Is it time for another top 100 or so project?

[ted2019]

I'll admit I 'cheated' a lot to come up with my list of top 120. I used the all-time lists that had been done on here before, both for positions, playoffs and Europeans to help me come up with 120 names in order. I'm not nearly as knowledgeable as others to do it off the top of my head.

When we go from 100 to 220.....it becomes harder. There aren't enough names populated in most lists to be all that helpful. So I'm sure I can come up with a list of 101 to 220 (or top 1-220 if we do that) - but there'll be some extremely glaring omissions or bad rankings I'm certain on my end, especially towards the bottom half.

Would there be anyway to help others come up with their own top 220 list? Would a preliminary thread be used to discuss specific names and give a lot of suggestions/discussions as who likely fits where? I think that would be very helpful for me, moreso than last time.

Regarding pre-consolidation - if you guys go that route, i'll read and follow with lots of interest, but it's way too tall a task for me, and I wouldn't participate.
I'd still love to do best single seasons - but judging by last few posts it doesn't seem to be the topic of most interest.

The stats section in NHL.com is a big help. Also, I posted some links in a thread a week ago or so that could help you out. Some links I would like to share. You could also go through the last ATD draft and get some ideas from there.

 

[ted2019]

Just one more comment on 101-200 list. It sounds great in practice - but for the process we have to keep in mind how insanely difficult it will be.

Doing 1-100....ranking the top 4 was easy. The top 20, also. Even the top 50. It's all names we see all the time. Sakic or Yzerman or Bossy? Easy to compare. By the time we were getting closer to ~90 and in the last thread to rank 100th - there were so many names available and there was so much disagreements among all participants about who should be higher or lower. It just gets exponentially more difficult the lower we go.

That's the fun of this, is the disagreements and learning that goes on.

 

[ted2019]

I'm not saying that I wouldn't participate in a 101-200 list, but if we did that, a 1-220 list would be really tough for someone like me because of a really bad tendency to question myself in an overly excessive bid for perfection.

The initial top 220 list is just a small part of things. That gets your foot in the door. The rest is all about comparisons.

 

[TheDevilMadeMe]

I'll admit I 'cheated' a lot to come up with my list of top 120. I used the all-time lists that had been done on here before, both for positions, playoffs and Europeans to help me come up with 120 names in order. I'm not nearly as knowledgeable as others to do it off the top of my head.

Nothing wrong with that - the Top Players by Position lists were always intended to be rough models for an updated Top 100 list, all the way back when FissionFire (the admin of the 2008 and 2009 top 100 lists) first proposed them.

When we go from 100 to 220.....it becomes harder. There aren't enough names populated in most lists to be all that helpful. So I'm sure I can come up with a list of 101 to 220 (or top 1-220 if we do that) - but there'll be some extremely glaring omissions or bad rankings I'm certain on my end, especially towards the bottom half.

Seems like a good reason to maybe be a bit less ambitious and add 50 or maybe 75 names to the list, rather than another 100?

Would there be anyway to help others come up with their own top 220 list? Would a preliminary thread be used to discuss specific names and give a lot of suggestions/discussions as who likely fits where? I think that would be very helpful for me, moreso than last time.

Hopefully there would be a preliminary discussion list - there has been one for each of the last several projects. And hopefully it would have much less bickering about things that should be determined in round 2 anyway. (I found the last preliminary discussion thread practically unreadable with pages and pages of arguing about exactly where Sergei Fedorov should rank... when it didn't even matter until Round 2 anyway).

 

[TheDevilMadeMe]

That's the fun of this, is the disagreements and learning that goes on.

Yes, disagreement is a good thing (as long as it's civil and doesn't lead to neverending circular arguments).

 

[tarheelhockey]

I'm not saying that I wouldn't participate in a 101-200 list, but if we did that, a 1-220 list would be really tough for someone like me because of a really bad tendency to question myself in an overly excessive bid for perfection.

Every single time we do one of these projects, I have at least one if not multiple “what was I thinking?” moments when we go back to review the original lists. It’s hard not to be embarrassed by those, but comforting to know that it’s just part of the process that everybody goes through together.

 

[Professor What]

You guys are probably right. Personal fact: I have Asperger's Syndrome, and that makes me tend to focus in on details like that, making them seem bigger than they are. But it also has a lot to do with my being here since hockey history is one of my obsessive interests.

Anyway, I guess the point is, if we do something like that, just be patient with me.

 

[TheDevilMadeMe]

You guys are probably right. Personal fact: I have Asperger's Syndrome, and that makes me tend to focus in on details like that, making them seem bigger than they are. But it also has a lot to do with my being here since hockey history is one of my obsessive interests.

Anyway, I guess the point is, if we do something like that, just be patient with me.

These things have always been a two-step process. Round 2 voting is when it's time to focus on the details. Round 1 (the listmaking part) is all about getting players in the general range and trying to make sure you didn't forget anyone.

 

[Professor What]

@quoipourquoi Just curious: If we do the 1-220 lists, are you going to do an aggregate list like was done on the top 100 players discussion thread? It strikes me as an interesting idea because it would be a way to give some monitoring of movement without actually going through every round of discussion.

 

[quoipourquoi]

@quoipourquoi Just curious: If we do the 1-220 lists, are you going to do an aggregate list like was done on the top 100 players discussion thread? It strikes me as an interesting idea because it would be a way to give some monitoring of movement without actually going through every round of discussion.

