Top-100 Hockey Players of All-Time - Round 2, Vote 2 (Back in the Habit)

[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 9th at midnight and continue through Sunday, November 11th at 8:59pm. Eastern time zone. I will release the results of the vote on Monday, November 12th.


Vote 1 Candidates

• Bobby Hull
• Dominik Hasek
• Doug Harvey
• Eddie Shore
• Howie Morenz
• Jean Beliveau
• Maurice Richard
• Patrick Roy
• Ray Bourque
• Sidney Crosby

Click to read more...

 

[DannyGallivan]

Ah, this place still has that "new thread smell".

Time to fish or cut bait. I will cast my vote momentarily... I won't have access to the world wide web from about 3:45 today until Tuesday morning.

 

[DannyGallivan]

 

[bobholly39]

As of now my tiers:

Hull/Beliveau/Roy
Harvey/Richard/Morenz
Shore/Bourque

I'm thinking of Crosby in tier 1 (want to look at longevity a bit more closely) and Hasek tier 2 - but both could still move.

Very undecided tbh. And within tiers i haven't yet decided how to vote, either.

 

[quoipourquoi]

I’ll get you all stickers next week.

 

[The Macho King]

Vote in. This was a fun one. My list changed almost entirely from my original submission.

 

[MXD]

I'll vote tonight, due to anticipating difficulties to access.

While Eddie Shore entered this round as a complete afterthought, and that he was, to a certain extent, an actually an afterthought for the strict purposes of this vote's voting, what little positive shown about him was that having him as low as I did was probably a mistake. It was probably one round too early for him to be available, but it certainly won't be two rounds too early... Considering what transpired.

(Edit : When I say "one round too early", I mean "shouldn't have been available at all"; I should refine terminology to appropriately distinguish between cases like Eddie Shore and cases like, say, Sidney Crosby, who, to me, became available at the right time, but who doesn't quite deserve to be voted in yet)

 

[TheDevilMadeMe]

This is where I'm at:

1. Patrick Roy - the least flaws of any goalie resume ever. Personally, I have him as a clear #1 goalie with the gap between him and the rest larger than the gap between Harvey and Bourque/Shore. I realize that's a minority opinion on this forum, but I think it is less strange in the hockey world at large. I'll be honest, @ContrarianGoaltender's posts did make me consider dropping Roy under Beliveau/Richards/Hull. But ultimately, this is one time that I think I'm sticking to my guns, and it's not like those guys don't have flaws in their resumes.

2. Jean Beliveau - I'm still a little concerned by the reliance on the PP for parts of his career, but I think good answers to those questions have been posted by @BenchBrawl and @overpass. I don't think it's out of the question that one of the most versatile players ever focused more on the PP while playing more defensively at even strength, when he had prime Henri Richard tearing it up at even strength. We do know the 60s Canadiens were a much more defensive-minded team than the "firewagon hockey" late 50s dynasty. I think it is telling that as the younger Henri Richard declined slightly, the older Beliveau did pick up his even strength scoring again. To me, versatility is a major plus that helps win championships. But lets be clear - anyone who dinged Mario Lemieux for being overly reliant on the PP, should at least consider doing the same to Beliveau.

3/4. Maurice Richard and Bobby Hull. Flawed players. If Beliveau was one of the most versatile superstars ever, these guys were the opposite. But when you're a forward and you're that good at the most important thing a forward does, you deserve to be ranked high. I bumped them over Crosby and Morenz because their primes as truly elite players were longer. I do like that both of them were tough guys in a tough era.

5/6. Sidney Crosby and Howie Morenz. I championed them in this post: https://hfboards.mandatory.com/posts/151745959/
If anyone hasn't read it, I think it's my biggest contribution to the thread, for the compilation of information on Howie Morenz. Very short version though: In the 5 years or so before the forward pass was allowed in all 3 zones, Howie Morenz tore the league a new one offensively, while also being highly praised as a two-way player. After the forward pass, he continued to be the best offensive player for a few years, but by a lesser margin. Morenz's speed (voted the fastest player in the league in 1934, even as his prime was coming to an end) seemed to allow him a very unique combination of being very aggressive offensively (Morenz was famous for rushing the net with the puck), but getting back to play strong defensively as well. In the end, average longevity is the only thing keeping these two below Beliveau/Richard/Hull in my mind, but it is one of many important factors.

As for Crosby, I originally had him 1 spot under Beliveau, but decided that what Beliveau did in his 30s was too important for such a tiny gap. Another reason I inserted Richard/Hull between them.

