Makarov vs. Beliveau

[Dennis Bonvie]

Oh and can't help but laugh when people throw the "Canadian bias" card. Immense irony there.

True, it is ironic considering who is usually making the claim.

But there is still clear Canadian bias to be found in discussions on these boards.

 

[Dennis Bonvie]

Without doing any real research; Beliveau’s last season has to be the best swan song in the history of the sport. 39 years old, leads his team in scoring in the regular season, leads the playoffs in assists, and goes out the same way he spent most of his career; leading his team to a Stanley Cup win.

Perhaps Ray Bourque's swan song can match it.

 

[Sentinel]

Sure you can find some individual games where the stakes were higher and the games were entertaining, but, as I said, for the most part, in the 80's these were listless affairs.

I will ask you again: how many of these games did you watch?

Back in the 80s I watched them all. Lately, only a handful.

I am particularly concentrating on the CSKA vs. Oilers games because they are the most relevant to the Makarov vs. Gretzky comparison point.

 

[Theokritos]

Can't you not just acknowledge that home ice was a major advantage for team Canada and for the NHL clubs?
Isn't it just simply a fact? Why not acknowledge it?

I've often acknowledged it, for example in the thread I've linked a few posts ago. But it's a point often brought up while the counterpoint isn't.

Anyway, why are you bringing this up? Why look at 1989, when Soviet was basically over?

There are no earlier examples of NHL clubs touring the Soviet Union, that's why.

My memories of the late 1980s is that the Soviet was in a major state of change, and also that Soviet hockey of the late 1980s wasn't as good as it used to be.

Obviously CSKA had lost several of its top players by September 1989, but apart from that the Soviet talent pool was pretty much intact. Why would Khimik Voskresensk or Dinamo Rigs be weaker in 1989-90 than e.g. in 1979-80?

We can also see that CSKA and Dynamo won their games, while 3 of the other teams lost in overtime.
Also, Calgary was basically the best NHL team at the time, while Washington also were a top team.

Calgary was. Washington was good in the season before, but not so good in the 1989-90 regular season.

Maybe I'm wrong, but I count two overtime wins, not three. And of course, an OT win is a win, just like the 1975 tie between the Canadiens and a reinforced CSKA squad remains a tie, even though Canadiens outplayed their opponent.

But for the sake of the argument, let's count the OT games as ties. That would give each of the two touring NHL clubs 5 points out of 4 games. On par with Calgary's NHL average in the same season and better than Washington's average. Despite playing on large rinks and away. So perhaps the fact that it was an entire tour the teams were focusing on instead of a one-off was actually an even bigger factor than rink size and home advantage?

 

[Sentinel]

The burden of proof is on you.

I don't see what your point is. Good luck with your crusade.

I did provide the only evidence I could: the interleague Super Series competition. Of course, in order to project it onto Beliveau, one would have to presume that all Harts have similar value: be it a 1950s Hart or a 1980s Hart. But Makarov proved, beyond all doubt, that he was quite on par with NHL's best in the 80s. Of course, had he or Beliveau played in 80s NHL, they would have gotten the same number of Harts and Art Rosses -- zero.

You can feel superior about your "NHL is always superior to other leagues" position. And you will not find much disagreement. But to what extent? And how much domination of the Soviet league (and international tournaments) can you disregard before you start to look intellectually dishonest?

 

[Dennis Bonvie]

#6 Beliveau vs #26 Makarov? The next thread will be Abel vs Gretzky.

A clear case of Canadian bias.

Beliveau's worst original ranking was 14th. One voter had him ranked 3rd.

Makarov had 4 voters rank him outside the top 50. (53, 68, 76, 81)

When Makarov finally came up for voting in the 6th round of phase 2, two voters did not vote for him in the top 10 (with 11 players available)

 

[plusandminus]

By the way, since the 1979 Challenge Cup was mentioned here, I found this article.
Soviet Six Routs N.H.L. Stars, 6‐0
It's the NY Times. Soviet won 6-0.
Some quotes (my bolding):

---
"holding the N.H.L. scoreless over the last 1½ contests. The N.H.L. players were limited to only 31 shots the last 94 minutes."

