Top-100 Hockey Players of All-Time (Part 2)

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MXD

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Sure but Moore has a very short window of very good to elite play in his career and Richard's offense is significantly less than Malkin.

Well, first of all, no one compared Moore to Malkin.

Second, their offense can't be compared at face value due to Richard's ridiculously low PP opportunities, because of the team he played on. The panel judged this was an extremely signficant factor. As far as I'm concerned, both went exactly where they should have.
 
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quoipourquoi

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I don't think it was a Canadian bias as much as an NHL bias. We uniformly ranked Soviets too low.

I kinda think the group was way too lenient on Makarov and Fetisov and their placement back-to-back just screams package deal. Visually, they’re absolutely stunning players, but so were several post-Soviet Union Russian players (Fedorov and Bure come to mind) who didn’t receive the same benefit of the doubt because they played the vast majority of their careers in the NHL rather than one in which they were on the league champions literally every season.

Is there a substantial gap between being MVP in the Soviet Union and being the best Russian player in the NHL in a given year? Because to me, if Fedorov is still a Soviet Union player from 1991-2003 (a 13-year period that would match Fetisov’s on a team that, again, were league champions literally every season), doesn’t he just go to town on that award?

1991 - Leading Russian scorer in NHL
1992 - Leading Russian scorer in NHL (Selke nominee)
1994 - Leading Russian scorer in NHL (Hart, Selke winner)
1996 - Leading Russian scorer in NHL (5th in Hart, Selke winner)
2003 - Leading Russian scorer in NHL

Granted, there’s a gap there from 1997-2002 (where Fedorov was a ~20 point player for three championships), but in a non-Bowman situation, he might even be in a position to challenge Makarov’s 9 scoring titles.
 
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The Macho King

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I kinda think the group was way too lenient on Makarov and Fetisov and their placement back-to-back just screams package deal. Visually, they’re absolutely stunning players, but so were several post-Soviet Union Russian players (Fedorov and Bure come to mind) who didn’t receive the same benefit of the doubt because they played the vast majority of their careers in the NHL rather than one in which they were on the league champions literally every season.

Is there a substantial gap between being MVP in the Soviet Union and being the best Russian player in the NHL in a given year? Because to me, if Fedorov is still a Soviet Union player from 1991-2003 (a 13-year period that would match Fetisov’s on a team that, again, were league champions literally every season), doesn’t he just go to town on that award?

1991 - Leading Russian scorer in NHL
1992 - Leading Russian scorer in NHL (Selke nominee)
1994 - Leading Russian scorer in NHL (Hart, Selke winner)
1996 - Leading Russian scorer in NHL (5th in Hart, Selke winner)
2003 - Leading Russian scorer in NHL

Granted, there’s a gap there from 1997-2002 (where Fedorov was a ~20 point player for three championships), but in a non-Bowman situation, he might even be in a position to challenge Makarov’s 9 scoring titles.
Putting it out there - Soviet players are just *hard to rank*. And while your Fedorov comparison is interesting, I think it misses some of the nuances of ranking the Soviets because the struggle is *how do we rank them against players they never/rarely played against*. Fedorov - we can feel pretty certain where he ranks (too high but that's a different discussion) because he was playing against the best players in the world for his entire career. And one thing that Fedorov's success shows is - hey, those Soviets are pretty f***ing good and would probably do well in the NHL (Mogilny also is a note in that favor).

Makarov and Fetisov back to back does strike me as kind of a concession (especially because I think the general tenor of the discussion has Fetisov as the better player). But I can't give a good answer on whether they were overrated, underrated, or properly rated. Admittedly those weren't the guys I was thinking of when pointing out underrated Soviets since they do tend to get a lot of buzz, but rather guys like Kharlamov, Firsov, and Mikhailov who flew under the radar. That said - whether they went in the right spot or not? Don't really know. I just think we didn't do a good job discussing them and their rankings strike me as rather arbitrary.
 

wetcoast

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Well, first of all, no one compared Moore to Malkin.