7. Doug Harvey. Best defensive defenseman ever, probably second to Orr in terms of controlling the pace of the game. Seemed to have focused on defense at even strength, while saving his offense for the power play just like Nicklas Lidstrom. Call him Lidstrom plus a fairly scary physical game or call him a slightly better version of Lidstrom.* To me, that makes him the 2nd best defenseman of all-time, but not necessarily better than some of these forwards.

*I really hope I don't open a can of worms with this one - it's a discussion that has been made on this forum many times. Personally I'm hoping Lidstrom becomes available next round, but let's wait to discuss him in detail until then, ok?

 

[Iceman]

Ballot submitted.

Not that my original list has been made public yet I'm happy I haven't felt the need, although very close, to change the order of the names available for this vote which will happen at some point, maybe as soon as the next vote.

 

[MXD]

For the record : During the first 4 seasons of Howie Morenz' career, the Canadiens players were awarded 0.46 assists per goals. The league average was 0.51 assists per goals goals.

If you take out 1924-25, where assists seems to have been given a tad more liberally and where the Canadiens were, for all intents and purposes, league average, the Canadiens players were awarded 0,39 assists per goals, while the League Average was 0,47 assists per goals. For every of those three seasons, the Canadiens were squarely in the bottom half of the league for assists per goals; per exaxmple, in 26-27, the Canadiens players were awarded 0.34 assists per goals. The league average was 0.48.

I'm not sure that's suuuuper relevant now, but it certainly does deserve to be taken consideration.

 

[Dr John Carlson]

My ballot right now is quite a bit different from what my original list has, the main difference being Patrick Roy rising a couple spots.

 

[Iceman]

I'll vote tonight, due to anticipating difficulties to access.

While Eddie Shore entered this round as a complete afterthought, and that he was, to a certain extent, an actually an afterthought for the strict purposes of this vote's voting, what little positive shown about him was that having him as low as I did was probably a mistake. It was probably one round too early for him to be available, but it certainly won't be two rounds too early... Considering what transpired.

(Edit : When I say "one round too early", I mean "shouldn't have been available at all"; I should refine terminology to appropriately distinguish between cases like Eddie Shore and cases like, say, Sidney Crosby, who, to me, became available at the right time, but who doesn't quite deserve to be voted in yet)

Shore and Crosby are two of many players that should be available after the first cluster that usually follows the big 4 but not all can make the final 4-5 or so spots out of these 10 for the 2nd vote which ultimately made be close out my ballot with Shore and Crosby at the end of it. That however is not as important as getting some of these top 10 names on the list right pretty quickly, so some of these players left have a chance to be compared to players yet to surface.

 

[Michael Farkas]

Seemed to have focused on defense at even strength

Defense and having to babysit poor partners, meant he couldn't wander...had to manage both the strong side and keep tabs on what his partner was doing, or wasn't doing, as it were. Two reliable players: Tom Johnson and Jean-Guy Talbot played the second pair and could feed off of each other better, join attacks...Harvey didn't really have that luxury because he was so good at drawing multiple forecheckers to him, that his job was just to get the puck to his own blue line to his centermen. I've seen a lot of players, and I'm a defenseman guy...I'm not sure I've seen anyone draw in forecheckers and then make a subtle pass against the grain or through a seam like Harvey does, except maybe Orr...and maybe you could say it for Erik Karlsson too, but Karlsson is more adventurous/risky...Harvey can reliably take on two forecheckers and thread a pass for the Montreal break...remember, this is before D-to-D passing was really utilized.

I can't state enough how much poise Harvey has, with and without the puck...it's the best of the players left and it's better than Howe in that regard. Harvey was just so smart, it looked like the game was being played in slow motion for him...and frankly, even in his body language, it doesn't look like he's exerting much effort...the game came so easily to him...but make no mistake, he is the pre-eminent transition defensemen of his era. It's not close either.

 

[Kyle McMahon]

As promised in my previous post, here is some strength of opposition information for the non-Original Six skaters up for discussion. As I mentioned in that post, I didn't run the numbers for the Original Six players because they all have sufficiently large sample sizes in a small league with a stable playoff format. If I had to hazard a guess, logic would say Beliveau probably had slightly more favourable conditions to score than Richard, Harvey, or Hull. Richard and Harvey had to play the Red Wings dynasty in the early 50's, Leafs in the late 40's/early 50's. Hull had to play elite defensive Montreal and Toronto teams throughout the 60's. Beliveau somewhat avoided the great Red Wings and obviously didn't have to play against his own team in the 50's or 60's.

