Makarov vs. Beliveau

[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.

I hate to do this, but I'm really interested in this...as I've never pursued domestic Soviet League games from this era before...

I am going to tag some potential Russians (no malice intended if someone I tagged is not ethnically Russian, I'm a barely-one-language American) and folks who I know have watched Soviet era hockey with the hopes of getting an answer...

@MaxV
@Zine
@VMBM
@Fantomas
@Kshahdoo
@Pasha71
@Batis
@Peter25
@Caser
@pnep

 

[danincanada]

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?

This is it right here for me. The Soviets certainly flexed their muscles a few times in the late 70's and early 80's aginst the NHLs best but I think most can agree the NHL has been the best league over time. I'd question if the 50's and 60's NHL was actually any better than the RSL in it's best years (late 70's/early 80's) and even later into the 80's when it took Wayne and Mario teaming up on home ice to beat their top guys.

I'll go on record again and state that I think overall this section has vastly overrated the O6 and it's stars. It should probably be viewed more along the lines of the RSL because it took until then for the Soviets to build up their program to where Canada was. I certainly don't think the O6 should be weighed the same as the international NHL that came later. That would be ridiculous and no one else would consider doing that for any domestic league.

At the same time both Beliveau and Makarov are both all-time greats and we don't have a time machine to actually compare them.

 

[Sentinel]

I don't think O6 was as bad as you're describing it because there were NO international players who could challenge Canadians until at least the 60s. And even then there was only a couple of players who could feasibly make a transition and compete on equal footing (Firsov, Ragulin, possibly Starshinov).

What I do believe is that the era of 70s and 80s should be represented by Canada and Russia similarly. They were *that* close.

 

[tarheelhockey]

I don't think O6 was as bad as you're describing it because there were NO international players who could challenge Canadians until at least the 60s. And even then there was only a couple of players who could feasibly make a transition and compete on equal footing (Firsov, Ragulin, possibly Starshinov).

What I do believe is that the era of 70s and 80s should be represented by Canada and Russia similarly. They were *that* close.

Exactly.

I also don't think we tend to go terribly deep when it comes to issuing credit for the O6 era. We give a lot of credit to the core of the Habs and Wings dynasties, much the same as we do for the core of the CSKA dynasty. But I don't see anyone in here talking up Ed Litzenberger or Dutch Reibel... at least not to nearly the extent we would talk up their counterparts in the international era. There's a general recognition that being the 20th best player in the world today is a bigger deal than being the 20th best player in 1955.

 

[Theokritos]

@Mike Farkas

I think CSKA vs Dinamo Moscow from March 1989 is still the only pre-exodus Soviet league game that is available on YouTube in full length.

EDIT: Not in full length, actually.

 

[danincanada]

I don't think O6 was as bad as you're describing it because there were NO international players who could challenge Canadians until at least the 60s. And even then there was only a couple of players who could feasibly make a transition and compete on equal footing (Firsov, Ragulin, possibly Starshinov).

What I do believe is that the era of 70s and 80s should be represented by Canada and Russia similarly. They were *that* close.

I'm not saying the O6 was terrible or it didn't have great players. I just think that only having Canadians means it wasn't nearly as deep or talented as what would come after, and that's before noting this was pre-baby boom Canada feeding the league, not baby-boom or post baby-boom.

The fact that were no other nations to even challenge Canada's supremecy or play in the NHL speaks voumes. Imagine removing all that non-Canadian talent now? It would be a much different league with a lot less talent and therefore less competition to dominate if you're an elite player.

 

[Michael Farkas]

With no new information or angle or argument being presented here, can we please not go down this road, right now, in this thread...? I'm trying to preempt it by actively seeking out new information as it is central to the OP. This repeat...whatever it is...just doesn't need to occur again.

 

[Sentinel]

I'm not saying the O6 was terrible or it didn't have great players. I just think that only having Canadians means it wasn't nearly as deep or talented as what would come after, and that's before noting this was pre-baby boom Canada feeding the league, not baby-boom or post baby-boom.

The fact that were no other nations to even challenge Canada's supremecy or play in the NHL speaks voumes. Imagine removing all that non-Canadian talent now? It would be a much different league with a lot less talent and therefore less competition to dominate if you're an elite player.

