MLD 2012 Mickey Ion Semifinal: Winston-Salem Polar Twins vs. Sherbrooke Castors

[seventieslord]

Coach
Don Cherry
Assistant Coach
Dave King

Fred Scanlan - Ulf Nilsson - Rick Kehoe
Joe Juneau - Bronco Horvath - Gary Dornhoefer
Buzz Boll - Charlie Burns (A) - Serge Bernier
Lorne Henning - Stephane Yelle - Dustin Brown (A)

Arnie Brown - Brad Maxwell
Albert Langlois - Dave Ellett
Udo Kiessling - Garth Butcher (C)

Mike Karakas
Arturs Irbe


Spares
Jim Riley
Dolly Swift
Udo Kiessling


Power Play 1
Horvath - Nilsson - Kehoe
Ellett - Maxwell

Power Play 2
D. Brown - Juneau - Bernier
Langlois - Kiessling

Penalty Kill 1
Burns - Henning
A. Brown - Butcher

Penalty Kill 2
Yelle - D. Brown
Langlois - Maxwell


VS


Head Coach: Jacques Martin
Captain: Orest Kindrachuk
Assistant Captains: Stu Barnes, Mario Marois

ROSTER

Don Maloney - Herb Jordan - Claude Giroux
Morris Lukowich - Craig Janney - Keith Crowder
Nick Libett - Orest Kindrachuk (C) - Chico Maki
Bohuslav Stastny - Stu Barnes (A) - Colin Patterson

Jeff Beukeboom - Bob Dailey
Lou Fontinato - Mario Marois (A)
Gary Sargent - Alex Smith

Don Edwards
Jim Henry

Spares:
Christian Ehrhoff, D
Jeff Carter, C/RW
Mike Krushelnyski, C/LW
Hugh Bolton, D
​

POWERPLAY

PP1: Morris Lukowich - Herb Jordan - Claude Giroux - Bob Dailey - Mario Marois
PP2: Don Maloney - Craig Janney - Keith Crowder - Gary Sargent - Alex Smith

PENALTY KILL:

PK1: Stu Barnes - Colin Patterson - Lou Fontinato - Jeff Beukeboom
PK2: Orest Kindrachuk - Chico Maki - Bob Dailey - Mario Marois[/center]

Click to read more...

 

[tarheelhockey]

Best of luck, Velociraptor.

Just a heads up, I'm planning to sit down at some point today or tomorrow and consider a couple of lineup changes. Wanted to get that out there to save you some time analyzing lines that might end up changing.

 

[Velociraptor]

Will include my thoughts when my schedule permits me, good luck THH.

 

[tarheelhockey]

Wow, the week kinda got away from me. Sorry it took so long to get these line changes in.


New Defensive Pairings
Arnie Brown - Brad Maxwell
Albert Langlois - Dave Ellett
Udo Kiessling - Garth Butcher

Jocelyn Guevremont will be a spare in this series.

New Power Play 2
D. Brown - Juneau - Bernier
Langlois - Kiessling

New Penalty Kill 2
Yelle - D. Brown
Langlois - Maxwell


The core change here is that I replaced Guevremont with Kiessling. This caused a shuffle in the defense corps, with Arnie Brown moving to the top line (where he was in real life next to guys like Howell and Park), Dave Ellett moving to the second line (more consistent with his level in the MLD) and Kiessling slotting into the 3rd line where his chippiness will be most valuable.

Overall, this move makes the d-pairings a bit more balanced between offense and defense, and the group as a whole a bit tougher and more experienced. Guevremont is a very strong spare and should slot comfortably into whatever hole opens in the lineup. Kiessling-Butcher is about as nasty of a bottom defensive pairing as it gets without running into penalty trouble.

 

[BillyShoe1721]

Overall, this move makes the d-pairings a bit more balanced between offense and defense, and the group as a whole a bit tougher and more experienced. Guevremont is a very strong spare and should slot comfortably into whatever hole opens in the lineup. Kiessling-Butcher is about as nasty of a bottom defensive pairing as it gets without running into penalty trouble.

5 straight seasons of 200+PIM and 5 more of 100+ for Garth Butcher, but they won't be in penalty trouble?

 

[TheDevilMadeMe]

5 straight seasons of 200+PIM and 5 more of 100+ for Garth Butcher, but they won't be in penalty trouble?