Second, their offense can't be compared at face value due to Richard's ridiculously low PP opportunities, because of the team he played on. The panel judged this was an extremely significant factor. As far as I'm concerned, both went exactly where they should have.

Well I was comparing Moore with Sellanne and Kane and simply put Moore only had 4 seasons where he was an elite player and in 2 of them he missed 8 and 13 games in a 70 game season.

Throw in another couple of decent seasons then 2 more but also with significant time missed you have a pretty small sample for a guy ranked in the top 100 of all time.


Funny with Richard's low scoring totals from lesser PP opportunities and the next post was about fedorov who also suffered from the same fate but that argument was pretty much ignored when he came up.

A significant difference between Fedorov and Richard is that often in the playoffs Fedorov was one of the guys driving the bus more often than not for the Red Wings while Richard played a slightly lesser role with the habs.

Of course 10 SC's is always brought out as some sort of trump card.....


I kinda think the group was way too lenient on Makarov and Fetisov and their placement back-to-back just screams package deal. Visually, they’re absolutely stunning players, but so were several post-Soviet Union Russian players (Fedorov and Bure come to mind) who didn’t receive the same benefit of the doubt because they played the vast majority of their careers in the NHL rather than one in which they were on the league champions literally every season.

Is there a substantial gap between being MVP in the Soviet Union and being the best Russian player in the NHL in a given year? Because to me, if Fedorov is still a Soviet Union player from 1991-2003 (a 13-year period that would match Fetisov’s on a team that, again, were league champions literally every season), doesn’t he just go to town on that award?

1991 - Leading Russian scorer in NHL
1992 - Leading Russian scorer in NHL (Selke nominee)
1994 - Leading Russian scorer in NHL (Hart, Selke winner)
1996 - Leading Russian scorer in NHL (5th in Hart, Selke winner)
2003 - Leading Russian scorer in NHL

Granted, there’s a gap there from 1997-2002 (where Fedorov was a ~20 point player for three championships), but in a non-Bowman situation, he might even be in a position to challenge Makarov’s 9 scoring titles.

Fedorov like lots of players in the 90's seem to have a higher bar to climb due to the influx of elite talent from both Europe and the USA during that decade.

Throw that in with the literal end of dynasties in the NHL in the 80's and it's quite a different landscape.
 
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slapKing

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Given what you users have said, I will take a closer look among the players I have mentioned and see why they were ranked in the area of this list placement. Given what i have said, it's no secret I'm a younger hockey fan, but I will give the older players a chance and look at their resumes.

And looking back at my posts, I want to again apologize on my behavior. There was no need for the personal attacks and calling the voters hypocrites. That was very immature on my part. While I don't believe this to be a perfect list, it's certainly better than most. Then again, I don't believe there will ever be a perfect list.

For what it's worth, I rank Bourque > Lidstrom, and Hasek > Roy.

Edit: And before I go, I also went overboard with the whole Canadian bias thing. I'm not going to lie, there was a bit Canadian bias on this very if you were to ask me, but I greatly over exaggerated it. Though some Canadians were also underrated in this list. I feel Messier and Lafleur should be in the top 20. i think they were a bit underrated in this list. And I do stand that Yzerman was also underrated.

And to go the other way, given the looks of the list. I think guys like Forsberg and Selanne are a bit too high, comparing to someone like Fedorov who is a bit too low. Forsberg, I can understand, I rank him ahead of Fedorov, but much closer between the two. selanne? i put him below both.
 
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seventieslord

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Given what you users have said, I will take a closer look among the players I have mentioned and see why they were ranked in the area of this list placement. Given what i have said, it's no secret I'm a younger hockey fan, but I will give the older players a chance and look at their resumes.

And looking back at my posts, I want to again apologize on my behavior. There was no need for the personal attacks and calling the voters hypocrites. That was very immature on my part. While I don't believe this to be a perfect list, it's certainly better than most. Then again, I don't believe there will ever be a perfect list.

For what it's worth, I rank Bourque > Lidstrom, and Hasek > Roy.