But if you remove all non-Canadians from the NHL today, it would be a massive loss of talent. If you add a bunch of non-Canadians to the 50s NHL, it would be a negligible gain of talent.

The only era when NHL would benefit from the outside talent is the 1970-1989 era.

 

[tarheelhockey]

With no new information or angle or argument being presented here, can we please not go down this road, right now, in this thread...? I'm trying to preempt it by actively seeking out new information as it is central to the OP. This repeat...whatever it is...just doesn't need to occur again.

Or at least pivot the argument to something that does matter here — which league was harder to succeed in, the late-50s through early-70s NHL, or the 1980s Soviet league?

International talent pools are irrelevant... neither of these players made his name in an international talent pool.

 

[Michael Farkas]

Sure, exactly, anything but that tired old rubbish (from either side at this point)...if we can make it to page 20 of this thread without using or hinting at or referencing the term "baby boom", I will donate to the ECHL player relief fund...

I don't think we can do a hell of a lot without some Soviet League video...but theokritos makes me less than hopeful. We may have to use (and contextualize) what international competitions and exhibitions and just sit there and evaluate the players...then evaluate where those players landed on the stat tables and then see where we sit...

It's not ideal, but it's a worthwhile venture for the talent evaluators here.

 

[Kyle McMahon]

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.



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.




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.

The way I see it is thus...

The Expansion teams got totally hosed in the expansion draft. None of the O6 teams really lost anyone of perceived importance outside of the goaltender position. But despite this, those teams really weren't all that terrible, other than Oakland.

If you look at the results of the 67-68 season, you'll see that the non-Oakland teams were reasonably competitive against the O6 division. There were 24 cross-divisional games. LA and Minnesota almost had .500 records against the O6, believe it or not. Most of the game scores were typical "normal" scores (3-2, 5-3, ect). Considering the hand they were dealt, these are pretty strong results, and as pointed out by @Mike Farkas, probably because the AHL was bursting with NHL-caliber talent by this point.

So yeah, of course Beliveau would have been at an advantage playing these teams, but so were all the other O6 players he was competing with for awards and scoring titles. It's not like Esposito and Hull and Mikita were stuck playing for an expansion team.

By the time we get around to the WHA's arrival and the continued expansion in the NHL, we start to see some truly awful teams, and certain established teams got hit harder than others by WHA player raids (Boston and Toronto in particular). Even after the Buffalo/Vancouver expansion there were still only 14 major professional teams to spread the talent amongst. By the time of the Washington/KC expansion there were over 30, goon hockey had arrived, and the junior/minor league development system that previously fed NHL-ready talent to the big league had disintegrated.

The only real difference I see between the 1968-1972 NHL and the early 90s NHL that Makarov played his later years in was that there more average teams in the 90s by virtue of the league having more teams. Ottawa and very early San Jose would have been your Oakland Seals. But teams like the Nordiques, Whalers, pre-Gilmour Leafs, pre-Lindros Flyers weren't any better than the 1968 expansion teams.

Once you hit 1973/WHA, yeah all bets are off. Being on a "have" team gave an individual player a big advantage over being on a "have not". But Beliveau was retired by then.

 

[tarheelhockey]

Sure, exactly, anything but that tired old rubbish (from either side at this point)...if we can make it to page 20 of this thread without using or hinting at or referencing the term "baby boom", I will donate to the ECHL player relief fund...

I don't think we can do a hell of a lot without some Soviet League video...but theokritos makes me less than hopeful. We may have to use (and contextualize) what international competitions and exhibitions and just sit there and evaluate the players...then evaluate where those players landed on the stat tables and then see where we sit...

It's not ideal, but it's a worthwhile venture for the talent evaluators here.

It would also be a really useful contribution to the knowledge pool for other threads. This issue about the quality of 70s/80s European domestic hockey comes up quite often.

 

[Dennis Bonvie]

I'm not saying the O6 was terrible or it didn't have great players. I just think that only having Canadians means it wasn't nearly as deep or talented as what would come after, and that's before noting this was pre-baby boom Canada feeding the league, not baby-boom or post baby-boom.