A lot of those PIMs were fighting majors and probably misconducts. It would be interesting to see how many. I know that later career butcher had a rep as an aggitator who baited the other team into taking bad penalties, rather than taking them himself

 

[tarheelhockey]

A lot of those PIMs were fighting majors and probably misconducts. It would be interesting to see how many. I know that later career butcher had a rep as an aggitator who baited the other team into taking bad penalties, rather than taking them himself

To flesh this point out a bit, I looked at the box scores Butcher's highest season of PIM, 1990-91, and tallied the types of penalties he took.

Less than shockingly, the box score count doesn't match perfectly with his PIM total. During the regular season it's 1 minute off, and during the playoffs it's 2 minutes. This could be my error, or an inconsistency in the record, or both. But the margin of error is so small as to be nearly irrelevant here.

Type | Regular | Playoff
Minor | 70 | 16
Major | 14 | 2
10-min | 6 | 0
Game | 2 | 1

When counting his minors, I made note of the circumstances under which they were taken.

Type | Regular | Playoff
Coincidental | 43 | 8
Meaningful | 19 | 5
Meaningless | 8 | 3

By "meaningful" and meaningless", I'm referring to the scoreboard situation. Meaningless minors were taken during the "garbage time" portion of blowouts (3+ goal differential) when message-sending and retaliation undoubtedly came into play for a guy like Butcher, and the PP didn't really threaten to change the game outcome.

In sum, the "at his worst" version of Butcher is likely to take a meaningful minor penalty about once every 4 games, meaning one per series and the possibility of a second. Assuming a 20% opposing power play (which I'd like to hope won't happen ) that means about a 20-40% chance of a goal against during the 4-7 games.

But, more than twice as often, he will be taking an opposing player to the box with him. Considering he's a bottom-pair guy, there's a good chance his victim will be a top offensive player, as in this incident on 2/27/1991:

2nd
PIT - Lemieux 18:29 ; VAN - Butcher 18:29
3rd
PIT - Lemieux 12:27 ; PIT - Lemieux (Misconduct (10 min)) 12:27 ; VAN - Butcher 12:27

[all of those penalties were taken with Butcher's Canucks leading the Pens 4-3, and the score never changed again.]

In the context of a pairing with Kiessling, a notoriously dirty and sneaky player who drew the ire of North American opponents, and likely sharing ice time with the post-lockout champion of penalty-drawing, I see Butcher as another element who can help this team play an intelligently physical game, converting their battles into scoring opportunities for their less aggressive teammates like Nilsson and Horvath.

 

[seventieslord]

that is really great analysis. However, I have no idea if that is high or low. For example, if you take a few other defensemen with 6 100+ PIM seasons, what does their breakdown look like? My gut tells me Butcher looks good from your info, but it might be average or even below average.

 

[Velociraptor]

I have been extremely busy the last couple of days, I'm in class most days until 6, and I'm working if I'm not in school usually. Some things I'd like to point out:

- With the very strong checking capability the Castors possess throughout their lineup, I fear having Gary Dornhoefer as really the only strong two-way player creates a degree of softness for the Polar Bears in their top-six, two lines who will be seeing a lot of the Castors' third and fourth lines.

- A very small first line is also a concern against the biggest pairing in the draft. If Dailey and Beukeboom had their way with Vickers - Ftorek - Stastny, I think they will have a field day with the Polar Bears' smaller line that does not possess any physical qualities to my knowledge.

- There is again a considerable goaltending advantage for the Castors, Irbe and Karakas have had flashes of brilliance in the post-season. But they are both on a lower-scale than Don Edwards.

- I don't know if this has been touched on, but it paints a picture that Ulf Nilsson is the superstar on a team coached by Don Cherry, that to me could prove to be very puzzling considering Grapes's disgust for players from across the pond.

- Butcher as stats depict was somewhat of a **** disturber at times, and could cause Mario Lemieux to commit penalties. But the Castors' top players seldom took penalties, maybe besides Don Maloney, so I don't really see that as advantageous in any way, but definitely a point of interest.

- I'll touch base on things a little later if I get the chance, bottom-6 units will be fun to compare as they both look fairly comparable on paper.

 

[tarheelhockey]

[in response to seventieslord above]

Could be... it might make a good project for the new By The Numbers forum.

Generally, I'd say that one minor penalty per playoff series is to be expected from any player who is in the trenches on a regular basis, just as part of playing the game and getting the occasional tripping or high sticking call. A second minor is where I'd start to grumble about "too many penalties", and Butcher presents a chance of taking that second penalty that starts at 25% in a 5 game series and rises to 75% in a 7-game series. That strikes me as a manageable risk, but of course it's just a gut feeling without statistical support.

