Top-100 Hockey Players of All-Time - Round 2, Vote 13

[Theokritos]

Nothing on Benedict or Lehman?

Nothing on Lehman. But on Benedict there is, I overlooked that. See the thread by RGO I have linked above.

 

[Vilica]

Tim Horton

Thanks for posting these.

You know what I want to see? Gordie Howe's splits - particularly his performance against Toronto vs the rest of the league, particularly in the playoffs. We know that Toronto had Detroit's number in the 1960s, and anecdotally Horton had a large part of it, as he was the one star defenseman in the league who was physically stronger than Gordie Howe, at least according to Gordie Howe (google "Tim Horton Gordie Howe" and you'll see tons of references).

Edit: Looks like Horton's +/- against Detroit was great at least, though I'm not sure exactly what years that includes.

Yea, I always forget to mention that +/- wasn't tracked until the same year as shots, so 59-60 is the first year of that data. Gordie is actually the first player I did when I started doing these splits systemically, simply because he had so many seasons that I just created my templates as I charted his seasons. So I do have Howe's splits for 59-60 to 66-67, though not his playoff splits. On hockey-ref, if you go to each individual season, they have each playoff series broken down, so you can see it yourself without having to collate multiple websites.

Here's Gordie's 59-60 to 66-67 splits:

				Total
	Games	Goals	Assists	Points	+/-	Shots
BOS	110	57	92	149	44	555
CHI	109	38	60	98	-18	526
DET	0	0	0	0	0	0
MTL	111	41	57	98	-6	477
NYR	111	49	94	143	55	559
TOR	111	46	63	109	-1	544
	552	231	366	597	74	2661
		0.4184782609	0.6630434783	1.081521739		4.820652174

[TBODY] [/TBODY]

		GPG	APG	PPG		SPG
BOS		0.518	0.836	1.355		5.045
CHI		0.349	0.550	0.899		4.826
DET
MTL		0.369	0.514	0.883		4.297
NYR		0.441	0.847	1.288		5.036
TOR		0.414	0.568	0.982		4.901

[TBODY] [/TBODY]

Gordie's so interesting because he played for so long that his spikes against bad teams get smoothed out by their times when they were good. Like those tables above are a solid 110 game sample of Gordie averaging 1.35 ppg against Boston compared to .9 ppg against Chicago, and yet when you add the other 170 games that comprise his entire career prior to expansion, he ends up averaging 1.11 ppg against Boston and 1.12 ppg against Chicago. When you start chopping down the sample though, Howe does perform at about .9 ppg versus Montreal and about 1 ppg versus Toronto, both in his twenties and in his thirties.

 

[Vilica]

Also I kinda forgot to answer your question about Horton/Howe apart from the lone -1 in the column. Assuming that Toronto was more easily able to match Horton against Howe at home as opposed to on the road, here's Howe's h/r splits for Toronto.

Away	Games	Goals	Assists	Points	+/-	Shots	Home	Games	Goals	Assists	Points	+/-	Shots
TOR	56	17	27	44	-13	271	TOR	55	29	36	65	12	273
		0.304	0.482	0.786		4.839			0.527	0.655	1.182		4.964

[TBODY] [/TBODY]

So there does seem to be a bit of a gap, though I'm applying a modern sense of line matching that may not be the case back in this era. You also have to account for the large gap in home/road production that existed at the time - Howe was a 1.24 ppg player over 700 games at home, and a .9 ppg player in 698 games on the road. That's just another nuance smoothed away by my choice to just use a 6 column full splits table for ease of viewing as opposed to trying to fit in the extra 12 columns to indicate home/road splits.

 

[Kyle McMahon]

Where are we at with reliability of plus/minus data from the 1960s? I know when this data got released a couple years ago (or maybe it was more recent than that even), it was discovered that certain teams tracked it differently than others. Specifically, some teams were giving out "pluses" for PP goals in certain seasons and others were not.

 

[TheDevilMadeMe]

The source of the quotes and all that aren't really the point...I literally went in order, c&p'ing out of the Pre-1950 Goaltender Research thread from the goalie project...it's nothing new under the sun. My point wasn't about the specifics, it's that an awful lot of players are considered the best in their position in a pretty short amount of time and that, in conjunction with the other points I had mentioned, should make us take the extra minute on this and go, "hmm...how sure about this are we?"

Goalies before 1950 research thread

Thanks for digging up that thread - the link in thr goalies project has been broken since the server change.