Edit: And before I go, I also went overboard with the whole Canadian bias thing. I'm not going to lie, there was a bit Canadian bias on this very if you were to ask me, but I greatly over exaggerated it. Though some Canadians were also underrated in this list. I feel Messier and Lafleur should be in the top 20. i think they were a bit underrated in this list. And I do stand that Yzerman was also underrated.

And to go the other way, given the looks of the list. I think guys like Forsberg and Selanne are a bit too high, comparing to someone like Fedorov who is a bit too low. Forsberg, I can understand, I rank him ahead of Fedorov, but much closer between the two. selanne? i put him below both.

You look like you're here for discourse and education and I greatly respect that.
 

MXD

Original #4
Oct 27, 2005
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Given what you users have said, I will take a closer look among the players I have mentioned and see why they were ranked in the area of this list placement. Given what i have said, it's no secret I'm a younger hockey fan, but I will give the older players a chance and look at their resumes.

And looking back at my posts, I want to again apologize on my behavior. There was no need for the personal attacks and calling the voters hypocrites. That was very immature on my part. While I don't believe this to be a perfect list, it's certainly better than most. Then again, I don't believe there will ever be a perfect list.

For what it's worth, I rank Bourque > Lidstrom, and Hasek > Roy.

Edit: And before I go, I also went overboard with the whole Canadian bias thing. I'm not going to lie, there was a bit Canadian bias on this very if you were to ask me, but I greatly over exaggerated it. Though some Canadians were also underrated in this list. I feel Messier and Lafleur should be in the top 20. i think they were a bit underrated in this list. And I do stand that Yzerman was also underrated.

And to go the other way, given the looks of the list. I think guys like Forsberg and Selanne are a bit too high, comparing to someone like Fedorov who is a bit too low. Forsberg, I can understand, I rank him ahead of Fedorov, but much closer between the two. selanne? i put him below both.

Don't worry about my earlier quip.
 

quoipourquoi

Goaltender
Jan 26, 2009
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Given what you users have said, I will take a closer look among the players I have mentioned and see why they were ranked in the area of this list placement. Given what i have said, it's no secret I'm a younger hockey fan, but I will give the older players a chance and look at their resumes.

And looking back at my posts, I want to again apologize on my behavior. There was no need for the personal attacks and calling the voters hypocrites. That was very immature on my part. While I don't believe this to be a perfect list, it's certainly better than most. Then again, I don't believe there will ever be a perfect list.

For what it's worth, I rank Bourque > Lidstrom, and Hasek > Roy.

Edit: And before I go, I also went overboard with the whole Canadian bias thing. I'm not going to lie, there was a bit Canadian bias on this very if you were to ask me, but I greatly over exaggerated it. Though some Canadians were also underrated in this list. I feel Messier and Lafleur should be in the top 20. i think they were a bit underrated in this list. And I do stand that Yzerman was also underrated.

And to go the other way, given the looks of the list. I think guys like Forsberg and Selanne are a bit too high, comparing to someone like Fedorov who is a bit too low. Forsberg, I can understand, I rank him ahead of Fedorov, but much closer between the two. selanne? i put him below both.

Honestly, most of your opinions fall in line with the general vibe of HOH from about 12 years ago. Back then, Lafleur was solidly in the top-20, Forsberg was right by Fedorov, Selanne was unlisted... and these are all relatively recent players.

I can’t understate the extent to which statistical research and attempts to normalize scoring environments has re-shaped how certain players are viewed.

For instance, it’s one thing to know what it means to have a 25-point playoff. It’s another to know how to differentiate between a 25-point in 20-game playoff and a 25-point in 25-game playoff. It’s another to know what it means to score 6 in 5 games against a 300 GA team, 5 in 7 against a 250 GA team, 8 in 4 against a 200 GA team, and 6 in 4 against a 170 GA team.

We keep finding new and inventive ways of avoiding our families that end up with greater understanding of each point and each save relative to each other.

