I really don't understand how Babe Dye can be ranked above someone like Sakic. He has six top ten finishes and only played like 10 seasons, on top of that this is when the talent was diluted and seperated into 3 different leagues. Oh well, its your opinion.
Lousy Players with good stats?
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I really don't understand how Babe Dye can be ranked above someone like Sakic. He has six top ten finishes and only played like 10 seasons, on top of that this is when the talent was diluted and seperated into 3 different leagues. Oh well, its your opinion.
Dark Shadows
Registered User
Gretzky missed 7 games in 1989-90. When I said 10 in 92, I forgot that it was 93 in which the league increased the games to 84.
In either case, Yzerman's 1989 and no Hart was better than either of Messier's Hart years as far as I am concerned.
Dark Shadows
Registered User
Ogopogo's system is point based.
Granted, I am not sure how Babe Dye gets that many points from what I know of Ogo's system.
You would have to admit that Cy Denneny is kind of underrated though when it comes to all-time great left wings. He finished top 4 like eight times, which is a pretty ridiculous peak.
MXD
Original #4
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I don't think much people ranks Denneny, let alone Dye, ahead of those three guys anyways. Things might be a bit different for Seibert, even though I have him below those three guys.
The main contention points between the Messier, Yzerman and Sakic gap comes from guys like Milt Schmidt, Bill Cook and Charlie Conacher, who might or might not be ranked higher than Sakic and al. For more recent players, guys like Robinson and Fetisov might be the contentious ones.
Isnt that the idea? He put up big numbers but the St Louis Blues were good because of Pronger and MacInnis. Not because of Demtira. At least thats how I see it. Maybe lousy is the wrong word to use, but a guy who's numbers overstated his actual presence on the ice.
Fish on The Sand
Untouchable
seventieslord
Student Of The Game
Was it enough to bridge the overwhelming advantage they both have on him in regular season performance? I mean, they aren't playoff slouches themselves.
You've seen my goalscoring and playmaking threads. recall:
Goalscoring:
Top-1 Top-5 Top-10 Top-15 Top-20
Sakic: 1-2-5-6-7
Yzerman: 2-3-6-7-8
Messier: 0-0-4-5-5
Playmaking:
Top-1 Top-5 Top-10 Top-15 Top-20
Sakic: 0-6-9-12-14
Yzerman: 0-2-5-9-12
Messier: 1-3-6-9-10
In regards to their playoff production, from my Sakic vs. yzerman thread, with Messier added:
In playoff goalscoring I'd say it's close between Sakic and Messier, with Yzerman a distant 3rd. In playmaking, Messier has a good edge on Sakic, who has a small edge on Yzerman. In points, Messier has a very slight edge on Sakic who has a fair edge on Yzerman.
So, is that enough to make him better than them? they definitely have the regular season edge in goals and assists, and though he comes out slightly ahead in the playoffs, does he come out enough ahead? And does the fact that a lot of it had to do with circumstance matter to you? I mean, if he had been on any other team than the Oilers he wouldn't have such a lucrative array of playoff leaderboard finishes.
that's such a cool name
i know it's cecil 'babe' dye but it's still up there in my top 10 corny nicknames along with clarence 'happy' day and darius 'kasper the unfriendly ghost' kasparaitis
Yzerman wasn't necessarily better in the regular season. Messier put up better numbers than Yzerman in 1984, 1986, 1987, 1990, 1992, 1995, 1996, 1997 and 2003. LOL Yzerman has no overwhelming edge in the regular season, I would argue Messier was better in the regular season and he brought physicality to his game, something Yzerman didn't offer.
Messier's top 10 finishes are: 2nd, 3rd, 5th, 5th, 7th and 10th.
Yzerman: 3rd, 3rd, 4th, 7th, 8th, 10th.
The playoff gap between Messier and Yzerman is big enough for me, i find it funny how you keep using the '80's oilers' excuse. After Gretzky got traded, Messier would put upanother 138 playoff points and he didn't even get to play in the playoffs for the final 7 years of his career, lol. He outperformed Yzerman in the playoffs from 1989-1997 when there was no Gretzky. He has the better playoff resume, he has the hart trophies and hes the more complete player, Messier is definetly a better hockey player than Yzerman.
I find it funny how you say if he wasnt on the oilers, should I remind you how ridiculously stacked that detriot red wings team was from 1995-2002, there is a reason they made it to the finals or smie finals nearly every year.
Scott Hall
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Glen Murray? Was he a product of Joe Thornton or was he just not good enough for the "new" NHL?
How about Mikael Renberg, the most feared member of the Legion of Doom line?
How about Mikael Renberg, the most feared member of the Legion of Doom line?
darko
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cynicism
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Murray needed someone to feed him, he had a great shot, decent skater. He's far above guys like Leeman and Aarnason.