Anyway, despite the issues I had with your presentation of the quotes, you fo have a point - IF the only thing we had about Vezina was a volume of quotes praising him as the best, it would be meaningful, but still leave a lot of room for questions.

That's why the (re)discovery a few years ago of the full MacLean's All-Time All-Star Teams from 1925, including the names on the panel, was so vital. When hockey's finest (or at least most famous) minds put their proverbial money where their mouths were, they voted Vezina the best goalie of all-time. And the margin over his contemporaries must have been large, as a guy from the previous was 2nd.

The discovery of the MacLean's article is the single biggest reason many (most?) of us now believe that Vezina should be ranked decisively over his contemporary Clint Benedict. All the other quotes are more "corraborating evidence."

 

[Michael Farkas]

Fair. And I can buy that...it was an observation to bring about conversation...I have no other motive.

Now, while I am grinding here...what do we say to this...?

Here's the MacLean's piece: All-Star, All-Time Canadian Hockey Team | Maclean's | March 15, 1925

It's from 1925. After Newsy Lalonde's career is over...he's third-team. Cyclone Taylor's career is over...he's third-team.

What say we to that?

 

[Michael Farkas]

Age in hockey doesn’t appear to make as much difference as in some other sports. Take Joe Vezina, the best goal keeper in hockey and one of the real reasons why the Canadiens have kept so long on top. He has been playing the game for upward of a quarter of a century, and he’s as good to-day as ever he was, and in some ways better. Joe deserves a lot of credit, not only because of his hockey record but because he has presented this Dominion of ours with fourteen future citizens. That’s stepping some.

Someone mentioned Vezina being like an NFL scuzzo and churning out kids...could be the source of it.

A Six-Letter Word Meaning “The Best Game in the World” | Maclean's | February 15, 1925

 

[Kyle McMahon]

Someone mentioned Vezina being like an NFL scuzzo and churning out kids...could be the source of it.

A Six-Letter Word Meaning “The Best Game in the World” | Maclean's | February 15, 1925

Went back through my copy of Stan Fischler's Hockey's 100. And yup, there it is..."The father of 22 children, Vezina was virtually impregnable once he took his position in the goal crease".

 

[TheDevilMadeMe]

Fair. And I can buy that...it was an observation to bring about conversation...I have no other motive.

Now, while I am grinding here...what do we say to this...?

Here's the MacLean's piece: All-Star, All-Time Canadian Hockey Team | Maclean's | March 15, 1925

It's from 1925. After Newsy Lalonde's career is over...he's third-team. Cyclone Taylor's career is over...he's third-team.

What say we to that?

As I more or less said in my first post about Vezina, the voters very obviously considered the generation before Nighbor/Lalonde/Cleghorn;Vezina's to be equal to the later generation, something that we on this forum do not. So it makes perfect sense for the AS Teams to be 1) Nighbor 2) Bowie 3) Lalonde. The MacLean's list was also a major catalyst for this forum ranking Nighbor over Lalonde for the first time.

Taking that into account, Taylor is the only puzzling placement. But 2 things - 1) when the list came out, it was criticized in Western newspapers as being biased against players who played in the western leagues;* 2) Taylor was primarily a rover, a position extinct by 1925, and one not included on the list. So maybe he shouldn't have been on the list at all; it does seem weird to see him listed as a third team wing, but where else do they put him? Rover was most similat to center, but then they are bumping Lalonde, who actually did spend most of his career as a center.

*in other words, Vezina > Benedict from the list, but Vezina's ranking vs the now-underrated Lehman can't totally be told via the list. Lehman had some playoff issues that Vezina didn't have though .

 

[overpass]

As I more or less said in my first post about Vezina, the voters very obviously considered the generation before Nighbor/Lalonde/Cleghorn;Vezina's to be equal to the later generation, something that we on this forum do not.

Not necessarily. The actual Macleans article is available online via their archives now. Read it to find several of the teams submitted by individuals, with their comments. One of the lists showcased had a team of the best modern players and the best old-time players, because it was too difficult to compare them. Another submitted a team of the best professionals and a team of the best amateurs.

The key point is that both teams submitted would have been included in the voting for the list, despite the fact that the individual voter specifically did not take a stance on whether the moderns or old timers were better, or whether the pros or amateurs were better. Instead they declined to compare across generations and instead included both generations.

We don’t know how many voters submitted multiple teams in this way but it’s certainly a factor.

