Round 2, Vote 9 (HOH Top Wingers)

[Hardyvan123]

Hardy-Lafleur led team team in scoring 8 times,led team in assists 8 times-Never played with all star centermen,he made Steve Shutt.From 1980 to 83 missed nearly 60 games.Played with Chabot,Walter,Acton,Napier.Would have had 8 straight 100pts seasons if he were not hurt.Lafleur never played with star forwards-please dont tell me shutt

I agree with you, especially on Shutt but his playoff resume outside of his peak is awfully weak for his ranking all time and if you want to take a bout players who were hurt and had worse team support in their legacies, Exhibit A is Paul Kariya this round.

Guy has an incredible peak 75-80 and then 3 really good years in PPG but then again
1.37 (10th in the league)
1.27 (18th in the league)
1.12 (20th place guy had 1.14 PPG)

PPG in 81,82,83 is a huge drop off even for Guy

The point still stands for Kovalchuk he has 8 (9) top 10 goal scoring finishes, that's elite territory....period, never mind for this round.

 

[Dennis Bonvie]

Kovalchuk did totally suck defensively for the large majority of his career

Indeed.

Good luck finding anyone else with his numbers and a career plus/minus of -116.

 

[thom]

Valid pt-But from 1980-83-missed 60 games-yes we was not quite same after 1980.Reason and excuses vary.But 80-81.81-82 if healthy he has another 200 pts.Check his line mates and compare his stats no one on habs forward lines compares.Lafleur had nearly 400 more assists than his centermen Lemaire and over that amount with Mahalovich.He had his 100 pts seasons with 3 different centermen-P.Mahalovich,Lemaire,Larouche .As a winger excluding injured season 1974-75-he had more assists than his linemates by a mile.1980-83-Played with Napier,Acton,Wickenhiser,Walter,Chabot-pretty sad when you think about it

 

[unknown33]

Kovalchuk had a historically high PP usage, I don't know if his ES/PP scoring ratio was unusual other than 2005/06 though.

http://hfboards.mandatory.com/showthread.php?t=767772

Not claming that he wasn't awful defensively, just could ALSO be a factor for his terrible +/-

 

[MXD]

Indeed.

Good luck finding anyone else with his numbers and a career plus/minus of -116.

While everybody here is aware of the flaws of +/-, I concur it's it's... Pretty bad.

Overpass numbers hinted at that as well.

 

[Hardyvan123]

Indeed.

Good luck finding anyone else with his numbers and a career plus/minus of -116.

sure playing on lousy teams then being a forward on the PP for a team with limited offensive Dmen can do that to a career.

lots of star players with a career plus/minus one wouldn't expect Mario Being exhibit #1 there.

 

[MXD]

sure playing on lousy teams then being a forward on the PP for a team with limited offensive Dmen can do that to a career.

lots of star players with a career plus/minus one wouldn't expect Mario Being exhibit #1 there.

Hummmm... Lemieux is a career +115.

If you are saying that, for his whole career, Kovalchuk roughly equals Lemieux past 36 years old (where he went -43 in 103 games - 3 seasons), well, I'd probably concur.

 

[tarheelhockey]

Maybe but Lafleur got alot of mileage on basically 6 great seasons and some so-so play outside of it, especially in the playoffs.

If Kovalchuk's peak seasons were anything close to the level of Lafleur's, it would be a different conversation.

At this point of the project any guy with 8 (and we really should give him credit for 9 as the lockout year is basically like a war year) top 10 goal scoring finishes who didn't totally suck defensively deserves serious consideration.

I agree and I don't mean he shouldn't be taken seriously. I'm just saying I do think his post-30 seasons are meaningful, in a negative way.

FWIW, here are the players we haven't inducted yet who show up on the top-10 goal scoring lists most frequently:

PLAYER | TOP 5- | TOP 10 | TOTAL
Roy Conacher | 6 | 8 | 14
Ilya Kovalchuk | 4 | 8 | 12
Gordie Drillon | 5 | 6 | 11
Luc Robitaille | 2 | 9 | 11
Michel Goulet | 4 | 6 | 10
John LeClair | 4 | 6 | 10
Peter Bondra | 4 | 6 | 10

Yeah, he's right up there as a goal-scorer at this point.

 

[MXD]

If Kovalchuk's peak seasons were anything close to the level of Lafleur's, it would be a different conversation.



I agree and I don't mean he shouldn't be taken seriously. I'm just saying I do think his post-30 seasons are meaningful, in a negative way.