Renberg was a decent player who got worn down by (freak) injuries, he was the defensive conscience on the LOD line and I don't think I've ever seen a player forecheck and dig along the boards with as much enthusiasm as Renberg.
iamjs
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Dark Shadows
Registered User
I think I was among the bigger Denneny supporters later in voting.
Top 8 four times also needs to be highlighted as he was top 2 six of those times.
They don't have an overwhelming advantage in the regular season.
Messier's Regular season record is actually better than Yzerman's and very close to Sakic's.(Using all the usual criteria. Points, all around play, Hart Voting, all star selections)
And even if you remove his Gretzky Oiler years, Messier has from 1988-1997 138 points in 117 games. The latter half of his career is better than most people's full career. Even after Coffey and Gretzky were gone, he put up those massive post season numbers multiple times. When you throw his early years on top of the pile, it breaks the argument for me.
He was a dominant post season performer no matter who he played with.
Some people might not remember this......But Yzerman was given the "Joe Thornton" treatment before the age of 30. Not fair given the weaker team he played on before 91-92, but he visibly receded in the post season for a number of years.
seventieslord
Student Of The Game
Cool down son, you're getting carried away. I really don't care, and nor should anyone else, that a prime Messier on the Oilers outscored a pimple-faced Yzerman on a terrible wings team in 1984, 1986, or 1987. Other than that, sure, Messier came out ahead just as often as he didn't. In fairness I don't really care who was better when they were both in their late 30s and far out of the top-20, I care who was better when they were elite players.
Yzerman is a considerably better goal scorer. He was in the top-5 three times; Messier never was.
"Keep using"? When did I use it before?
It was a splinter league, though. Those top-2s are top-4s if all the best players are together. Still, very impressive.
Hold on a sec.
Not that I'm not becoming re-convinced of Messier's greatness that I had begun to doubt, but let me play Devil's advocate here.
- Points are just goals and assists; we've talked about that, Sakic and Yzerman have outperformed him in the regular season.
- All-around play. All three are good all-around players. I know adjusted +/- is just one statistic, but Messier is a career adjusted -10. Sakic is a career +194 and Yzerman is a career +133. They also both hold the edge in Selke voting. Yzerman won once, and was also 3rd, 4th, 5th, 9th, 11th. Sakic was 2nd, 9th, 10th, 13th, 15th, 15th. Messier was 8th, 9th, 14th. That's half the top-15s that either of them has, and he peaked lower in voting than they did. Now if you want to say you watched them all and Messier had the better all-around game, you're free to do so, but could it have been THAT much better?
- Hart voting definitely favours Sakic and Yzerman. Here are their top-15s:
Sakic: 1, 6, 7, 7, 7, 8, 14, 14, 15, 15.
Yzerman: 3, 4, 7, 7, 7, 8, 8, 12.
Messier: 1, 1, 2, 9, 9.
- All-Star voting favours Sakic and Yzerman too. Here are their top-5s among centers:
Sakic: 1, 1, 1, 3, 3, 4, 4, 4, 4.
Yzerman: 1, 3, 3, 4, 5, 5.
Messier: 1, 1, 3, 4.
Messier also has a 1, 1, 2 from his LW years, but those can hardly be considered at par value considering the competition at LW at that time.
Yeah, he was a dominant postseason performer. There is no question about that. Yzerman and Sakic both put together strings of good playoff seasons too.
I did another little calculation. Basically I added up all the playoff goals/assists finishes with the regular season ones and counted them as equal. (fair assumption since a cup winner plays 1/4 as many games as he did in the regular season, meaning a playoff game is given 4X the importance of a regular season game)
Goal scoring:
Top-2 Top-5 Top-10 Top-15 Top-20
Yzerman: 2-4-8-12-13
Sakic: 4-5-11-13-14
Messier: 2-5-11-13-13
Playmaking:
Top-2 Top-5 Top-10 Top-15 Top-20
Yzerman: 2-4-9-14-17
Sakic: 2-10-14-17-19
Messier: 4-8-13-19-20
If I were to add up all the fields for each player (basically meaning that a top-2 gets you 5 points, a top-5 gets you 4 points, down to one point for a mere top-20), we get this:
Goalscoring: Sakic 47, Messier 44, Yzerman 39
Playmaking: Messier 64, Sakic 62, Yzerman 46
Total: Sakic 109, Messier 108, Yzerman 85
Those two are sure leaving Yzerman behind.
So anyway, yeah, consider me convinced again. Messier is a playoff monster. But there are definitely many good reasons to consider Sakic and Yzerman ahead of Messier, and they had me believing for a while.
Let's get one thing out of the way for future thread starters: there's no such thing as a lousy hockey player who makes the NHL. There are marginal NHL players, but anyone who makes it to the NHL is an exceptional hockey player. The guys who reach the show are guys without any weaknesses in their game from a hockey perspective. Even guys who play the enforcer role are usually guys who were the best players in their age group in their province or state in minor hockey.
