Disappointing Calder Trophy winner's career

[MeHateHe]

The Calder Trophy has been handed out every season since 1933. It actually surprised me to see that most of the winners had long and productive (for the most part) careers. You'd figure with 90 names, that a good chunk would have had a flash in the pan and then either vanished or fizzled out. As it turned out, that number is surprisingly low.

I came up with four names of players whose NHL careers wound up being short and mostly uneventful. Three of the four had careers disrupted by the war years. Whose career was most disappointing? Bonus points if you saw any of them play live (hah!)

Frank McCool, Maple Leafs (1945)
McCool won the Calder as the Leafs goalie in 1945, when he played 50 games, recording a 24-22-4 record with a 3.22 average and four shutouts en route to a Stanley Cup championship. He played 22 games the following season and retired largely because he was plagued by ulcers.

John Quilty, Canadiens (1941)
Quilty played 48 games for the Habs in 1940-41, posting a respectable 18-16-34 stat line. He scored another 12 the following season before signing up with the RCAF. Wikipedia says he played for RCAF teams in Toronto and Vancouver during the war years. He came back to the NHL in 1946, scoring six goals over 29 games spanning the following two seasons. After a broken leg in 1948, his NHL career was over.

James (KIlby) MacDonald, Rangers (1940)
MacDonald won the Calder at the tender age of 27, having bounced around senior and minor/semi pro until catching on with the Rangers on their run toward the Cup in 1940. He picked up 28 points in 44 games that season, including 15 goals, racking up 11 points the following season before briefly joining the Canadian army. He returned to the Rangers for the '43-'44 and '44-45 season, ultimately amassing 36 goals in 151 NHL games.

Jack Gelineau, Bruins (1950)
Gelineau served in World War II and earned the British Empire Medal for gallantry, having saved crewmates from a crashed airplane that was carrying ammunition. After the war, he played hockey for McGill and in the summer played baseball. He earned a tryout with the Boston Red Sox but ultimately settled on hockey. He started with the Bruins while finishing his studies at McGill (remind you of any other goalie?) and was the Bruins starter in '49-'50 and '50-'51, racking up more than 8,000 minutes in 137 games. After two succeeding seasons in the QSHL, he returned to the NHL with the Blackhawks in 1953-54, where he played two games and gave up 18 goals.

Is it too soon to talk about Andrew Raycroft?

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[MadLuke]

goaltender will be a bit more noisy I would imagine, Mason, Raycroft....

It depend where we put the bar, Samsonov, Myers, Berard, Plett, Vail.

The high bar set by their rookie season can make a really nice career disappointing.

 

[BigBadBruins7708]

goaltender will be a bit more noisy I would imagine, Mason, Raycroft....

It depend where we put the bar, Samsonov, Myers, Berard, Plett, Vail.

The high bar set by their rookie season can make a really nice career disappointing.

I'd almost say you have to carve out the injury cases too, like Berard and to a lesser extent Samsonov (he was never the same after the wrist injury)

Jackman is my candidate. Yes he played 875 games, but only had 186 points. His 19 rookie year points were his 3rd best in his career. Also, surprising that a defenseman would win the Calder with only 19 points (over Zetterberg and Nash) and not get a single Norris vote.

 

[overpass]

John Quilty, Canadiens (1941)
Quilty played 48 games for the Habs in 1940-41, posting a respectable 18-16-34 stat line. He scored another 12 the following season before signing up with the RCAF. Wikipedia says he played for RCAF teams in Toronto and Vancouver during the war years. He came back to the NHL in 1946, scoring six goals over 29 games spanning the following two seasons. After a broken leg in 1948, his NHL career was over.

Johnny Quilty was the son of Ottawa football great Silver Quilty, and was a great all-around athlete like his father. Howard Riopelle, another NHLer who came out of Ottawa at the same time as Quilty, remembered Quilty as the greatest natural athlete he had ever seen.

Quilty played his hockey and football at Ottawa' St. Patrick's College High. At age 18, he was the light-heavyweight boxing champion of the Ottawa Valley. After finishing high school, he initially signed with the Montreal football club of the Big 4 (the precursor to the CFL) and then signed with the Canadiens instead.

Silver Quilty negotiated a $1000 bonus for his son if he won the Calder trophy. Habs management smiled at the request as they didn't see that as a realistic possibility, but once he hit the ice he exceeded all expectations. They were calling him another Syl Apps in his rookie season. Johnny received the Calder trophy from president Frank Calder at a presentation banquet at St Patrick's after the season, and Calder mentioned that his jump directly from "schoolboy hockey" to the National Hockey League was unprecedented.

As you say, the war and the broken leg both interrupted Quilty's career. Alcoholism was another factor in the early end of his career. Quilty got sober several years later and was very active in AA, and Riopelle said Quilty helped 75 men get sober over the years.

 

[MeHateHe]

Jackman is my candidate. Yes he played 875 games, but only had 186 points. His 19 rookie year points were his 3rd best in his career. Also, surprising that a defenseman would win the Calder with only 19 points (over Zetterberg and Nash) and not get a single Norris vote.

Agreed about Jackman, but as you alluded, the interesting thing may be that he won the Calder at all, and as another poster pointed out, the Calder sets a high bar. I mean, an 875-game career is a pretty good career - you can't be less than mediocre for most of that and stick around, can you?