FWIW, here are the players we haven't inducted yet who show up on the top-10 goal scoring lists most frequently:

PLAYER | TOP 5- | TOP 10 | TOTAL
Roy Conacher | 6 | 8 | 14
Ilya Kovalchuk | 4 | 8 | 12
Gordie Drillon | 5 | 6 | 11
Luc Robitaille | 2 | 9 | 11
Michel Goulet | 4 | 6 | 10
John LeClair | 4 | 6 | 10
Peter Bondra | 4 | 6 | 10

Yeah, he's right up there as a goal-scorer at this point.

And all of them don't scream "negatives" as much as Kovalchuk either, with the possible lone exception of Drillon. I mean, even Bondra has that "elite SHG threat" going for him.

Now, Kovalchuk was a better winger than Bondra (who, at first glance, isn't a Top-60 Winger of All-time), don't get me wrong about that...

 

[MXD]

Personnal wishlist for next round :

John Leclair, Bert Olmstead, Bob Gainey and Alex Yakushev

My hopes are low. Just because their case would be very, very different from what we've seen so far. Especially Gainey. They aren't even the players that I'd consider as the best players not available (though Leclair probably isn't that far from that...), just because it may bring a whole change of pace.

 

[tarheelhockey]

And all of them don't scream "negatives" as much as Kovalchuk either, with the possible lone exception of Drillon.

To me, Conacher and Robitaille are distinguished in that group for having a great collection of prime scoring seasons AND longevity to boot. Bondra and Leclair aren't very far behind in that respect.

I see Goulet, Drillon and Kovalchuk being very close together, with Goulet being slightly ahead due to his better roundedness. If Drillon shows up next round as I predict he will, that means Kovy came available at just the right spot.

 

[Captain Bowie]

Personnal wishlist for next round :

John Leclair, Bert Olmstead, Bob Gainey and Alex Yakushev

My hopes are low. Just because their case would be very, very different from what we've seen so far. Especially Gainey. They aren't even the players that I'd consider as the best players not available (though Leclair probably isn't that far from that...), just because it may bring a whole change of pace.

I have LeClair as one of the next guys to come up on my list. I also am hoping for Alfredsson for comparisons sake to Hossa and Kovalchuk.

I see now that I highly overrated him on my initial list, but Drillon is the guy I have the highest not to come up yet.

Yakushev wouldn't be a bad time either.

 

[overpass]

Kovalchuk had a historically high PP usage, I don't know if his ES/PP scoring ratio was unusual other than 2005/06 though.

http://hfboards.mandatory.com/showthread.php?t=767772

Not claming that he wasn't awful defensively, just could ALSO be a factor for his terrible +/-

Players who play the point on the PP tend to play more minutes and score fewer points/minute (i.e. they get a point on a lower percentage of team PP goals than the forwards do.). So Kovalchuk's high usage didn't necessarily mean high PP points.

Here's an interesting point on Kovalchuk that hasn't been mentioned. Over the course of his career, his teams allowed about 1.5 times as many shorthanded goals against compared to the average NHL team. That's very unusual - most players end up close to league average. (Ray Bourque had the opposite effect - his teams allowed only half the SHGA of the average team.)

It follows that Kovalchuk did have his plus-minus dragged down by a high number of shorthanded goals against. But he was probably to blame for at least a few of those.

Does anyone else think that Kovalchuk was probably the worst coached NHLer in recent history? I don't know if he was uncoachable or if the Thrashers' staff didn't try very hard, but it seems like a lot of his negatives could have been sorted out on a team with better coaching and leadership.

Then again, Jason Spezza was drafted at the same time, by a much better team, coached by Jacques Martin, and never became a good defensive player. So I guess you never know.

 

[Dennis Bonvie]

sure playing on lousy teams then being a forward on the PP for a team with limited offensive Dmen can do that to a career.

lots of star players with a career plus/minus one wouldn't expect Mario Being exhibit #1 there.

Please, feel free to mention a few star players that were over -100 for their careers.

 

[MXD]

.

Does anyone else think that Kovalchuk was probably the worst coached NHLer in recent history? I don't know if he was uncoachable or if the Thrashers' staff didn't try very hard, but it seems like a lot of his negatives could have been sorted out on a team with better coaching and leadership.

Then again, Jason Spezza was drafted at the same time, by a much better team, coached by Jacques Martin, and never became a good defensive player. So I guess you never know.

I don't know what you mean about "worst coached".

The player that benefitted from the better coaching (on a personnal basis)?

or

The player that played for the teams with the worst coaches/head coaches?


