Personally don't really understand the hype about Schmidt. Played mostly during weak years, only four seasons in top 10 points (same as Malkin and Forsberg, who were both higher in their respective seasons). The Hart and the Ross are nice. Three AS-1 as well.
But compare him to Malkin and Forsberg...I don't see it.
I think people need to think more about the Hart voting. Forsberg ever being only Hart-1 then Hart-7, Hart-8 and so on clearly doesn't give the whole truth with regards to some other players and Forsberg in comparison. Are we ranking the best players or the best careers?
I'm definitely coming around to the Forsberg>Schmidt point of view. Forsberg's biggest issue, as we know, was being healthy enough to play. But his per-game impact is pretty much unquestioned. If Schmidt had been a model of consistency throughout his career, it wouldn't be hard to for me to accept a slightly lower per-game impact as trade off for always knowing what you were going to get. But he has those as-of-now unexplained lulls throughout his career ('41, '48, '49 in particular) that Forsberg never really had.
I still like Schmidt over Malkin, however. While Forsberg was basically "Forsberg" every time he made it onto the ice from 1995-2006, Malkin cannot say the same. There are long stretches of Malkin's prime where he wasn't close to delivering the same impact as he did 2009, 2012, or 2017. Malkin also bothers me a little as a player who never really seemed to evolve into a more complete or versatile player as he matured.
This might be something Penguins fans can better shed light on, but it seems like the Malkin we got in 2009 is pretty much the same player we still have today. His teammate Crosby became appreciably better at practically everything besides generating offense as the years rolled on. But it seems like Malkin has been less willing or less able to improve on other aspects of his game. This hurts him in a stylistic comparison to Schmidt, whose game had no weaknesses, at least in the eyes of his contemporaries. I still recall the Red Storey (longtime referee from the Original Six era) quote from the Legends of Hockey series from the mid-1990s. Something to the effect of "I'm often asked to name my all-time all-star team, and I'll give my choices for each position. However, if it were possible, I would most prefer a team of five Milt Schmidt's. I could then throw my grandmother in goal, and we'd never worry about a thing".