The fact that were no other nations to even challenge Canada's supremecy or play in the NHL speaks voumes. Imagine removing all that non-Canadian talent now? It would be a much different league with a lot less talent and therefore less competition to dominate if you're an elite player.

Take away the non-Canadians, fine. But then make it a 6 team league. Would that really be easier to dominate?

 

[tarheelhockey]

One way to approach the question of who was the "better" player.

For the purposes of the below, set aside defensemen and goalies. Both of these guys played on the same team with non-forwards (Harvey, Plante, Fetisov, Tretiak) who could rationally be ranked above them. Let's focus on forwards only for now.

OK, now also set aside Big 4 players. Howe, Gretzky, Lemieux exit stage left.

Now, thinking only about forwards who aren't Big 4, how many years were each of these guys the best in the world?

My impression is that Beliveau began to be regarded more highly than Maurice Richard in 1956, and was then eclipsed by Bobby Hull in 1960. I don't believe Hull lost his grip on that title until after Beliveau was retired. So... Beliveau had a 4-season window.

Again my impression: Makarov gets safely clear of Marcel Dionne around 1982. After that, does anybody touch him before 1989? Trottier's in the picture, Yzerman's in the picture, but it seems to me neither of them was clearly above Makarov from 1983-89. Am I wrong here? If not, Makarov had a 6-season window as the best non-big-4 forward in the world.

 

[Michael Farkas]

The way I see it is thus...

The Expansion teams got totally hosed in the expansion draft. None of the O6 teams really lost anyone of perceived importance outside of the goaltender position. But despite this, those teams really weren't all that terrible, other than Oakland.

If you look at the results of the 67-68 season, you'll see that the non-Oakland teams were reasonably competitive against the O6 division. There were 24 cross-divisional games. LA and Minnesota almost had .500 records against the O6, believe it or not. Most of the game scores were typical "normal" scores (3-2, 5-3, ect). Considering the hand they were dealt, these are pretty strong results, and as pointed out by @Mike Farkas, probably because the AHL was bursting with NHL-caliber talent by this point.

So yeah, of course Beliveau would have been at an advantage playing these teams, but so were all the other O6 players he was competing with for awards and scoring titles. It's not like Esposito and Hull and Mikita were stuck playing for an expansion team.

By the time we get around to the WHA's arrival and the continued expansion in the NHL, we start to see some truly awful teams, and certain established teams got hit harder than others by WHA player raids (Boston and Toronto in particular). Even after the Buffalo/Vancouver expansion there were still only 14 major professional teams to spread the talent amongst. By the time of the Washington/KC expansion there were over 30, goon hockey had arrived, and the junior/minor league development system that previously fed NHL-ready talent to the big league had disintegrated.

The only real difference I see between the 1968-1972 NHL and the early 90s NHL that Makarov played his later years in was that there more average teams in the 90s by virtue of the league having more teams. Ottawa and very early San Jose would have been your Oakland Seals. But teams like the Nordiques, Whalers, pre-Gilmour Leafs, pre-Lindros Flyers weren't any better than the 1968 expansion teams.

Once you hit 1973/WHA, yeah all bets are off. Being on a "have" team gave an individual player a big advantage over being on a "have not". But Beliveau was retired by then.

Yeah, this just fits so well with what knowledge we have and what video was have. I won't repeat myself about how I see the timeline of the game since WWII unless expressly asked, but this seems bang on. The missing links, in my estimation, are film from the AHL in the 60's and film from the RSL in 70's and 80's...anything else is probably bonus bucks (Czechoslavkia domestic league, 1940's film, etc.) just to confirm our suspicions. But it really, really adds up. And not because I think this way and always have, I worked my way to this after years and years and going over the video and the other evidence...it just makes sense. That said, maybe one day we unearth the Soviet League games from 1978 and it's 10x better than the WHA (that's probably got a good shot of being true, minus the hyperbole) and we'd have to kind of adjust our sights...but who knows...

But I'd love a shot at some Super League games...to use an obscure song lyric: I don't wanna walk and talk about Jesus, I just wanna see his face...

 

[danincanada]

Take away the non-Canadians, fine. But then make it a 6 team league. Would that really be easier to dominate?

