Top-100 Hockey Players of All-Time - Round 2, Vote 1

[quoipourquoi]

Procedure

• You will be presented with 10+ players based on their ranking in the Round 1 aggregate list (10 players plus anyone with 99% of the voting points of the 10th ranked player)
• Players will be listed in alphabetical order to avoid creating bias
• You will submit ten names in a ranked order, #1 through #10, without ties via PM to quoipourquoi
• Results of this vote will be posted after each voting cycle, but the individual ballots themselves will remain secret until the completion of this project
• The top-4 players will be added to The List in Vote 1, while the top-5 players will be added to The List in subsequent voting cycles (#1-4 in Vote 1, #5-9 in Vote 2, #10-14 in Vote 3, #15-19 in Vote 4, #20-24 in Vote 5, #25-29 in Vote 6, #30-34 in Vote 7, #35-39 in Vote 8, #40-44 in Vote 9, #45-49 in Vote 10, #50-54 in Vote 11, #55-59 in Vote 12, #60-64 in Vote 13, #65-69 in Vote 14, #70-74 in Vote 15, #75-79 in Vote 16, #80-84 in Vote 17, #85-89 in Vote 18, #90-94 in Vote 19, #95-99 in Vote 20)
• A 100th player will be added to The List in Vote 21 from an expanded group of 15 candidates

Eligible Voters

• Ballots from voters who have submitted an approved Round 1 ranking of 120 players (which was used to shape the aggregate list) will have their votes tabulated in the History of Hockey ranking
• Art of Sedinery, Batis, BenchBrawl, blogofmike, bobholly39, Canadiens1958, ChiTownPhilly, DannyGallivan, Dennis Bonvie, Dr John Carlson, ehhedler, Hockey Outsider, Iceman, ImporterExporter, Johnny Engine, JoseTheodore2002, kruezer, Kyle McMahon, Mike Farkas, MXD, pappyline, quoipourquoi, ResilientBeast, Sentinel, seventieslord, steve141, ted1971, TheDevilMadeMe, TheGeneral, The Macho Man, tony d, VanIslander

Guidelines

• Respect each other. No horseplay or sophistry!
• Stay on topic and don't get caught up in talking about non-eligible players
• Participate, but retain an open mind throughout the discussion
• Do not speculate who cast any particular ballot. Do not make judgments about the mindset of whoever cast that particular ballot. All individual ballots will be revealed at the end of the project.

House Rules

• 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

The actual voting period will open up on Friday, November 2nd at midnight and continue through Sunday, November 4th at 8:59pm. Eastern time zone. I will release the results of the vote on Monday, November 5th.


Vote 1 Candidates

• Bobby Hull
• Bobby Orr
• Doug Harvey
• Gordie Howe
• Jean Beliveau
• Mario Lemieux
• Maurice Richard
• Patrick Roy
• Ray Bourque
• Wayne Gretzky

Click to read more...

 

[seventieslord]

Really surprised to see Gretzky so soon.

 

[MXD]

... It begins.
With a small surprise as I expected Hasek but not Bourque. Other nine are no surprises.

To be honest, the biggest issue for me here is... probably 2nd and 3rd. I'm not saying the reminder is open and shut... but it realistically is.

 

[VanIslander]

Four Montreal Canadiens!
Which one was the greatest?
Lots of ink has been spilt on that question.

 

[Captain Bowie]

Finally!!!

 

[Captain Bowie]

I generally have Gretzky->Orr->Howe->Lemieux but am opento some new and interesting arguments for anything different. I often flip flip Lemieux and Howe too so it would be easy to convince to flip those 2.

 

[ChiTownPhilly]

I generally have Gretzky->Orr->Howe->Lemieux but am open to some new and interesting arguments for anything different. I often flip flip Lemieux and Howe too so it would be easy to convince to flip those 2.

Good on you. I'll try to put together reasons why Lemieux should receive higher consideration than a consensus-weld to the #4 spot.

 

[VanIslander]

How much will we overlook/discount injuries?????

Orr, Lemieux,... (later Kharlamov, Forsberg, etc).