When I thought about this, I was looking for the guys who caught lightning in a bottle for that one year but then faded away. I was wondering if there was a Warren Young-type, who fell into a line with someone who wound up carrying him to a Calder win, but not really. What I found was a bunch of guys who, like Steve Vickers, hit a peak at 20 or so and never really got a lot better, and but mostly hung around at that level. Eric Vail and Willy Plett both fit that mold too.

 

[Ishdul]

Raycroft hasn't played in 12 years so I think you're in the clear.

I think people were pretty aware of Jackman's ceiling as a player even when he won the award. That year Zetterberg was the leading scorer at 44 points while no other rookie cleared 40, so it was just seen as a weak year for candidates. Jackman being a big minute eater for the Blues in the absence of Pronger was a compelling case. He was not a big point producer in Junior or in the AHL. He also had a major shoulder injury the year after.

 

[GlitchMarner]

If Jackman's career can be considered disappointing, how about Tyler Myers'?

I think it's fair to say he didn't quite live up to the expectations he set as a rookie.

 

[Michael Farkas]

Re: Myers. Classic case of (usually) a big player with technicals of some regard but lacking hockey sense/mental processing ability...that manifests as a lack of adaptability down the line, so you end up with a lot "ugh" down the line, especially as the athletic prime erodes...

Tyler Myers got a couple of scant Norris votes in his first couple seasons. Then fell out of favor in Buffalo just that quickly.

Went to Winnipeg - where his game wasn't as well known - and had a nice start there. Then fell out of favor again...

Phaneuf - early success - then the stumble, the trade, the quick revival within athletic prime time...then the wind down...

Matt Dumba - it took a little too long for the long-awaited trade there, so he was traded outside of his athletic prime and it ended up now really working out. Had he been traded at 24 or 25, he probably would have had a really nice year where ever he went...

The list goes on and on...

 

[MeHateHe]

If Jackman's career can be considered disappointing, how about Tyler Myers'?

I think it's fair to say he didn't quite live up to the expectations he set as a rookie.

I guess there are varying degrees of disappointing. A Calder win isn't a necessarily precursor to a Hall of Fame career the same way that, say, a Hart trophy win (Jose Theodore notwithstanding) wouldat least suggest the same. I think that Jackman (and Myers and Vail and Plett) had perfectly cromulent careers whereas the names I suggested early on simply didn't. So in that sense, Jackman and Myers et al didn't have careers you might call 'disappointing.'

But yeah, I'd agree that in terms of what might have been expected from a guy like Myers to a greater extent and Jackman to a lesser extent, the results didn't match those expectations.

 

[vadim sharifijanov]

i think the difference between jackman and myers is jackman was what he was when he won the calder. a good solid defensive guy with no offensive upside. i don’t think anybody expected him to grow an offensive game and he already was a pretty good version of what he was. not a disappointment at all.

myers on the other hand was a toolsy guy with low hockey iq. you would have expected him to eventually figure out how to simplify the game for himself and develop into at least a non-liability defensively. and you also expected him to learn how to use his ridiculous gifts, his size and reach and skating to his advantage. he had workhorse all situations dman written all over him, like a bouwmeester with offensive upside. but he ended up being best served as a third pair guy you sheltered with easy minutes, like he was in winnipeg when he was behind trouba and byfuglien. and for a guy who almost hit 50 pts as a rookie he never even broke 40 ever again. a clear disappointment despite being on track to play 1,000 games.

 

[Soundgarden]

I think if you look at where they were drafted and how long they played it's hard to call Jackman (17th) and Myers(12th) disappointing.

 

[vadim sharifijanov]

I think if you look at where they were drafted and how long they played it's hard to call Jackman (17th) and Myers(12th) disappointing.

interesting to note that myers was from the stacked 2008 draft

in the end where would he rank among dmen?

1. doughty
2. karlsson
3. josi
4. pietrangelo
5. carlson
6. spurgeon
7. brodie
8. maybe you can put myers here, in a tier with luke schenn and hamonic and maybe justin schultz?

then below that a tier of demers, bogo, and jake gadiner, arguably voynov did enough to fit here

and then scandella and del zaster

then sbisa and michael stone

 

[Laphroaig]

Brit Selby had a pretty mediocre career after winning the Calder in the mid sixties. I thought he was going to be a Leaf mainstay but he only topped his rookie season's 27 points in one other season (30 points).

 

[Crosby2010]

To be fair, Myers is still playing, and is still effective. But I do agree he really raised the bar as a rookie and he never reached it again. If he had a career like Pietrangelo I don't think it surprises anyone in 2010.

Pentti Lund from 1949 comes to mind. Born in Finland, played 5 years with his first being his best and a sliding decline after that.

 

[Johnny Engine]

I think if you look at where they were drafted and how long they played it's hard to call Jackman (17th) and Myers(12th) disappointing.

True, but I think the point of this thread has recalibrated expectations baked into it - for an ad absurdum example, if Kucherov has a 35-point season next year, you wouldn't say "pretty good for a 2nd rounder who's 31 now", you'd wonder what the hell happened to the best winger of his era.
With Myers, one conversation that was happening in 2010 was that of the two big Rockets defensemen, Myers went back and learned to be an all-situations stud in Kelowna, while Luke Schenn spent his year scrambling around vainly while Vesa Toskala let every single shot in behind him, and that this stroke of luck and development savvy meant that the Sabres were going to get a far superior franchise defenseman. Then as Vadim's tiers illustrate, what they both ended up being were sort of problematic mid-pair defensemen who could give you different things if you pushed them down a notch. That's kinda what we already thought Luke Schenn was going to be after 2 seasons, and adjusted expectations for Myers upwards.