To me, the more intriguing aspect of Butcher's game is that he draws a coincidental penalty every other game. From a tradeoff standpoint, I'm more than OK with him taking one penalty and drawing two from his opponent in a 4-game series. That aspect of his game is magnified by playing with other notorious agitators, who make it that much less likely that he will be the one to initiate an incident. He might go to the box fairly often, but it will be a matter of escalating the penalty count on both sides of the box score, which really screws with opposing lineups. Plenty of teams have had playoff success with that style, most recently Boston and Anaheim, and of course going back to the powerhouses of Cherry's heyday.

 

[TheDevilMadeMe]

I could see Garth Butcher driving Claude Giroux absolutely nuts.

 

[tarheelhockey]

- With the very strong checking capability the Castors possess throughout their lineup, I fear having Gary Dornhoefer as really the only strong two-way player creates a degree of softness for the Polar Bears in their top-six, two lines who will be seeing a lot of the Castors' third and fourth lines.

- A very small first line is also a concern against the biggest pairing in the draft. If Dailey and Beukeboom had their way with Vickers - Ftorek - Stastny, I think they will have a field day with the Polar Bears' smaller line that does not possess any physical qualities to my knowledge.

Softness is a reasonable charge to levy at Horvath and Kehoe, no doubt. Nilsson played through intense amounts of abuse from true goons -- enough to make Bobby Hull recoil -- so I don't worry too much about him here. Scanlan is of course a question mark, since we know nothing about his size or toughness level, so I think of him as just "average for the era". Juneau isn't gritty, but he was a good two-way player in the second half of his career. As a group, the top-6 isn't extremely physical but only two of them are really soft and they are the two best goal scorers.

As far as matchups go -- note that there's a big stylistic difference between the Polar Twins' first and second lines. The Scanlan-Nilsson-Kehoe line is a north/south, speed-attack, rushing line. To the extent that they'll cycle the puck, it will be a perimeter-based game with not a whole lot of grinding. Juneau-Horvath-Dornhoefer is a more traditionally structured, passer/shooter/PF sort of group.

As far as Dailey and Beukeboom are concerned, I'm more than happy to get them involved in a track meet against that first line. There could hardly be a better matchup for them than a couple of big guys who need to be protected against north-south speed and want to play an inside game rather than attack the perimeter.

- There is again a considerable goaltending advantage for the Castors, Irbe and Karakas have had flashes of brilliance in the post-season. But they are both on a lower-scale than Don Edwards.

I'm honestly not sure what to make of that comment. Edwards never won more than 4 playoff games, and that was during a 4-round era. In 1938 alone, Karakas won 6 games in three rounds, coming back injured to win the Stanley Cup. Irbe won 10 in a Finals run. If we're talking regular seasons Edwards has a record worth playing up, but his playoff record is on a higher scale than Karakas and Irbe? Based on first-round wins?

- I don't know if this has been touched on, but it paints a picture that Ulf Nilsson is the superstar on a team coached by Don Cherry, that to me could prove to be very puzzling considering Grapes's disgust for players from across the pond.

This is where I have to trust the voters to separate Cherry's media persona from his coaching career. As far as I can tell, the only European he ever coached was goaltender Hardy Astrom, who didn't belong in the NHL and garnered Cherry's scorn for losing winnable games on the unwatchable Rockies. He never had any European star on his teams, let alone having ethnic problems with anyone, and to the best of my knowledge never said anything negative about Borje Salming when his teams played against the Leafs, or expressed an unwillingness to acquire Europeans while a coach. His media personality developed a decade later, and his comments targeted against guys who had nothing in common with the Salmings and Nilssons of the hockey world. I'm sure he was not the only coach of his era, and previous eras, who held those attitudes -- he was just the most tactless in expressing them.

But, in anticipation of this issue coming up again, I was certain to draft an assistant coach who has a solid European resume and specifically has coached a Swedish team. Even if you are unforgiving toward Cherry, please factor in the presence of a coach who is especially well positioned to alleviate any problems on that front.

 

[TheDevilMadeMe]

Scanlan is of course a question mark, since we know nothing about his size or toughness level, so I think of him as just "average for the era".

Has anyone done a full google archives search for Scanlan? Frank Selke called him the "workhorse" of the old Shamrock line. There has to be more out there.

