Top-100 Hockey Players of All-Time - Round 2, Vote 17

[Batis]

I disagree with the notion of Mikhailov being "blocked" from more All-Star nods. Based on my reading, Martinec 4-year run of picking up AST nods was well deserved. I intentionally mentioned the 1974 WHC where Martinec was the biggest vote-getter of all players, Mikhailov just wasn´t close. 1976 WHC, Mikhailov wasn´t close either, the Soviet offense there was completely run by Kharlamov (per contemporary reports... Petrov didn´t play there and Maltsev got soon injured, Mikhailov was an afterthought). And as I listed, Mikhailov losing AST honours to Martinec was only a small portion of it. He also lost twice to Vikulov, twice to Maltsev, couple other players...

Bottom line is that Mikhailov was rarely the best RW, plain and simple. BUT that doesn´t mean that he wasn´t great player, RW was just one of the deeper positions at the time.

RW sure was a deep position but come to think of it was it even the most competitive Wing position during much of Mikhailovs international career? I mean while Martinec and Maltsev definitely was very tough competition for Mikhailov the competition at LW for much of that time frame was in my opinion just as tough and on average the First Team RW:s actually did somewhat worse than the First Team LW:s in the overall All-Star voting during Mikhailovs international career. At two tournaments the First Team RW (Vikulov) even ranked outside of the top 3 in the overall voting and had two LW:s ahead of him (Firsov and Kharlamov in 1971 and Kharlamov and Yakushev in 1972). So in my opinion it is not very likely that Mikhailov would have had a much easier time making the All-Star teams if he would have had the LW competition instead. Yes in the 1974-1978 time frame Mikhailov lost out to some truly great competition in peak Martinec (74-77) or prime Maltsev (78) but even during that time frame it is unlikely that Mikhailov would have picked up many All-Star nods with the LW competition either considering that Yakushev, Kharlamov or Kapustin led the overall All-Star voting among forwards in 1975, 1976 and 1978.

 

[quoipourquoi]

You're right, Leetch's 2nd best season was somewhat better than Fedorov's 2nd best, not a lot better. Fedorov's 95-96 was a legit great season; I'm just not sure it was as good as a "won the Norris in a landslide" season.

It was a landslide because his competition was Sandis Ozolinsh and Vladimir Konstantinov while Fedorov’s was Lemieux, Messier, and Lindros.

I’d take Fedorov’s 1995-96 over Leetch’s 1996-97 where he was probably just the 3rd most highly regarded Ranger in spite of the positional designation.

 

[DN28]

RW sure was a deep position but come to think of it was it even the most competitive Wing position during much of Mikhailovs international career? I mean while Martinec and Maltsev definitely was very tough competition for Mikhailov the competition at LW for much of that time frame was in my opinion just as tough and on average the First Team RW:s actually did somewhat worse than the First Team LW:s in the overall All-Star voting during Mikhailovs international career. At two tournaments the First Team RW (Vikulov) even ranked outside of the top 3 in the overall voting and had two LW:s ahead of him (Firsov and Kharlamov in 1971 and Kharlamov and Yakushev in 1972). So in my opinion it is not very likely that Mikhailov would have had a much easier time making the All-Star teams if he would have had the LW competition instead. Yes in the 1974-1978 time frame Mikhailov lost out to some truly great competition in peak Martinec (74-77) or prime Maltsev (78) but even during that time frame it is unlikely that Mikhailov would have picked up many All-Star nods with the LW competition either considering that Yakushev, Kharlamov or Kapustin led the overall All-Star voting among forwards in 1975, 1976 and 1978.

You´re right, now that I´m reading your post it looks convincing that LW was even deeper position than RW during the 1970s. However, I´d say that in general European forwards of this era (both wings and centers) rivaling each other, faced more difficult competition for awards than d-men and goalies. European d-men of the 1970s seems just too inconsistent compared to forwards. And there also wasn't a whole long array of goalies competing for all-star teams too.

So I think I agree with your point but I say that Mikhailov´s competition at his own position still remained higher than average.

 

[TheDevilMadeMe]

It was a landslide because his competition was Sandis Ozolinsh and Vladimir Konstantinov while Fedorov’s was Lemieux, Messier, and Lindros.

I’d take Fedorov’s 1995-96 over Leetch’s 1996-97 where he was probably just the 3rd most highly regarded Ranger in spite of the positional designation.

Your first point is valid.

But if Leetch was thought of lower than Messier and Gretzky as late as 96-97, it was because of past, not current, accomplishments. (FWIW, both Leetch and Gretzky received a pair of top 5 Hart votes; Messier got none). 1996-97 Rangers was a weird team - 3 superstars (despite Gretzky and Messier not being as good as they were in the past) and not much else.

 

[Batis]

International play

Borje Salming was voted All-Star defenseman along with Bobby Orr at the 1976 Canada Cup. At the time, he was considered Sweden's best player by far, and Team Canada's strategy was to constantly hit him.

Brian Leetch was voted All-Star at the 2002 Olympics along with his partner Chris Chelios. At the time, the his NHL club (the Rangers) were terrible, overworked Leetch like mad, and he looked flat out bad in his own zone. So its interesting to note that on a strong Team USA, Leetch was still able to excel.

Leetch was not an All-Star at the 1996 World Cup (Team USA's only victory in true best-on-best competition), but his pairing with Chris Chelios (who was an All-Star) was highly praised.

To expand upon this here is how Brian Leetch and Börje Salming (the two new candidates with available data) does when it comes to scoring against Best-on-Best Team Canada.

Leetch
CC 1991 2 gp, 0 g, 0 a, 0 pts
WC 1996 4 gp, 0 g, 4 a, 4 pts
WOG 1998 1 gp, 0 g, 0 a, 0 pts
WOG 2002 1 gp, 0 g, 0 a, 0 pts
WC 2004 1 gp, 0 g, 0 a, 0 pts
Total 9 gp, 0 g, 4 a, 4 pts

Salming
CC 1976 1 gp, 0 g, 0 a, 0 pts
CC 1981 1 gp, 0 g, 1 a, 1 pts
CC 1991 2 gp, 0 g, 0 a, 0 pts
Total 4 gp, 0 g, 1 a, 1 pts

Leetch had a great impact against Team Canada at the 1996 World Cup but outside of that tournament he was held off the scoresheet against them. Still 4 points in 9 games against Best-on-Best Team Canada is definitely something that I would consider rather strong numbers from a defenceman.