But ultimately, it’s important to know that we haven’t completely devolved into group-think. This list is not wholly reflective of any one of our individual opinions. We all have players we think are too low and players we think are too high.
 

Batis

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Makarov and Fetisov back to back does strike me as kind of a concession (especially because I think the general tenor of the discussion has Fetisov as the better player). But I can't give a good answer on whether they were overrated, underrated, or properly rated. Admittedly those weren't the guys I was thinking of when pointing out underrated Soviets since they do tend to get a lot of buzz, but rather guys like Kharlamov, Firsov, and Mikhailov who flew under the radar. That said - whether they went in the right spot or not? Don't really know. I just think we didn't do a good job discussing them and their rankings strike me as rather arbitrary.

Interesting. I did not get that impression from the discussion. Fetisov did of course finish slightly ahead in the voting but as far as I remember no one really came up with any strong counterargument to the conclusion that DN28 reached in the linked post here below and no one else did make as much of a in-depth comparison between the two as what was made in that post. "My overall impression is that there isn´t a noteworthy separation between peak Fetisov and peak Makarov and thus Makarov comes ahead simply by his significantly better 1979-1981 stretch and then by his partially better NHL adjustments and results". Top-100 Hockey Players of All-Time - Round 2, Vote 6
 

Batis

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I kinda think the group was way too lenient on Makarov and Fetisov and their placement back-to-back just screams package deal. Visually, they’re absolutely stunning players, but so were several post-Soviet Union Russian players (Fedorov and Bure come to mind) who didn’t receive the same benefit of the doubt because they played the vast majority of their careers in the NHL rather than one in which they were on the league champions literally every season.

Is there a substantial gap between being MVP in the Soviet Union and being the best Russian player in the NHL in a given year? Because to me, if Fedorov is still a Soviet Union player from 1991-2003 (a 13-year period that would match Fetisov’s on a team that, again, were league champions literally every season), doesn’t he just go to town on that award?

1991 - Leading Russian scorer in NHL
1992 - Leading Russian scorer in NHL (Selke nominee)
1994 - Leading Russian scorer in NHL (Hart, Selke winner)
1996 - Leading Russian scorer in NHL (5th in Hart, Selke winner)
2003 - Leading Russian scorer in NHL

Granted, there’s a gap there from 1997-2002 (where Fedorov was a ~20 point player for three championships), but in a non-Bowman situation, he might even be in a position to challenge Makarov’s 9 scoring titles.

While Fedorov being the leading scorer among Russians in the NHL 5 times (3 times alone at the top and 2 times tied for the lead) is impressive I would say that when comparing him to Fetisov and Makarov it is worth noting that it is a very big difference between Fedorovs level of scoring dominance compared to his Russian peers and Makarovs level of dominance compared to his Soviet peers. Makarovs 7-year Vs2 in the Soviet League is 1.23 and his 10-year Vs2 is 1.13 while Fedorov in his 5 times being the leading scorer only managed to get an average score of 1.04 compared to his closest Russian competitor. So even during his 5 best years Fedorov failed to come close to Makarovs average level of scoring dominance throughout his 10 best years in the Soviet League. And if we would replace Makarovs 82/83 season, when he missed more than 30 percent of the games due to a shoulder injury and therefore only finished tied for 7th in scoring, with his 90/91 season when he was tied with Fedorov for the scoring lead among Russians in the NHL then his 10-year average would be even further ahead of Fedorovs 5-year average. So Makarov was clearly miles ahead of Fedorov when it comes to scoring dominance over their Russian/Soviet peers and while Fedorovs superior defensive play makes up for some of that gap I would still say that he is rather far behind in overall impact especially considering that Makarov during his prime years brought some value away from the puck himself as he was the leading penalty killer of the Soviet national team for much of the 80s and was praised by Victor Kuzkin for his ability to help out his defencemen.