Just notes on a couple players mentioned:
*Leeman was a talented goal scorer who topped 30 goals twice before his 50-goal breakout. Most expected the 50 goals would be the norm. When he hit 50 in 1990, the Leafs employed an all-out offensive attack. A lot of players on that team had great starts, and Leeman and Daniel Marois had career years. They started poorly in 1990-91, the coach was fired before the quarter point in the season, Ed Olzyck was gone before the quarter point, and Damphousse was traded before the start of 1991-92. And Leeman couldn't stay healthy after 1990.
*People remember Renberg for his play on the Legion of Doom line. They forget that he scored at nearly a point-per-game clip as a rookie the year before, and he was a strong candidate for rookie of the year. And he wasn't on Lindros' line in 1993-94, either. Injuries really held him back.
*Anyone who cites Ray Sheppard has no idea what it takes to score goals at the NHL level. He wasn't the flashiest player or the best skater. But he was a tremendous player. He had a nose for the net. He understood what it takes to score goals. His instincts were elite. He had the attributes that you couldn't teach, and at the end of the day, that's what makes great goal scorers more than anything else - the skills you can't teach.
Just notes on a couple players mentioned:
*Leeman was a talented goal scorer who topped 30 goals twice before his 50-goal breakout. Most expected the 50 goals would be the norm. When he hit 50 in 1990, the Leafs employed an all-out offensive attack. A lot of players on that team had great starts, and Leeman and Daniel Marois had career years. They started poorly in 1990-91, the coach was fired before the quarter point in the season, Ed Olzyck was gone before the quarter point, and Damphousse was traded before the start of 1991-92. And Leeman couldn't stay healthy after 1990.
*People remember Renberg for his play on the Legion of Doom line. They forget that he scored at nearly a point-per-game clip as a rookie the year before, and he was a strong candidate for rookie of the year. And he wasn't on Lindros' line in 1993-94, either. Injuries really held him back.
*Anyone who cites Ray Sheppard has no idea what it takes to score goals at the NHL level. He wasn't the flashiest player or the best skater. But he was a tremendous player. He had a nose for the net. He understood what it takes to score goals. His instincts were elite. He had the attributes that you couldn't teach, and at the end of the day, that's what makes great goal scorers more than anything else - the skills you can't teach.
Dennis Bonvie
Registered User
overpass
Registered User
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As the creator of adjusted +/-, let me defend Messier a little here. His career rating of -10 is probably more misleading than any other player, for a couple of reasons.
1. He was terrible in his final 7 years, dragging his career number down by 60. I'd rather rate a player based on his good years.
2. He played on the same team as Gretzky, who skews Messier's team adjustment by approximately +10 per year, by my estimate.
Add 10 per year to Messier's adjusted +/- from 1980 to 1988, and leave out his post 1997 years, and his adjusted +/- is very similar to Yzerman's. I think they are both a bit overrated because they peaked in a higher scoring era, and Sakic is the best of the three.
As I understand it, you are rating players based on their scoring finish in goals and scoring finish in assists, calculated separately. You don't rate players based on their scoring finish in points. As a result, you end up rating one-dimensional offensive players higher than balanced offensive players. Do you think this is correct? I don't. I'm not sure how it affects this analysis, just a general point.
Regarding the original topic (lousy players with good stats), I'd look for poor defensive players, players on bad teams who get a lot of ice time, and players who are the third best player on a top line with two very good players and who get power play time with them. Jonas Hoglund is an example of the latter. Olli Jokinen fits the first two criteria - he put up big numbers on bad teams and took a ton of ice time and shots to do so, while being a terrible defensive player and terrible on faceoffs. I don't think you could win a Cup with a player like Jokinen, unless he's your second best second line winger, and you'll never get him at a reasonable price for that role.
seventieslord
Student Of The Game
Excellent points, GBC. Anyone who wants to call an NHL player lousy needs to consciously or subconsciously admit that it is a relative term. Yes, Aki Berg is a lousy player compared to Tomas Kaberle or Nicklas Lidstrom, but he's not a lousy hockey player.
Good points regarding a few of the unfairly maligned players from this thread.
One side point though: Some players just aren't that good, and are only in the NHL for one reason. I haven't seen this myself, but some people in the Adult Safe leagues here in Regina have played with/against Derek Boogaard and insist he's not even a good player at that level.
Good points regarding a few of the unfairly maligned players from this thread.
One side point though: Some players just aren't that good, and are only in the NHL for one reason. I haven't seen this myself, but some people in the Adult Safe leagues here in Regina have played with/against Derek Boogaard and insist he's not even a good player at that level.