Outside of his 1 assist in 4 games in major international tournaments Salming also had 1 assist in 2 exhibition games against Team Canada before the second half of the Summit Series.

And here are the numbers of the other available players again.

Hull
CC 1991 3 gp, 1 g, 1 a, 2 pts
WC 1996 4 gp, 5 g, 2 a, 7 pts
WOG 1998 1 gp, 1 g, 0 a, 1 pts
WOG 2002 1 gp, 0 g, 1 a, 1 pts
WC 2004 1 gp, 0 g, 0 a, 0 pts
Total 10 gp, 7 g, 4 a, 11 pts

Mikhailov
SS 1972 8 gp, 3 g, 2 a, 5 pts (3 g, 4 a, 7 pts)
Total 8 gp, 3 g, 2 a, 5 pts (3 g, 4 a, 7 pts)

Fedorov
CC 1991 1 gp, 0 g, 0 a, 0 pts
WC 1996 1 gp, 1 g, 0 a, 1 pts
WOG 2010 1 gp, 0 g, 1 a, 1 pts
Total 3 gp, 1 g, 1 a, 2 pts

 

[ted2019]

Lemaire won 8 SCs as a player, others in management with the Canadiens and Devils.

Stevens never went to the SC finals without Brodeur while Brodeur did so without Stevens.

Like I said earlier, Brodeur never won another cup and Lemaire never won a cup as a head coach without Stevens. Lemaire could've won 20 cups part as management or as a player, he still never won one as a head coach without Stevens.

 

[Vilica]

Before I post two walls of text that I've been working on today, one about Gadsby, one about Lach, I have a question to ask the participants in this exercise. I've been contributing some stuff as I catch up on discussions, but a lot of my stuff ends up being me tearing down old players for various reasons. Since I'm a non-voter, I can only advance my point of view through these discussion threads. I have my biases in this sort of project, in that I lean towards rewarding modern players over older ones, and that I prefer larger sample size in evaluating players rather than over-weighting a player's performance in a single tournament or playoff round. Like I see Batis post those international tournament results, and it's like Leetch has 9 games over 13 years, or Hull has 10 games over 13 years, or Fedorov has 3 games over 19 years - there's nothing predictive about those numbers, if you played those games over again there's no telling what the results would be.

In any case, given that my posts tend towards analyzing one single person, and come more to the conclusion of 'this is why you should NR this player', as opposed to comparing two or more nominees, and making a case to vote for one over the other, do people still want to read that sort of post? Also, I find my team split stuff quite interesting, though I've found that it makes the strongest case between 49-50 and 66-67, where you had 70 game seasons and players had 14 games a year against the really bad teams. Post-consolidation but before the O6 era, the low number of games combined with a larger league meant that the correlations weren't as drastic. Both Elmer Lach and Nels Stewart played about 650 NHL games, but their team splits are quite different.

Games	Away	Home	Nels	Lach	Away	Home
BOS	30	30	60	131	65	66
CHI	34	38	72	135	68	67
DET	36	36	72	125	60	65
HAM			0
MTL	48	49	97
MTM	21	21	42
MTW			0
NYA	29	30	59	6	4	2
NYR	36	37	73	133	64	69
OTT	18	18	36
OTT/STL	9	9	18
PIT/PHL	13	13	26
TOR	48	47	95	134	64	70
			650	664

[TBODY] [/TBODY]

Looking at Stewart's results, I wouldn't feel very confident about assessing his team splits. Sure he had 84 points against Toronto compared to 68 points against Montreal, but they were balanced home and away, and he scored 20 goals in 26 games against Pittsburgh/Philadelphia, but those are just anecdotes. In contrast, I can look at Lach, and see he scored 160 points in 135 games against Chicago, compared to 94 points in 125 games against Detroit. I can see that he had a large home/road split in that he was a .72 ppg player on the road (worst against Detroit 32 points in 60 games, best against Chicago 62 points in 68 games), and a 1.14 ppg player at home (62 points in 65 games against Detroit, 98 points in 67 games against Chicago). Nels Stewart's home/road splits were .70 on the road, .875 at home. It is much easier to create a narrative around Elmer Lach's splits, or how he took advantage of the war years, because he has 10 games a year against 5 other teams, whereas Nels Stewart has a much more modern schedule of 4-6 games against 8-9 other teams.

Edit - Oops I guess this ended up being another wall of text.

 

[Batis]

Like I see Batis post those international tournament results, and it's like Leetch has 9 games over 13 years, or Hull has 10 games over 13 years, or Fedorov has 3 games over 19 years - there's nothing predictive about those numbers, if you played those games over again there's no telling what the results would be.

Those numbers I posted are only from the games against Team Canada in Best-on-Best tournaments. Both Leetch and Hull obviously played far more international games than that. So why am I bringing up the numbers against Best-on-Best Team Canada? Because in my opinion it is interesting to get an idea of how the players performed against the highest available competition possible. Which with the possible exception of the late 70´s/early 80´s Soviet national teams the Best-on-Best Team Canadas clearly have been since 1972. Now do I rank players based on this without taking into account their whole careers? Of course not. But still I find it interesting and a point in his favour that for example Brett Hull did so well throughout his career against teams as strong as those Team Canadas.