With this said I do think that it is an interesting discussion whether it has been a positive or a negative for the reputation of modern Russian players to have gotten the chance to play in the NHL and I personally think that the answer depends on which player we are talking about. In the case of Fedorov I think that it is very possible that his reputation offensively would have benefitted somewhat from playing in the Soviet Union instead. On the other hand I think that his reputation defensively would have taken somewhat of a hit from that scenario considering that you rarely hear anything on this board about any Soviet player playing selke level defensive hockey. In the case of Ovechkin I think that playing in the Soviet Union would have had a negative impact on his overall resume considering just how important a part of the Soviet season that international tournaments were and how disappointing Ovechkins international career has been for a player of his calibre. On the other hand Ovechkins goalscoring dominance in the Soviet League would probably have been absolutely incredible. However unless he would have had a far stronger international career than what he has had I think that many would be quick to write off his dominance in the Soviet League due to him not being dominant against stronger opponents on the international stage.
 

Dennis Bonvie

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Well I was comparing Moore with Sellanne and Kane and simply put Moore only had 4 seasons where he was an elite player and in 2 of them he missed 8 and 13 games in a 70 game season.

Throw in another couple of decent seasons then 2 more but also with significant time missed you have a pretty small sample for a guy ranked in the top 100 of all time.


Funny with Richard's low scoring totals from lesser PP opportunities and the next post was about fedorov who also suffered from the same fate but that argument was pretty much ignored when he came up.

A significant difference between Fedorov and Richard is that often in the playoffs Fedorov was one of the guys driving the bus more often than not for the Red Wings while Richard played a slightly lesser role with the habs.

Of course 10 SC's is always brought out as some sort of trump card....

Richard had 47 PP goals in his career.

Fedorov had 144 PP goals in his career.

Ten Cups may not be a trump card, but its still a really good card.
 

wetcoast

Registered User
Nov 20, 2018
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Richard had 47 PP goals in his career.

Fedorov had 144 PP goals in his career.

Ten Cups may not be a trump card, but its still a really good card.

PP goals are a really hard way to compare the 2 guys and I will show the OP I was responding to in part here.

Well, first of all, no one compared Moore to Malkin.

Second, their offense can't be compared at face value due to Richard's ridiculously low PP opportunities, because of the team he played on. The panel judged this was an extremely significant factor. As far as I'm concerned, both went exactly where they should have.

There seems to be a notion that Henri Richard was given lesser opportunities to score due to lesser PP opportunities.

That's somewhat questionable as Henri SOG totals suggest that he still got significant time and opportunity in offensive positions.

We don't have TOI for his time but the often quoted metric that Henri scored more ESP than any player in a decade somehow glosses over that he also took the 7th highest total shots in that decade.

That for a guy known more as a playmaker than a goal scorer suggests that his offensive opportunities weren't curtailed as much as originally suggested.

Player Season Finder | Hockey-Reference.com
 

quoipourquoi

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Whenever I saw the Soviets play Canada, Makarov and Krutov were better than any Canadian forwards other than Gretzky & Mario.

Mats Sundin might be the best player in international hockey from the past 25 years, and he didn’t have the benefit of retaining his linemates from domestic games to international games. Performance in best-on-best hockey (particularly when it’s makeshift teams against a regular unit) might not be our best indicator.

I know you can’t ever wholly separate the great performance of an individual and the great performance of a team, but if we can just look at the level that CSKA Moscow was during Makarov’s 9 scoring titles in 10 years:

CSKA Moscow Lead in GF/GA
1980: 71/9 (44 games); 39-3-2
1981: 59/21 (49 games); 40-3-6
1982: 12/44 (47 games); 40-4-3
1983: 21/20 (44 games); 40-3-1
1984: 72/29 (44 games); 43-1-0
1985: 32/1 (40 games); 31-3-6
1986: 46/35 (40 games); 32-3-5
1987: 49/27 (40 games); 36-2-2
1988: 56/11 (44 games); 32-5-7
1989: 54/-6 (44 games); 30-8-6

In 1983 when Makarov missed 14 games, they could have been at worst 10-3-1 and still obviously the best team without their best player. They were so far above everyone else as a whole that I don’t know we can draw an accurate reading of how that would translate if other Russian players were in the same position for a decade.