I ranked opponents quite simply as good, average, or poor, based on goal surrendered during the season. It's not perfect and there's some borderline cases, but overall I think it achieves its purpose of giving us a general idea of how favourable or not the conditions were for a player to accumulate points relative to his contemporaries. I made one single common-sense adjustment here, and that was ranking the 2009 Red Wings as average defensively, even though their regular season GA indicates they were poor. Given the subjective nature of eye-balling the GA totals and using them as a proxy for defensive play in the first place, I don't think I've been intellectually dishonest in making this tweak. If such a glaring situation exists for other players, point it out and I can adjust accordingly.

I've included all playoff seasons for Morenz, Shore, Bourque, and Crosby, as none of them really have any seasons where they weren't considered among the best players in the league.

Howie Morenz. 39 career GP.

Against Poor: 4 (10%)
Against Avg: 13 (33%)
Against Good: 22 (56%)

Note: 3 career playoff GP in situations where his team won the first half of a two game/total goals series and didn't necessarily need to score in the 2nd game.

Eddie Shore. 55 career GP.

Against Poor: 10 (18%)
Against Avg: 24 (44%)
Against Good: 21 (38%)

Note: 2 career playoff GP in situations where his team won the first half of a two game/total goals series and didn't necessarily need to score in the 2nd game.

Ray Bourque. 214 career GP.

Against Poor: 50 (23%)
Against Avg: 61 (29%)
Against Good: 103 (48%)

Sidney Crosby. 160 career GP.

Against Poor: 45 (28%)
Against Avg: 59 (37%)
Against Good: 56 (35%)

Things to consider:

-This helps put some perspective on Morenz's seemingly weak playoff scoring totals. He had almost no games against soft teams to pad stats, and also has the highest percentage of games against strong defensive teams.

-The playoff format probably hurt Shore's ability to enhance his stats, but only in the sense that he didn't see many punching bags. I expected his percentage of games against good defensive teams to be higher. But in fact, a lot of the time they were just average in that regard. Boston tended to be upset frequently in the playoffs by strong offensive/middling defensive teams. At a glance, this doesn't paint a flattering picture of Eddie, as it suggests he had trouble shutting down elite offensive opponents.

-Bourque has a ridiculously high number of games against strong defensive teams considering the relative success of his Boston teams in the regular season in the old "everybody in" divisional format from the 21-team era. Most of these are against Montreal, but even Hartford and Buffalo were not easy marks defensively in a lot of seasons. The Wales Conference in general was significantly better defensively than the Campbell. Only 6 of 40 GP in the 1988 and 1990 playoff campaigns were against weak opposition. 21 against average, 13 against strong.

-Crosby's distribution of opponents throughout his career is by far the least balanced. He victimized a lot of bad defensive teams earlier in his career, and overcame a lot of good defensive teams in more recent times. The takeaway is that the raw numbers from 2008-13 ("Crosby is a playoff god even when Pittsburgh loses!") are over-selling him, while the numbers from 2014-18 ("Crosby didn't deserve those Smythe's!") are under-selling him.

How does this influence my rankings:

-Between this data and previous research and postings, Morenz as a poor playoff performer has been fully debunked in my eyes. His 3 Stanley Cups in a pretty competitive era while the game was consistently evolving is a strong record. Maybe not as strong as Richard, Harvey, Beliveau, or Roy, but at least on an even footing with the other five available.

-Shore's playoff record is just too poor for him to make my top 5 in this vote, as it currently stands. The only one who he might fare better than in this regard is Hasek, who takes a big hit for his lack of reliability and the evidence that he more or less quit on his team on more than one occasion in the playoffs. Easily behind the other 8 candidates.

-Bourque is continuing to look better and better. One thing that we have to square is his reputation while active versus our current evolving perceptions. I just doesn't seem like Bourque was truly seen as a top-10 all time player during his career, and has never really been promoted as such based on the eyeball test. But passage of time has allowed us to realize that 1987-1994 (his generally accepted peak stretch) saw an inordinate number of all-time greats and mere Hall of Famers alike all peaking at the same time. If it was ever possible for a top 10 player of all time to get lost in the shuffle, it was then.