 

[Canadiens1958]

Before I post two walls of text that I've been working on today, one about Gadsby, one about Lach, I have a question to ask the participants in this exercise. I've been contributing some stuff as I catch up on discussions, but a lot of my stuff ends up being me tearing down old players for various reasons. Since I'm a non-voter, I can only advance my point of view through these discussion threads. I have my biases in this sort of project, in that I lean towards rewarding modern players over older ones, and that I prefer larger sample size in evaluating players rather than over-weighting a player's performance in a single tournament or playoff round. Like I see Batis post those international tournament results, and it's like Leetch has 9 games over 13 years, or Hull has 10 games over 13 years, or Fedorov has 3 games over 19 years - there's nothing predictive about those numbers, if you played those games over again there's no telling what the results would be.

In any case, given that my posts tend towards analyzing one single person, and come more to the conclusion of 'this is why you should NR this player', as opposed to comparing two or more nominees, and making a case to vote for one over the other, do people still want to read that sort of post? Also, I find my team split stuff quite interesting, though I've found that it makes the strongest case between 49-50 and 66-67, where you had 70 game seasons and players had 14 games a year against the really bad teams. Post-consolidation but before the O6 era, the low number of games combined with a larger league meant that the correlations weren't as drastic. Both Elmer Lach and Nels Stewart played about 650 NHL games, but their team splits are quite different.

Games	Away	Home	Nels	Lach	Away	Home
BOS	30	30	60	131	65	66
CHI	34	38	72	135	68	67
DET	36	36	72	125	60	65
HAM			0
MTL	48	49	97
MTM	21	21	42
MTW			0
NYA	29	30	59	6	4	2
NYR	36	37	73	133	64	69
OTT	18	18	36
OTT/STL	9	9	18
PIT/PHL	13	13	26
TOR	48	47	95	134	64	70
			650	664

[TBODY] [/TBODY]

Looking at Stewart's results, I wouldn't feel very confident about assessing his team splits. Sure he had 84 points against Toronto compared to 68 points against Montreal, but they were balanced home and away, and he scored 20 goals in 26 games against Pittsburgh/Philadelphia, but those are just anecdotes. In contrast, I can look at Lach, and see he scored 160 points in 135 games against Chicago, compared to 94 points in 125 games against Detroit. I can see that he had a large home/road split in that he was a .72 ppg player on the road (worst against Detroit 32 points in 60 games, best against Chicago 62 points in 68 games), and a 1.14 ppg player at home (62 points in 65 games against Detroit, 98 points in 67 games against Chicago). Nels Stewart's home/road splits were .70 on the road, .875 at home. It is much easier to create a narrative around Elmer Lach's splits, or how he took advantage of the war years, because he has 10 games a year against 5 other teams, whereas Nels Stewart has a much more modern schedule of 4-6 games against 8-9 other teams.

Edit - Oops I guess this ended up being another wall of text.

More jibber-jabber. Shows that you can divide a schedule into home and away by team.

Let's try for something moderately useful.Player NHL RS scoring vs year end team standing position(first to last)

In other words how much did each player - say Nels Stewart score against the 1st place team,etc down to last during each season of his career.

 

[Vilica]

Those numbers I posted are only from the games against Team Canada in Best-on-Best tournaments. Both Leetch and Hull obviously played far more international games than that. So why am I bringing up the numbers against Best-on-Best Team Canada? Because in my opinion it is interesting to get an idea of how the players performed against the highest available competition possible. Which with the possible exception of the late 70´s/early 80´s Soviet national teams the Best-on-Best Team Canadas clearly have been since 1972. Now do I rank players based on this without taking into account their whole careers? Of course not. But still I find it interesting and a point in his favour that for example Brett Hull did so well throughout his career against teams as strong as those Team Canadas.

I agree with you that they're interesting, we just disagree on the weighting - and that's perfectly fine. My preferred brand of analysis is statistical, and I just can't see myself justifying anything about a player based on their performance in a single game (no matter how important), there's just too much random variance in hockey.

I suppose I do have a bit of a hangup in my obsession about team splits, in that I'm reluctant to put much weight on a player's performance in the playoffs, feeling that judging a player's performance based on a 7 or 14 game sample is too harsh, while at the same time wanting to bash Milt Schmidt's 2nd team All-Star in 1951-52 because he scored 20 of his 50 points in 14 games against Chicago, leaving only 30 points scored in his other 55 games.

 

[Canadiens1958]

I agree with you that they're interesting, we just disagree on the weighting - and that's perfectly fine. My preferred brand of analysis is statistical, and I just can't see myself justifying anything about a player based on their performance in a single game (no matter how important), there's just too much random variance in hockey.

I suppose I do have a bit of a hangup in my obsession about team splits, in that I'm reluctant to put much weight on a player's performance in the playoffs, feeling that judging a player's performance based on a 7 or 14 game sample is too harsh, while at the same time wanting to bash Milt Schmidt's 2nd team All-Star in 1951-52 because he scored 20 of his 50 points in 14 games against Chicago, leaving only 30 points scored in his other 55 games.

So?

How did the other #1 centers from each team do in 14 games vs Chicago?

Half-baked data does not impress.

 

[Vilica]

More jibber-jabber. Shows that you can divide a schedule into home and away by team.

Let's try for something moderately useful.Player NHL RS scoring vs year end team standing position(first to last)

In other words how much did each player - say Nels Stewart score against the 1st place team,etc down to last during each season of his career.

Ok I apologize in advance for these massive tables, but here's the raw data for Stewart's 2 Hart winning seasons.