1993-2003 Fedorov and Bure or 2008-2018 Ovechkin and Malkin in an all-Russian league on a dynasty that scores >1 goal-per-game more than everyone else would likely get the same rub as Makarov and Fetisov.

I don’t think anyone here is going to fault Makarov for not competing for the Art Ross given the circumstances, but if a player is going to be treated as the #3 behind Gretzky and Lemieux, maybe 43 points behind Mark Messier is too big of a gap for 9 scoring titles to retain full credibility (the previous year, Makarov held a 54-41 point gap over #2). And that’s with Makarov going from the best team in the Soviet Union to the defending Stanley Cup Champions. And maybe Sergei Fedorov matching Makarov in points but in fewer games in Fedorov’s debut season (on a team that finished 24 points back of Calgary in the standings) is something of a red flag too.

And then for Makarov and Fetisov to land back-to-back? It’s tough to buy. And it makes me wonder just how much differently Brett Hull and Chris Chelios would be viewed if politics dictated that they had to dominate an American-only league for a decade and occasionally impress internationally. Would we feel the compulsion to have Americans in the top-40?
 
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MXD

Original #4
Oct 27, 2005
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And then for Makarov and Fetisov to land back-to-back? It’s tough to buy. And it makes me wonder just how much differently Brett Hull and Chris Chelios would be viewed if politics dictated that they had to dominate an American-only league for a decade and occasionally impress internationally. Would we feel the compulsion to have Americans in the top-40?

I don't understand the problem here, unless everyone ranked Makarov and Fetisov one next to another. I mean, we nearly ended up with Beliveau - Harvey - Richard (and we did if we restrict ourselves to skaters) and the only problem it caused is one or two users throwing a hissy fit because too much Quebec players.
 

quoipourquoi

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I don't understand the problem here, unless everyone ranked Makarov and Fetisov one next to another.

It was, like, 13/30 ballots. Fetisov was eligible a round earlier and missed the cut-off, so he was in good position to go 1st in Vote 6th (and did). Makarov, newly eligible in Vote 6, leapfrogged all of the holdovers from the previous rounds and went a very close 2nd.

I would level the same criticism against Keith and Kane landing next to each other, but not necessarily Beliveau and Harvey and Richard. Unlike the young Blackhawks and the Soviet players, I don’t know that it’s nearly as hard to get a read on the full resumes of the Canadiens to be at the point where one says no one in hockey history is as nearly identical in ability as these two players that happen to be from the same Russian league on the same overpowered team and the same unit in international and domestic games and are difficult to assess relative to ~85% of players from this list for the exact same reasons.
 

MXD

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It was, like, 13/30 ballots. Fetisov was eligible a round earlier and missed the cut-off, so he was in good position to go 1st in Vote 6th (and did). Makarov, newly eligible in Vote 6, leapfrogged all of the holdovers from the previous rounds and went a very close 2nd.

It seems to me that the logical conclusion is that Makarov became available one round too late.
 
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quoipourquoi

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It seems to me that the logical conclusion is that Makarov became available one round too late.

Whereas I see it as half of the voters when confronted with having to rank both of them at the same time placed them one after the other, because that tends to happen when there are two players that make for an obvious comparison.

13/27 votes had Forsberg/Malkin back-to-back, to give another example (resulting in Malkin making the cut in his first round of eligibility, just as Makarov did).

I don’t think it’s unusual to see players’ reputations almost piggyback off of other players’ reputations - to the point where comparisons to the rest of the field are de-emphasized. When Chris Pronger made it before Scott Stevens, people were pretty up-front about the urgency to add Stevens, at which point he received more first-place votes than any other player in his debut round. Similar comments were made with Firsov (relative to Tretiak) and Gardiner (relative to Benedict), and just like Scott Stevens, they took the most first-place votes in their debut rounds.