"quite clearly, the N.H.L. players could not move as quickly as the Russians, they could not pass as well as a team and they could not protect the puck"

"The Russians repeatedly stole the disk with a clever technique in which they lifted the N.H.L. stars’ sticks and then quickly scooped away the free puck. Nbthing like that had ever happened to the N.H.L. players when they had learned this game as children."

"60 minutes of swarming tactics by four efficient Soviet lines"

The two‐goal deficit seemingly enraged the N.H.L. stars, who reacted predictably — they started slamming Soviet players into the boards
---

I remember when Swedish players first played against NHL players, they were surprised by their lack of skill. The Swedes found they were as good skaters, as good passers and as good technically. Tactically, the Canadian way appeared to be intimidation and rough play, rather than trying to outplay their opponent.

There's this ongoing myth among many North Americans that their hockey was so superior, when it actually wasn't, as the 1972 Summit Series showed. It's very logical. The Europeans (mainly Soviets, Swedes) have a long tradition of playing bandy, a sport that favors skating, passing and positioning more than physical play. The Europeans also used larger ice hockey rinks, which even further helped them improve on these parts of the game.

The North Americans, however, played on small ice surface, with a small league (often) consisting of 6 teams playing each other over and over. They played their small rink physical play. My theory is that their game simply had stagnated. That would be logical, as playing the same 5-6 teams over and over, season after season, might not be as developing as - like the Europeans - play games against players from another country and league.

Then Bobby Orr appeared, basically like a star forward playing defense, changing the North American game in a way few other had prior to him. Then the WHA came, and players like Hedberg and Ulf Nilsson showed the North Americans just how skilled and tactically developed European players were. (Bobby Hull said that he immediately found a chemistry with them, and it was wonderful getting to play with them the way they thought of hockey.) In the NHL, Salming had showed the way, and in NYI several Swedes played for their dynasty. Later, Gretzky arrived, with his more "European" way of thinking hockey. (Of course, Gretzky stood out in many other areas too.)

In Sweden, floorball is a popular sport (possibly bigger than ice hockey). Sweden has been world leading. Our women's national team went undefeated for probably more than a decade. We dominated hugely, with the men's team from Finland sometimes being able to beat us. Why did we dominate? Because we were "first" and had the most players to choose from. Just like ice hockey in Canada. But today, Finland is about as good as us. Our men's national team also sometimes lose to Switzerland. Why? Because the sport is getting bigger in those countries, just like ice hockey grew in countries like Soviet, Sweden and Czechoslovakia. It's absurd to believe that it would take several decades to catch up. If ice hockey would suddenly overtake association football as the number one sport in the world, Canada's "tradition" wouldn't mean much. Within a couple of decades, we would see countries developing new ways of thinking and playing the game that we haven't seen today. Depending upon rink size and rules, even countries with physically smaller population (southern Europe, South America, Asia) might become very competitive.

(Floorball is said to have been introduced to Sweden by immigrants from Finland, so Finland probably should get credit too, and probably were the first nation to dominate the sport.)

The main thing Canada (and nowadays USA) has had going for them is population of players (or what it's called), i.e. the number of ice hockey players to choose from. Logic says that they should be much deeper, and that the likelihood of producing stars should be much higher. Yet, when the Europeans entered the NHL in the early 1990s, they immediately showed they were basically as good, despite coming from "smaller" ice hockey countries. Forsberg, Lidstrom, Hasek, Jagr, Selanne, Bure, Fedorov, Sundin...
My current theory is that this shows that European hockey were great at developing world class hockey players, perhaps even better than Canada when looking at the amount of players to choose from.