I'm honestly not sure what to make of that comment. Edwards never won more than 4 playoff games, and that was during a 4-round era. In 1938 alone, Karakas won 6 games in three rounds, coming back injured to win the Stanley Cup. Irbe won 10 in a Finals run. If we're talking regular seasons Edwards has a record worth playing up, but his playoff record is on a higher scale than Karakas and Irbe? Based on first-round wins?

Raptor apparently doesn't have much time to post right now, so maybe his post was rushed. But what I think he meant is that Edwards has a better overall record, not confined to playoffs. I think it depends on how much you value Edwards' consistently strong play vs the playoffs peaks of Karakas and Irbe.

 

[overpass]

This is where I have to trust the voters to separate Cherry's media persona from his coaching career. As far as I can tell, the only European he ever coached was goaltender Hardy Astrom, who didn't belong in the NHL and garnered Cherry's scorn for losing winnable games on the unwatchable Rockies. He never had any European star on his teams, let alone having ethnic problems with anyone, and to the best of my knowledge never said anything negative about Borje Salming when his teams played against the Leafs, or expressed an unwillingness to acquire Europeans while a coach. His media personality developed a decade later, and his comments targeted against guys who had nothing in common with the Salmings and Nilssons of the hockey world. I'm sure he was not the only coach of his era, and previous eras, who held those attitudes -- he was just the most tactless in expressing them.

But, in anticipation of this issue coming up again, I was certain to draft an assistant coach who has a solid European resume and specifically has coached a Swedish team. Even if you are unforgiving toward Cherry, please factor in the presence of a coach who is especially well positioned to alleviate any problems on that front.

Cherry has been criticized as a media commentator for statements about French-Canadian players. But he coached a team with Jean Ratelle, a French-Canadian who never fought and wasn't a typical Cherry player. And Cherry has only ever had good things to say about Ratelle.

If Ulf Nilsson was a classy player in the mold of Jean Ratelle, Cherry should have no problem at all with him. If Nilsson was a diver or a wimp then it might be a different story.

 

[tarheelhockey]

If anything, Nilsson was more of a stereotypical Cherry player than Ratelle. The farthest thing from a wimp. Check out some of the quotes in his bio -- he was built of the same stuff as Salming, just a different type of player.

 

[TheDevilMadeMe]

Cherry has been criticized as a media commentator for statements about French-Canadian players. But he coached a team with Jean Ratelle, a French-Canadian who never fought and wasn't a typical Cherry player. And Cherry has only ever had good things to say about Ratelle.

If Ulf Nilsson was a classy player in the mold of Jean Ratelle, Cherry should have no problem at all with him. If Nilsson was a diver or a wimp then it might be a different story.

When I drafted Emile Francis before, I came across an article that basically credited Cherry with getting the most out of Ratelle in the playoffs. Ratelle was a small player and Cherry thought Emile Francis had overworked him during the regular season, leading to him being burnt out in the playoffs. Apparently Emile Francis was very demanding on his players in practice. So Cherry took it easier on Ratelle during the regular season.

The stats certainly seem to support Cherry's approach - Ratelle looks like one of the biggest playoff chokers of all time during his time with the Rangers under Francis, but he immediately turns it around in Boston under Cherry.

Just one player, but I find it interesting.

I found the article back when nobody was posting anything negative about anyone they drafted, so unfortunately, I didn't save it.

 

[seventieslord]

Raptor apparently doesn't have much time to post right now, so maybe his post was rushed. But what I think he meant is that Edwards has a better overall record, not confined to playoffs. I think it depends on how much you value Edwards' consistently strong play vs the playoffs peaks of Karakas and Irbe.

That's what I thought as well.

 

[overpass]

When I drafted Emile Francis before, I came across an article that basically credited Cherry with getting the most out of Ratelle in the playoffs. Ratelle was a small player and Cherry thought Emile Francis had overworked him during the regular season, leading to him being burnt out in the playoffs. Apparently Emile Francis was very demanding on his players in practice. So Cherry took it easier on Ratelle during the regular season.

The stats certainly seem to support Cherry's approach - Ratelle looks like one of the biggest playoff chokers of all time during his time with the Rangers under Francis, but he immediately turns it around in Boston under Cherry.

Just one player, but I find it interesting.

I found the article back when nobody was posting anything negative about anyone they drafted, so unfortunately, I didn't save it.

Cherry wrote the same thing in his book of hockey stories. See page 97 here.

http://books.google.ca/books?id=Ea3...=0CDcQ6AEwAQ#v=snippet&q=Jean Ratelle&f=false

Cherry thought Ratelle was too thin and had been overworked. He ordered Ratelle to stop coming to Monday and Tuesday practices so he would have some time off to recover.