 

[Canadiens1958]

Also I kinda forgot to answer your question about Horton/Howe apart from the lone -1 in the column. Assuming that Toronto was more easily able to match Horton against Howe at home as opposed to on the road, here's Howe's h/r splits for Toronto.

Away	Games	Goals	Assists	Points	+/-	Shots	Home	Games	Goals	Assists	Points	+/-	Shots
TOR	56	17	27	44	-13	271	TOR	55	29	36	65	12	273
		0.304	0.482	0.786		4.839			0.527	0.655	1.182		4.964

[TBODY] [/TBODY]

So there does seem to be a bit of a gap, though I'm applying a modern sense of line matching that may not be the case back in this era. You also have to account for the large gap in home/road production that existed at the time - Howe was a 1.24 ppg player over 700 games at home, and a .9 ppg player in 698 games on the road. That's just another nuance smoothed away by my choice to just use a 6 column full splits table for ease of viewing as opposed to trying to fit in the extra 12 columns to indicate home/road splits.

Howe vs Toronto home and away over the seasons in questions saw a difference of 2 SOGs or 271 vs 273. Points and +/- varied significantly. Match-ups.

 

[overpass]

https://archive.macleans.ca/article/1925/3/15/all-star-all-time-canadian-hockey-team

3 of 15 individuals gave old-time and modern or pro and amateur teams. Quoted below.

Sooner or later all roads lead to Montreal, and we pick from the stack of replies that of W. J. Morrison, sporting editor of the Gazette, and a goaler of some repute in his day. On Billy’s ideal forward line we find Billy Burch of Hamilton, Cy. Dennenay, the CornwallOttawa marksman, and “Babe” Dye. His defence would be George “Buck” Boucher and Sprague Cleghorn in front of “Praying Clint” Benedict, whose passing from Ottawa to Montreal was one of the sensations of the present season. In an accompanying note Morrison says that these are his choice among the players of modern days. His “oldtime” stars—stand-outs of the late ’nineties—would be Merritt in goal, Mike Grant and Harvey Pulford on the defence, and Tom Phillips, Frank Magee and Jim Gardner up on the firing line.

***

In view of the Soo’s prominent position on the amateur hockey map no compendium of this sort would be complete without the opinion of an authority from the home of the Canadian champions. Ross Mackay of the Star takes two pokes at the puck, splitting his selections into amateur and pro. sections. His all-star simon-pure sextette would line up like this: Goal,
“Flat” Walsh; defence, “Babe” Donnelly and Beattie Ramsay; and forwards, Harry Watson, Bellefeuille and Bill Carson. As for the pro’s, he expresses a preference for Vezina for goal; defence, Hod Stuart and Sprague Cleghorn, and forward would place Frank Nighbor, Tommy Phillips and Scotty Davidson.

***

THIRTY-FIVE years is a long, long while, and many stars have shone and waned in that time, and so James T. Sutherland, of Kingston, one of the pioneers of the sport, in forwarding his contribution writes that he is afraid he could not do justice to the many wonderful players he has seen in his almost two score years’ connection with hockey, if limited to the selection of one team. The old-timer, therefore, submits all-star teams for two periods, covering their amateur affiliations only. His first consignment of stellar chiefs, 1891 to 1911, includes: Goal, Riley Hern (Stratford) and Eddie Hiscock (Kingston); defence, Pulford (Ottawa), Guy Curtis (Queen’s), Molson (McGill) and Dr. Rankin (Stratford); forwards, “Cyclone” Taylor (Listowel), Russell Bowie (Montreal), George Richardson (Kingston), Trihey (Montreal Shamrocks), Marty Walsh (Kingston), Tom Phillips (Toronto Marlboros), George Chadwick and George McKay (Toronto Wellingtons), and Jock Harty (Queen’s).

Here is his 1912-1925 period: Goal, Dr. Charles Stewart (Hamilton and Kingston) Dr. Jack Langtry (Varsity) and “Flat” Walsh (Soo); defence, “Scotty” Davidson (Kingston), “Babe” Donnelly (Soo), Hughie Fox (Granites), Glad Murphy (St. Michaels) and Beattie Ramsay (Varsity); forwards, Harry Watson (Granites), Frederickson (Winnipeg), Boo Anderson (Montreal), Morenz (Stratford), Cook (Kingston), Babe Dye (Aura Lee), Johnny Woodruff, (Queen’s and Soo), and Shorty Green (Sudbury). An imposing list, this, and any manager would not go far astray if he dipped into the bunch and selected a team at random.

