oXo Cube
Power Play Merchant
If these posts are sincere then you should be a much bigger fan of Phil Esposito than you apparently are.
Overrated And Underrated Hockey Players
- Thread starter GlitchMarner
- Start date
If these posts are sincere then you should be a much bigger fan of Phil Esposito than you apparently are.
-Yea, since the season I used he put up 34 points in the playoffs which is one of the Top playoff performances in the last 30 years of the NHL
-Sakic put up 154 points in 1996.
-Regardless, Jagr won the Art Ross in 2001 over Sakic too.
-I should be. But I cant get it out of my head how bad he was outside of Boston and when Orr was hurt in 1968 and hos his stats were no where near his peak without Orr. So my opinion with Esposito is, he was no where near a top player without Bobby Orr.
oXo Cube
Power Play Merchant
When I think overrated the 3 names that come to mind right away for HF are Forsberg, Fedorov and Pronger.
Not necessarily as much by people in this sub-forum - but on HF overall, yes.
Not necessarily as much by people in this sub-forum - but on HF overall, yes.
What about Orr's points without Esposito? That relationship went both ways.
If you delete Gretzky and Lemieux from history - Esposito is the one who broke all the record books open. Definitely agree with him being one of the names often very underrated.
-In Orr's last 3 seasons of his career after he won the Art Ross, he played a total of 36 games, 12 games per season. His career was over because of injuries.
Hockey Outsider
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- Jan 16, 2005
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Keep in mind that any career average stat is going to be biased in favour of players who either retired young, or are in/just past their primes.
For example, adjusted points per game tells you that Joe Sakic is a better scorer than Jaromir Jagr, which makes no sense. (VsX per game tells you that they're even - and that conclusion is also falls).
The reason (in this case) is because Sakic played just 59 games (4% of his career total) after turning 37. Jagr played 460 (27%). Comparing their averages is misleading, because you're really comparing Sakic (basically from age 19 to 38) to Jagr (basically from age 18 to 44, with a few years skipped in the middle). Of course Sakic's going to look better - he retired before his level of play decreased. It doesn't make sense for Jagr's legacy to be diminished because he played well into his mid forties (leading a division winner in scoring at age 43!) - but not as well as he did when he was 25.
Points per game is fine if you want to estimate ability (rather than pure production). But it has to be based on comparable ages, or else the result is meaningless. Below is VsX, points per game, based on seven years. (There's nothing magic about seven - easy to calculate over another set of years). But I think this is a better approximation of the best per-game scorers in NHL history:
| Players | Seven years |
| Wayne Gretzky | 1.565 |
| Mario Lemieux | 1.39 |
| Phil Esposito | 1.312 |
| Gordie Howe | 1.219 |
| Bobby Orr | 1.215 |
| Guy Lafleur | 1.103 |
| Jaromir Jagr | 1.087 |
| Sidney Crosby | 1.087 |
| Bobby Hull | 1.076 |
| Stan Mikita | 1.067 |
| Jean Beliveau | 1.056 |
| Ted Lindsay | 1.047 |
| Marcel Dionne | 1.044 |
| Syl Apps Sr | 1.029 |
| Bill Cowley | 1.024 |
| Bernie Geoffrion | 1.012 |
| Maurice Richard | 1.006 |
| Evgeni Malkin | 1.004 |
| Charlie Conacher | 1 |
| Howie Morenz | 0.992 |
| Mike Bossy | 0.971 |
| Alex Ovechkin | 0.97 |
| Andy Bathgate | 0.963 |
| Bryan Trottier | 0.962 |
| Eric Lindros | 0.958 |
| Joe Thornton | 0.945 |
| Steve Yzerman | 0.942 |
| Joe Sakic | 0.94 |
| Busher Jackson | 0.933 |
| Elmer Lach | 0.929 |
| Jari Kurri | 0.929 |
| Peter Forsberg | 0.927 |
| Paul Coffey | 0.926 |
| Bill Cook | 0.923 |
| Jean Ratelle | 0.922 |
| Max Bentley | 0.921 |
| Peter Stastny | 0.92 |
| Patrick Kane | 0.918 |
| Sweeney Schriner | 0.917 |
| Frank Boucher | 0.911 |
| Bobby Clarke | 0.907 |
| Doug Bentley | 0.906 |
| Norm Ullman | 0.906 |
| Frank Mahovlich | 0.905 |
| Mark Messier | 0.904 |
| Teemu Selanne | 0.901 |
| Gordie Drillon | 0.898 |
| John Bucyk | 0.895 |
| Nels Stewart | 0.891 |
| Martin St. Louis | 0.889 |
-Your work is time consuming but thought out, I respect that. Can you run all these players and put a cap at the age of 31 years old?
