Black Gold Extractor
Registered User
- May 4, 2010
- 3,088
- 4,911
Hello! I have come from the History of Hockey boards and would like to learn about what Bruins fans who watched Phil Esposito live think about him, because seriously who else would I ask?
Everyone knows who "the guy" was for the Bruins in the early-70's, but is Esposito just a result of Orr and the offensive style the Bruins played (which was also in part because of Orr)?
Arguments for Esposito:
1) I doubt that Esposito on his own would be a 5-time Art Ross winner, but this post by Sprague Cleghorn shows what Esposito's point totals would be without a single shared point with Orr. Assuming that it's a Orr decided to choose another profession/didn't exist scenario, Esposito would have had enough points to win two Art Ross trophies (70-71, 73-74) without a single shared point with Orr. In 68-69, Orr's hypothetical replacement would only need to "boost" Esposito by 4 more points (from 104 to 108) to win the Art Ross.
A likely 3-time Art Ross winner in any era would be considered pretty good. How many players have more than 3 Art Ross wins, ever? Only six, including real-life Esposito.
2) The media and players at the time also seemed to respect Esposito (as a player, at least). From 69-70 through to 74-75, Esposito had two Hart wins, was twice the Hart runner-up, and had two Pearson/Lindsay wins. His toughest competitors were Orr and Bobby Clarke. That's pretty tough, and he occasionally came up on top. Awards voting seems to be a decent way to start to determine how people at the time thought about said players.
Arguments against Esposito:
1) The eye test appears to be the sticking point for a lot of people. Esposito usually parked in front of the net, so he didn't really play a style that people associate with superstar players, perhaps?
2) Bobby Orr's effect on the Bruins on the ice went beyond mere shared points. Without any possession stats, I'm going to assume that it's safe to say that he tilted the ice dramatically in favor of the Bruins, thus giving his linemates more time to try and generate scoring chances. Unfortunately, without possession stats, it's hard to quantify this. This allows some posters to ignore it or argue entirely for it.
Why I care:
1) Curiosity. Raw offensive numbers and measures of dominance over peers (i.e. 1st place vs runner-up in scoring/Vs2, VsX, and the like) seem to show that Esposito was an offensive dynamo in some vague tier between Jagr and Gretzky, but he's either underrated/overrated depending on who you ask on the History of Hockey boards.
2) Plus, someone did point out (correctly) that I'm a youngster who hasn't seen Esposito play day-in day-out, and it seemed prudent to get more opinions before I continued with a discussion that was largely numbers-based on my part.
Everyone knows who "the guy" was for the Bruins in the early-70's, but is Esposito just a result of Orr and the offensive style the Bruins played (which was also in part because of Orr)?
Arguments for Esposito:
1) I doubt that Esposito on his own would be a 5-time Art Ross winner, but this post by Sprague Cleghorn shows what Esposito's point totals would be without a single shared point with Orr. Assuming that it's a Orr decided to choose another profession/didn't exist scenario, Esposito would have had enough points to win two Art Ross trophies (70-71, 73-74) without a single shared point with Orr. In 68-69, Orr's hypothetical replacement would only need to "boost" Esposito by 4 more points (from 104 to 108) to win the Art Ross.
A likely 3-time Art Ross winner in any era would be considered pretty good. How many players have more than 3 Art Ross wins, ever? Only six, including real-life Esposito.
2) The media and players at the time also seemed to respect Esposito (as a player, at least). From 69-70 through to 74-75, Esposito had two Hart wins, was twice the Hart runner-up, and had two Pearson/Lindsay wins. His toughest competitors were Orr and Bobby Clarke. That's pretty tough, and he occasionally came up on top. Awards voting seems to be a decent way to start to determine how people at the time thought about said players.
Arguments against Esposito:
1) The eye test appears to be the sticking point for a lot of people. Esposito usually parked in front of the net, so he didn't really play a style that people associate with superstar players, perhaps?
2) Bobby Orr's effect on the Bruins on the ice went beyond mere shared points. Without any possession stats, I'm going to assume that it's safe to say that he tilted the ice dramatically in favor of the Bruins, thus giving his linemates more time to try and generate scoring chances. Unfortunately, without possession stats, it's hard to quantify this. This allows some posters to ignore it or argue entirely for it.
Why I care:
1) Curiosity. Raw offensive numbers and measures of dominance over peers (i.e. 1st place vs runner-up in scoring/Vs2, VsX, and the like) seem to show that Esposito was an offensive dynamo in some vague tier between Jagr and Gretzky, but he's either underrated/overrated depending on who you ask on the History of Hockey boards.
2) Plus, someone did point out (correctly) that I'm a youngster who hasn't seen Esposito play day-in day-out, and it seemed prudent to get more opinions before I continued with a discussion that was largely numbers-based on my part.