-I've generally held that Crosby was somewhat overrated as a playoff performer based on poor team results post-2009 Cup, but 2016 and 2017 significantly rehabilitated his image for me. So nothing here was earth-shattering from my perspective. I think of him as arguably the best playoff player of his era, but it's definitely close between him, Malkin, and the Blackhawks trio. This lands him in Morenz territory for me. A candidate for the top 5 in this round, whose case is neither hampered nor significantly bolstered by post-season results in relation to the others.

 

[MXD]

In more concrete terms : in 1926-27, the Montreal Canadiens scored 99 goals. They got awarded 34 assists. Had they been league average, they would've been awared 47 or 48 assists instead. And that's the league average WITH the Canadiens, of course; the more accurate numbers here would probably be the league average WITHOUT the Canadiens, which amounts to 0.50 with some rounding down necessary. So, 49 or 50 assists.

I don't know if that means every goal scored by a Canadien should be worth more (because each player had to work more for it?) or if the number of assists should be adjusted upwards (mentally) a bit to account for what appear to be a chronic undercounting of assists....? But it certainly means that we can't quite take Morenz' numbers vs. his contemporaries at absolute face value.

Also, notice that this undercounting of assists didn't start with Morenz : from the beginning of the NHL, the Canadiens players were awarded significantly less assists, and Morenz' rookie season was the first where they weren't absolutely dead last in assists per game (litterally, 0,5084 vs. 0,5079 for Hamilton; in other words, a margin-of-error gap, with a single goal potentially changing the order.

 

[danincanada]

7. Doug Harvey. Best defensive defenseman ever, probably second to Orr in terms of controlling the pace of the game. Seemed to have focused on defense at even strength, while saving his offense for the power play just like Nicklas Lidstrom. Call him Lidstrom plus a fairly scary physical game or call him a slightly better version of Lidstrom.* To me, that makes him the 2nd best defenseman of all-time, but not necessarily better than some of these forwards.

*I really hope I don't open a can of worms with this one - it's a discussion that has been made on this forum many times. Personally I'm hoping Lidstrom becomes available next round, but let's wait to discuss him in detail until then, ok?

*Can of worms opened...

More like Lidstrom with less offense, shorter longevity, and more PIMs and injuries. Harvey was a slightly worse and less evolved version.

Of course a 6 team league with only pre-baby boom central Canadian talent can’t compare with a much larger international league in terms of competition but that doesn’t seem to matter in this project. Let’s just talk about the war years as the only dip in talent, lol.

Close that Can up for now.*

 

[TheDevilMadeMe]

Very interesting,@MXD

I wonder if the introduction of the Art Ross Trophy in 47-48 (and the attached $$$ bonuses) helped lead to the standardization of assist recording not all that long thereafter.

 

[MXD]

*Can of worms opened...

More like Lidstrom with less offense, shorter longevity, and more PIMs and injuries. Harvey was a slightly worse and less evolved version.

Of course a 6 team league with only pre-baby boom central Canadian talent can’t compare with a much larger international league in terms of competition but that doesn’t seem to matter in this project. Let’s just talk about the war years as the only dip in talent, lol.

Close that Can up for now.*

You know what's funny?
You targeting specifically Doug Harvey when there is three other O-6ers and two Pre-O-6ers.

 

[ted2019]

Voted and proud of it.

 

[The Macho King]

Y'all should have posted this useful information more. I really like that playoff breakdown - good shit.

 

[seventieslord]

Great job, everyone. So much information came out in this thread.

Every single player I think he's an absolute stud, but there's a "yeah, but..." attached to Every. Single. One. Of. Them.

I am going to find voting very difficult.

 

[MXD]

In terms of how significant the undercounting is?

I'll continue with 1926-1927, since I already nailed the numbers.

I mentionned above there were to ways to correct the assist imbalance. The first would be to give bigger weight to every goal scored : after all, the fact that the same teams, for the bigger part of nine seasons, saw its players getting LESS assists can be explain by systemic features, despite the Canadiens actually changing coaches and players between 1917-18 and 1926-27. But it's not a very convenient thing to do, so let's just go for the somewhat boring route : adjust the Canadiens assists to a number that's more closely aligned to league average.

Had the Canadiens been at league average, they would've ended up with 47 or 48 assists. The league average without them is 49 or 50 assists. Let's be reasonable, and credit the Candiens with 49 assists, because, hey, they were absolutely influencing the first number, but let's be conservative too : I'll go up to 50 if it makes a difference for the calculation regarding Morenz.

So 34 assists were awarded to Canadiens. Out of that number, 7 went to Howie Morenz. That amounts to 20,5%.