-Since most players retired before 30 or 31ish 1980 and prior, and players playing long careers like Jagr hurt their long term stats, I want to see an even playing field.
Hockey Outsider
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I'll check when I get home, but I don't think I have player ages in the database. But by picking best 7 years, players have a chance to boost their results if they have a good season in their 30s (for example 2006 was one of Jagr's best three or four years - he was 33), but they're not penalized if they're playing at a lower level than they did while at their peak.
-What determines a players best 7 years as that is subjective? As we saw, I dont agree with another poster in what Joe Sakic's best year is.
Eric Lindros underrated no doubt. The complex nature of his injuries and feud with Clarke cast a shadow over his career, but he was the complete package.
Last edited:
Dennis Bonvie
Registered User
And this is your weakness in evaluating players.
Points are the only thing you consider.
Johnny Engine
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It's the 7 seasons with the highest VsX scores.
Also, the generalization about
This isn't really solid as generalizations go. Most players don't make it very far or at all into their 30s because they're not that good. This has been true for the entire history of the game. However, when it comes to elite-level scorers, which is what interests you, the average longevity for those players has waxed and waned over time due to a wide variety of factors. Note the number of late-O6 greats who were still kicking around in the early-80s (Hull, Keon, Howe, almost Mahovlich by a couple of years) while others whose athletic prime fell in the 50s (Beliveau, Plante, Delvecchio) also kicked around for a long time.
It's notable that the very best players born in the 50s (the Islanders' big-3) seemed to burn out faster than you'd think, the next generation (Messier, Bourque, Yzerman) were right back at career longevity as an endurance sport. Also note that most of Jagr's peer group - (Kariya, Lindros, Forsberg, almost Selanne barring a late Selannaissance), were picked off by injuries while Jagr stayed healthy.
Think about the various reasons why this might be.
Hockey Outsider
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There's no magic to seven. It can be any length of time, per game or total production, consecutive or not. It's (fairly) easy to run the appropriate query.
There's no subjectivity in which years are included - it's whatever gives each player the highest possible score. Although I don't have the numbers in front of me, I'm positive that for Sakic it would be 2001.
Doctor No
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VanIslander
A 19-year ATDer on HfBoards
Bernie Geoffrion is very underrated.
Beliveau, Richard and Geoffrion were all on the 5-consecutive-cup dynasty team and yet Boom Boom scored SIGNIFICANTLY MORE playoff points over those 5 dynasty postseasons, 68 points to Beliveau's 55 and Richard's 44 (yeah Rocket missed most of one of the five but it doesn't make up the huge gap in points).
Plus Bernie won the Hart trophy just before and just after the dynasty. He just wasn't the sexy hero archetypes of Jean Beliveau and Rocket Richard.
There is toooooo big of a gap between the rankings of the other two and Geoffrion. That's the point here.
The fact that Bernie had to play on the 2nd line yet be so dominant was remarkable.
Beliveau, Richard and Geoffrion were all on the 5-consecutive-cup dynasty team and yet Boom Boom scored SIGNIFICANTLY MORE playoff points over those 5 dynasty postseasons, 68 points to Beliveau's 55 and Richard's 44 (yeah Rocket missed most of one of the five but it doesn't make up the huge gap in points).
Plus Bernie won the Hart trophy just before and just after the dynasty. He just wasn't the sexy hero archetypes of Jean Beliveau and Rocket Richard.
There is toooooo big of a gap between the rankings of the other two and Geoffrion. That's the point here.
The fact that Bernie had to play on the 2nd line yet be so dominant was remarkable.
Canadiens1958
Registered User
Previous rankings were very RS centric.
Dickie Moore says hi. Only two time Ross winner employed in a checking role against Howe and Bathgate.
crobro
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Canadiens1958
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