Would say Crosby look more impressive if Ovi, Malkin, Datsyuk, and Kucherov never stepped foot in the NHL? In hindsight I think he would and it wouldn't matter how many teams the league had at the time.

 

[BenchBrawl]

One way to approach the question of who was the "better" player.

For the purposes of the below, set aside defensemen and goalies. Both of these guys played on the same team with non-forwards (Harvey, Plante, Fetisov, Tretiak) who could rationally be ranked above them. Let's focus on forwards only for now.

OK, now also set aside Big 4 players. Howe, Gretzky, Lemieux exit stage left.

Now, thinking only about forwards who aren't Big 4, how many years were each of these guys the best in the world?

My impression is that Beliveau began to be regarded more highly than Maurice Richard in 1956, and was then eclipsed by Bobby Hull in 1960. I don't believe Hull lost his grip on that title until after Beliveau was retired. So... Beliveau had a 4-season window.

Again my impression: Makarov gets safely clear of Marcel Dionne around 1982. After that, does anybody touch him before 1989? Trottier's in the picture, Yzerman's in the picture, but it seems to me neither of them was clearly above Makarov from 1983-89. Am I wrong here? If not, Makarov had a 6-season window as the best non-big-4 forward in the world.

Unfair, you take out Lemieux and Gretzky without replacing them by "randomized" superstars who could have overtook Makarov. You diminish the sample of "top players" by 2, without replacing them. That's an enormous void you're creating. Furthermore, Bobby Hull was much harder to beat than anyone from the 1980's outside Gretzky and Lemieux. Also, this way of judging players is too dependent on a single other player being there (or not).

Alos, why take out Lemieux from 83-88? Was he better than Bobby Hull then? If so, not by much.

All this without going on Beliveau's playoff value versus Hull's.

 

[danincanada]

But if you remove all non-Canadians from the NHL today, it would be a massive loss of talent. If you add a bunch of non-Canadians to the 50s NHL, it would be a negligible gain of talent.

The only era when NHL would benefit from the outside talent is the 1970-1989 era.

Doesn't this context you are showing mean anything? I mean if there weren't as many great players because it was only really Canadians than shouldn't that generally make things easier for Beliveau? Not just Beliveau but also Makarov because his league in his prime wasn't the NHL of today either. Context matters so if the O6 or RSL was void of "massive amounts of talent" when compared to today (or the last 40 years really) that should count for somethingin cross era comparisons.

 

[JackSlater]

One way to approach the question of who was the "better" player.

For the purposes of the below, set aside defensemen and goalies. Both of these guys played on the same team with non-forwards (Harvey, Plante, Fetisov, Tretiak) who could rationally be ranked above them. Let's focus on forwards only for now.

OK, now also set aside Big 4 players. Howe, Gretzky, Lemieux exit stage left.

Now, thinking only about forwards who aren't Big 4, how many years were each of these guys the best in the world?

My impression is that Beliveau began to be regarded more highly than Maurice Richard in 1956, and was then eclipsed by Bobby Hull in 1960. I don't believe Hull lost his grip on that title until after Beliveau was retired. So... Beliveau had a 4-season window.

Again my impression: Makarov gets safely clear of Marcel Dionne around 1982. After that, does anybody touch him before 1989? Trottier's in the picture, Yzerman's in the picture, but it seems to me neither of them was clearly above Makarov from 1983-89. Am I wrong here? If not, Makarov had a 6-season window as the best non-big-4 forward in the world.

That seems very early to give Hull an edge over Beliveau when Beliveau probably takes the Art Ross if he plays the full season in 1960 and was certainly the more well rounded player at the time. Beliveau played with stronger players, but he was also probably playing less than Hull was with Montreal rolling lines and Chicago riding its horse. Then again I'm also not sure that Howe should be excluded from comparison after his peak ended and his scoring was elite but mortal.

I'm also very unconvinced about the quality of the Soviet league in the 80s. Who was the fifth (roughly) best forward in the Soviet league from say, 1985-1989? On Soviet national teams it seemed like the second line was typically the Bykov line, which obviously played behind Makarov's line and the players on the line wouldn't be in a good position to challenge him in scoring. I'm pretty doubtful that the fifth best forward was comparable to the fifth best forward from the 50s or 60s in the NHL, or from the Soviet league in the 70s for that matter. That applies down the line from fifth as well.