We're giving the Canadiens 49 assists, so we have 15 assists to distribute. Let's give Morenz a 20.5% share, unless any of you think of a more reasonable way to do this. It gives a tad more than 3, like, 3,09, and using 50 as the team assists total just obfuscates things even more.

So Morenz, instead of going 25-7-32, goes 25-10-35. It doesn't change things THAT much (remains 3rd in scoring, only now he's only 1 point being Irvin and 2 points behind Bill Cook), but it's not totally insignificant. Unless I got things wrong, That was his "100" season on VsX, and, if we're to keep the initial Morenz as the benchmark, the "100" becomes a "109.4".

For the record, Bill Cook was on a league-average-with-Canadiens team. Dick Irvin, on the other hand, was on a team that was well above league-average-with-Canadiens : the Hawks were awarded 0.56 assists per goal, in comparison to the 0.34 assists per goal awarded to the Canadiens. They scored quite a bit of goals too, and Dick Irvin was the league leader in assists (with 18; closest was Frank Boucher, Bill Cook's center, with 15).

Bottom line : If you want to conclude that Howie Morenz should've finished 2nd in scoring in 1926-27, I'm not stopping you.

EDIT : For the record, the Canadiens players were awarded significantly more assists than usual (not counted yet, but it appears to have been the highest amount per goal) in 1927-28, which is the year of Morenz' monster season. Wouldn't change a thing to his Art Ross, because he completely broke the system. At worse, I guess he'd "lose" like one or two assists, but he had a 12 pt lead... on his teammate.

 

[MXD]

...For the record, I started this thing about assists per goals starting from 1917-1918. Only up to 26-27 (and gotta stop tonight, and, consequently, for this round); I must admit that I was tipped about this by HardyVan123 who claimed, during the wingers project, that the Senators players were awarded more assists than their NHL counterparts. Which was actually partly true : The Senators were usually above the league average... but that was more a case of causation than correlation : when a team gives 30% less assists per goals than the other teams, and there's three or four team in the whole league, chances are, everyone else is above average.

Also, Cy Denneny leading NHL in assists while being described as primarily a goalscorer ticked me, too.

As far as Morenz is concerned, there isn't much to be "gained" in the seasons prior; while the Canadiens were awarded less assists per goal than league average every season but 24-25, Howie Morenz was awarded 3 assists in 23-24 and 3 assists in 25-26. If we split them proprotionally, like I did, he almost certainly gets zero.

EDIT : How much is the mention of HV123 worth on the drinking game?

 

[Michael Farkas]

Here's the shift chart for Ray Bourque - May 7, 1983 @ Islanders - Game 6 of the Wales Conference Final (NYI 8-4)

1st Period
0:33* (* - shift contained a stoppage, 0:00 -> 0:33)
1:12
0:22
1:03* [played RW]
0:58
1:06 (10:16 -> 11:22)
0:46 (PP, 12:28 -> 13:14)
2:02* (2:00 of PP, 0:02 at ES; 14:32 -> 16:34)
1:14 (18:16 -> 19:30)
0:12 (19:48 -> 20:00)

1st Per Tot: 10 shifts, 9:28 TOI - 6:42 ES, 2:46 PP, 0:00 PK | played 1:03 at RW

2nd Period:
0:42* (0:17 -> 0:59)
0:45
0:42** (4:19 -> 5:01, [LW])
0:55
0:35 (7:45 -> 8:20, [LW])
1:04
0:56 (13:14 -> 14:10 [LW])
1:18* (PP, 15:49 -> 17:07)
1:03* (0:39 of PK, 18:40 -> 19:43 [LW at ES -> D on PK])

2nd Per Tot: 9 shifts, 8:00 TOI - 6:03 ES, 1:18 PP, 0:39 PK | played 2:37 at LW

3rd Period:
0:33 (PK, 0:00 -> 0:33)
0:56 (PP, 1:17 -> 2:13)
1:12 (3:29 -> 4:41 [LW])
2:29 (2:00 of PP, 4:56 -> 7:25)
1:00 (9:19 -> 10:19)
0:50 (PK, 13:11 -> 12:11)
1:07
0:51 (18:23 -> 19:14)

3rd Per Tot: 8 shifts, 8:58 TOI - 4:39 ES, 2:56 PP, 1:23 PK | played 1:12 at LW

Game total: 27 shifts, 26:26 - 17:24 ES, 7:00 PP, 2:02 PK | played 4:52 at either wing


Not a very pretty game overall. The Islanders are the class of the league in terms of structure at this time. They're hungrier, they're more disciplined, they're better positioned, they play much tighter as a team. Bourque is still pretty raw here, he makes a few defensive errors...Goring posterized him on one too that was really an inexcusable error by young Bourque while the game was still close. He rebounded and as Boston had to chase the game, Bourque was used to rush the puck from the back line often. Notably, he played a number of shifts at wing. In fact, there were instances where the Bruins had four d-men on the ice. He looked comfortable playing up there at least, though it probably wasn't the best use of his abilities being stuck at wing considering he was the best puck carrier on defense. He didn't have a regular partner in the game really, hell, he didn't have a regular position...he and Rick Middleton seemed to be the only threatening players from the attack line in...