Going back to Vezina, looking at the individual lists in the article he was picked by Tommy Gorman (Ottawa), Bruce Boreham (Winnipeg), Roy Hampton (Quebec City), Ross McKay (Sault St Marie, picked a pro and an amateur team), and Harry Scott (Calgary). So he had support from across Canada.

 

[Canadiens1958]

All-Star, All-Time Canadian Hockey Team | Maclean's | March 15, 1925

3 of 15 individuals gave old-time and modern or pro and amateur teams. Quoted below.


Going back to Vezina, looking at the individual lists in the article he was picked by Tommy Gorman (Ottawa), Bruce Boreham (Winnipeg), Roy Hampton (Quebec City), Ross McKay (Sault St Marie, picked a pro and an amateur team), and Harry Scott (Calgary). So he had support from across Canada.

Still it was distinct minority support for Vezina.

 

[overpass]

Still it was distinct minority support for Vezina.

Right. From the article, I count the following goaltenders mentioned. Vezina leads but there is no consensus.

Vezina x5
Lesueur x3
Lehman x2
Benedict x2
Roach
Merritt
Walsh
Moran
Hern
Stewart

 

[Canadiens1958]

Right. From the article, I count the following goaltenders mentioned. Vezina leads but there is no consensus.

Vezina x5
Lesueur x3
Lehman x2
Benedict x2
Roach
Merritt
Walsh
Moran
Hern
Stewart

More or less back to square one.

 

[Kyle McMahon]

More or less back to square one.

Finding majority agreement when it comes to goaltenders is difficult in any era though.

A similar study from the post-WHA era might look the same, swapping out the names "Vezina, Lesueur, Benedict" with "Roy, Hasek, Brodeur". Original Six, go with "Plante, Sawchuk, Hall".

 

[a79krgm]

Bathgate's playoff record's not anything special either.

Could that be partly due to the fact the Rangers either didn't make the playoffs very often or when they did, they needed to play on the road because of the Ice Capades at MSG? In either case you got to feel for Andy Bathgate for wasting all of his good years with the Rangers.
BTW. I got to meet him once. He was are really nice guy.

 

[TheDevilMadeMe]

Right. From the article, I count the following goaltenders mentioned. Vezina leads but there is no consensus.

Vezina x5
Lesueur x3
Lehman x2
Benedict x2
Roach
Merritt
Walsh
Moran
Hern
Stewart

Yes, MacLean's support for Vezina is somewhat weaker than it first appeared, though again, it is 5 Vezina, 2 Benedict, 2 Lehman among contemporaries, with players from a previous generation being held to a somewhat different standard. Some (like Merritt from the 1890s) specifically voted in as "old times". So I looks like he received majority support among his own generational cohort at least.

John Ross Roach really got a vote in the middle of his 4th professional season? Looks like Toronto homers are nothing new (even if the voter was from Halifax)

 

[TheDevilMadeMe]

Here's an article where Iain Fyffe looked at Vezina and Benedict using his statistical analysis known as points allocation:

Hockey Historysis: Vezina v. Benedict

His conclusion:

Vezina has a better career average (though that might be due to missing stats for his pre-Montreal days), but Benedict had better best seasons. Vezina was strikingly consistent, which is quite a tribute given the shoddy defences he often played behind in his early years. Benedict generally benefited from better teams in front of him, but was still remarkable in his own right.

If I had to choose, I'd probably go with Vezina, since you would know exactly what you were going to get. Benedict could often be better, but sometime noticeably worse as well. Hard to complain about either of them.

(For the math nerds, here's an in-depth view of his original point allocation formula: Hockey Historysis: Puckerings archive: Point Allocation (09 Apr 2002). He updated it a few times since. His blog has the details. It's kind of like GVT, but can be applied to historical players based on the limited statistics available.

____________________

The thing with Vezina is that if you look at any source alone, it isn't enough. But we have at least 4 different avenues that all seem to point towards Vezina being the best of his generation:

1) The MacLean's list
2) Contemporary newpaper articles
3) articles after the fact, talking to people who watched him play
4) statistical analysis

 

[Canadiens1958]

Yea, I always forget to mention that +/- wasn't tracked until the same year as shots, so 59-60 is the first year of that data. Gordie is actually the first player I did when I started doing these splits systemically, simply because he had so many seasons that I just created my templates as I charted his seasons. So I do have Howe's splits for 59-60 to 66-67, though not his playoff splits. On hockey-ref, if you go to each individual season, they have each playoff series broken down, so you can see it yourself without having to collate multiple websites.

