Defensemen who were the greatest players in the world when they played

quoipourquoi

Goaltender
Jan 26, 2009
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Even in his best 3 year stretch 14-15 to 16-17 is it really even debatable that he was as good as Crosby?

I don't think so.

From the beginning of the Senators’ hot streak in February 2015 through the end of the 2017 playoffs:

Erik Karlsson: 206 points in 215 games
Sidney Crosby: 252 points in 236 games

We’re comparing an 88-point Center who plays with Evgeni Malkin on the powerplay to a 79-point Defenseman who does not.
 

Albatros

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The rosters for the 76 and 81 Canada Cups were clearly more in line with all nations having their best players.

Maybe, although the Soviets had their B roster in 1976, but who would have cared? There was no HFBoards and most of the names weren't known to the wider public on either side of the Atlantic anyway.

The WC and Olympics you speak of clearly didn't have that same standard due to players playing in the NHL plain and simple.

Again, who cares? These games got a lot more exposure so they were what most people watched. The NHL wasn't the gold standard in Europe at the time so the cultural division was much bigger still than it is nowadays. You could be a very good player in the NHL but as no one watched that in Europe it counted for nothing. The Soviet stars people witnessed time and time again and that dominance had its consequences.
 
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Fixxer

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Could have been...
ESPNMAG.com - Wasted

"He had everything. He could skate like the wind. He could see anybody on the ice. He could make the perfect pass. He was as talented as anybody I've seen in junior hockey. He broke all of Bobby Orr's records. Everybody was telling me you can't go wrong with him." - Maurice Filion, former Quebec GM, who drafted Bryan Fogarty with the Nordiques' first pick in 1987, six picks ahead of Quebec's second selection, Joe Sakic.
"He needed the beer, but it was his demise. The profession, the lifestyle -- he couldn't handle it. He wanted the hockey, but it was so hard the way he was. The inside of Bryan and the world around him didn't seem to meet." - Virginia Fogarty (Bryan's mother)
"Mats Sundin told me this: 'Bryan Fogarty could skate faster, shoot harder and pass crisper drunk than the rest of us could sober.'" - Max Offenberger
"He was the best player I have ever seen. He had a heart of GOLD. He'd never hurt a fly. He'd do anything for you. He just couldn't help himself." - Marc Laforge" -------------------------------------
 
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Albatros

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Which only reinforces his point

In Sweden in 1976 I'm aware that three Canada Cup games were shown, namely Sweden vs. USSR, USSR vs. Canada, and Czechoslovakia vs. Canada. For someone to think that Denis Potvin was the best player in the world would have been heavily based on these games. In Finland I believe a few more games were broadcast in 1976 but only two in both 1981 and 1984. In the USSR and Czechoslovakia additionally politics played an even bigger role when it came to broadcasting decisions concerning events in non-socialist countries. So of course it was a different world than it is today, but that goes both ways. Players like Denis Potvin or Bobby Orr are underrated in Europe because of that, and the same goes for various European players of the era in North America.
 

DannyGallivan

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Potvin never had much fame in Europe at all, not even compared to Salming. Bourque rather in the 1990s when the NHL became more of a thing. Trottier was likewise never in the equation at all, Gretzky only some years later when the Oilers got their dynasty going. In the early 1980s there was nothing in North America that could have challenged the Soviet achievements in hockey from a European perspective, certainly not the Islanders.
I just thought that Europeans were more knowledgeable about hockey, even back then. I think that the Islanders could have beaten the Red Army in a best of seven series, with no additional add-ons from other teams.
 

Albatros

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In any case the Islanders didn't have a winning record against any Soviet team despite playing all the games at home, against CSKA they played twice losing both times.
 

Theokritos

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Apr 6, 2010
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In any case the Islanders didn't have a winning record against any Soviet team despite playing all the games at home, against CSKA they played twice losing both times.

I think it's obvious he was referring to the Islanders when they had Potvin, so that precludes the second game against CSKA (1989).

The Potvin Islanders did indeed lose their two encounters with Soviet club teams (vs Krylya Sovietov in January 1976, vs CSKA in December 1979). But neither of the two Soviet clubs played with their regular roster and @DannyGallivan explicitly said "without additional players". Krylya added the entire top line of Spartak Moscow (Yakushev, Shadrin, Shalimov) and CSKA the top line from Torpedo Gorky (Varnakov, Kovin, Skvortsov; although the latter did not play in that game). So the comparison would have been fair if the Islanders could have added e.g. Clark and Gainey or Perrault and Sittler for the game.
 
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Albatros

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Varnakov and Kovin replaced more established players Krutov and Kapustin so it's not like they had a better roster than usual.
 

Voight

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I agree. There's a big difference between a guy being the best player for one season (see Jose Theodore, Henrik Sedin, et al.) and being the "best player in the world". Nobody thought Chris Pronger was the best player in the world, even after he won the Norris and Hart.

Not to mention he won it by literally 0.18% of the vote.... thats with Jagr missing 1/4 of the season. If Jaromir plays even 70 games I don't think its even a contest.

The argument would have more merit if Pronger had won the Hart by a huge margin and maybe even a playoff run like his in 2006.
 
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quoipourquoi

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Not to mention he won it by literally 0.18% of the vote.... thats with Jagr missing 1/4 of the season. If Jaromir plays even 70 games I don't think its even a contest.

The argument would have more merit if Pronger had won the Hart by a huge margin and maybe even a playoff run like his in 2006.

While I do agree that Jaromir Jagr wins the Hart Trophy if he plays more games, consider how the voting shook out. By voting points, it was super close, but Pronger’s votes were heavily front-loaded, seeing him take 25 out of 58 first-place votes to Jagr’s 18 and Bure’s 11.

Even if Jagr does win the Hart, you’re still looking at a substantial amount and likely even a plurality of people saying Chris Pronger is the most valuable player in the league. It’s a snapshot argument, where in a specific moment of time, he makes a good case.

By contrast, Nicklas Lidstrom (who would be his closest contemporary in this discussion) took just 4 first-place votes across 406 ballots from 2006-2008, but was also the only player to receive a first-place vote in each of those three seasons. So while not having a great case at any one specific moment (less than 1% cumulatively), it becomes one retroactively by examining a broader range of time.
 

wetcoast

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The thing is, those were all flukes that nobody would have predicted. From early December through mid January, Karlsson was just dominating everybody, and you knew it would happen no matter who he played against. Kucherov and McDavid came into San Jose, right in the middle of hot streaks, and both got wrecked by Karlsson who ended their hot streaks. It really only stopped once he got injured

Those same people were also predicting that Karlsson would come out flying to start the season in San Jose and we all saw how that turned out.

But at least one of those posters was claiming that it was 100% the fault of Vlasic and that he wasn't even good enough to play in the NHL.
 
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Voight

#winning
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In spurts of 20 games or so Erik Karlsson at times is the best player in the world currently .

DigitalVengefulAnnelida-size_restricted.gif
 

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