That’s part of the reason why I think it’s important not to get fixated on natural comparisons, often positional or nationality-based (Lidstrom/Bourque, Roy/Hasek, Sakic/Yzerman, Crosby/Ovechkin, Selanne/Kurri, Sedin/Sedin, etc.). Doing that is probably going to lead to pairing off those players when in reality, each block should have ~10 choices of similar value. Most obvious example from HFBoards projects being the 2009 list: no goaltenders in the top-11, then 3 goaltenders in a row.

Just something to be conscious of. Sometimes we have to be King Solomon and cut pairings in half rather than let the tether pull one player higher or lower than they might be if compared more fiercely to 8 other names.
 

The Macho King

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Whereas I see it as half of the voters when confronted with having to rank both of them at the same time placed them one after the other, because that tends to happen when there are two players that make for an obvious comparison.

13/27 votes had Forsberg/Malkin back-to-back, to give another example (resulting in Malkin making the cut in his first round of eligibility, just as Makarov did).

I don’t think it’s unusual to see players’ reputations almost piggyback off of other players’ reputations - to the point where comparisons to the rest of the field are de-emphasized. When Chris Pronger made it before Scott Stevens, people were pretty up-front about the urgency to add Stevens, at which point he received more first-place votes than any other player in his debut round. Similar comments were made with Firsov (relative to Tretiak) and Gardiner (relative to Benedict), and just like Scott Stevens, they took the most first-place votes in their debut rounds.

That’s part of the reason why I think it’s important not to get fixated on natural comparisons, often positional or nationality-based (Lidstrom/Bourque, Roy/Hasek, Sakic/Yzerman, Crosby/Ovechkin, Selanne/Kurri, Sedin/Sedin, etc.). Doing that is probably going to lead to pairing off those players when in reality, each block should have ~10 choices of similar value. Most obvious example from HFBoards projects being the 2009 list: no goaltenders in the top-11, then 3 goaltenders in a row.

Just something to be conscious of. Sometimes we have to be King Solomon and cut pairings in half rather than let the tether pull one player higher or lower than they might be if compared more fiercely to 8 other names.
On this topic, one of the encouraging things from this list *was* the separation between Sakic and Yzerman. I think we got better in that regard, although ultimately the list was still somewhat flawed in a few respects.

This is a long way of saying the procedure was good (if not perfect), but maybe the education was lacking in certain areas.
 
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wetcoast

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I don't understand the problem here, unless everyone ranked Makarov and Fetisov one next to another. I mean, we nearly ended up with Beliveau - Harvey - Richard (and we did if we restrict ourselves to skaters) and the only problem it caused is one or two users throwing a hissy fit because too much Quebec players.

I'll have to read back to the threads but my guess is that having 3 teammates so closely group together and how high was probably a much bigger problem that birthplaces.
 

TheDevilMadeMe

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Is it any wonder that when the USSR collapsed, the quality of their hockey program declined?

Then seemed to recover at least somewhat for the Ovechkin/Malkin generation?
 

MXD

Original #4
Oct 27, 2005
50,654
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Is it any wonder that when the USSR collapsed, the quality of their hockey program declined?

Then seemed to recover at least somewhat for the Ovechkin/Malkin generation?

... Well, from the prior generation (think anyone falling between Kovalev/Yashin and Malkin/AO), the best players would be Datsyuk, Kovalchuk, Markov, Gonchar and ... please tell me there's someone better than Sergei Samsonov.
 

Batis

Registered User
Sep 17, 2014
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Merida, Mexico
Is it any wonder that when the USSR collapsed, the quality of their hockey program declined?

Then seemed to recover at least somewhat for the Ovechkin/Malkin generation?

There are also reasons to believe that the decline had started even before USSR collapsed considering that Tikhonov already back in the 85/86 season talked about that their hockey system had entered a downperiod. This decline can also to some extent be seen in the results of the national team in 1985-1989 compared to the results during the 1978-1984 time frame when Soviet hockey was at its absolute peak. Then the final collapse of the Soviet Union probably only made this already on-going decline of their hockey program even steeper.
 
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