Top-100 Hockey Players of All-Time - Preliminary Discussion Thread

• Eligibility
  • Players will be judged only on their performance as hockey players
  • Currently active players are eligible, but will be judged only on what they have already accomplished
  • No, I don’t know what to do with Connor McDavid either

• Preliminary Discussion Thread
  • Anyone may participate in this thread, even if he or she does not intend to take part in the voting round
  • Posters are encouraged to share information about players in this thread and to take information shared into account when constructing their own lists
  • For instance, did you know Roy McGiffin was in the fruit business during the off-season? Not that I am implying that he should be ranked on the viability of his Californian fruit
  • Brief comparisons between players are permitted, but detailed cases and debates should be saved for the voting round
  • Please do not rank players outright in the preliminary thread

• Voting
  • Round 1
    • All participants submit a list of 120 players ranked in order, with all positions included
    • All eras are to be considered
    • To make it easier to aggregate the submitted lists, please list players using their most commonly used name; e.g. Tim Thomas, not Timothy Thomas Jr.; Justin Williams, not Justinus Septum Williams
    • Lists may be submitted via PM to quoipourquoi
    • Deadline for list submission is September 30
    • Players will be assigned a point value on each list based on ranking. A 1st-place vote is equal to 120 points. A 2nd-place vote is equal to 119 points. A 120th-place vote is equal to 1 point.
    • An aggregate list will be compiled ranking them in order of the most total points
    • Participants must submit a list in Round 1 to be eligible to vote in Round 2
  • Round 2
    • The top-10 ranked players from the aggregate list will be posted in a thread
    • Players will be listed in alphabetical order to avoid creating bias
    • Player merits and rankings will be open for discussion and debate for a period of five days. Administrators may extend the discussion period if it remains active
    • Final voting will occur for two days via PM. A 1st-Place vote is equal to 10 points. A 2nd-Place vote is equal to 9 points. A 10th-Place vote is equal to 1 point.
    • The top-5 players will be added to the final list, unless people start booing because of a clear break in voting after the top-4 players, at which point we might agree to hold someone back for the next round because I easily succumb to peer pressure and will go along with whatever you want
    • The exception is in Vote 1 in which only 4 players (#1-4) will be added and in Vote 21 in which only 1 player will be added (#100) because we like to do things arbitrarily for dramatic effect
    • The process repeats until we have a list of 100 players
    • Failure to retain an acceptable level of discussion may lead to an abbreviated list of no fewer than 25 players

• Quality Assurance
  • Lists will be subject to an evaluation process
  • This is not meant to deter participation; we merely want to ensure that voters are considering all eras of hockey's history
  • The complete voting record of every participant will be released at the end of the project
  • Any attempts to derail a discussion thread with disrespect to old-time hockey will be met with frontier justice
  • We encourage interpositional discussion (forward vs. defenseman vs. goaltender) as opposed to the safer and somewhat redundant intrapositional debates. Overemphasizing a tired single-position argument like, I don’t know, Harvey/Lidstrom, will only be briefly tolerated before one is asked to move on to a less tedious comparison.
  • Take a drink when someone mentions the number of hockey registrations in a given era
  • Finish your drink when someone mentions that goaltenders cannot be compared to skaters

 

I'm really looking forward to this project (thanks for organizing).

The only issue that I'm facing - I'll be travelling out of the country for the first three weeks of October. I'm not sure if I'll have internet access (if I do, it'll be pretty limited). Based on the timeline, it sounds like I'll be missing the first few rounds of voting. Do you (and others) care, or do you only want people who will be (more or less) 100% available from the start?

 

Let's settle this already, he's out

 

Too late, he's already on my list.

 

Not to drag this, but McDavid's career is 2 years and a half, with no team success.

 

I'm fine with you missing a few voting rounds and coming back later.

 

I would have no trouble delaying three weeks in order to accommodate you. Would anyone mind a mid-October start?

 

Does Kovalchuk make the list?

 

Not mine.

 

I want to thank quoipourquoi for organizing this.

I'm gonna try to make a case for 2-3 players to be included in the Top 100 in the next few days.

 

There have been 8 other players to have won back to back Art Ross Trophies. None this century. Only 14 others with multiple ARTs. McDavid is 21 and already has a significant achievement.

 

Unlikely

It's a significant achievement, but he has literally nothing else.To rank his two years ahead of full careers like that of say Dave Keon's seems brutal.I use Keon because he was ranked around 30th in the Top Centers project, and that's more or less how many centers we expect to see on most lists (I think?).You can use Sid Abel, Doug Gilmour or whoever you want, all of which are not locks to make the Top 100 and yet look better than McDavid at this point.

 

Oh man...I'm gonna have to make time for this. Probably not from my personal life, but definitely from my time in the office...I'm in though. I knew almost nothing about history when this was last done in 2009 (?), so I'm excited to get into this...

 

I am interested to see how this goes. I'm not going to participate but I will likely follow a lot of the discussion. If things are well researched and order is kept then it should be a good read. I hope that the rules are firmly established and that people are held to them.

 

He made it 59th in the Top-60 Wingers list, and there's no way I'll have any room for the 29th* winger. Let alone the 59th.

*That has nothing to do with the fact that said 29th winger really shouldn't have ended up as high as he did.

 

This is going to be fun. Can't wait to start getting my list together.

 

Yeah, I don't see any place for him either after thinking about it. Maybe could change after his years in LA Kings, though. A couple of big playoff runs would do some good, but probably not enough anyway. Don't expect him to light up the RS.

Kovy blew his chance at the top 100 of all time list!

 

I certainly wouldn't mind. Given all the excellent and comprehensive statistical work that Hockey Outsider does for HoH, it would seem wrong to exclude him. I suspect that the first few rounds are also going to be the most contentious, and having someone with a good grasp of numbers and hockey history in general would be helpful.

Thanks for organizing this!

 

Not to sound snobbish or whatever, but I'm definitely ok with accommodating a VIP like Hockey Outsider...

 

Been looking forward to the new HoH project! So glad we're doing a top 100 as it's been a long time coming. I'll definitely be participating as much as time allows.

 

You mean their career's look better, or do you mean they look like better players?

And he does have that Hart Trophy also. As a 20 year-old. Only a couple guys that ever did that.

 

Career, contributed more.Besides, 2 years is just too little for me, unless it includes a Cup and a Smythe or more, and even then...

 

it would be disrespectful to your efforts and the breadth/depth of everyone's research for me to vote, but i look forward to reading along and contributing what i can.

 

I have a question, is there an updated VsX floating around?

 

http://hfboards.mandatory.com/threads/reference-vsx-comprehensive-summary-1927-to-2017.2215905/

 

Do we count all/any hockey? Nothing that doesn't count?

I know for the playoff project there was some discussion in the older eras about what counts as playoffs vs not. Since this is an all-time ranking do we simply count everything, pre-NHL even, no exception?