Do you consider Yzerman and Sakic top 25 players all time?

[bobholly39]

Sakic's best season was 2000-01 when he scored 118 points, was +45 and won the Hart trophy.

In Yzerman's 155 point season, he was only +17, so he didn't dominate at even strength like Sakic did.

Yep. I'd still take Yzerman's peak season over Sakic personally. 155 points is 155 points and that's insane lol. But it is quite close, and 2001 is clearly Sakic's best season.

 

[Voight]

Sorry, I mixed two Joes.

Also Yzerman’s peak season was a way better than Sakic’s.

Yzerman dominated the game even strenght (2/3 or total production) where Sakic had 50 pts out of 120 of his production in powerplay.

No need to mention, that in 88-89 season Wings’ second in scoring was Gerard Gallant with 93 pts.

Sakic’s 120 pts were followed with Forsberg’s 116.

Imo Yzerman was also better player defensively.

Sakic lost the Selke by a hair in 2001. He also just 3 points behind Jagr for the scoring lead and 5 goals behind Bure for the Rocket.

 

[Northern Avs Fan]

Sakic lost the Selke by a hair in 2001. He also just 3 points behind Jagr for the scoring lead and 5 goals behind Bure for the Rocket.

Yeah, I think sometimes people forget how strong Sakic was as a two-way player.

 

[Dennis Bonvie]

Yep. I'd still take Yzerman's peak season over Sakic personally. 155 points is 155 points and that's insane lol. But it is quite close, and 2001 is clearly Sakic's best season.

The year Yzerman scored 155 points, he was one of 4 players to score 150 or more points.

The year Sakic scored 118 points he was one of two players to score over 100 points.

 

[bobholly39]

The year Yzerman scored 155 points, he was one of 4 players to score 150 or more points.

The year Sakic scored 118 points he was one of two players to score over 100 points.

Yup.

But another way of saying the same thing is - remove Gretzky and Lemieux from the equation, and Yzerman scores 155 points and second place is likely Joe Mullen at 110 points?

1	M Lemieux	199
2	W. Gretzky*	168
3	S. Yzerman*	155
4	B. Nicholls	150
5	R. Brown	115
6	P. Coffey*	113
7	J. Mullen*	110
8	J. Kurri*	102
9	J. Carson	100
10	L. Robitaille*	98

[TBODY] [/TBODY]

This was the top 10 in 1989. Without Gretzky in La - Bernie Nicholls doesn't score 150 points or anywhere near that, since his previous career high was 100 points exactly.
Without Lemieux Rob Brown doesn't score 115 points, since his career high outside of his 2 years with Lemieux is like 58 points
Paul Coffey scores less without Lemieux

So - Joe Mullen? Maybe i'm being too harsh on Nicholls and maybe he actually tops Joe Mullen's 110, but he still doesn't come anywhere near 150.

It was a really fantastic offensive season from Yzerman.

 

[daver]

The year Yzerman scored 155 points, he was one of 4 players to score 150 or more points.

The year Sakic scored 118 points he was one of two players to score over 100 points.

You know that in Yzerman's season that once you remove Wayne and Mario and their spheres of interest we see players only hitting 100 - 110 points right?

There is no argument that Yzerman's was clearly the better offensive season; one of the best non-Big Four seasons of all-time.

 

[Dennis Bonvie]

Yup.

But another way of saying the same thing is - remove Gretzky and Lemieux from the equation, and Yzerman scores 155 points and second place is likely Joe Mullen at 110 points?

1	M Lemieux	199
2	W. Gretzky*	168
3	S. Yzerman*	155
4	B. Nicholls	150
5	R. Brown	115
6	P. Coffey*	113
7	J. Mullen*	110
8	J. Kurri*	102
9	J. Carson	100
10	L. Robitaille*	98

[TBODY] [/TBODY]

This was the top 10 in 1989. Without Gretzky in La - Bernie Nicholls doesn't score 150 points or anywhere near that, since his previous career high was 100 points exactly.
Without Lemieux Rob Brown doesn't score 115 points, since his career high outside of his 2 years with Lemieux is like 58 points
Paul Coffey scores less without Lemieux

So - Joe Mullen? Maybe i'm being too harsh on Nicholls and maybe he actually tops Joe Mullen's 110, but he still doesn't come anywhere near 150.

It was a really fantastic offensive season from Yzerman.

No fair, using a what if.

If we remove Sakic and Jagr from the 2000-01 season, Patrick Elias wins the Art Ross trophy.

Without Jagr, Mario doesn't score 91 points in 67 games. That means the top 3 in Hart voting are out, leaving Roman freakin' Cechmanek as the Hart winner!

