One player who in my opinion was very underrated during the Wingers project is Anatoly Firsov. During the Non-NHL Europeans project Firsov was finally ranked in the tier where he belongs as he placed in between Kharlamov and Tretiak. In my opinion there is no doubt about that Firsov belongs in the same tier as Kharlamov no matter which one of them one prefers.
Voting record:
Soviet player of the year voting:
Considering that the Soviet player of the year award first was awarded during Firsovs 26-year old season his voting record really is exceptionally strong. This post here below is actually about Starshinov but it really shows how Firsov dominated the Soviet player of the year voting in the years leading up to the Summit Series.
This is how Firsov does when it comes to peak Soviet player of the year voting.
It should also be pointed out that the Soviet player of the year award had not yet been created during what arguably was Firsovs strongest season in 66/67. Had the voting been conducted that season I find it likely that Firsov could have rivaled Makarov for having the strongest 3-year average.
International scoring:
Firsovs scoring in major and minor international tournaments is very impressive and along with Makarov, Kharlamov and perhaps Maltsev he definitely belongs to the first tier in that regard.. Here you can get a look at how Firsov compares to Soviet and Czechoslovakian players there.
Regular season scoring:
While Firsovs regular season scoring is rather impressive as well it is clearly not on the same very high level as his international scoring. In the Twenty Years of Soviet Hockey thread Sturminator calculated Firsovs 7-year Vs2 score from the 60/61-69/70 time frame to be 96.7. These numbers included the very stingy assist records from the 60's Soviet League which were not part of the official scoring race which was decided by goals only up until the 70/71 season.
One of Firsovs 7 strongest Vs2 scores came during the 72/73 season though where he had a score of 82.5. So if we include that into the numbers above we can see that Firsovs overall Soviet League 7-year Vs2 is 98.5. When we take into account how stingely awarded the assists were in the Soviet League in the 60's and that Firsov was a clearly superior playmaker than his main threat in the scoring race (Starshinov) during the late 60's I think that we can fairly assume that Firsovs 7-year Vs2 probably would have at least been somewhere in the 100-105 range had assists been awarded more often.
Ability to prevent the opponents from scoring:
Penalty killing:
Additionally Firsov was in my opinion one of the 10 best penalty killers among Soviet forwards. Here is the post about Firsov from the Soviet penalty killing study.
If someone wants to get a even deeper look into Firsovs career and his style of play I would recommend this excellent bio from Theokritos
https://hfboards.mandatory.com/posts/140504759/ https://hfboards.mandatory.com/posts/140664535/ as well as my video study of Firsov which is linked to in the first part of that bio.