Prime Peter Forsberg vs MacKinnon now

[Ben White]

Who’d you pick to start a franchise? Prime Peter Forsberg (when healthy) or Nathan MacKinnon now.

Reg. season
Forsberg 885 p in 708 games for his career
MacKinnon 657 p in 644 games at age 27

Playoffs:
Forsberg 171 p in 151 games for his career
MacKinnon 93 p in 70 games at age 27

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[Sasha Orlov]

Forsberg AINEC

 

[cvaicunas]

Who’d you pick to start a franchise? Prime Peter Forsberg (when healthy) or Nathan MacKinnon now.

Reg. season
Forsberg 885 p in 708 games for his career
MacKinnon 657 p in 644 games at age 27

Playoffs:
Forsberg 171 p in 151 games for his career
MacKinnon 93 p in 70 games at age 27

As a Wings fan, Forsberg. I was terrified every time he was playing against the Wings. The guy was an absolute beast.

 

[NOTENOUGHRYJOTHINGS]

Forsberg was better at everything. And MacGinnon misses a lot of time to injury too.

 

[Video Nasty]

Forsberg was better at everything. And MacGinnon misses a lot of time to injury too.

MacKinnon has played 644 out 709 available games over his entire career. That’s 90.8% availability. Even if you want to contain it to just the past 5 seasons, working on the 6th this year, when he “became” MacKinnon, he has still played 344 out of 378 games or 91.0%.

If he plays 65 of the remaining 76 games on Colorado’s schedule, he’ll have played more games than Forsberg did in the regular season during his entire career by the end of just his age 27 season.

Forsberg was better, no doubt. But MacKinnon being a notch below in talent while being dependable to play the games should make him a fairly easy choice, if it were not for fantasy land making Forsberg something he simply wasn’t: a dependable healthy player.

I ended up choosing Forsberg under the shackles of the question.

 

[bobholly39]

Forsberg was often not healthy.

Healthy? No reason to pick MacKinnon. Comparable level of offense - and Forsberg much better defensively. And although MacKinnon has been crazy good in playoffs so far, Forsberg is probably an even better choice there, or at least they cancel each other out.

I think if you didn't add the caveat of "when healthy" - it might be closer. Because Forsberg was more of a question mark there.

 

[JaegerDice]

I love (and deeply fear) Mackinnon, but outside of straight-line speed, I'm not sure there's anything he does better than Forsberg.

Forsberg is on a short list of guys like Bure that I feel yo could drop into the modern, faster, more structured, all-around better NHL, and they wouldn't miss a beat. He was ahead of the curve in so many areas.

 

[NordiquesForeva]

Up through his age 27 season (2000-01; he would miss the entirety of the 2001-02 season), Forsberg played in 86% of his team's games, compared to 91% for MacKinnon up through the end of last season (his age 26 season). MacKinnon played in 638 regular season games, compared to 466 for Forsberg (a function of (i) MacKinnon entering the league when he was 18, compared to 21 for Forsberg; and (ii) the higher number of missed Forsberg games. If you're looking to start a franchise, not knowing how the remainder of MacKinnon's career will play out, you have to ask yourself whether Forsberg's on-ice contributions make up for the lower number of games vis-a-vis MacKinnon. I'm not sure if they do, honestly. The big edge that Forsberg usually has - playoff performance - doesn't really exist (or if it does exist, its not a clear edge) versus MacKinnon. Forsberg's certainly the better per-game player and the equation changes dramatically if Forsberg comes over to North America earlier, but measured right now MacKinnon has played a little over 2 seasons of more of (mostly quality) games than Forsberg did at a comparable age.

 

[North Cole]

Why is there so many Forsberg vs Mack threads? Was there some big argument I missed? I'd probably take Forsberg without the qualifier too.

 

[Foppberg]

Lol Forsberg.

 

[SeanMoneyHands]

Forsberg even at 70% was better than most in the league, the guy was a machine.

 

[Ruthervin]

Who’d you pick to start a franchise? Prime Peter Forsberg (when healthy) or Nathan MacKinnon now.

Reg. season
Forsberg 885 p in 708 games for his career
MacKinnon 657 p in 644 games at age 27

Playoffs:
Forsberg 171 p in 151 games for his career
MacKinnon 93 p in 70 games at age 27

As awesome as MacKinnon is, prime Peter Forsberg was just something else........even if it was for a very brief time (i.e. injuries derailing him). For me, prime Peter Forsberg is up there with McDavid and Crosby and I know I might get flamed for putting St. Peter up that high. The guy was just a freak of nature in his prime, you just had to see it.