NHL 25-26	36 Games	7 Teams
				Away							Home							Total
	Games	Goals	Assists	Points	+/-	Shots		Games	Goals	Assists	Points	+/-	Shots		Games	Goals	Assists	Points
BOS (38)	3	1	0	1	0	0		3	3	1	4	0	0		6	4	1	5
MTL (23)	3	4	1	5	0	0		3	3	1	4	0	0		6	7	2	9
MTM (45)	0	0	0	0	0	0		0	0	0	0	0	0		0	0	0	0
NYA (28)	3	2	0	2	0	0		3	3	0	3	0	0		6	5	0	5
OTT (52)	3	0	0	0	0	0		3	3	0	3	0	0		6	3	0	3
PIT (39)	3	1	0	1	0	0		3	3	1	4	0	0		6	4	1	5
TOR (27)	3	4	1	5	0	0		3	7	3	10	0	0		6	11	4	15
Total	18	12	2	14	0	0		18	22	6	28	0	0		36	34	8	42
Per Game		0.667	0.111	0.778		0.000			1.222	0.333	1.556		0			0.944	0.222	1.167
Totals	36	34	8	42	0	0
	36	34	8	42	0	0

[TBODY] [/TBODY]

NHL 29-30	44 Games	10 Teams
				Away							Home							Total
	Games	Goals	Assists	Points	+/-	Shots		Games	Goals	Assists	Points	+/-	Shots		Games	Goals	Assists	Points
BOS (77)	2	2	0	2	0	0		2	1	1	2	0	0		4	3	1	4
CHI (47)	2	2	1	3	0	0		2	1	0	1	0	0		4	3	1	4
DET (34)	2	5	0	5	0	0		2	2	1	3	0	0		4	7	1	8
MTL (51)	3	5	0	5	0	0		3	0	1	1	0	0		6	5	1	6
MTM (51)	0	0	0	0	0	0		0	0	0	0	0	0		0	0	0	0
NYA (33)	3	2	0	2	0	0		3	3	1	4	0	0		6	5	1	6
NYR (44)	2	0	2	2	0	0		2	2	2	4	0	0		4	2	4	6
OTT (50)	3	5	0	5	0	0		3	2	2	4	0	0		6	7	2	9
PIT (13)	2	3	1	4	0	0		2	1	1	2	0	0		4	4	2	6
TOR (40)	3	3	3	6	0	0		3	0	0	0	0	0		6	3	3	6
Total	22	27	7	34	0	0		22	12	9	21	0	0		44	39	16	55
Per Game		1.227	0.318	1.545		0.000			0.545	0.409	0.955		0.000			0.886	0.364	1.250
Totals	44	39	16	55	0	0
	44	39	16	55	0	0

[TBODY] [/TBODY]

What would you feel comfortable about concluding about Nels Stewart based on those 2 seasons? He beat up on some bad teams, had some bad performances versus some good teams. Contrast that to Elmer Lach's performance in the 2 war years.

NHL 43-44	50 Games	6 Teams
				Away							Home							Total
	Games	Goals	Assists	Points	+/-	Shots		Games	Goals	Assists	Points	+/-	Shots		Games	Goals	Assists	Points
BOS (43)	5	3	2	5	0	0		5	3	8	11	0	0		10	6	10	16
CHI (49)	5	1	6	7	0	0		5	0	8	8	0	0		10	1	14	15
DET (58)	4	2	1	3	0	0		5	8	6	14	0	0		9	10	7	17
MTL (83)	0	0	0	0	0	0		0	0	0	0	0	0		0	0	0	0
NYR (17)	5	4	1	5	0	0		5	1	7	8	0	0		10	5	8	13
TOR (50)	4	1	2	3	0	0		5	1	7	8	0	0		9	2	9	11
Total	23	11	12	23	0	0		25	13	36	49	0	0		48	24	48	72
Per Game		0.478	0.522	1.000		0.000			0.520	1.440	1.960		0.000			0.500	1.000	1.500
Totals	48	24	48	72	0	0
	48	24	48	72	0	0

[TBODY] [/TBODY]

NHL 44-45	50 Games	6 Teams
				Away							Home							Total
	Games	Goals	Assists	Points	+/-	Shots		Games	Goals	Assists	Points	+/-	Shots		Games	Goals	Assists	Points
BOS (36)	5	2	4	6	0	0		5	2	10	12	0	0		10	4	14	18
CHI (33)	5	1	3	4	0	0		5	3	8	11	0	0		10	4	11	15
DET (67)	5	1	3	4	0	0		5	4	8	12	0	0		10	5	11	16
MTL (80)	0	0	0	0	0	0		0	0	0	0	0	0		0	0	0	0
NYR (32)	5	5	5	10	0	0		5	3	5	8	0	0		10	8	10	18
TOR (52)	5	2	2	4	0	0		5	3	6	9	0	0		10	5	8	13
Total	25	11	17	28	0	0		25	15	37	52	0	0		50	26	54	80
Per Game		0.440	0.680	1.120		0.000			0.600	1.480	2.080		0.000			0.520	1.080	1.600
Totals	50	26	54	80	0	0
	50	26	54	80	0	0

[TBODY] [/TBODY]

Ignoring for the moment that Lach's seasons are back to back while Stewart's are 4 years apart, I'd feel much better trying to draw a conclusion about Lach's statistics.

I did consider your query about performance against 1st to last in career, but there are a few reasons why I've stuck with team splits. To put it in a single sentence, I valued continuity of opposition over quality of opposition. If you look at the numbers in parentheses after each team, that's the number of points they accumulated that year. You can sort it by points, but the gaps end up being arbitrary. There's no correlation in finishes each year, and to make it worse the league continually expanded and contracted so you had different numbers of teams each year.

 

[Vilica]

So?

How did the other #1 centers from each team do in 14 games vs Chicago?

Half-baked data does not impress.

I don't know, let me consult how Joe Thornton did in the 16 games he played against a -83 GD team in one of his seasons. Oh right, he didn't because schedules are so split that he'll never have the opportunity to run up the stats against a single opponent like that. Even if you combine opponents, you're still not going to get year-to-year correlations to stick with any sort of regularity, unlike back in the O6 era.

To answer your question though:

				Away					Home					Total
NHL 51-52	Games	Goals	Assists	Points		Games	Goals	Assists	Points		Games	Goals	Assists	Points
Elmer Lach	7	2	3	5		7	4	9	13		14	6	12	18
Don Raleigh	7	3	5	8		7	4	4	8		14	7	9	16
Sid Abel	6	1	1	2		7	1	6	7		13	2	7	9
Ted Kennedy	7	1	1	2		7	2	5	7		14	3	6	9
Milt Schmidt	7	4	7	11		7	3	6	9		14	7	13	20

[TBODY] [/TBODY]

Lach's full season line was 70 Games, 15+50=65
Raleigh's line was 70 Games, 19+42=61
Abel's line was 62 Games, 17+36=53
Kennedy's line was 70 Games, 19+33=52
Schmidt's line was 69 Games, 21+29=50

 

[quoipourquoi]

Your first point is valid.