I think we discount injury for Lemieux (accomplished less due to it but ain't resorting to PPG stats to argue for Mario>Gretz). Hence, we conclude Gretzky > Lemieux.

But with Orr we often cut him ALL slack. Should we? I'm not sure he should be ranked above Howe and Gretzky. I wonder if we should think of him like Mario: too bad he wasn't healthier. I'm not comfortable ranking Orr first (though in the ATD of course a dman would be so valued; but in this project... career accomplishments, maintaining high level of play for a long time beyond 6 years... is valued).

 

[ResilientBeast]

I wasn't expecting to see this today, but I'm excited to get going.

Gretzky > Orr > Howe > Lemieux is traditionally how I've viewed the presumptive top 4, interested in the arguments for movement in 2-4

A little surprised my #5 in Hasek wasn't in the first set but I'm expecting to see him in the second set of nominees

 

[Michael Farkas]

Really surprised to see Gretzky so soon.

I've heard of him...

 

[seventieslord]

PPG arguments don't get Lemieux ahead of Gretzky anyway, so I don't see why one should even bother.

I'm having difficulty finding one off the top of my head, but, is there any way that Lemieux's resume is superior to Gretzky's?

 

[Hockey Outsider]

I have dozens (hundreds?) of potential tables that I can post, but I'd like to keep things simple. I'm open to feedback, but I think there are two key tables I'd like to post at the start of each voting round.

Here's how the ten candidates stack up in terms of Hart trophy voting:

Player	1st	2nd	3rd	4th	5th	6th	7th+	Total
Gordie Howe	6	1	5	2	3		1	18
Wayne Gretzky	9	1	1	1	1			13
Mario Lemieux	3	3	1	1	1			9
Bobby Orr	3		4	1		1		9
Jean Beliveau	2	4	1	2				9
Bobby Hull	2	2	4		1			9
Maurice Richard	1	2	3					6
Ray Bourque		2			2	1		5
Doug Harvey		1	1		3			5
Patrick Roy		1	1		1		1	4

[TBODY] [/TBODY]

This is filtered to exclude any year where a player received less than 5% of the available votes (the intention is to avoid overstating their results based on a few random votes). Note also that this data goes back to the end of WWII (so it captures all ten players' entire careers).

Here's how they stack up in ten year VsX:

Player	1st	2nd	3rd	4th	5th	6th	7th	8th	9th	10th	TOTAL
Wayne Gretzky	169.4	169.4	158.1	154.1	152.5	144.2	141.7	121.5	120.9	115.1	144.7
Gordie Howe	155.7	132.8	130.3	124.6	115.6	111.3	108.5	106.2	98.6	97.6	118.1
Mario Lemieux	143.2	134.2	128.2	112.9	111.9	108.1	100.0	99.1	95.3	87.5	112.0
Bobby Hull	124.4	114.3	111.5	106.7	101.3	100.0	100.0	89.3	85.5	85.3	101.8
Jean Beliveau	123.9	109.6	109.1	100.0	100.0	98.7	98.6	92.5	84.4	83.1	100.0
Maurice Richard	112.7	109.8	100.0	100.0	100.0	100.0	94.2	93.6	88.3	80.5	97.9
Bobby Orr	154.4	139.5	134.1	111.6	107.3	97.1	59.8	58.6	36.9	21.9	92.1
Raymond Bourque	88.0	81.7	79.3	75.8	69.8	68.3	65.1	63.7	61.8	61.5	71.5
Doug Harvey	66.2	64.9	62.0	60.7	57.7	55.7	48.1	43.9	43.3	42.0	54.5

[TBODY] [/TBODY]

For those not familiar with VsX, check this link. Roy isn't included because you can't compare goalies to other positions directly using this metric (everybody take a shot - gin).

 

[Dr John Carlson]

9 of my top 10, 10 of my top 11.

I may be able to be convinced of Howe > Orr but that'll be the only possible movement in my top 4. Gretzky and Lemieux are both firmly 1 & 4 respectively.

 

[BenchBrawl]

It's on!

Wishing everyone a pleasant and constructive project.

 

[ted2019]

Four Montreal Canadiens!
Which one was the greatest?
Lots of ink has been spilt on that question.