 

[tarheelhockey]

Unfair, you take out Lemieux and Gretzky without replacing them by "randomized" superstars who could have overtook Makarov. You diminish the sample of "top players" by 2, without replacing them. That's an enormous void you're creating. Furthermore, Bobby Hull was much harder to beat than anyone from the 1980's outside Gretzky and Lemieux. Also, this way of judging players is too dependent on a single other player being there (or not).

Alos, why take out Lemieux from 83-88? Was he better than Bobby Hull then? If so, not by much.

All this without going on Beliveau's playoff value versus Hull's.

I didn't just take out Gretzky/Lemieux, I also took out Howe. If you're suggesting we should leave Mario Lemieux in as an offset to Bobby Hull, I'd say you're deliberately tilting the scales in the other direction.

The point of the exercise is that we know the Big 4 are untouchable when it comes to this stuff. Makarov being #3 behind Gretzky/Lemieux is no different than Beliveau being #2 behind Howe. Beliveau wasn't going to beat Mario, why would we punish Makarov for not beating Mario? Removing the entire Big-4 levels the playing field, which is the point of removing them and not muddying up the picture with D and goalies.

That seems very early to give Hull an edge over Beliveau when Beliveau probably takes the Art Ross if he plays the full season in 1960 and was certainly the more well rounded player at the time. Beliveau played with stronger players, but he was also probably playing less than Hull was with Montreal rolling lines and Chicago riding its horse. Then again I'm also not sure that Howe should be excluded from comparison after his peak ended and his scoring was elite but mortal.

This all makes sense. I said upthread that Beliveau's 1960 effectively has the value of a Ross winning season, so I'm on board with calling it in his favor. 1961 was a weird year in that neither Beliveau nor Hull had a Hart vote at all, so those two seasons can probably be lumped together as a transition phase. I'd be interested to look a little more deeply around how people at the time perceived the question of who were the top 3-5 forwards in the league. By 1962 I think we can say Hull had eclipsed Beliveau for sure.

I'm also very unconvinced about the quality of the Soviet league in the 80s. Who was the fifth (roughly) best forward in the Soviet league from say, 1985-1989? On Soviet national teams it seemed like the second line was typically the Bykov line, which obviously played behind Makarov's line and the players on the line wouldn't be in a good position to challenge him in scoring. I'm pretty doubtful that the fifth best forward was comparable to the fifth best forward from the 50s or 60s in the NHL, or from the Soviet league in the 70s for that matter. That applies down the line from fifth as well.

I guess the question I'm after here is -- if Makarov was clearly the best player in the Soviet league, and if head-to-head against NHL'ers he was better than anyone other than Gretzky/Lemieux, can we conclude that he was the #3 forward in the world during that time? Was there some other NHL forward circa 1983-89 who would really have challenged that ranking?

To me, being the clear-cut #3 forward of the 80s is about equivalent to being the clear-cut #2 forward of the late 1950s. That puts them on a level with each other for prime, and Beliveau tilts the argument only by virtue of longevity and what I'll call "soft" factors like leadership and clutch scoring.

 

[plusandminus]

(I wrote and posted this yesterday, but deleted it. Maybe the league comparisons deserves its own thread? Anyway, since it continues in this thread, I post this as yet another angle of looking at things.)

Scoring finishes: 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 2, 2, 2, 3, 4, 4, 5(74%GP). The season finishing 5th he was actually 1st in pts per game.
Leading the scoring 6-7 times, and being top-4-5 all 13 seasons is pretty impressive, right?

Above are the stats of Patrick Kane, focusing on only USA players.
Source, for example: American NHL Players ‑ 2017-2018 Stats
(If some American player is registered as some other nationality than USA, let me know.)

Best scoring finishes by Kane in the NHL as a whole is 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 9.
Scoring finishes compared to Canadians: 1, 2, 3, 4, 4, 6, 11, 13, 13, 14, 19, 19, 24. (He would have been 4th-5th the season he missed games, but here I listed his actual scoring finish of that season.)
Also one each of Hart, Pearson, Smythe.
3 AST-1 and 1 AST-2.