Like I said, I'll try to squeeze in another from the 1988 to 1992 window or so to add a little context, hate to leave you hanging with one data point...

Just keeping these together for those that care...

Here's the shift chart for Ray Bourque - April 11, 1991 vs. Hartford - Game 5 of the Adams Division Semifinal (Bos 6-1)

1st Period:
0:33 (0:00 -> 0:33)
0:58* (* = stoppage during shift)
1:56 (PP; 4:26 -> 6:22)
1:20* (7:37 -> 8:57)
2:14 (2:00 of PP; 9:29 -> 11:43)
1:02 (PP, 12:04 -> 13:06)
0:36 (14:39 -> 15:15)
0:30 (PK, 16:11 -> 16:41)
0:59 (PK, 19:01 -> 20:00)

1st Per Tot: 9 shifts, 10:08 TOI - 4:43 ES, 3:56 PP, 1:29 PK

2nd Period:
1:22 (1:01 of PK; 0:00 -> 1:22)
1:00* (2:15 -> 3:15)
2:03** (0:40 of PK; 4:35 -> 6:58)
1:10 (7:26 -> 8:36)
0:39 (10:25 -> 11:04)
1:00
0:58 (PK, 14:59 -> 15:57)
0:54 (17:09 -> 18:03)
0:55 (0:18 of PP; 19:05 -> 20:00)

2nd Per Tot: 9 shifts, 10:01 TOI - 7:04 ES, 0:18 PP, 2:39 PK

3rd Period:
1:20* (PP, 0:00 -> 1:20)
0:50
1:03 (3:48 -> 4:51)
1:35* (5:34 -> 7:09)
0:47* (7:56 -> 8:43)
1:46* (0:33 of PP; 9:47 -> 11:33)
0:42
1:15* (13:48 -> 15:03)
0:43 (0:39 of PP; 16:14 -> 16:57)

3rd Per Tot: 9 shifts, 10:01 TOI - 7:29 ES, 2:32 PP, 0:00 PK

Game Total: 27 shifts, 30:10 TOI - 19:16 ES, 6:46 PP, 4:08 PK


Truthfully, I didn't see the maturity that I expected to see from Bourque. This was a sloppy game overall for him, though he was better in the 3rd period. The score looks lopsided, but it was 1-0 Hartford in the 3rd period actually. Bourque scored from center on Sidorkecwicz when the Bruins were being heavily outplayed for 40 minutes and that obviously turned the series for Boston (which was 2-2, with Boston behind in the game)...you know what I say about bad goals at bad times...anyway, doing some more film study on earlier on Bourque, I think I oversold him on my list and oversold him a little in this thread...I'm now more convinced that Harvey is even further ahead of him and the gap from Beliveau/Hull/Harvey to the field is greater than first anticipated.

I will also have to re-examine Nicklas Lidstrom vs. Ray Bourque...as I had them back to back and struggled with them, ultimately putting Bourque ahead...I'd like a chance to challenge myself on that...it feels fairly likely I'll get that chance I think...

 

[Michael Farkas]

KM and MXD, nice work to kick off the new thread with...very interesting takes on data. Thanks for piecing it together.

The door is open for me now...I wonder if it's not Morenz that's able to woo me before the horn. I won't be voting til Sunday, but I won't be home all day Saturday either.

Maybe I need to make some head to head comparables to make my life simpler...

I'm really confident in Beliveau/Hull/Harvey at the top.

I feel like Morenz >> Shore
Roy > Hasek
Crosby > Richard
Bourque > Shore

So I'm left with Crosby vs. Morenz
An undercard of Bourque vs. Roy vs. Richard
I don't think I see enough for Hasek or especially Shore to feature prominently this vote...

Gosh...maybe one of Morenz or Crosby is top 10...hmph...I'm rattled, boys, I gotta be honest...