Phil Kessel ranks 43rd on TSN's Top 50 NHL players

xyzz

Registered User
Aug 18, 2008
658
0
Yep, and infallibty rains supreme in the NHL correct?

infallibility, reigns.

These are guys that get paid based on their hockey knowledge. How much is your hockey knowledge worth? (aimed at 90% of the basement dweller members here)
 

Grant

LL Genius
Jan 16, 2012
14,193
1
London
Current season success seems to play a large role in where people get ranked.

Someone like Bergeron last year was ranked 35th and this year 16th. He had pretty much identical points and he is always known for his great defensive play. But this year they made it to the cup finals while last year they were knocked out first round.

Tavares is another example of this. PPG both last year and this but last season the team sucked and he was ranked 20th, this time the team made the playoffs and he was 13th.

Kopitar very similar point totals. Last year won the cup and ranked 10th, this year didn't make the cup and ranked 18th.

Keith went from 49th last year to 20th this year. Guess why!!! :P

I would continue with more examples but it seems to all be the same.

If the leafs were to have made it to the conference finals lets say, Kessel may be ranked top 25 for all we know. I don't care all that much though, after the players in the 30-50 range in general are all very comparable and could make arguments for each player being the best in that group.
 

Mess

Global Moderator
Feb 27, 2002
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That sounds like a BS reason to rank certain players ahead of others. So just because Kessel is a winger, that makes him less deserving of the top 30 or 20? The list is a joke, TSN is a joke.

Winger is the least important position on a winning team as G,D and C all play more critical positions and impact a game result more.

NHL GMs and Coaches simply place less value in wingers in team building strategies and its a fact.
 

Mess

Global Moderator
Feb 27, 2002
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Since TSN is Toronto based it would make sense that either Nonis or Carlyle were among those involved in this ranking process.
 

theIceWookie

#LeafHysteriaAlert
Dec 19, 2010
9,039
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infallibility, reigns.

These are guys that get paid based on their hockey knowledge. How much is your hockey knowledge worth? (aimed at 90% of the basement dweller members here)

Getting paid is hardly an accurate way to determine someone's knowledge on hockey.

I'd be willing to bet that a great many of those "basement dweller member's" you talk about would be considered very knowledgeable compared to many executives.

Coaching and GMs are very different skills than scouting is. That list is very much scouting. There's a reason that lot's of GM's hand off the scouting duties to their head scouts.

The point is GM's and Coaches make mistakes, and make them often. Making comments like "oh they probably know more than you cause they're paid" is just dumb. Yeah, there is a reason they are paid but that doesn't mean they are infallible in their knowledge and every decision they make is correct. It's quite likely that they have overrated more than a few player's and underrated others
 

Oiltankjob Fail

Registered User
Feb 10, 2013
6,686
0
Complete and utter joke , this from A Oiler fan top 10 minimum most dangerous player in league ,at least top 20 best player.
 

FlareKnight

Registered User
Jun 26, 2006
19,822
1,707
Alberta
Yep, an interesting thing to check out but definitely nothing important either.

Shows the impact of having multiple skilled guys who can play together. It adds up which raises how they are viewed by the guys compiling the lists. I mean if Lupul had a healthy season and was playing with Kessel they both probably would have been higher up. Team success doesn't hurt either since the further you go in the playoffs the more you get to be seen.

Doesn't matter in the end, but makes sense how certain guys end up where they did.
 

achtungbaby

Registered User
Oct 31, 2006
4,792
25
Neal is a case where it seems he is just ranked too high, overrated I suppose is the word. If Kessel is 43rd, I'd think Neal would have to be around 45-48.

Neal was a surprise for me as well. I'd also have him ranked in the lower 40's.
 

BayStreetBullies*

Guest
Winger is the least important position on a winning team as G,D and C all play more critical positions and impact a game result more.

NHL GMs and Coaches simply place less value in wingers in team building strategies and its a fact.

But the top 50 ranking isn't about team building strategies. And if we're talking about impact, then that doesn't really exclude wingers. In the past 10 years, 5 of the Art Ross and 4 of the Hart trophy winners have been wingers.

TSN's list is highly suspect, and that's a fact.
 

Future

Registered User
Feb 8, 2011
10,705
3,506
Ontario
Are you seriously telling me all these GM's and coaches had nothing better to do than to make a top 50 list for TSN? Seriously?

Wasn't Phil ranked in the top 15 players, actually by the players last season anyways?


Couture, Hall, Neal, etc. Ahead of Kessel. Lmfao. I remember when Tyler Freaking Seguin was ranked like 10 spots ahead of Kessel in their rankings last year.
 

BayStreetBullies*

Guest
Are you seriously telling me all these GM's and coaches had nothing better to do than to make a top 50 list for TSN? Seriously?