 

[bobholly39]

No fair, using a what if.

If we remove Sakic and Jagr from the 2000-01 season, Patrick Elias wins the Art Ross trophy.

Without Jagr, Mario doesn't score 91 points in 67 games. That means the top 3 in Hart voting are out, leaving Roman freakin' Cechmanek as the Hart winner!

Gretzky and Lemieux are just outliers though, for obvious reasons. How is that the same as removing Sakic and Jagr in 2001?

 

[Dennis Bonvie]

Gretzky and Lemieux are just outliers though, for obvious reasons. How is that the same as removing Sakic and Jagr in 2001?

The way that comparing what actually happened, to "what if" we remove these guys from the game is the same?

 

[bobholly39]

The way that comparing what actually happened, to "what if" we remove these guys from the game is the same?

Depends - what are we even talking about? I thought we were comparing the strength of Yzerman's best offensive season to Sakic's best offensive season.

What actually happened - as you say - is that Yzerman scored 155 points and Sakic scored 118 points.

If you want to add extra context and look at competition and scoring environment within that year - fine. But are you really going to say Yzerman's season is worst because Gretzky and Lemieux topped him? Using that logic - one could argue that hypothetical player X scoring 214 points in 1986 would be worst than Jagr in 2001 since Jagr won the Ross and the other guy finished #2 to Gretzky. Or - you use common sense, and don't do that.

 

[Dennis Bonvie]

Depends - what are we even talking about? I thought we were comparing the strength of Yzerman's best offensive season to Sakic's best offensive season.

What actually happened - as you say - is that Yzerman scored 155 points and Sakic scored 118 points.

If you want to add extra context and look at competition and scoring environment within that year - fine. But are you really going to say Yzerman's season is worst because Gretzky and Lemieux topped him? Using that logic - one could argue that hypothetical player X scoring 214 points in 1986 would be worst than Jagr in 2001 since Jagr won the Ross and the other guy finished #2 to Gretzky. Or - you use common sense, and don't do that.

Responded to this:

"Yep. I'd still take Yzerman's peak season over Sakic personally. 155 points is 155 points and that's insane lol. But it is quite close, and 2001 is clearly Sakic's best season."

Somewhere along the line it went to strictly offensive output. Then to what if.

So, original argument was who had a better "peak" season. I'll take Sakic's based on context.

 

[bobholly39]

Responded to this:

"Yep. I'd still take Yzerman's peak season over Sakic personally. 155 points is 155 points and that's insane lol. But it is quite close, and 2001 is clearly Sakic's best season."

Somewhere along the line it went to strictly offensive output. Then to what if.

So, original argument was who had a better "peak" season. I'll take Sakic's based on context.

Yes. You're the one who changed it to offense only - and then tried to continue down that road.

I said 155 points is crazy - but overall it's still close (and by that, I was implying Sakic's defense in 2001 bridged the gap on some of the offense).
You took exception to the comment - and tried to imply that 4 players hitting 150 points vs 2 hitting 100 points was the same. So - strictly offense talk.
Responding back to you - strictly on offense - I clearly showed you why saying "4 players hit 150 points" is ignoring the extreme outliers peak Lemieux and Gretzky - and their linemates - are.

Bottom line:

Yzerman > Sakic for offense in peak season, clearly so
Overall peak season? That's closer. As someone who prefers offense over defense - I still easily pick Yzerman, but I could see others disagreeing.

 

[Hockey Outsider]

it's 29 points, not 2
Also, Hockey-reference's way of adjusting points is a good high level reference point - but by no means exactly accurate. Mostly because there is no way of perfectly adjusting statistics. But if there was - odds are it would fluctuate by at least 100 points total, one way or another.

Joe Sakic was 10 times a top 10 scorer, vs 6 for Yzerman. I think he simply has more quality seasons in terms of offense than Yzerman
Sakic is also definitely better in playoffs. Overall for career playoffs - and absolutely for best single run too.

It's not a huge gap between both - they're close and absolutely on the same tier - but to me it's still a clear edge to Sakic overall

seventieslord (one of the participants in the Top 100 Players project) wrote a 3,000+ word essay comparing Sakic and Yzerman. I don't agree with every word of it, but I agree with the overall conclusion - it's close but Sakic is ahead by a small but clear margin.

Ever Wonder Which Of Sakic and Yzerman is Better?

(I'm sure you're aware of this post - but linking it for others who may not have read it).

 

[Dennis Bonvie]

Yes. You're the one who changed it to offense only - and then tried to continue down that road.

