Top-100 Hockey Players of All-Time - Round 2, Vote 10

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, January 18th at midnight and continue through Sunday, January 20th at 8:59pm. Eastern time zone. I will release the results of the vote on Monday, January 21st.


Vote 10 Candidates

• Bernie Geoffrion
• Brad Park
• Charlie Conacher
• Henri Richard
• Ken Dryden
• Milt Schmidt
• Paul Coffey
• Peter Forsberg
• Pierre Pilote
• Syl Apps
• Vladislav Tretiak

 

@Swedes here we go haha

(Hmph, apparently that's an actual user name here...whoops)

 

I really like Schmidt being available because he compares really well to both Henri Richard and Syl Apps and it wouldn't quite make sense if those two players were to be voted in without Schmidt being at least available.

 

I realize that it's too late to cry about it now, but damn is Anatoli Firsov underrated or what...

 

Can't say that until we debate him.

Good to see Milt and Boom Boom. Is this the round people finally see beyond Park's bride's maid record and Coffey's one-dimensional criticism?

 

That is pretty much the reason why I was a bit scratching my head with Kharlamov being voted in last round.

 

I think, for me anyways, it's Coffey's time. He was just too talented to be dismissed as a product of Gretzky. And as far as his defensive play goes, more emphasis needs to be put on the offense versus defense of the 80's and early 90's hockey in general. His offensive numbers were jaw-dropping, he was perhaps the greatest skater the game ever saw and he has the Norris and Stanley Cups to beef up his resume just enough to make this his round.

 

Hart trophy shares

Player	1st	2nd	3rd	4th	5th	6th	7th+	Total
Milt Schmidt	1	1		2	1		1	6
Syl Apps		3	2					5
Henri Richard				2		1	1	4
Ken Dryden		1		2				3
Peter Forsberg	1						1	2
Bernie Geoffrion	1						1	2
Charlie Conacher		1		1				2
Paul Coffey				2				2
Brad Park					2			2

Nine of the candidates are listed here. The two who aren't are Tretiak (never played in the NHL) and Pilote (as far as I can tell, never got a single Hart vote). Apps' record looks excellent but, as I wrote last week, there's no way he would have been a finalist five times based on modern standards (he missed too much time during three of those seasons).

VsX - adjusted scoring

Player	1st	2nd	3rd	4th	5th	6th	7th	8th	9th	10th	7YR	10YR
Charlie Conacher	121.3	120.9	100.0	96.0	95.0	75.0	65.1	52.3	52.3	46.8	96.2	82.5
Syl Apps Sr	113.6	100.0	100.0	90.9	88.3	77.8	75.9	69.8	66.7	55.6	92.4	83.9
Peter Forsberg	101.9	100.0	96.7	92.7	90.7	78.9	71.4	70.8	63.2	54.3	90.3	82.1
Bernie Geoffrion	105.6	101.4	88.8	88.5	87.3	79.5	78.3	70.4	70.2	63.9	89.9	83.4
Paul Coffey	104.1	97.9	89.6	82.9	81.3	80.9	79.8	77.4	64.2	62.0	88.1	82.0
Milt Schmidt	120.9	98.4	92.4	86.4	72.7	72.5	64.8	61.4	59.4	59.3	86.9	78.8
Henri Richard	112.7	91.3	90.1	78.6	78.2	75.6	70.1	67.9	62.7	61.4	85.2	78.9
Brad Park	90.1	72.5	67.0	63.8	51.0	49.6	48.9	48.9	47.9	47.1	63.3	58.7
Pierre Pilote	74.3	71.1	67.9	56.3	50.0	46.2	44.6	44.0	42.3	38.9	58.6	53.5

Not to repeat myself from last time, but there's a massive drop-off in Conacher's production after his 5th best season. Richard's production is based almost entirely on ES scoring; he received very little powerplay time for a player of his calibre. Pilote's score is unimpressive but, if we look at how he stacks up compared to just the defensemen in his era, his offense was on par with Red Kelly (mind you, that was against weaker competition).

 

To complete this post (and sorry for repeating myself) : Syl Apps receving votes he wouldn't have gotten based on modern standards meant that Milt Schmidt "lost" votes he would've gotten based on modern standards. It is very, very obviously the case for 1939-40, where Milt Schmidt led the league in scoring, but finished only 4th in Hart voting. Vote splitting (with Dit Clapper) might've also been a factor that season.

 

Hrmm i'm surprised about Forsberg only having one top 6 (well it's a win) hart vote. I would have expected more.

Also - I know the VsX hurts for games missed - but is there an easy way to compare taking into account games missed? PPG I suppose, unless anything else. Does that exist for VsX and do you (or anyone) have this handy for these candidates? I'm curious how Forsberg does in that metric vs others.

Forsberg is the first candidate since Lemieux to be this severely impacted by short seasons. Obviously full seasons do matter but i would still like some visibility on some of his shorter seasons.

 

We just litterally spent a round talking about Syl Apps getting undeserved (by modern standards) Hart support during seasons where he missed a significant amount of games, but, okay.

 

Forsberg's Hart record is disappointing. I'll talk about that more later (time permitting).