So... If Kane had been playing in a USA players only league, he might have had a very impressive collection of scoring finishes..? But in the NHL, he factually had the finishes mentioned in the previous paragraph.

How comparable is USA elite and depth since 2007-08 relative to the Canada or NHL, compared to the Soviet League of Makarov's day relative to Canada or the NHL of that time?
And can we really draw any conclusions based on this? (In my opinon we can't say much.)

How good do we consider Kane to be compared to Makarov? According to the best-player projects that some participated in, Makarov (26th) is ranked far above Kane (93rd). I don't follow today's NHL much, but from what I've seen of Kane Makarov seemed like a much better overall, allround player than Kane?

This became very theoretical and experimental, but I just got curious in looking at it this way, and thought I might as well share it here. I guess we just cannot draw any conclusions about Makarov. Perhaps we can guess that he at least likely would have been able to outperform Kane (?), although perhaps missing out on a top-1-2 scoring finish mainly because of Gretzky.
Makarov was widely regarded as the 2nd or 3rd best forward of the 1980s. He was likely the best winger.
I have little idea of where Kane would rank during the last decade or so..?

Edit: Somehow I'm not even sure why strength of the Soviet League would matter. Kopitar likely would have been outstanding season after season in a Slovenian league, although that would in itself tell very little about how good he would perform in the NHL.

 

[JackSlater]

I didn't just take out Gretzky/Lemieux, I also took out Howe. If you're suggesting we should leave Mario Lemieux in as an offset to Bobby Hull, I'd say you're deliberately tilting the scales in the other direction.

The point of the exercise is that we know the Big 4 are untouchable when it comes to this stuff. Makarov being #3 behind Gretzky/Lemieux is no different than Beliveau being #2 behind Howe. Beliveau wasn't going to beat Mario, why would we punish Makarov for not beating Mario? Removing the entire Big-4 levels the playing field, which is the point of removing them and not muddying up the picture with D and goalies.




This all makes sense. I said upthread that Beliveau's 1960 effectively has the value of a Ross winning season, so I'm on board with calling it in his favor. 1961 was a weird year in that neither Beliveau nor Hull had a Hart vote at all, so those two seasons can probably be lumped together as a transition phase. I'd be interested to look a little more deeply around how people at the time perceived the question of who were the top 3-5 forwards in the league. By 1962 I think we can say Hull had eclipsed Beliveau for sure.



I guess the question I'm after here is -- if Makarov was clearly the best player in the Soviet league, and if head-to-head against NHL'ers he was better than anyone other than Gretzky/Lemieux, can we conclude that he was the #3 forward in the world during that time? Was there some other NHL forward circa 1983-89 who would really have challenged that ranking?

To me, being the clear-cut #3 forward of the 80s is about equivalent to being the clear-cut #2 forward of the late 1950s. That puts them on a level with each other for prime, and Beliveau tilts the argument only by virtue of longevity and what I'll call "soft" factors like leadership and clutch scoring.

I don't have issue with Makarov being generally the best forward after Gretzky for most of the 80s, though being the best forward in a given decade doesn't mean that the player is above Beliveau. I'm commenting on the quality of the Soviet league of the 80s and I do want to have an idea of who the fifth or so best forward was in that league, given that Soviet scoring titles seem to be the crux of the argument here. Makarov isn't any better or worse if his league is great or is terrible but it does provide some relevant information when it comes to how to value his scoring titles. If he's playing with the other two best forwards in the league and with the two best defencemen constantly while every other competitor is playing with far worse players or on his own team in less advantageous positions, and those competitors aren't even historically noteworthy, then that takes a fair bit of the shine away. I buy Makarov as the best Soviet forward ever and probably the best Soviet player ever but I do have questions about who he was competing against in domestic competition.

 

[tarheelhockey]

(I wrote and posted this yesterday, but deleted it. Maybe the league comparisons deserves its own thread? Anway, since it continues in this thread, I post this as yet another angle of looking at things.)

Scoring finishes: 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 2, 2, 2, 3, 4, 4, 5(74%GP). The season finishing 5th he was actually 1st in pts per game.
Leading the scoring 6-7 times, and being top-4-5 all 13 seasons is pretty impressive, right?