But if Leetch was thought of lower than Messier and Gretzky as late as 96-97, it was because of past, not current, accomplishments. (FWIW, both Leetch and Gretzky received a pair of top 5 Hart votes; Messier got none). 1996-97 Rangers was a weird team - 3 superstars (despite Gretzky and Messier not being as good as they were in the past) and not much else.

Meanwhile Fedorov landed on 1/3 of all Hart ballots in 1995-96 despite a crowded field of the aforementioned nominees (Lemieux, Messier, Lindros) as well as Jagr, Sakic, Forsberg, Kariya, Selanne, Chelios, and Bourque. All had fantastic seasons, but Fedorov still garnered individual attention in MVP voting despite being on a team with three of the top-6 Norris finishers and a Vezina nominee.

Let’s not overrate the value of the 1997 Norris Trophy.

 

[Kyle McMahon]

I don't know, let me consult how Joe Thornton did in the 16 games he played against a -83 GD team in one of his seasons. Oh right, he didn't because schedules are so split that he'll never have the opportunity to run up the stats against a single opponent like that. Even if you combine opponents, you're still not going to get year-to-year correlations to stick with any sort of regularity, unlike back in the O6 era.

To answer your question though:

				Away					Home					Total
NHL 51-52	Games	Goals	Assists	Points		Games	Goals	Assists	Points		Games	Goals	Assists	Points
Elmer Lach	7	2	3	5		7	4	9	13		14	6	12	18
Don Raleigh	7	3	5	8		7	4	4	8		14	7	9	16
Sid Abel	6	1	1	2		7	1	6	7		13	2	7	9
Ted Kennedy	7	1	1	2		7	2	5	7		14	3	6	9
Milt Schmidt	7	4	7	11		7	3	6	9		14	7	13	20

[TBODY] [/TBODY]

Lach's full season line was 70 Games, 15+50=65
Raleigh's line was 70 Games, 19+42=61
Abel's line was 62 Games, 17+36=53
Kennedy's line was 70 Games, 19+33=52
Schmidt's line was 69 Games, 21+29=50

So in conclusion, Lach, Schmidt, and Raleigh all beat on Chicago pretty soundly. Makes Kennedy and Abel look good, as we can reasonably speculate that a smaller percentage of their points were racked up in blowouts of the Hawks, but has nothing to do with Joe Thornton or any other player who didn't play in the NHL in 1951-52. I could be wrong here, but you seem to be implying that Lach had some sort of advantage that a modern player may not (14 GP against the league's worst team), but everyone he was competing with in the scoring race would have had the same advantage (except members of the Blackhawks).

 

[VMBM]

I disagree with the notion of Mikhailov being "blocked" from more All-Star nods. Based on my reading, Martinec 4-year run of picking up AST nods was well deserved. I intentionally mentioned the 1974 WHC where Martinec was the biggest vote-getter of all players, Mikhailov just wasn´t close. 1976 WHC, Mikhailov wasn´t close either, the Soviet offense there was completely run by Kharlamov (per contemporary reports... Petrov didn´t play there and Maltsev got soon injured, Mikhailov was an afterthought). And as I listed, Mikhailov losing AST honours to Martinec was only a small portion of it. He also lost twice to Vikulov, twice to Maltsev, couple other players...

Agreed. The 1974 and 1976 WHC All-Star team nods were clear choices in Martinec's favour, and although the 1977 and especially the 1975 tournament ASTs were somewhat less clear, apparently Mikhailov just wasn't that great in either tournament (for example, I know that Mikhailov and his line twice failed badly vs Sweden in 1977, which de facto cost them the world championship, whereas Martinec was an absolute key player and prolific scorer in the wins over USSR and vs Sweden in the medal round).
Like it has been mentioned, in the 1969-72 WHCs, Mikhailov wasn't anything special (though certainly good in 1969), and in 1978, Maltsev had one of his best later performances when playing with (and maybe mentoring?) his Dynamo Moscow teammates the Golikov brothers, and furthermore, would Mikhailov even have beaten Balderis at RW (in 1978)?
Also, if there had been All-Star selections at the Winter Olympics (1972, 1976, 1980), Mikhailov hardly would have gotten any nods; in 1972, he played partly injured (knee-injury, and according to a Finnish sports book, his other leg was never quite the same after that) and did not get many points, poor stats also in 1976 (but he did miss the 16-1 game vs Poland?), and in 1980 he was one of the scoring leaders but failed to score in the Miracle game, and no way he would have beaten Makarov for the AST.

Bottom line is that Mikhailov was rarely the best RW, plain and simple. BUT that doesn´t mean that he wasn´t great player, RW was just one of the deeper positions at the time.

For me, his consistency (scoring) is the most impressive thing about him. He was also a reliable performer against any opposition.

 

[Vilica]

So in conclusion, Lach, Schmidt, and Raleigh all beat on Chicago pretty soundly. Makes Kennedy and Abel look good, as we can reasonably speculate that a smaller percentage of their points were racked up in blowouts of the Hawks, but has nothing to do with Joe Thornton or any other player who didn't play in the NHL in 1951-52. I could be wrong here, but you seem to be implying that Lach had some sort of advantage that a modern player may not (14 GP against the league's worst team), but everyone he was competing with in the scoring race would have had the same advantage (except members of the Blackhawks).

I'm using it to compare players across eras in similar seasons. Let's just for example take Elmer Lach's age-30 season, 1947-48. That year, he was the 1st team All-Star Center, finished 3rd in Hart voting, and won the Art Ross, though Montreal did miss the playoffs. Montreal averaged 2.45 Goals For per game, while the league average was 2.92.