Here's a post where I look at VsX per game - Reference - VsX comprehensive summary (1927 to 2018)

Based on 7 year PPG VsX, Forsberg ranks 30th all-time (right around Sakic, Yzerman, Kurri and Stastny). For 10 year, he's 28th all-time (basically with the same crowd).

(To put that into perspective, based on normal VsX, he ranks 34th and 45th over seven and ten years. So, yes, he ranks higher on a per game basis, but it's not by a huge margin - he's not the only player in history to have missed time).

(Edit #2 - I only counted seasons where a player appeared in at least half the games. So his exceptional 2004 season was excluded entirely. That would push him higher still on the PPG list. I don't have the original data handy, but it could concieveably push him up around 25 or so, passing Yzerman/Sakic/etc since there's not a lot separating them).

 

Forsberg took 1st Team Center selections over Pearson candidates and Hart candidates in 1997-98 and 1998-99, so it would be difficult to say that playing with Roy and Sakic didn’t impact his Hart chances at least to some extent if he could be rated as the best but not most valuable.

I think his consistent presence in the top-5 of THN’s rankings literally every year for 10 years straight paints a more realistic picture of how he was perceived than this strict adherence to Hart voting which improperly suggests Gretzky and Yashin had better seasons over the year’s 1st Team Center.

 

Forsberg is tough for me. Probably the guy (I'm familiar with) I have the hardest time placing. Great for a good period, but on a great team and he missed a lot of *significant* time.

One of the things that I think hits most about him w/r/t missing time is the 2001 Cup. He's out after Round 2 and the Avs keep trucking. I don't have more time at the moment but my initial impression is he doesn't make the top half of my list this time around.

 

The TSN rankings didn't bother about things like not playing and accrued longevity. It's probably worth noting that, at this point, Evgeni Malkin played roughly 125 more NHL games than Forsberg (playoffs included).

In the Centers project, Sidney Crosby circa 2013 was deemed litterally equal to Peter Forsberg. That was a very accurate depiction of Peter Forsberg.

For the record, it's probably obvious that, if we would proceed on a per-game basis, Forsberg would probably be already voted in (or that he'd be very close to), but frankly, he's not the only player for whom such a statement can be made.

 

I wouldn’t suggest that he be rated on a per-game basis, but 593 regular season games (and 133 playoff games) as essentially a top-5 player - including that 2000-2005 breakdown from the Mario Lemieux thread as likely the very best - is definitely not a small amount at this point of the project. A little over 7 seasons (593/80=7.4) worth of fantastic play in that 1996-2006 stretch but with poor distribution for awards voting.

Frankly anyone who was the plurality or majority pick for best player in the world for consecutive years is going to look very good, and if they were a minority pick like he was for 1996-2001, even better.


I’ll try to recreate the tables for vs. COL/DAL/DET scoring that was lost. Needless to say, he drew separation. And I also wouldn’t focus too much on Colorado winning two rounds in 2001 without him (8-4 against St. Louis and New Jersey); he was the best skater for them in the 1998-2000 and 2002 playoffs but didn’t have the secondary scoring.

 

Better than whom, exactly?

 

When looking at this data, keep in mind that Schmidt missed 3 prime years and Apps 2 due to WWII. For Schmidt it was ages 24,25,26 and Apps 29,30.

 

Essentially, Schmidt sacrificed likely his three most potentially productive years to serve his country. He would likely already have been voted into our list if that didn't happen.

However, shortened careers (regardless of circumstance) robbed Orr of number one in this list, Bossy of a higher placement, Lindros of a higher placement, Neely of any placement (I'm guessing here), etc.

 

I just think it odd to mention Richard's lack of PP time and not mention Schmidt's war time service.

It is up to the individual to make their own judgement on this but I tend to give some credit to missing prime years due to war. My feeling is if you were a star when you left and a star when you came back then you would have been a star in your missed years.

 

I do to, and I tend to not place as much emphasis on longevity as some voters. However, I do place a lot of emphasis on peak years and I think the world never saw the best Schmidt could have been.

I see myself putting Milt into a top five finish in this round, but where exactly is yet to be determined.

 

Bernie Geoffrion.

1.He was the NHL's top scorer (Art Ross ) the year just prior to the NHL's only 5-year dynasty.

2. He scored more playoff points than any other Hab during the 5-year dynasty.

3. He scored more than any other NHLer (Art Ross) AND won the Hart trophy the year just after the 5-year dynasty.

4. His 7-year peak is more comparable to guys we've inducted ages ago than guys this round.

5. Before the dynasty, he was twice 2nd in playoff points; during the dynasty he was 1st, 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 7th (that 7th includes 4 non-Habs!) in playoff points; he surpassed Rocket Richard in career playoff scoring for a couple of years before Gordie took over.

 

It's probably that one (Schmidt's War Time Service) is probably more well-known than the other (Richard's lack of PP time).

 

Damn Forsberg looks pretty crispy with his playoff +/– resume. Only one season as a minus player and +50 overall. Sakic (while on the same team, which means disregarding 92–93) is +1. Fedorov in comparison was +38 with Detroit in a similar role. Malkin is + 10 with Pittsburgh.