 

[tarheelhockey]

Has anyone done a full google archives search for Scanlan? Frank Selke called him the "workhorse" of the old Shamrock line. There has to be more out there.

I started that process back when we were in the bio-making phase of the draft, then shelved it when we got going with the first round. I'll try and get everything together, but it isn't a huge amount of material.

The short version is that we can say for sure that Scanlan was very fast and handled the puck well. After that, there's just not a lot to go on.

 

[tarheelhockey]

As a way of comparing the offense of the top-6 players in this series...

Below is the adjusted PPG of the players' best 5 adjusted scoring seasons. This includes a schedule adjustment and a 15% boost for pre-expansion players (thanks to seventies for explaining those tweaks to me last round).

Player|PPG
Craig Janney | 1.039
Bronco Horvath | .935
Claude Giroux |.919
Joe Juneau | .905 Rick Kehoe | .826 Ulf Nilsson | .803 Gary Dornhoefer | .740
Keith Crowder| .737
Don Maloney |.698
Morris Lukowich |.658

Bold = Winston-Salem players

Kind of an interesting layout. Janney is clearly ahead of the pack as a point producer, no doubt about that, but he only has one teammate in the top 7. His linemates, Lukowich and Crowder, are two of the three lowest producers. This sets up an obvious matchup strategy for the Polar Twins -- blanket Janney with shutdown specialist Charlie Burns, and let Crowder and Lukowich take responsibility for producing their own offense.

The other big producer for the Castors on this table is Claude Giroux. He has produced great PPG in his 4 seasons so far, but it should be noted that in this series he plays RW, and his numbers on the wing are much lower than from the middle. He had a 1.337 as a full-time center last season, compared to a .772 in previous seasons mostly as a winger. Some of his uptick in production was natural growth, to be sure, but a lot of it had to do the extra space to move the puck and a clear mandate to be the primary playmaker on his line. It'll be up to the voters individually to figure out how much the position change affects his stat line in this series.

It should be noted that the above leaves out arguably the Castors' best forward in Herb Jordan and a top-6er for W-S in Fred Scanlan, both of whom played during the early/developmental decades of the sport. Scanlan was discussed at length already in the previous round, and I'm not sure there's anything new to say other than that I have pulled together a few scraps to corroborate his speed and stick skill, which I will try to post tomorrow.

As for Jordan, he is without a doubt the offensive lynchpin of the Castors, but he faces the same problems as Scanlan -- how much credit do we give stars of the early era, how do we ascribe defensive ability to a 5'6" 130lb guy who only played on one half of the ice surface, and how do we evaluate his ability to play in a long-format tournament? I would say, at the least, that an out-of-position Giroux and the low-scoring Maloney are probably not the best linemates to try and carry the first line if Jordan falters. With Janney clamped by Burns, it's pretty much all on Jordan to try and win this series for Sherbrooke, which would be a much safer bet if he had been a scoring star of the 1950s instead of the 1910s.

 

[Rob Scuderi]

As for Jordan, he is without a doubt the offensive lynchpin of the Castors, but he faces the same problems as Scanlan -- how much credit do we give stars of the early era, how do we ascribe defensive ability to a 5'6" 130lb guy who only played on one half of the ice surface, and how do we evaluate his ability to play in a long-format tournament? I would say, at the least, that an out-of-position Giroux and the low-scoring Maloney are probably not the best linemates to try and carry the first line if Jordan falters. With Janney clamped by Burns, it's pretty much all on Jordan to try and win this series for Sherbrooke, which would be a much safer bet if he had been a scoring star of the 1950s instead of the 1910s.

I'm not sure era concerns are even the same with the two.

Scanlan was a star in the CAHL and then moved to the weaker Manitoba league for two years before it was as competitive as it was just a few years later when the MHL takes off.

Jordan was a star in the CAHL and ECAHA before winding down with two years in the NHA.

Jordan started in '02 and finished in '11. Scanlan started in '98 and finished in '03. Those differences seem minor but a difference in 5 years between them reaching their primes meant a whole different set of leagues, players, rules etc.

