if we put any comparison between bure and the other players in this round aside, i think moving into the next rounds we need to take jetsalternate's argument seriously.
he has painstakingly pointed out that bure was fine defensively from his rookie year until partway through his last season in vancouver. that's not how i remember '98, but i'm willing to accept that it wasn't until the end when he started goalsucking based on one of his previous videos from that season, in which bure played in a way that flat out did not correspond to my memories of him from that season. but even if don't buy the "he was fine for part of '98" argument, bure was fine defensively up to the '98 season. he also has shown, convincingly, that bure was fine defensively in new york. not a large sample, but that just leaves his florida years and some, possibly all, of '98. the point behind sharing that information about new york is not to give him "credit" for that year; it's to show that bure wasn't inherently a defensive nothing, either for his entire career (which of course would falsify the majority of his career in vancouver), or after his knee problems (because he was fine in new york, so he theoretically could have done it in florida too).
now i am totally fine with the argument that those were bure's highest scoring seasons and that if we accept his goal scoring dominance in those years, we also have to consider that playing one-dimensionally helped him achieve those numbers. i don't know that i agree with it, but that's a debate we probably have to have.
but the real debate, as i suggested upthread, is that we have to figure out what to do with those 2-3 defensively bad years. we know it was a choice, so how do we treat that choice? do we acknowledge that bure had to play that way due to the teams he played on and that under normal circumstances he would have played in the same defensively fine way he did for the rest of his career? and if so, do we therefore excuse his incompleteness in those years in the same way we excuse the lower offensive numbers of guys thrust into highly defensive situations (previously i cited brian propp, but maybe names like scott stevens, jacques lemaire, dave keon, and igor larionov make more sense)?
the argument that none of this matters in this round, relative to the longer completer careers of st. louis and iginla, is a fair point. however, i think moving forward we can't just ignore what jetsalternate is saying about the anomalousness of bure's 2-3 one-dimensional years. what we choose to do with that information, and what conclusions we want to draw from it, is obviously up for debate.