I'll say in order.
Beliveau
Harvey
Richard
Roy

 

[ted2019]

Really surprised to see Gretzky so soon.

I know since I had Brent at #125 on my top 120 list.

 

[BenchBrawl]

PPG arguments don't get Lemieux ahead of Gretzky anyway, so I don't see why one should even bother.

I'm having difficulty finding one off the top of my head, but, is there any way that Lemieux's resume is superior to Gretzky's?

Looking more dominant through the eye-test.

I don't agree with it but that's the only reason to rank Lemieux over Gretzky I can think of.

 

[VanIslander]

Do we take into account defensive play of forwards?

If we will later (Nighbor, Fedorov, etc) then how about now.

Gordie Howe deserves some credit for the many, many accounts of his complete game. For example, Bowman says he was excellent defensively. Shall we profile his greatness without the puck? Will it make some difference?

 

[ted2019]

• Bobby Hull
• Bobby Orr
• Doug Harvey
• Gordie Howe
• Jean Beliveau
• Mario Lemieux
• Maurice Richard
• Patrick Roy
• Ray Bourque
• Wayne Gretzky

Will Mario break into the top 3?
Will Orr slip to #3?
Can someone knock the foursome of Gretzky/Orr/Howe/Lemieux out of the top 4?

 

[Michael Farkas]

Eye test and less time in a bleh-ish era than Wayne-o had...that's best I can do...

I am more interested in Orr vs Howe...I think we can look more closely at that here...

 

[ted2019]

I wasn't expecting to see this today, but I'm excited to get going.

Gretzky > Orr > Howe > Lemieux is traditionally how I've viewed the presumptive top 4, interested in the arguments for movement in 2-4

A little surprised my #5 in Hasek wasn't in the first set but I'm expecting to see him in the second set of nominees

I had Hasek 11th and Roy 12th

 

[ChiTownPhilly]

How much will we overlook/discount injuries?????

Orr, Lemieux,... (later Kharlamov, Forsberg, etc).

I think we discount injury for Lemieux (accomplished less due to it but ain't resorting to PPG stats to argue for Mario>Gretz). Hence, we conclude Gretzky > Lemieux.

But with Orr we often cut him ALL slack. Should we?

Everyone will have their own twist on answering this question- but you do make a good point that the sub-forum does appear to have a history of cutting Orr ALL slack for his injuries. [And he's had a few instances during his career, as well as at the end.] I have my answer: no. We should NOT look past this matter.

 

[Captain Bowie]

Is it really cutting him slack, though? His injuries did not hold him back from being the best player of his era, and the best defenceman ever by a significant margin. Him not having a long, fruitful 1000+ game career is likely the only thing preventing Orr vs. Gretzky being a really, really close debate.

 

[BenchBrawl]

Injury Prone (Orr vs. Lemieux)

How much will we overlook/discount injuries?????

Orr, Lemieux,... (later Kharlamov, Forsberg, etc).

I think we discount injury for Lemieux (accomplished less due to it but ain't resorting to PPG stats to argue for Mario>Gretz). Hence, we conclude Gretzky > Lemieux.

But with Orr we often cut him ALL slack. Should we? I'm not sure he should be ranked above Howe and Gretzky. I wonder if we should think of him like Mario: too bad he wasn't healthier. I'm not comfortable ranking Orr first (though in the ATD of course a dman would be so valued; but in this project... career accomplishments, maintaining high level of play for a long time beyond 6 years... is valued).

Bobby Orr was not injury prone the same way Mario Lemieux was.Injuries ended Orr's career but that's a different thing.

Number of missed games for Bobby Orr (yearly):
9
28
9
0
0
2
15
4
0
(after that his career was for all purposes over, even if he did play a few more games)

Number of missed games for Mario Lemieux (yearly):
7
1
17
3
4
21
54
16
24
62
12
6
(then he retired for the first time, I'll ignore his come back years)

---

Season by season injuries impacted Lemieux' career more than Orr's.

Of course we could count all the games Orr didn't play from age 26 to 35 or something, but that's another story.

 

[Captain Bowie]

Jagr's the only guy I had in the top 10 that isn't on the list this round.