I said 155 points is crazy - but overall it's still close (and by that, I was implying Sakic's defense in 2001 bridged the gap on some of the offense).
You took exception to the comment - and tried to imply that 4 players hitting 150 points vs 2 hitting 100 points was the same. So - strictly offense talk.
Responding back to you - strictly on offense - I clearly showed you why saying "4 players hit 150 points" is ignoring the extreme outliers peak Lemieux and Gretzky - and their linemates - are.

Bottom line:

Yzerman > Sakic for offense in peak season, clearly so
Overall peak season? That's closer. As someone who prefers offense over defense - I still easily pick Yzerman, but I could see others disagreeing.

My quote:

Sakic's best season was 2000-01 when he scored 118 points, was +45 and won the Hart trophy.

In Yzerman's 155 point season, he was only +17, so he didn't dominate at even strength like Sakic did.

Your response:

"Yep. I'd still take Yzerman's peak season over Sakic personally. 155 points is 155 points and that's insane lol. But it is quite close, and 2001 is clearly Sakic's best season."

If there is any implication of defensive play in that statement, I'm missing it.

We simply miscommunicated.

 

[Voight]

Yup.

But another way of saying the same thing is - remove Gretzky and Lemieux from the equation, and Yzerman scores 155 points and second place is likely Joe Mullen at 110 points?

1	M Lemieux	199
2	W. Gretzky*	168
3	S. Yzerman*	155
4	B. Nicholls	150
5	R. Brown	115
6	P. Coffey*	113
7	J. Mullen*	110
8	J. Kurri*	102
9	J. Carson	100
10	L. Robitaille*	98

[TBODY] [/TBODY]

This was the top 10 in 1989. Without Gretzky in La - Bernie Nicholls doesn't score 150 points or anywhere near that, since his previous career high was 100 points exactly.
Without Lemieux Rob Brown doesn't score 115 points, since his career high outside of his 2 years with Lemieux is like 58 points
Paul Coffey scores less without Lemieux

So - Joe Mullen? Maybe i'm being too harsh on Nicholls and maybe he actually tops Joe Mullen's 110, but he still doesn't come anywhere near 150.

It was a really fantastic offensive season from Yzerman.

You know that in Yzerman's season that once you remove Wayne and Mario and their spheres of interest we see players only hitting 100 - 110 points right?

There is no argument that Yzerman's was clearly the better offensive season; one of the best non-Big Four seasons of all-time.

Remove Jagr from the equation and Sakic wins the Art Ross by 22 points, which would have been the largest margin of victory since Gretzky in 1991.

 

[bobholly39]

Remove Jagr from the equation and Sakic wins the Art Ross by 22 points, which would have been the largest margin of victory since Gretzky in 1991.

Odds are even without Lemieux Jagr would be less than 22 points from Sakic.

Also - if you remove 99 and 66 from 1989 - Yzerman wins art ross by quite a bit more than 22 points most likely

Edge Yzerman for offense in peak season.

 

[Video Nasty]

Odds are even without Lemieux Jagr would be less than 22 points from Sakic.

It's really hard to say. I think the odds are more in the corner of Jagr finishing 22+ points behind Sakic.

Jagr literally did not care until Lemieux came back. He had 37 points in 36 games pre-Lemieux. Could he have finished with 60 points in the remaining 45 games to finish "less than 22 points" from Sakic and also still finish ahead of Elias? Of course he could. Than man was coming off 3 consecutive Art Rosses without Mario around, a 1.47 ppg during season where league GPG fluctuated between 5.17-5.39 and won a Hart, finished runner up to Hasek and lost another by 1 point to Pronger.

But he also wasn't great and was disinterested during his following 3 seasons as well, so I would lean towards him finishing sub 100 points in 2000-2001 and finishing well behind Sakic. There's a reason Sakic won the Hart and Mario was the runner up.

I'm not knocking Jagr, but he clearly wanted to leave Pittsburgh and without Lemieux coming back, there's really no convincing argument that he would have found that extra gear to finish anywhere closer than at least 15 points behind and more likely 20+.

 

[bobholly39]

It's really hard to say. I think the odds are more in the corner of Jagr finishing 22+ points behind Sakic.

Jagr literally did not care until Lemieux came back. He had 37 points in 36 games pre-Lemieux. Could he have finished with 60 points in the remaining 45 games to finish "less than 22 points" from Sakic and also still finish ahead of Elias? Of course he could. Than man was coming off 3 consecutive Art Rosses without Mario around, a 1.47 ppg during season where league GPG fluctuated between 5.17-5.39 and won a Hart, finished runner up to Hasek and lost another by 1 point to Pronger.

But he also wasn't great and was disinterested during his following 3 seasons as well, so I would lean towards him finishing sub 100 points in 2000-2001 and finishing well behind Sakic. There's a reason Sakic won the Hart and Mario was the runner up.