Here are his team splits (as it was post-war, his home/road splits have normalized 29 points in 30 away games, 32 points in 30 home games):

	47-48	Elmer	Lach	Total
	Games	Goals	Assists	Points
BOS (59)	12	8	2	10
CHI (46)	12	8	10	18
DET (72)	12	3	4	7
MTL (51)	0	0	0	0
NYR (55)	12	6	6	12
TOR (77)	12	5	9	14
	60	30	31	61
		0.500	0.517	1.017

[TBODY] [/TBODY]

Compare that to Sergei Fedorov's age-30 season. In 1999-2000, Fedorov played 68 games, going 27+35=62, +8. Detroit averaged 3.39 Goals For, much higher than the league average of 2.74. Detroit lost in the 2nd round of the playoffs.

Lach had a point on 42% of Montreal goals, while Fedorov only registered points on 22% of Detroit's goals. In the end though, I'd judge that Lach's year was much better than Fedorov's, as his post-season awards indicate.

Let's turn our attention to their age-26 seasons. That would be 1943-44 for Lach, and 1995-96 for Fedorov.

I posted Lach's full splits earlier in the thread, so you can see his huge discrepancy between away and home games, but here are his team splits:

	43-44	Elmer	Lach	Total
	Games	Goals	Assists	Points
BOS (43)	10	6	10	16
CHI (49)	10	1	14	15
DET (58)	9	10	7	17
MTL (83)	0	0	0	0
NYR (17)	10	5	8	13
TOR (50)	9	2	9	11
	48	24	48	72
		0.5	1	1.5

[TBODY] [/TBODY]

Lach was named to the 2nd team All-Star, and Montreal won the Stanley Cup in 9 total games, completing a dominant season where Montreal averaged 4.68 Goals For compared to a league average of 4.05, and lost 1 home game all year. Weirdly, despite Montreal's domination, none of their players received any votes for Hart or Lady Byng, and Bill Durnan was the only AS-1 nomination - Lach, Richard and Bouchard had to content themselves with 2nd team nominations.

Now you have Fedorov's age-26 season. In 78 games, he scored 39 goals and added 68 assists, for 107 points, and was a +49. Detroit averaged 3.96 Goals For per game, while the league average was 3.14. Detroit lost in the de-facto Stanley Cup finals against Colorado, as both teams would have handled Florida in the finals. Due to a deeper league in comparison to Lach's year, Fedorov finished a distant 5th in both Hart voting and in All-Star Center voting, while winning the Selke.

I'd argue that Fedorov's year was more impressive than Lach's year, though more due to the lesser competition because of the war as opposed to any outliers on team splits. For all I know, you might agree with me.

You also don't have to just compare individual season to individual season, you can also compare peak to peak, or prime to prime, and to me that's where I start to put more weight on team splits. You see that a player is 0.80 PPG for his career, then you look at his scoring environment to see how that helped or hurt, and then you look at team splits to try and gauge his true talent. I'm jumping around a bit, but take for example Ted Kennedy. You guys probably voted him in more for his Cups than his regular season performance, but his splits are shocking. His career PPG is 0.80, but look at the gaps between his points against "good" teams versus his points against "bad" teams.

Away	G	GPG	APG	PPG		Home	GPG	APG	PPG		Total	GPG	APG	PPG
BOS	71	0.324	0.282	0.606		69	0.478	0.580	1.058		140	0.400	0.429	0.829
CHI	71	0.408	0.521	0.930		71	0.479	0.620	1.099		142	0.444	0.570	1.014
DET	63	0.143	0.317	0.460		68	0.382	0.382	0.765		131	0.267	0.351	0.618
MTL	71	0.155	0.324	0.479		68	0.265	0.412	0.676		139	0.209	0.367	0.576
NYR	72	0.278	0.639	0.917		72	0.375	0.639	1.014		144	0.326	0.639	0.965

[TBODY] [/TBODY]

Head-to-head results over the years against Detroit and Montreal are inconclusive, though I don't know how you'd judge expected results versus actual results. I don't have Sid Abel's team splits, but looking at Lach's, against Toronto he was a career .866 ppg player (.78 away, .94 home), compared to his career .94 average. That'd indicate to me that if Kennedy matched up against Lach, Lach had the better of that matchup, if you just look at scoring rates compared to their averages. That's the sort of place where I think you would find value in these team splits.

Sorry for such a rambling post, I was basically working this out in my head as I was typing this up. It's a variation of the argument I made about Frank Mahovlich, where I tried to show that if you took his prime years, when he made 6 straight All-Star teams, and compared it to a few modern wingers - Jamie Benn, Corey Perry, Marian Hossa - you'd see that over the same age period, in similar league scoring environments, those 3 wingers had the same or better stats than Mahovlich, but because of better league depth, not as much recognition. In fact, I still maintain that despite Marian Hossa's single AS-2 nomination over his entire career, his regular season performance to go along with his 3 Cups, 5 Finals and 7 Conference Finals, that his career was clearly better than Mahovlich's, even with his 6 Cups in 8 appearances, and 3 AS-1/6 AS-2 nominations.

Looking back at my argument, I should probably have deleted the Lach/Fedorov comparison, because it isn't very well articulated. I like the Kennedy/Lach stuff a bit better, because comparing careers or primes allows you to increase your sample size. Finally, I just want to mention that I'm not treating that Schmidt year as any sort of argument - it's just trivia. It just happens to be the most extreme sample-size performance I've found so far.

 

[Canadiens1958]

Ok I apologize in advance for these massive tables, but here's the raw data for Stewart's 2 Hart winning seasons.

