I don't how you were raised but you crossed the line for me. Not only did you insinuate that I lied and then asked for proof, which I provided, but then you didn't even acknowledge it, as if people accuse others of lying all the time. Questioning someone's honesty is not some flippant aspect of regular conversation for you, is it? I don't really want to bother with you after that but since you keep pushing...
C'mon Dan, get over it. My supposed "accusations" were in response to you missing certain facts from the book.
You were either,
A) Doing it to test me to see if I had read the book
or
B) You hadn't actually read the book
or
C) You omitted them on purpose because it didn't support or went against your agenda
And again, nobody is fooled.
Your feigned outrage is just a convenient excuse to not answer my posts that you couldn't answer to in the first place.
You are giving yourself way too much credit if you think I was ignoring you because your arguments were strong.
See...here's the problem Dan.
The difference between you and I is that I take all the facts into the mix.
For example, I do take into account that Lidstrom faced more worldwide competition but I also take into account that Harvey was playing the very best of the best on a much, much more regular basis AND that Lidstrom faced no less than
NINE expansion teams that came into the League during his career.
To boot, we haven't even got into payrolls and the whole lopsided have's and have not's ratio that happened for most of Lidstrom's career.
I give weights to both and determine that they more or less cancel each other out with any advantage for either player being slight.
You on the other hand, put all the weight behind the former and completely ignore any of the latter.
Like do you honestly believe that Lidstrom facing expansion teams and low payroll have not's for 30% and even up to 55-60% of his games some seasons is the same as Harvey just playing against Howe/Lindsay, Hull/Mikita a full 40% of the time.
If so, then that's ridiculous!
There are so many flaws and inconsistencies in them that's it's hard to cover them all now but I'll try.
First off, you actually read my posts? You respond to most of them but I don't think you read them because my opinion and how I think has been repeated numerous times here and my argument is not what you think it is and its not the one that is terrible. It's completely irrational to believe a Canadian-only composed league from the middle of the 20th century would have as many great players as a league with 50 years of added growth to the sport, and don't pretend hockey didn't grow in Canada after Harvey's era, which also had 29 of the 60 Norris finalists in a 20 year span being non-Canadians when we had zero during Harvey's career. So this is two fold; Canadian hockey grew - probably substantially - and we have all those elite non-Canadians competing as well. Pretending to compare players across these eras on a peer to peer basis like its a fair comparison is what's terrible. How do you think we should compare the modern fully integrated NHL with the O6? It's not even apples and oranges, it's Fuji apples and kumquats so weighing them equally is an injustice to those delicious Fuji's.
And yet, you have no issue using Harvey's straight stats from 50 years to make direct comparisons to Lidstrom numbers but in the very next breath you have no issue telling anyone that will listen that we should take Bourque's numbers from only a difference of 10 years with a grain of salt.
Somehow the League and the role of Dmen changed more in those 10 years than it did in 50 years.
Forget that the slapshot was still in its' infancy and rarely used by anyone, let alone Dmen during Harvey's career.
Forget that it was pre-Orr and that Dmen rushing of the puck was rare and highly discouraged.
Obviously those things are minor to how Dmen operate and produce points in today's game
And finally, I'm sorry but after viewing many hours of Harvey footage and reading countless first-hand accounts of his play, I refuse to believe that Harvey today would only be as effective offensively at even strength as Chara was.
As you know and I have shown countless times in this thread already, that is EXACTLY how effective Lidstrom was offensively at even strength for the entire second half of his career.
Harvey would be much closer to Bourque in that regard than to Lidstrom. No doubt in my mind!
Trust me, I am faaaaaarrrr from the only one and quite assuredly not in the minority on that.
If the whole world took up playing hockey and it became more popular than soccer, and was given time to grow and flourish around the world, don't you think there would be a hell of a lot more truly elite talent in this new version of the NHL than now? Wouldn't that make it a bigger feat to dominate, especially if a defenseman had the same career record and list of accomplishments as Lidstrom did? If that was the case then I would rank him higher than Lidstrom. Even if he didn't do quite as well against his own peers as Lidstrom but those peers were clearly from a much larger talent pool one would have to weigh his accomplishments on a higher plain. It's not a difficult concept to understand and should be used in some way if one is going to compare players across vastly different eras. You try to portray this with Bourque and his peers all the time, believing he had more of an uphill battle, but you refuse to give Lidstrom the same reasoning versus Harvey. Instead you act as if Lidstrom had it so easy, Bourque overcame the impossible, and you don't even need to question who Harvey competed with in terms of peers. We just know the NHL only had elite Canadians born pre-baby boom. Sorry, one peer group is not like the others here. Not close actually.
And again, show me some evidence, ANY evidence that more players means more Elite players.
I assure you, there isn't any.
We have era's where the hockey population increased and produced less Elite talent and we have era's where the hockey population went down and produced more Elite talent.
There is no rhyme or reason to it and no odds of 1 in so many, it's completely 100% random.
Orr, Gretzky, and Lemieux dominated to such a degree, and all did it with baby boomers and when at least some elite non-Canadians were present so it's not difficult to assume they were just that good. Harvey isn't in that class though, in fact even in a peer to peer comparison he and Lidstrom are neck and neck, except Lidstrom appears to actually come out on top in more metrics. That's why I say it's quite easy to go with Lidstrom over Harvey. The only way to go with Harvey is if you ignore how much the composition of the league changed. Maybe the most talented Soviets would have decreased the scoring title margins 4, 99, and 66 had some seasons but that's about as far as anyone would venture. With Harvey I don't think he faced much, and certainly not as much as Lidstrom, so adding elite non-Canadians and a larger group of elite Canadian defenders would probably reduce his dominance quite a lot and maybe he wouldn't dominate at all some seasons. This is not a fact but it's not reasonable to just assume that adding so many more elite players would have no affect on his level of dominance or how Harvey is viewed.
Not a bad response but I think what you left out of it is more important and speaks volumes over than what you actually said.
You know, how it's funny that you specifically left out mentioning Howe or Hull. I wonder why that is...hmmmm
How many years did you try to downgrade Lidstrom for relying on the PP for points? It turns out Harvey was even more guilty of that and all you do is talk about how dominant he was on the PP, ignoring that he was tied for 4th in the chart with Horton for ES points/70 games with 19. Meanwhile Lidstrom is tied for second with 24 in his peer group, just 1 back of the leader and even trailed Pronger in terms of the PP while Harvey made all his gains there. Then you try to compare Lidstrom with guys from much higher scoring years when ES points were clearly in abundance even though it's obvious that the best way to compare him is against actual peers who also played in those same DPE seasons. So what's next? Pretend Kelly and Gadsby were superior offensively to the modern group of Lidstrom's peers even though Pilote came along after and produced more offensively some seasons than Harvey's group and then Orr came along and made everyone before look like defenseman didn't even cross centre before his arrival? Harvey gets special treatment and you have never questioned anything when it comes to him even though he and Lidstrom were close to identical players to their eras. I've told you this for years now because it's the truth and the ES / PP numbers revealed it even more.
Covered this already but I don't mind doing it again quickly.
A) The slapshot
B) Dmen discouraged from rushing the puck
As far as where Kelly and Pilote are concerned...YES, Kelly was superior offensively to Lidstrom and the peer group you have him listed with in that chart. Kelly is in the Potvin/Bourque/Leetch class.
Pilote is about in the same class as Lidstrom, the one BELOW Kelly/Potvin/Bourque/Leetch.