Dark Shadows
Registered User
Yep
Messier was not the best goalscorer of the 3, nor was he the best playmaker. I get that. But in terms of simple "Points", he is very very close to Yzerman. Yzerman is 3, 3, 4, 7, 7, 10, Messier is 2, 3, 5, 5, 7, 10
I would say Sakic had the best all around game of the 3, followed by Messier. As I have said over and over, Yzerman did not have that sort of all around game until he gave up his higher end offense, in which case he became the best of the 3 defensively, but worst of the 3 offensively.
In any case, the Selke was voted on MUCH differently in the 70's and 80's than it was from the early 90's forward. If they voted on the selke in the late 70's and 80's the way they did in the mid 90's, then Trottier would have had more of a monopoly on that trophy and Messier likely would have a few higher finishes(Although I should note that I do not consider Messier or Sakic to be great defensive forwards. Merely very good. Yzerman became great, but lost much of his offense in the process) and I will explain in the next post why I do not care about "9th" and "7th" place voting for such trophies very informing.
Hart Voting outside of top 5 generally is meaningless. Maybe not every year, but most of those "7's" and so on are the result of biased butt end last voting. I am very guilty of ignoring this aspect of trophy voting on occasion, but in this case, I am going to address it.
What I mean is, take this year for example:
1986-87
HART: Wayne Gretzky 255 (49-3-1); Ray Bourque 95 (2-24-13); Mike Liut 39 (1-7-13); Mario Lemieux 34 (2-6-6); Doug Gilmour 30 (0-9-3); Dale Hawerchuk 11 (0-2-5); Steve Yzerman 5 (0-1-2); Mark Howe 5 (0-1-2); Ron Francis 3 (0-1-0); Ron Hextall 3 (0-0-3); Mark Messier 3 (0-0-3); Dino Ciccarelli 2 (0-0-2); Kevin Dineen 1 (0-0-1)
Exact numbers of voters was a bit off year by year, but they generally tried to have an equal amount of Journalists voting from each city. Usually around this time, each city had 3 Journalists who got a vote(In this particular year, they only have the records of 2.5 voters per city)
Yzerman managed to catch exactly 3 votes, as did many of these players. Having merely 3 votes out of 53 voters sounds a lot less inspiring than "7th for the Hart" now doesn't it?
In short, I respect the voting record of the players who caught more than a piddling amount of votes, but to use Yzerman's mere 3 butt end votes out of 53 and to call it "7th for the Hart" does not compute with me.
Modern voting is a bit different, as they have far more voters than they used to and you get a better feel from the Hockey world where people stand, but from what I can tell here, the likelyhood that all 3 votes for Messier came from the Edmonton journalists is as likely as all 3 of Yzerman's coming from the Detroit voters.
In the end, only getting 3 votes out of 53 does not = 7th for the Hart to me. It has about as much credibility to me as the year Gretzky received multiple Selke votes.
I would argue that Messier at LW was more deadly than some of the centers or RW's at the time as well. They cannot be discounted outright.
Certainly Messier's 83-84 LW all star selection is worth at least 3rd team C ahead of Pederson that year(Or at least, you can compensate somewhat by giving him a 4 or 5 instead of nothing),
My contention is that Messier is more than the simple sum of his scoring in the playoffs. All of them were. But Messier to me was much more of a playoff beast
There are lots of great reasons to consider it. I just think what I think.
Dark Shadows
Registered User
seventieslord
Student Of The Game
Fair points. A couple things:
- I don't have the season by season sheet handy but I assume Sakic and Yzerman weren't at their best in their last 7 seasons, either. If we remove those years, could they possibly end up more ahead of Messier? Or would you just be chopping off smaller pluses?
- Messier played until he was 43 so if anything you may want to knock off 3-4 years for an even comparison to those two guys.
- I thought adjusted +/- accounts for higher scoring eras?
I'm sure you've seen my goals and assists threads. I would be interested in doing one for points as well, but I would see considerably diminished returns for my work. The top-20 in points is loaded with players who made either the top-20 in goals or assists, or both. Not many of them are guys who did neither. The other downfall would be that assists have not always been handed out at the same rate per goal over the past 100 years, which is the scope of my study. Adjustments would first have to be made or I'd severely undervalue good playmakers who would have ranked higher in total points if more assists were given.
I agree that looking solely at goals or assists can undervalue that rare, extremely balanced player who does neither at an exceptional level but both well. The kind of guy who might finish 23rd in goals, 23rd in assists, but be 18th in points. Or even 9th in goals, 8th in assists, but 5th in total points. That sorta thing. I don't believe that it applies much to this case. If I had done the research on points separately I'd have posted the results too, but I don't think they'd be much different from what we're seeing in goals and assists, for these three particular players. They all have a slight playmaking bias, Messier maybe a bit more than the other two.
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