NHL 25-26	36 Games	7 Teams
				Away							Home							Total
	Games	Goals	Assists	Points	+/-	Shots		Games	Goals	Assists	Points	+/-	Shots		Games	Goals	Assists	Points
BOS (38)	3	1	0	1	0	0		3	3	1	4	0	0		6	4	1	5
MTL (23)	3	4	1	5	0	0		3	3	1	4	0	0		6	7	2	9
MTM (45)	0	0	0	0	0	0		0	0	0	0	0	0		0	0	0	0
NYA (28)	3	2	0	2	0	0		3	3	0	3	0	0		6	5	0	5
OTT (52)	3	0	0	0	0	0		3	3	0	3	0	0		6	3	0	3
PIT (39)	3	1	0	1	0	0		3	3	1	4	0	0		6	4	1	5
TOR (27)	3	4	1	5	0	0		3	7	3	10	0	0		6	11	4	15
Total	18	12	2	14	0	0		18	22	6	28	0	0		36	34	8	42
Per Game		0.667	0.111	0.778		0.000			1.222	0.333	1.556		0			0.944	0.222	1.167
Totals	36	34	8	42	0	0
	36	34	8	42	0	0

[TBODY] [/TBODY]

NHL 29-30	44 Games	10 Teams
				Away							Home							Total
	Games	Goals	Assists	Points	+/-	Shots		Games	Goals	Assists	Points	+/-	Shots		Games	Goals	Assists	Points
BOS (77)	2	2	0	2	0	0		2	1	1	2	0	0		4	3	1	4
CHI (47)	2	2	1	3	0	0		2	1	0	1	0	0		4	3	1	4
DET (34)	2	5	0	5	0	0		2	2	1	3	0	0		4	7	1	8
MTL (51)	3	5	0	5	0	0		3	0	1	1	0	0		6	5	1	6
MTM (51)	0	0	0	0	0	0		0	0	0	0	0	0		0	0	0	0
NYA (33)	3	2	0	2	0	0		3	3	1	4	0	0		6	5	1	6
NYR (44)	2	0	2	2	0	0		2	2	2	4	0	0		4	2	4	6
OTT (50)	3	5	0	5	0	0		3	2	2	4	0	0		6	7	2	9
PIT (13)	2	3	1	4	0	0		2	1	1	2	0	0		4	4	2	6
TOR (40)	3	3	3	6	0	0		3	0	0	0	0	0		6	3	3	6
Total	22	27	7	34	0	0		22	12	9	21	0	0		44	39	16	55
Per Game		1.227	0.318	1.545		0.000			0.545	0.409	0.955		0.000			0.886	0.364	1.250
Totals	44	39	16	55	0	0
	44	39	16	55	0	0

[TBODY] [/TBODY]

What would you feel comfortable about concluding about Nels Stewart based on those 2 seasons? He beat up on some bad teams, had some bad performances versus some good teams. Contrast that to Elmer Lach's performance in the 2 war years.

NHL 43-44	50 Games	6 Teams
				Away							Home							Total
	Games	Goals	Assists	Points	+/-	Shots		Games	Goals	Assists	Points	+/-	Shots		Games	Goals	Assists	Points
BOS (43)	5	3	2	5	0	0		5	3	8	11	0	0		10	6	10	16
CHI (49)	5	1	6	7	0	0		5	0	8	8	0	0		10	1	14	15
DET (58)	4	2	1	3	0	0		5	8	6	14	0	0		9	10	7	17
MTL (83)	0	0	0	0	0	0		0	0	0	0	0	0		0	0	0	0
NYR (17)	5	4	1	5	0	0		5	1	7	8	0	0		10	5	8	13
TOR (50)	4	1	2	3	0	0		5	1	7	8	0	0		9	2	9	11
Total	23	11	12	23	0	0		25	13	36	49	0	0		48	24	48	72
Per Game		0.478	0.522	1.000		0.000			0.520	1.440	1.960		0.000			0.500	1.000	1.500
Totals	48	24	48	72	0	0
	48	24	48	72	0	0

[TBODY] [/TBODY]

NHL 44-45	50 Games	6 Teams
				Away							Home							Total
	Games	Goals	Assists	Points	+/-	Shots		Games	Goals	Assists	Points	+/-	Shots		Games	Goals	Assists	Points
BOS (36)	5	2	4	6	0	0		5	2	10	12	0	0		10	4	14	18
CHI (33)	5	1	3	4	0	0		5	3	8	11	0	0		10	4	11	15
DET (67)	5	1	3	4	0	0		5	4	8	12	0	0		10	5	11	16
MTL (80)	0	0	0	0	0	0		0	0	0	0	0	0		0	0	0	0
NYR (32)	5	5	5	10	0	0		5	3	5	8	0	0		10	8	10	18
TOR (52)	5	2	2	4	0	0		5	3	6	9	0	0		10	5	8	13
Total	25	11	17	28	0	0		25	15	37	52	0	0		50	26	54	80
Per Game		0.440	0.680	1.120		0.000			0.600	1.480	2.080		0.000			0.520	1.080	1.600
Totals	50	26	54	80	0	0
	50	26	54	80	0	0

[TBODY] [/TBODY]

Ignoring for the moment that Lach's seasons are back to back while Stewart's are 4 years apart, I'd feel much better trying to draw a conclusion about Lach's statistics.

I did consider your query about performance against 1st to last in career, but there are a few reasons why I've stuck with team splits. To put it in a single sentence, I valued continuity of opposition over quality of opposition. If you look at the numbers in parentheses after each team, that's the number of points they accumulated that year. You can sort it by points, but the gaps end up being arbitrary. There's no correlation in finishes each year, and to make it worse the league continually expanded and contracted so you had different numbers of teams each year.

Okay, get-it you are into customizing data that you then misinterpret, because of your lack of deep knowledge about NHL hockey.

Nels Stewart table. Up thread you claim he was a better home scorer than away:

Top-100 Hockey Players of All-Time - Round 2, Vote 17

Yet the table clearly shows that in the last pre-consolidation season, Stewart dominated at home while in the first forward pass season he dominated away.

Factor in that in 1932 Stewart went from the Maroons to the Bruins, where the smaller rink created a home scoring bias and you get a clearer picture. BTW 1932 marked the start of the 1930s Salary Cap era similar to the modern era in terms of opposition roster continuity.

So regardless of your claims, a better picture does emerge inadvertently about the strengths of Nels Stewart.

