, gap, Lemieux, gap, Howe, gap, Orr and his passenger (I kid, I kid, but seriously folks...), then "the pack" starts with Crosby, Lafleur and Jagr virtual equals.

Yes it does pass the smell test.

Esposito is like an hair in every system's soup

 

[BenchBrawl]

Yeah, I can't place him ahead of Stevie either. I just can't do it.

You realize you will have to do it very soon? Better be prepared.Or I can do it for you for a small price

 

[MXD]

What do you mean when you say you have problems identifying a peak? Are you talking playoff peak for Crosby, or regular season?

And are you saying Gilmour/Yzerman had better playoff peaks than Crosby, or regular season?

I'm not sure I understand exactly what you mean but i'm curious to find out because i think Crosby would actually look quite good in any of those comparisons. He has 2 conn-smythe worthy playoff runs after all

Playoffs.

Yzerman has an actual Connie Smythe.
Gilmour has 92-93, which is totally a Smythe-performance better than any Crosby performance and better than many actual Connie Smythes, including Yzerman's.