 

[plusandminus]

Obviously CSKA had lost several of its top players by September 1989, but apart from that the Soviet talent pool was pretty much intact. Why would Khimik Voskresensk or Dinamo Rigs be weaker in 1989-90 than e.g. in 1979-80?

I think you know the Soviet hockey league better than me. If you say there weren't weaker, and I currently see no reason why they would have been, it probably is so.

But...
How do we think about the influx(?) of European players in the NHL? That is a difference between say mid-1970s and the late 1980s.
Calgary: Håkan Loob (age 28), Jan Hrdina (31). Americans like Joe Mullen (31), Gary Suter (24), Joel Otto (27), Paul Ranheim (23).
Washington: Bengt-Åke Gustafsson (30), Calle Johansson (21), Michal Pivonka (23). Americans like Kevin Hatcher (22), Dave Christian (29), Kelly Miller (25). Rod Langway (31) too .

Soviet vs NHL att this time was no longer Soviet vs Canada, but rather Soviet vs Canada/Sweden/USA/Finland and some from Czechoslovakia.
On the other hand, the NHL had some more teams, spreading out its talent a little more.

But for the sake of the argument, let's count the OT games as ties. That would give each of the two touring NHL clubs 5 points out of 4 games. On par with Calgary's NHL average in the same season and better than Washington's average. Despite playing on large rinks and away. So perhaps the fact that it was an entire tour the teams were focusing on instead of a one-off was actually an even bigger factor than rink size and home advantage?

Maybe those Soviet teams weren't taken the games very seriously?

I'm not sure about how much conclusions we can draw from these games. Obviously, the away team did well. But overall, in the long run, home advantage is an advantage. And to me, this makes the accomplishment of the Soviet national team in the Canada Cups and similar, and the (often "enhanced") Soviet clubs vs NHL teams, even more impressive.

I used this source. (You probably have better sources.)
List of international games played by NHL teams - Wikipedia

I am pretty sure the majority of us here in Sweden, who lived through the 1970s and especially 1980s, were more impressed by the Soviets and thought they were the better team. Canada have Gretzky to thank for a lot of the games they did win in the 1980s.
Then we might have the seemingly endless debate regarding how to measure things like "But the Soviets trained/played together more", "The Soviets probably were on steroids", "The Soviet/Canadian teams didn't take the games seriously", "Canada won due to rough play", "Tretiak saved the Soviets from huge losses" and so on...

 

[Michael Farkas]

Gauging the caliber of the leagues isn't science, but it also isn't impossible to get an idea. Are there domestic RSL games from the 70's and 80's that exist in full or large part anywhere?

I haven't put it out yet, but I did a shift by shift video of Gretzky from the 1981 playoffs...the league isn't very good at that time. Can we see the Soviet League? I'll watch.

 

[plusandminus]

Another thing, equipment...

I'm really a novice on this one. So I might get slaughtered.

Some years ago, Swedish television showed a documentary about Soviet hockey and especially the Green Unit. I think it might have been called "CCCP hockey" or similar, with "CCCP" being the Russian letters.

One thing that surprised some, was how economically poor the Soviets were. They had relatively cheap equipment, lived under fairly basic conditions, etc. If I'm not mistaken, the amount of equipment was so limited, that they had to repair rather than replace equipment that partly broke (like gloves, perhaps even sticks??)..? Maybe someone else knows about this?

 

[Kyle McMahon]

Late 60s was THE expansion. The League got substantially weaker. Gordie Howe put up his first 100 pt. season in 1968-69. Unless you think he somehow has gotten better at the age of 41.

Scoring rates went up because suddenly there were a bunch of bad teams to run it up against. But the expansion didn't really make the O6 teams weaker initially. It wasn't until the expansion continued a few years later and the WHA began stealing good players away from the NHL that the talent started spreading much thinner and a few elite teams started lording over the bad ones to a comical extent.

 

[Albatros]

Another thing, equipment...

I'm really a novice on this one. So I might get slaughtered.