Funny how these GMs and coaches are never actually named. Must be to protect them from all of us "basement dwellers". :sarcasm:
 

DD03

3D
Mar 15, 2010
21,734
9
Pretty sure Duthie and them were saying that they had their own lists too. Because he was saying that he tells players he had them high on his list but the other guys didn't.
 

ponder

Registered User
Jul 11, 2007
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Polls of "hockey people" are just as prone to emotional decisions over logic as polls of fans. For example, Patrick Kane is really the same player he was a year ago, but this year they ranked him as the 9th best player in the league, while last year he was ranked 38th best. Their logic is clouded because he won the cup, pure and simple. Yeah, he was a significant part of that, but team accomplishments really should not play much into individual player rankings. Great players on weak teams will never win the cup, weak players on great teams can win cups, cups wins say very little about the ability of an individual player.

In a similar vein, how about Patrice Bergeron at 16th, and Mikko Koivu at 50th? These guys are more or less on dead even levels as players, but Bergeron has been getting tonnes of press on a great Boston team, while Koivu gets very little on the out-of-the-limelight Wild, so he gets ranked 34 spots lower. For that matter, what are guys like Spezza, Staal, Thornton, Backstrom, etc. doing so much lower than Bergeron? All of these guys are as good or better.

Kessel seems a bit low to me, but really all sorts of guys are either way lower or way higher than where I'd rank them. I think there's clearly a lot of illogical thinking in these rankings. You can bet your ass that:
- If the Wild win the cup, Koivu will jump from 50th to ~10th-15th, even if he does not improve at all as a player
- Nash will jump into the top 10 if the Rangers win the cup, even if he does not improve at all as a player
- Spezza will jump into the top 10-15 if he stays healthy and the Sens make a deep playoff run, even if he does not improve at all as a player (also, if this happens Bobby Ryan will go from not even getting an honourable mention to top 35)
etc.
 

Stephen

Moderator
Feb 28, 2002
77,840
51,501
43 is a bit low for Phil. ~30 would have been more reasonable in my opinion.

That makes no sense at all. If Phil Kessel is somewhere around 30th, it would mean that there are a significant number of teams that have better players than Phil, and a good number of teams that have multiple players better than Phil.

Considering he came off a 2 year stretch where he produced numbers comparable to John "God" Tavares, that is not possible. Kessel should be slotted in the low teens to mid 20s.
 

-DeMo-

Registered User
Nov 12, 2006
5,441
351
Huntsville Ontario
Polls of "hockey people" are just as prone to emotional decisions over logic as polls of fans. For example, Patrick Kane is really the same player he was a year ago, but this year they ranked him as the 9th best player in the league, while last year he was ranked 38th best. Their logic is clouded because he won the cup, pure and simple. Yeah, he was a significant part of that, but team accomplishments really should not play much into individual player rankings. Great players on weak teams will never win the cup, weak players on great teams can win cups, cups wins say very little about the ability of an individual player.

In a similar vein, how about Patrice Bergeron at 16th, and Mikko Koivu at 50th? These guys are more or less on dead even levels as players, but Bergeron has been getting tonnes of press on a great Boston team, while Koivu gets very little on the out-of-the-limelight Wild, so he gets ranked 34 spots lower. For that matter, what are guys like Spezza, Staal, Thornton, Backstrom, etc. doing so much lower than Bergeron? All of these guys are as good or better.

Kessel seems a bit low to me, but really all sorts of guys are either way lower or way higher than where I'd rank them. I think there's clearly a lot of illogical thinking in these rankings. You can bet your ass that:
- If the Wild win the cup, Koivu will jump from 50th to ~10th-15th, even if he does not improve at all as a player
- Nash will jump into the top 10 if the Rangers win the cup, even if he does not improve at all as a player
- Spezza will jump into the top 10-15 if he stays healthy and the Sens make a deep playoff run, even if he does not improve at all as a player (also, if this happens Bobby Ryan will go from not even getting an honourable mention to top 35)
etc.

completely disagree with your first sentiment in 2011-2012 Chicago finished 6th in the west and lost in the first round partly because players like Kane were poor, then with basically minimal chances last year they came out and were the most dominate team in the NHL because players like Kane took his game to a different level. Kane had 66 points in 11-12 in 82 games where as he had 55 in 47 last year(95.9 point pace over 82 games) how that's not stepping your game up to a new level I don't know. he wasn't the only one to do it and that's why they won the cup.
 

Ace88*

Guest
Wow. Hall above Kessel by 4 spots is absurdly...just not correct. Looking at the rest of the list, i'm sure that literally everyone will be able to take issue with at least one ranking
 

Kyle Doobas*

Guest
I have no earthly idea how Kessel can be ranked behind Zach Parise, Rick Nash, James Neal or Milan Lucic at this point, as far as wingers are concerned.

I feel like a lot of centers get ranked ahead of guys like Kessel purely because of the position they play as well. I mean, I don't see what Tavares does for the Islanders that Kessel doesn't do for the Leafs, and even Tavares is a bit underrated on this list (how the heck is Zetterberg a better player than him at this point in his career?).
 

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