Going up to assistant coaches is a bit complicated -- they aren't all well-known. If we leave purely on the Head Coach level... well, the following were Kovalchuk's coaches, omitting any coach who isn't there for more than a half-season : for the purposes of this list, a lockout shortened season is deemed to be a season :

Curt Fraser
Bob Hartley
Don Waddell (was there for more than a season when he canned Hartley)
John Anderson
Jacques Lemaire
John MacLean
Peter DeBoer

That's not exactly a great list, but still Lemaire, Hartley are/were good coaches. I have no opinion on DeBoer, but he doesn't scream bad. Somebody like TDDM might have more valuable insight about him.

 

[tarheelhockey]

The fact that he had that many coaches (NOT including short-termers) in such a short time is crazy.

 

[MXD]

The fact that he had that many coaches (NOT including short-termers) in such a short time is crazy.

Well, actually, there's no other short-timers (Waddell between Fraser and Hartley, but he did coach for a whole season when he canned Hartley), and I don't know why I included MacLean, other than to name a really terrible coach. Lemaire was obviously going to be short-lived, due to age. Was not there for a long time under Anderson.

 

[Theokritos]

Please, feel free to mention a few star players that were over -100 for their careers.

Only looking at forwards and being, ehm, generous with the word "star player", we could come up with Wendel Clark (–129), Bernie Federko (–132) and Vincent Lecavalier (–137). That's it more or less.

Compare:
Dale Hawerchuk –92
Alexei Yashin –83
Trevor Linden –64
Doug Weight –58
Aleš Hemský –56
Eric Staal –49
Phil Kessel –42
...

 

[MXD]

Only looking at forwards and being, ehm, generous with the word "star player", we could come up with Wendel Clark (–129), Bernie Federko (–132) and Vincent Lecavalier (–137). That's it more or less.

Compare:
Dale Hawerchuk –92
Alexei Yashin –83
Trevor Linden –64
Doug Weight –58
Aleš Hemský –56
Eric Staal –49
Phil Kessel –42
...

The underlined are really heavy '80ies influenced...

 

[Theokritos]

The underlined are really heavy '80ies influenced...

Which makes Kovalchuk look even more "outstanding".

 

[TheDevilMadeMe]

I decided to have fun with this one. Worst plus/minuses among 300+ goal scorers since 1995:

Olli Jokinen -139 (1192 games)
Vincent LeCavalier: -136 (1122 games)
Ilya Kovalchuk: -116 (816 games)
Ray Whitney - 66 (1241 games)
Ryan Smythe -54 (1270 games)

That's a pretty huge gap between the "top" three and the rest.

http://www.hockey-reference.com/pla...=gt&c4val=&order_by=plus_minus&order_by_asc=Y

Kovalchuk "accomplished" this feat in many fewer games than the rest of them too. Next "best" among guys with fewer than 1000 games is Rick Nash at -38.

Obviously, playing for a terrible defensive team most of his career is a major factor here, but still.

 

[Epsilon]

I decided to have fun with this one. Worst plus/minuses among 300+ goal scorers since 1995:

Olli Jokinen -139
Vincent LeCavalier: -136
Ilya Kovalchuk: -116
Ray Whitney - 66
Ryan Smythe -54

That's a pretty huge gap between the "top" three and the rest.

http://www.hockey-reference.com/pla...=gt&c4val=&order_by=plus_minus&order_by_asc=Y

One thing that stands out about that is the obvious common link between the "top" 3 on that list.

 

[Dennis Bonvie]

Only looking at forwards and being, ehm, generous with the word "star player", we could come up with Wendel Clark (–129), Bernie Federko (–132) and Vincent Lecavalier (–137). That's it more or less.

Compare:
Dale Hawerchuk –92
Alexei Yashin –83
Trevor Linden –64
Doug Weight –58
Aleš Hemský –56
Eric Staal –49
Phil Kessel –42
...

Good job!

Didn't think there were that many.

Will say in Lecavalier's defense (irony) that he was -88 before he was 22 years old.

 

[Theokritos]

I decided to have fun with this one.

More fun: Contemporaries of Kovalchuk already voted in or eligible now.

Ilya Kovalchuk –116
Mark Recchi +/–0
Martin St. Louis +23
Paul Kariya +31
Alexander Ovechkin +45
Jarome Iginla +83
Teemu Selänne +95
Brendan Shanahan +151
Marián Hossa +211
Jaromír Jágr +291

 

[tarheelhockey]

Considering Rod Brind'Amour is 7th on that list, I wouldn't read too much into it.