Some years ago, Swedish television showed a documentary about Soviet hockey and especially the Green Unit. I think it might have been called "CCCP hockey" or similar, with "CCCP" being the Russian letters.

One thing that surprised some, was how economically poor the Soviets were. They had relatively cheap equipment, lived under fairly basic conditions, etc. If I'm not mistaken, the amount of equipment was so limited, that they had to repair rather than replace equipment that partly broke (like gloves, perhaps even sticks??)..? Maybe someone else knows about this?

Such issues were not uncommon in Soviet hockey, but talking about the Green Unit in particular they had access to Western equipment of their choice as well as unofficial endorsement income.

 

[plusandminus]

(Changed my mind.)

 

[Theokritos]

Maybe those Soviet teams weren't taken the games very seriously?

Be my guest and make that argument. It simultaneously devalues the Soviet club record in North America.

 

[plusandminus]

Be my guest and make that argument. It simultaneously devalues the Soviet club record in North America.

I actually don't know how seriously either side took these games. I just wrote that (with the humorous smiley) as a response to those claiming the NHL players didn't take some games seriously.
I think my approach would be to ignore how seriously the games might have been taken. A win is a win even if the other team claims it didn't take the game seriously.
I think that by 1989 or 1990 a top or upper half NHL team with several good non-Canadians on its roster would be better than most teams in the Soviet League. And I would think those Soviet teams wouldn't have been upper half teams in the NHL. So in 1989 or 1990, I think we might agree that only a couple of Soviet teams would be upper half NHL teams.

 

[Iapyi]

True, it is ironic considering who is usually making the claim.

But there is still clear Canadian bias to be found in discussions on these boards.

You mean the bias against Canada and Canadians obviously. Why do you think that is? What have we ever done to deserve such disdain?

 

[Sentinel]

True, it is ironic considering who is usually making the claim.

But there is still clear Canadian bias to be found in discussions on these boards.

I simply want to give great Russian players their due. It's not like I've made the top four players Russian or something

 

[Dennis Bonvie]

You mean the bias against Canada and Canadians obviously. Why do you think that is? What have we ever done to deserve such disdain?

No, that would be a misinterpretation of my post.

How could anyone have disdain for Canadians? As you say, not deserved.

Canadian pride is the most likely reason for the bias from Canada. For Americans, its more likely hatred of all things Russian.

 

[wetcoast]

I'm not sure I'd call it "much stronger". 1970-71 was still pre-WHA and hyper-expansion. Those first few years after the 1967 expansion were mostly just an extension of the Original Six era.

Sure it's a huge question as to which league was stronger, that's very subjective but to call the first few years after expansion just an extension of the original 6 era is puzzling.

The NHL went from 6 to 12 teams and sure the original 6 were more or less stronger but they were able to feast on much weaker expansion teams.

Ditto 70-71 when 2 more teams were added.

Incidentally that was also the year the Bruins re-wrote the record book offensively. I wasn't there, but Wayne Cashman and Pie McKenzie finishing marginally ahead of Beliveau in the scoring race probably isn't enough to conclude they were actually better offensive players that season.

No you are right but context also shows that the Habs scored a boatload of goals against the really weak teams in the NHL that season and the "strength" of the NHL wasn't what is was in 1966.

Deeper digging/discussion in the last top 100 project left me with the feeling that Beliveau's last few years in the NHL are among the strongest "finishing stretches" of a long-career player in history.

Sure on the surface it does bur digging deeper as you suggest also brings up to context with expansion so it's hard to evaluate how strong his "finishing stretch" actually was and how it compares.

 

[wetcoast]

A clear case of Canadian bias.

Beliveau's worst original ranking was 14th. One voter had him ranked 3rd.

Makarov had 4 voters rank him outside the top 50. (53, 68, 76, 81)

When Makarov finally came up for voting in the 6th round of phase 2, two voters did not vote for him in the top 10 (with 11 players available)

While I liked this post one can never assume what the bias is, unless those who have it express it.