Above are the stats of Patrick Kane, focusing on only USA players.
Source, for example: American NHL Players ‑ 2017-2018 Stats
(If some American player is registered as some other nationality than USA, let me know.)

Best scoring finishes by Kane in the NHL as a whole is 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 9.
Scoring finishes compared to Canadians: 1, 2, 3, 4, 4, 6, 11, 13, 13, 14, 19, 19, 24. (He would have been 4th-5th the season he missed games, but here I listed his actual scoring finish of that season.)
Also one each of Hart, Pearson, Smythe.
3 AST-1 and 1 AST-2.

So... If Kane had been playing in a USA players only league, he might have had a very impressive collection of scoring finishes..? But in the NHL, he factually had the finishes mentioned in the previous paragraph.
How comparable is USA elite and depth since 2007-08 relative to the Canada or NHL, compared to the Soviet League of Makarov's day relative to Canada or the NHL of that time?
And can we really draw any conclusions based on this? (In my opinon we can't say much.)

How good do we consider Kane to be compared to Makarov? According to the best-player projects that some participated in, Makarov (26th) is ranked far above Kane (93rd). I don't follow today's NHL much, but from what I've seen of Kane Makarov seemed like a much better overall, allround player than Kane?

This became very theoretical and experimental, but I just got curious in looking at it this way, and thought I might as well share it here. I guess we just cannot draw any conclusions about Makarov. Perhaps we can guess that he at least likely would have been able to outperform Kane (?), although perhaps missing out on a top-1-2 scoring finish mainly because of Gretzky.
Makarov was widely regarded as the 2nd or 3rd best forward of the 1980s. He was likely the best winger.
I have little idea of where Kane would rank during the last decade or so..?

Edit: Somehow I'm not even sure why strength of the Soviet League would matter. Kopitar likely would have been outstanding season after season in a Slovenian league, although that would in itself tell very little about how good he would perform in the NHL.

That's an interesting way to look at it, particularly the bit about taking a guy who was widely viewed as the #3-#5 forward in the world for a time and looking at a reasonable approximation of his domestic-league numbers. That pretty well mirrors what we see in Makarov.

The biggest question is... was Makarov generally more like 2013 Kane or 2016 Kane? The gap is just big enough to really matter when it comes to comparing him to a heavy hitter like Beliveau.

 

[Dennis Bonvie]

Would say Crosby look more impressive if Ovi, Malkin, Datsyuk, and Kucherov never stepped foot in the NHL? In hindsight I think he would and it wouldn't matter how many teams the league had at the time.

Sid could be matched against Bergeron, O'Reilly, Toews, McKinnon or McDavid every night. How would that effect his production?

 

[TheDevilMadeMe]

One way to approach the question of who was the "better" player.

For the purposes of the below, set aside defensemen and goalies. Both of these guys played on the same team with non-forwards (Harvey, Plante, Fetisov, Tretiak) who could rationally be ranked above them. Let's focus on forwards only for now.

OK, now also set aside Big 4 players. Howe, Gretzky, Lemieux exit stage left.

Now, thinking only about forwards who aren't Big 4, how many years were each of these guys the best in the world?

My impression is that Beliveau began to be regarded more highly than Maurice Richard in 1956, and was then eclipsed by Bobby Hull in 1960. I don't believe Hull lost his grip on that title until after Beliveau was retired. So... Beliveau had a 4-season window.

Again my impression: Makarov gets safely clear of Marcel Dionne around 1982. After that, does anybody touch him before 1989? Trottier's in the picture, Yzerman's in the picture, but it seems to me neither of them was clearly above Makarov from 1983-89. Am I wrong here? If not, Makarov had a 6-season window as the best non-big-4 forward in the world.

For the final two years of this timeframe, Krutov was probably Makarov's equal (see Krutov winning Soviet Player of the Year in 1987 and being the Soviet forward on the 1987 Canada Cup All-Star team along with Gretzky and Lemieux, following it up with 3rd in Player of the Year voting in 1988). Also, if you look at their stats during this time, they were quite close, with Krutov providing a bit of toughness as well.

But then maybe 2 years is too short a time frame for this consideration.