The biggest difference between them however is the strength of teams, and overall resumes. For example, if we are to believe "At the close of his career, [Scanlan] was credited with having scored 16 goals in 31 games," then considering his Shamrock teammate Harry Trihey had two seasons with with over 17 goals (in 7 games each time) then I have a hard time taking Scanlan seriously compared to Herb Jordan. Furthermore, when Scanlan moved to the weaker Winnipeg leagues, he still was in his teammates' shadows. The great Dan Bain was still running the show for the Vics and they also had Gingras.

Jordan's record speaks for itself and the only Hall of Famer (or notable player) he had regularly was Paddy Moran. He had one year of a rookie Joe Malone (who was under a GPG) and then two years as a veteran player on the stacked Renfrew teams. If Renfrew lasted more than two years and Jordan built his resume there then Scanlan's teams with Trihey and Bain would have nothing on him, but that's not how it played out.

If we use era biases to drag down Jordan, then I have a hard time seeing why Scanlan belongs in the MLD to be honest. I see this is a Blair Russel/Russell Bowie situation all over again with Scanlan playing the part of B. Russel and Harry Trihey serving as the Bowie.

 

[seventieslord]

I'm not sure era concerns are even the same with the two.

Scanlan was a star in the CAHL and then moved to the weaker Manitoba league for two years before it was as competitive as it was just a few years later when the MHL takes off.

Jordan was a star in the CAHL and ECAHA before winding down with two years in the NHA.

Jordan started in '02 and finished in '11. Scanlan started in '98 and finished in '03. Those differences seem minor but a difference in 5 years between them reaching their primes meant a whole different set of leagues, players, rules etc.

The biggest difference between them however is the strength of teams, and overall resumes. For example, if we are to believe "At the close of his career, [Scanlan] was credited with having scored 16 goals in 31 games," then considering his Shamrock teammate Harry Trihey had two seasons with with over 17 goals (in 7 games each time) then I have a hard time taking Scanlan seriously compared to Herb Jordan. Furthermore, when Scanlan moved to the weaker Winnipeg leagues, he still was in his teammates' shadows. The great Dan Bain was still running the show for the Vics and they also had Gingras.

Jordan's record speaks for itself and the only Hall of Famer (or notable player) he had regularly was Paddy Moran. He had one year of a rookie Joe Malone (who was under a GPG) and then two years as a veteran player on the stacked Renfrew teams. If Renfrew lasted more than two years and Jordan built his resume there then Scanlan's teams with Trihey and Bain would have nothing on him, but that's not how it played out.

If we use era biases to drag down Jordan, then I have a hard time seeing why Scanlan belongs in the MLD to be honest. I see this is a Blair Russel/Russell Bowie situation all over again with Scanlan playing the part of B. Russel and Harry Trihey serving as the Bowie.

I agree. I think it's obvious Jordan is a very strong offensive player for this level and there's no way to spin Scanlan as anything more than a scoring line glue guy... if you are being generous. (and my own opponent has a much better version of him, IMHO)

and 5'6", 130 is more like 5'11", 180 today. a couple inches and 20 pounds below average. Small, not a midget.

 

[TheDevilMadeMe]

I agree. I think it's obvious Jordan is a very strong offensive player for this level and there's no way to spin Scanlan as anything more than a scoring line glue guy... if you are being generous. (and my own opponent has a much better version of him, IMHO)

and 5'6", 130 is more like 5'11", 180 today. a couple inches and 20 pounds below average. Small, not a midget.

Where do you have Scanlan's size? I could find no referene to his size anywhere

Jordan is a much much better goal scorer than Scanlan, that's for sure.

I don't think it's generous to consider Scanlan a glueguy though, based on what Frank Selke said about him. He also seems like he was at least capable of making a pass, based on his role in early "combination" attacks.

 

[tarheelhockey]

To be clear -- I wasn't comparing Scanlan to Jordan in quality. Just pointing out that the same issues apply to both of them with regard to defense, tournament play, competition, teammates and so forth. The same issues that arise almost across the board with pre-NHL players. Not intending to make a crazy claim about Scanlan here.

 

[seventieslord]

Where do you have Scanlan's size? I could find no referene to his size anywhere

Jordan is a much much better goal scorer than Scanlan, that's for sure.

I don't think it's generous to consider Scanlan a glueguy though, based on what Frank Selke said about him. He also seems like he was at least capable of making a pass, based on his role in early "combination" attacks.

I don't know if I have ever seen Scanlan's size, I was referring to Jordan's size.

and no, i don't mean it's generous to consider him a glueguy, but the level where he would be a good scoring line glue guy is up for debate. (MLD 1st line? MLD 2nd line? AAA 1st line? etc...)