It's ironic that later in the top 100 project Firsov fared so well with no actual NHL equivalency as the Soviets weren't Canada's equal internationally and there is no best on best for Firsov.

 

[wetcoast]

Scoring rates went up because suddenly there were a bunch of bad teams to run it up against. But the expansion didn't really make the O6 teams weaker initially. It wasn't until the expansion continued a few years later and the WHA began stealing good players away from the NHL that the talent started spreading much thinner and a few elite teams started lording over the bad ones to a comical extent.

But for all intensive purposes Jean's swansong was help by expansion don't you think?

He was on a very well positioned 06 team that was able to feast on these weaker teams.

 

[Michael Farkas]

That's certainly not obvious in the way that it's being put out...

Mind you, the first six expansion teams are a hell of a lot stronger than the subsequent ones...it's not like the league plopped down six 1992 Ottawa Senators teams...

The fringes of NHL teams and the AHL was bursting with talent...this just gave it an avenue. Now, certainly, some talent dilution naturally occurred. But it wasn't forced and exponential like it was afterwards. These players that were put into the league largely had the benefit of proper development from the sponsorship era of established teams with established development tracks...

By some way of example, you look at all the young players that were forced into action at the different expansion points...

1965 - 0 teenagers, 5 20 year olds.
1966 - 0 teenagers, 2 20 year olds.
1967 - 1 teenager (Orr), 1 20 year old (Mahovlich).
1968 - 1 teenager (Orr), 2 20 year olds.
1969 - 0 teenagers, 5 20 year olds (Orr, Park).
1970 - 0 teenagers, 5 20 year olds (Clarke, Briere).

##

1978 - 0 teenagers, 13 20 year olds.
1979 - 0 teenagers, 12 20 year olds.
1980 - 11 teenagers (Gretzky, Bourque), 18 20 year olds.
1981 - 11 teenagers (Coffey), 28 20 year olds.

Of course, there are a number of factors involved. But watching games from the late 60's and early 70's, for me, the game is clearly better then than it is in the early 80's...I did a "study" (liberal use of that word) that showed the other side too...the early 80's extended the careers of many older players. Yet, the next five year segment of births could not hang into the later part of the decade because of the league finally catching up to itself...

 

[MadLuke]

But for all intensive purposes Jean's swansong was help by expansion don't you think?

He was on a very well positioned 06 team that was able to feast on these weaker teams.

Lot of the best players were, he is still in the league top 10 and a major part to winning a cup (and 2 of the 3 opponents are 06 club in those playoff).

We would need a breakdown of is playoff scoring to judge, but if it was not massively against Minnesota, I am not sure in what way he was in a much better position than the other top 6 players of all the 06 clubs.

 

[tarheelhockey]

Another thing, equipment...

I'm really a novice on this one. So I might get slaughtered.

Some years ago, Swedish television showed a documentary about Soviet hockey and especially the Green Unit. I think it might have been called "CCCP hockey" or similar, with "CCCP" being the Russian letters.

One thing that surprised some, was how economically poor the Soviets were. They had relatively cheap equipment, lived under fairly basic conditions, etc. If I'm not mistaken, the amount of equipment was so limited, that they had to repair rather than replace equipment that partly broke (like gloves, perhaps even sticks??)..? Maybe someone else knows about this?

It's been a long time since I saw it, but I remember an interview with Sergei Fedorov where he talked about arriving in the NHL. He would peel the tape off his sticks for re-use, simply because it was what he had always been told to do up until that point.

 

[Iapyi]

No, that would be a misinterpretation of my post.

How could anyone have disdain for Canadians? As you say, not deserved.

Canadian pride is the most likely reason for the bias from Canada. For Americans, its more likely hatred of all things Russian.

The way I see it is that us Canadians are very humble and polite for the most part but the one thing that we do defend ourselves about is hockey (even that is tempered by the "eat your own attitude" that we also have).

Combine that with our unparalleled success in the sport and we end up with the strong bias against us that is so prevalent on this board.