Here's Gordie's 59-60 to 66-67 splits:

				Total
	Games	Goals	Assists	Points	+/-	Shots
BOS	110	57	92	149	44	555
CHI	109	38	60	98	-18	526
DET	0	0	0	0	0	0
MTL	111	41	57	98	-6	477
NYR	111	49	94	143	55	559
TOR	111	46	63	109	-1	544
	552	231	366	597	74	2661
		0.4184782609	0.6630434783	1.081521739		4.820652174

[TBODY] [/TBODY]

		GPG	APG	PPG		SPG
BOS		0.518	0.836	1.355		5.045
CHI		0.349	0.550	0.899		4.826
DET
MTL		0.369	0.514	0.883		4.297
NYR		0.441	0.847	1.288		5.036
TOR		0.414	0.568	0.982		4.901

[TBODY] [/TBODY]

Gordie's so interesting because he played for so long that his spikes against bad teams get smoothed out by their times when they were good. Like those tables above are a solid 110 game sample of Gordie averaging 1.35 ppg against Boston compared to .9 ppg against Chicago, and yet when you add the other 170 games that comprise his entire career prior to expansion, he ends up averaging 1.11 ppg against Boston and 1.12 ppg against Chicago. When you start chopping down the sample though, Howe does perform at about .9 ppg versus Montreal and about 1 ppg versus Toronto, both in his twenties and in his thirties.

1959-60 happens to be the first season that the NHL published the archival data for shots and +/-.

Both were compiled earlier. Dick Irvin SR coaching the Canadiens refers to +/- in the early 1950s.

 

[Canadiens1958]

The thing with Vezina is that if you look at any source alone, it isn't enough. But we have at least 4 different avenues that all seem to point towards Vezina being the best of his generation:

1) The MacLean's list
2) Contemporary newpaper articles
3) articles after the fact, talking to people who watched him play
4) statistical analysis

The things with Vezina are.

No or rare Montreal support. Journalists that saw him most often.

Also no French journalists, province of Quebec, have been cited. True for the MacLean's article as well, so it should not be viewed as a national point of view.

 

[TheDevilMadeMe]

The things with Vezina are.

No or rare Montreal support. Journalists that saw him most often.

Also no French journalists, province of Quebec, have been cited. True for the MacLean's article as well, so it should not be viewed as a national point of view.

So your problem with the article is that only one of the voters was from Montreal? And he picked Benedict, who, as the article noted, had just been traded to the Montreal Maroons?

On another note, it does look like the MacLean's list shows a distinct lack of French speaking voters.... Though if anything, IMO, that should have hurt Vezina, not helped him.

________

Edit: for those who don't know, the Montreal Gazette (paper of the only Montreal voter) was Montreal's only English language paper back then. So it is correct that there is a distinct lack of representation from French speakers among the voters

Also note that the Montreal Maroons catered to the English speaking crowd, while the Canadiens catered to French speakers. S

 

[BenchBrawl]

I can take a dive at the digital BanQ this week-end, but I doubt I'll find anything juicy in such a short window of time.

 

[overpass]

So your problem with the article is that only one of the voters was from Montreal? And he picked Benedict, who, as the article noted, had just been traded to the Montreal Maroons?

On another note, it does look like the MacLean's list shows a distinct lack of French speaking voters.... Though if anything, IMO, that should have hurt Vezina, not helped him.

________

Edit: for those who don't know, the Montreal Gazette (paper of the only Montreal voter) was Montreal's only English language paper back then. So it is correct that there is a distinct lack of representation from French speakers among the voters

Also note that the Montreal Maroons catered to the English speaking crowd, while the Canadiens catered to French speakers. S

There were several other English language dailies. The Montreal Herald with Elmer Ferguson and the Montreal Daily Star with Baz O’Meara were two English papers that were probably more prominent than the Gazette at the time. We use the Gazette now because the archives are in Google Archives.

 

[TheDevilMadeMe]

I can take a dive at the digital BanQ this week-end, but I doubt I'll find anything juicy in such a short window of time.

The more info the better, but I at least feel like non-hometown sources praising a player are worth more than hometown sources.