A HOH Wingers list is expected, if not a left winger list and then right winger list.
A lot of great role players will fall through the cracks: defensive defensemen and defensive forwards, third liners of renown, but so be it. The HOH Project is what it is: an all-star game-ish list hierarchy, not a reflection on the most influential or impact players in the history of the game. (The ATDs honor third liners and defensive-minded dmen more so, fits the team-first, playoff-oriented play of all-time greats in history hockey.) One project cannot be everything for everybody. There are many kinds of greatness in hockey history, and only some are being honored here.
I don’t think this is really an accurate representation of how the HOH projects are working compared to something like the ATD.
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As far as the defensemen list is concerned, their
overall impacts were always considered primarily, using criteria such as all-star votes which came from contemporaries and which were, except in the most recent years, based on overall impact and not simply offensive numbers. Most of the best defensive defensemen of all-time were already honoured in that project. What are we to do next? A list of the best defensive defensemen who couldn’t score to save their lives? How would we distinguish where to draw lines? Rod Langway made the HOH list already; is he eligible for a “role player†list? If so, what about Serge Savard? Or did he score too many points to be considered? Guys like Bill Hajt and Dave Burrows deserve credit for their play in one end of the rink. But we didn’t get down to someone like Eric Desjardins on the top-60 and he’s a better
all-around player than those two; do we end up just ignoring him since he doesn’t quite make either list? The best defensemen have already been appropriately honoured and we demonstrated our commitment to
overall impact over offense-based, all-star like hierarchies when the likes of Phil Housley, Sergei Gonchar and Sergei Zubov didn’t make the cut. It sounds like what you’re looking for is the ATD; have you heard of that?
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With both forwards and defensemen, their overall impact as players can *be simply summed up by their offensive and defensive impacts. I can’t speak for everyone, but I believe with defensemen we tend to value defensive contributions as a larger part of the whole, and with forwards we value offense more. That is why the list of defensemen is full of players ranging from Harvey Pulford to Bobby Orr offensively, but none who weren’t at least passable defensively in their primes (and most were excellent). It’s to be expected that the forward lists will end up a mirror image: Mostly based on offensive skill, with defense an important but secondary consideration. It will be full of players who were excellent offensively, while ranging from Bill Cowley to Dave Keon defensively. I highly disagree with the notion that some lame all-star hierarchy will be employed. I trust that all my colleagues strive to consider a player’s
overall impact; it’s just that with forwards that impact comes mainly from scoring. Just like I’ll have to demonstrate that a guy like Norm Ullman is more valuable
overall than Peter Stastny, you’ll have the opportunity to argue for Brind’Amour over Sundin, or for Lepine over Federko or whoever else. I expect everyon’s viewpoints will be considered, and if Sundin beats out Brind’Amour I expect it will be because his
overall impact was deemed greater and not just because “he scored more, therefore he’s betterâ€. *Give us some credit here.
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I agree that whether we are talking about real life (Bolland vs. Versteeg?) or an all-time context (Ramsay vs. Mosienko), an elite role player can and does have more value than a middling scoring line player. But we’re not talking about any middling scoring line players here; we’re talking about the best of the best, all-time. Federko, Turgeon, Sedin, Nieuwendyk, Roenick? They’re likely not making it. The guys that are, they’re all so talented that, save for maybe Guy Carbonneau, no role player’s going to usurp them from this list. Again, if you want to honour checkers, there’s an ATD for that, and although it is a little more role-player centric, it’s not like anyone’s taking Bob Pulford over Mark Recchi there, either. The logistics of organizing a “best role player forwards of all-time†list would be mind boggling if you start to think about where to arbitrarily draw lines in efforts to determine who is and isn’t eligible. Mark Messier, for example, due to his size, toughness, faceoff ability, penalty killing, fighting, intimidation and leadership could be argued to be the best role player of all-time, if only he didn’t have all that blasted skill (that somehow takes away from all that other stuff?). Kirk Muller had great intangibles, but he was a star for the first half of his creer too, does that disqualify him or can we only go by his “grumpy old man†years? And so on. Mind boggling, I tells ya.