 

[TheDevilMadeMe]

current thoughts:

This week felt pretty rushed with only 3 days of discussion the opening of voting before voting opens. I'm not going to vote until Saturday or Sunday, but here is where I'm currently at:

1) Elmer Lach - Best all-around player available this round. Seemed to play a style similar to Forsberg. VsX numbers slightly hurt by his injuries, but still not that far behind Stewart and Hull, both of whom were significnatly worse at the non-offensive aspects of the game. Maintained his per-game averages when Maurice Richard was absent.

2) Turk Broda - With his combined durability, longevity, and consistency, he provided stability in net for Toronto for almost 15 years (minus the war years that the majority of players missed). Had what looks to be a 10 straight year stretch of top 3 All-Star voting broken only by losing 3 years to WW2. By all accounts (statistically and from reports of observers), he was amazing in the playoffs - perhaps the first "money" goalie. Maybe he didn't have the "wow" regular season prime, and maybe I value stability in net and playoff excellence more than many voters here, but I like Broda as the next goalie added.

3) Brett Hull - I can't believe he's currently in my top 5. I don't think I ever had him in my top 5 in the wingers project before he eventually got in. I guess I've been convinced that while he was mainly a floater in the regular season, he upped his effort level in the playoffs to consistent results. I also surprised myself at how well he compared to Nels Stewart in regular season "Vs2" goal scoring.

4) Borje Salming - I'm open to arguments otherwise, but right now, he's my favorite of the defensemen this round. I like that he was excellent both offensively and defensively at the same time (see the coach's polls), something I don't really know if you can say about the other two (Gadsby seems to have been great offensively in NY and great defensively in Detroit, but probably not both at once). His regular season +/-s are generally incredible compared to his teammates. Didn't really have much of a chance to do much in the playoffs on a generally poor Toronto team, but performed quite well in the 1976 Canada Cup.

5) Boris Mikhailov - the long time captain of the Soviet team provided a lot of the "glue guy" work for his lines - going into corners, going to the front of the net, etc. Generally performed well against Canada. Seems to have had a short but great standout peak from about 1978-1981 after a decade of consistently very good service. Hard player to rank; for now, middle of this pack seems appropriate.

6) Nels Stewart - His combination of longevity and consistency as a goal scorer is incredible for a player of his era. 13 top 10 finishes in goals; 14 straight seasons with at least 60% of 2nd place in goals. Playoffs keep him from being ranked with Brett Hull.

7. Bill Durnan - I'm probably lower on him than most - I honestly just can't stand the way he ended his own career in the middle of the playoffs. Imagine what today's media would do if a modern player did that? His war year performances still don't do all that much for me, but he received too much praise from the later part of the 1940s for me to ignore. Plus, his peak isn't necessarily shorter than Brian Leetch's.

8/9) Bill Gadsby/Brian Leetch - I can never decide who I like better. Hopefully, I'll be able to think about it next round. In Leetch's favor - better at his best - in particular the 1992 Norris (won by a landslide; this one over excellent competition) and his 1994 playoffs. Gadsby could never manage to win that Norris, even when Harvey was mostly out of the picture in 1959. In Gadsby's favor - He was consistently the best non-Harvey/Kelly defensemen for quite some time. Unlike Leetch, he was able to reinvent himself as a more defensive defenseman later in his career.

10) Sergei Fedorov - Last round was really early for him to show up. This round, he doesn't stick out so badly, but if Leetch is in my 8/9 spot and Fedorov is a bit below Leetch, he's still 10th for another round. Feds' 1994 season was amazing and his 1996 season was also very good. But the drop off from there is rapid (even moreso than Leetch) with just 4 top 20 points finishes in his entire career. On paper, his resume looks very similar to Doug Gilmour's. (I would rank Fedorov over Gilmour, but not by a ton). Fedorov was an absolute joy to watch, and he was talented as hell, but personally, I vote more on accomplishments. I wouldn't be upset if he snuck into our top 100 - he was an excellent player. But I don't see why he should go ahead of unavailable centers Bill Cowley and Norm Ullman. in particular.

 

[wetcoast]

True, but if Karlsson had better longevity behind him, he'd be up for voting too.

It will be very interesting to see where Karlsson ends up all time or if injuries this season are going to continue going forward and lock him into whatever ranking people have of him right now more or less.

 

[wetcoast]

Well, on a per season basis, Karlsson is quite a bit ahead of Gadsby. It's just that Gadsby also played twice as many seasons.

Except Karlsson and heck any Dman post expansion isn't going to get a top 5 Norris with a 12 assist season.

A top 5 Norris(I'm on my phone think it was a 3rd or 4th place finish)with 12 assists speaks more to the extreme weakness of the field rather than elite defense.

 

[MXD]

... At this point, I guess there's possibly an argument for Fedorov over Gadsby, but I'll probably end up ranking them according to a how many positionnal comparables that should really make it before them (AKA : not many for Gadsby; A LOT for Fedorov). It sucks as a rationale to rank players, but it is what it is.

 

[Hockey Outsider]

Has anyone done a deep dive into Gadsby's competition? He was the clear #3 defenseman of his era behind Harvey and Kelly, but I was under the impression that his competition for that spot wasn't overly impressive.

 

[wetcoast]

More jibber-jabber. Shows that you can divide a schedule into home and away by team.

Let's try for something moderately useful.Player NHL RS scoring vs year end team standing position(first to last)

In other words how much did each player - say Nels Stewart score against the 1st place team,etc down to last during each season of his career.

So your idea is useful and his is jibber jabber?

Both are just different sets of statistics or sets of numbers and both provide some insight with context one would think.

 

[wetcoast]

... At this point, I guess there's possibly an argument for Fedorov over Gadsby, but I'll probably end up ranking them according to a how many positionnal comparables that should really make it before them (AKA : not many for Gadsby; A LOT for Fedorov). It sucks as a rationale to rank players, but it is what it is.

You are right it does suck and frankly players up each and every round should be compared against others in the round and not players up for selection yet.

Just becasue alot of great centers aren't up yet should mean nothing for players in this round.

Those players virtually don't exist until they come up for discussion.

That's my 2 cents this morning.