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
Looking just at top-10s, perhaps. As I mentioned above I don't have a detailed study on points in particular, but in goals and assists, Sakic and Yzerman have 2, 2, 5, and 7, respectively, seasons where they were not top-10 but were top-20. Messier has 1 and 3. There was a bigger drop off from his great seasons, to his next best ones, compared to those two.
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
Probably right.
God, the ATD needs you; what are you waiting for??
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.
Depends what years you're talking about. (as you have mentioned)
In recent years with the five-vote system you get a lot more... "accuracy" in the voting. the 10th-place vote-getters have had votes like 0-2-1-0-1, 0-0-2-4-3, 0-0-1-2-5, 0-2-1-6-1, 1-2-3-5-5, and so on. Seeing who came just below that elite tier and was deemed worthy of a few votes is still useful.
Prior to 1996, it gets a little silly after the top-8 or so, and sometimes a lot sooner than 8th, thanks to Hart vote hogs like Wayne and Mario. Still, in the year that you're talking about it says something (not much but something) that they got some 3rd place Hart votes that 600 other NHLers didn't get. And I wouldn't immediately dismiss them as being from their own city's writers. If they're going to be that biased, why stop there? Give them a first place vote.
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),
I'm all for being fair in comparisons. It's reasonable to conclude that had he been a center, he'd likely have been a 3rd team all-star in his three best years at LW, based on the names ahead of him. So then the All-Star voting would look like this:
Sakic: 1, 1, 1, 3, 3, 4, 4, 4, 4.
Yzerman: 1, 3, 3, 4, 5, 5.
Messier: 1, 1, 3, 3, 3, 3, 4.
He's right in the mix, a tad ahead of Steve and a fair amount behind Joe.
There are lots of great reasons to consider it. I just think what I think.
Maybe I didn't make myself clear enough, but I do agree with you in the end. Shortly after submitting my top-120 for the HOH project I started to question why I had Messier ahead of those guys at all, and the more I researched the more I started to think it was valid. If I had the chance to do it again, I would still rate him higher. He just doesn't have the edges on them in all the areas you said that he did.