I'm not knocking Jagr, but he clearly wanted to leave Pittsburgh and without Lemieux coming back, there's really no convincing argument that he would have found that extra gear to finish anywhere closer than at least 15 points behind and more likely 20+.

That's a reasonable response. You're right - who knows if Jagr figures it out. Odds are he does based on his track record of excellence the previous few seasons, and especially considering 96 points is a super low bar for him, but can't say for sure.

But my point was more that - even if you give Sakic this 22 points edge - Yzerman likely wins a ross in 89 by closer to ~45 points without Lemieux/Gretzky around. Looking at offense only - it's simply the better season.

If you want to argue Sakic's defense is enough to bridge the gap and say his overall 2001 season is better than Yzerman 1989 - be my guest. As someone who prioritizes offense more, it's not my something I'd say.

 

[newfy]

I voted yes for both, but they might be just outside the top 25 to be fair. Like right around 25 is where they belong for me, if someone had them at 20 and someone had them at 30ish I wouldnt think either are being outrageous.

If Yzermans peak wasnt directly coinciding with Gretzky and Lemieux he would be viewed much higher. He had a good run of 6 or so seasons where his lead over the next closest scorer was as big as the one Gretzky had over him during the same time. If we're talking roughly 6 years being viewed as the best offensive player in the game, a little more hardware to his name without Gretzky or Lemieux and then won a selke blocking shots and winning a bunch of cups, this wouldnt be a debate. Unfortunately for him, Gretzky and Lemeiux were peaking at roughly the exact same time.

But you can also count me as a guy who wouldnt put guys born in the 1800s above them. I know and understand why some people on the history board do that but I dont do it in my lists. I try to draw the line at when the original 6 era started, where theres video of guys and a lot of reliable sources to go off of. When I talk about a guy like Morenz, I'm going to say "he was one of the best of his time and an all time great, but there isnt enough to rank him overall accordingly". I dont think I would have any soviets ahead of those 2 either on my list.

 

[Video Nasty]

That's a reasonable response. You're right - who knows if Jagr figures it out. Odds are he does based on his track record of excellence the previous few seasons, and especially considering 96 points is a super low bar for him, but can't say for sure.

But my point was more that - even if you give Sakic this 22 points edge - Yzerman likely wins a ross in 89 by closer to ~45 points without Lemieux/Gretzky around. Looking at offense only - it's simply the better season.

If you want to argue Sakic's defense is enough to bridge the gap and say his overall 2001 season is better than Yzerman 1989 - be my guest. As someone who prioritizes offense more, it's not my something I'd say.

Oh, to your greater overall point, I absolutely agree that Yzerman had the best individual season between the two.

When you’re the answer to the question, “What player has the highest point total in a season not named Gretzky and Lemieux?”, you’re the automatic winner.

It’s a wildly under-appreciated season too commonly dismissed as just being a product of a higher scoring league

 

[Dennis Bonvie]

I voted yes for both, but they might be just outside the top 25 to be fair. Like right around 25 is where they belong for me, if someone had them at 20 and someone had them at 30ish I wouldnt think either are being outrageous.

If Yzermans peak wasnt directly coinciding with Gretzky and Lemieux he would be viewed much higher. He had a good run of 6 or so seasons where his lead over the next closest scorer was as big as the one Gretzky had over him during the same time. If we're talking roughly 6 years being viewed as the best offensive player in the game, a little more hardware to his name without Gretzky or Lemieux and then won a selke blocking shots and winning a bunch of cups, this wouldnt be a debate. Unfortunately for him, Gretzky and Lemeiux were peaking at roughly the exact same time.

But you can also count me as a guy who wouldnt put guys born in the 1800s above them. I know and understand why some people on the history board do that but I dont do it in my lists. I try to draw the line at when the original 6 era started, where theres video of guys and a lot of reliable sources to go off of. When I talk about a guy like Morenz, I'm going to say "he was one of the best of his time and an all time great, but there isnt enough to rank him overall accordingly". I dont think I would have any soviets ahead of those 2 either on my list.

Yzerman only had two seasons where he came in 3rd in scoring. And one of those seasons he was behind Gretzky and Messier.

So even without Gretzky and Lemieux, Yzerman only wins one scoring title. He probably wins a Hart trophy as well.

As for how you would rank players, I can understand that. Your cutoff would be the original six (1942-43). That would leave out Morenz and Eddie Shore. Both of them were born in the 1900s. Shore won 4 Hart trophies, Morenz won 3 and came in 2nd twice. Maybe use the birth date of 1900 as a cutoff to get in a couple of consensus all-time greats.