Absolutely. We always wait to post the aggregate list until after the second round (that way it doesn’t influence anything) but we will for sure have one.

 

[bobholly39]

Absolutely. We always wait to post the aggregate list until after the second round (that way it doesn’t influence anything) but we will for sure have one.

Considering how much harder it's going to be to differentiate players ranked 100-200 than it was from 1 to 100 when there was bigger gaps between them - I almost rather we post the initial aggregate list right after round 1. And allow for a ~1 week review for posters to edit/adjust their own lists based on that aggregate list. I think it could be useful.

Obviously we'd want to avoid people getting stupid trying to 'cheat' the system. If you notice a player you like is ranked below another player, don't edit your list to have that other played all of a sudden ranked 50 spots lower.

If we did it this way - once the final aggregate list 2 was created - we could keep that one private until the end, so we don't know who all's coming up round to round.

 

[quoipourquoi]

Considering how much harder it's going to be to differentiate players ranked 100-200 than it was from 1 to 100 when there was bigger gaps between them - I almost rather we post the initial aggregate list right after round 1. And allow for a ~1 week review for posters to edit/adjust their own lists based on that aggregate list. I think it could be useful.

Obviously we'd want to avoid people getting stupid trying to 'cheat' the system. If you notice a player you like is ranked below another player, don't edit your list to have that other played all of a sudden ranked 50 spots lower.

If we did it this way - once the final aggregate list 2 was created - we could keep that one private until the end, so we don't know who all's coming up round to round.

I don’t know; I’d rather have that hashed out in the preliminary before the Round 1 votes and keep the aggregate as a single list. The other thing is, we ranked exactly 220 players (60 + 40 + 60 + 60) in the positional projects, so I think that would serve as an equally valuable guideline as a first draft of the aggregate.

Though obviously I would expect my ratio of goaltenders to be higher than 40:180.

 

[quoipourquoi]

Considering how much harder it's going to be to differentiate players ranked 100-200 than it was from 1 to 100 when there was bigger gaps between them - I almost rather we post the initial aggregate list right after round 1. And allow for a ~1 week review for posters to edit/adjust their own lists based on that aggregate list. I think it could be useful.

Obviously we'd want to avoid people getting stupid trying to 'cheat' the system. If you notice a player you like is ranked below another player, don't edit your list to have that other played all of a sudden ranked 50 spots lower.

If we did it this way - once the final aggregate list 2 was created - we could keep that one private until the end, so we don't know who all's coming up round to round.

Having said that, I like that you’re thinking outside the box.

 

[ted2019]

So, what should we do?

 

[plusandminus]

So, what should we do?

Top-60 Swedish players of all time.

 

[sr edler]

Best pests of all-time. Cully Wilson, Ted Lindsay, Ken Linseman, Esa Tikkanen, Claude Lemieux, Brad Marchand, Darius Kasparaitis.

Only difficulty with this project is what to judge, 1) the actual pesting exclusively, or 2) the pesting plus playing ability.

 

[wetcoast]

Mathematically it is not hard at all to make that case. Let's look at the median skill level of a player in each league. In the AHL from the original 6 era, in theory you had the 121st through 260th best players in North America. (in reality, there were some players that were better than NHL players, and at the bottom end they were probably some players who weren't as good as the best from other levels such as the IHL or senior hockey, but those probably wash out for the most part). So the median AHL player in about 1960 was approximately the 190th best player in North America.

If we're looking at the 1975 wha, it's the same principle. In theory, they should have players number 321 through 600. In reality, many of the top 300 players were in The wha, but also, the bottom end of The League was littered with awful players who are no better than many AHL players. Both factors probably wash out again. Leaving us with the idea that the median wha player was about 480th best in north america.

If you told me that the pool of hockey players trying to make the highest levels of hockey was deeper in 1975 than in 1960, I think I would agree, but was it so much deeper that the 480th best player in 1975 would be better than the 190th in 1960? Or even close? No, not on your life.

This is a little difficult to gauge for a couple of reasons.

On the surface the numbers you are brining up make alot of sense but the WHA might have a case for being better for several reasons.

1. Former NHLers, or guys that would later be excellent NHL players post 1979.

Bobby Hull, Mark Howe, JC Tremblay, Ftorek, Rogers, Tardif, Cloutier for starters.

2. Influx of players from outside of Canada, which represented (without taking a really deep dive) probably 95% plus of AHL players in the 50s and 60s.

Guys like Nilsson, Hedberg, Nedomansky, Howe, Ftorek for starters.

Of course talent was spread more thin in the WHA years so it is extremely difficult to balance but I think the gap is significant, even more so with the top talent at each level (WHA versus AHL in the 50s and 60s).

 

[wetcoast]

I could do that, but what about posters who didn't take part in the top 100?

They could simply look at the top 100 list (assuming that everyone of those players would be on almost everyone's new top 220 list) and use it as a starting point to gain some insight.

The harder part and thus the fun in the project are the guys to put at 101-220

 

[ItsFineImFine]

Do it now while some of the old guys who remember 60-80s players are still around and active online. Although I strongly believe that the modern game needs to be given more weight on these lists, basically post-mid-90s hockey.

 

[Sanf]

Yeah, if we had a team of Sanf's, we'd be all set haha

Well thank you , but there are lot of great pro and hobby researchers here. Including you.