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

[Tuna Tatarrrrrr]

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

*Can of worms opened...

And Bourque was more like Lidstrom with more offense, and more physical and longer longevity. Bourque was a slightly better and more evolved version.

Close that Can up for now.*

 

[sr edler]

Sometimes when I read 58's posts I get the feeling he believes a hockey team is a superorganism made out of smaller psychologically linked independent units (players). Perhaps there is something to that though (yes, I'm kinda serious), but to what degree?.

I wouldn’t agree with this though if the individual units, synergistically interacting with each other, are supposed to be judged more or less equal in ability. Because if that’s the case, then there’s really no point in doing this project. Then we've already failed pretty bigly by not giving the #1 spot to Henri Richard.

 

[daver]

Is there anything else that Crosby needs other than longevity (i.e. adding solid to very good regular seasons or playoffs) to his resume to be placed among Hull and Belliveau, the seemingly consensus #4/5 forwards?

 

[VanIslander]

Is there anything else that Crosby needs other than longevity (i.e. adding solid to very good regular seasons or playoffs) to his resume to be placed among Hull and Belliveau, the seemingly consensus #4/5 forwards?

Luc Robitaille had a better 1st/2nd all-star team selection record after his first 7 seasons than Crosby has had in his near 14-year career.

Crosby has been top-5 in NHL goals just twice and top-5 in assists five times.

ADD: Two or three more upper-echelon seasons. Don't rely on PPG stats. Stay healthy and have some all-time great regular seasons.

Plus... Crosby is below Marleau in career points, outside the top 50 of all time. At least pass Alfredsson, Brind'amour, Nicholls, Roenick in career points.

Top-5 player of all time has to be staggering in some areas and not underwhelming in others.

 

[ChiTownPhilly]

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

As long as we're congratulating one another, I think congratulations are in order for the virtually impeccable Round One nominations. We talk about tiers, hey- I talk about tiers- but the tier that matters most to me is: Harvey/Richard/Béliveau/Hull/Roy*. All were part of the Vote 1 list. We didn't get that wrong- not at all.

How do we sort them out? Everyone will have their different priorities in the sort-- but they ARE the ones to sort, I believe.

* listed in random order.

 

[MXD]

Is there anything else that Crosby needs other than longevity (i.e. adding solid to very good regular seasons or playoffs) to his resume to be placed among Hull and Belliveau, the seemingly consensus #4/5 forwards?

No.
Not to me at least.
Well going 55 pts per season would not work. But that's probably not happening.

 

[daver]

Luc Robitaille had a better 1st/2nd all-star team selection record after his first 7 seasons than Crosby has had in his near 14-year career.

Crosby has been top-5 in NHL goals just twice and top-5 in assists five times.

ADD: Two or three more upper-echelon seasons. Don't rely on PPG stats. Stay healthy and have some all-time great regular seasons.

Plus... Crosby is below Marleau in career points, outside the top 50 of all time. At least pass Alfredsson, Brind'amour, Nicholls, Roenick in career points.

Top-5 player of all time has to be staggering in some areas and not underwhelming in others.

Crosby has as many Top 3 Art Ross finishes and Hart Nominations (fourteeen) as Belliveau and Hull. Only the Big 4 have more. That should put to rest any talk of underwhelming regular season resumes or lack of upper echelon seasons. If one chooses to ignore PPG completely, Crosby has the best Art Ross win since 92/93 so he has his one legacy season that is on par with Hull Belliveau's best.

Belliveau won the Art Ross once (don't rely on PPG stats) and comparing Top 3, 5, 10 finishes from a league with six teams vs. a thirty team league is statistically a disingenuous argument.

Case in point, despite "only" two Top 5 goal finishes (AKA Rocket wins) Crosby has the 2nd highest goal total of his era, the most playoff goals of his era, and shares the highest playoff run goal total. There is a legitimate argument to be made that Crosby is the 2nd best goalscorer of his era (don't rely on GPG stats).

His playoff resume is right there with those two also with a very strong argument to be better than Hull's.

Your comment about who he needs to pass in career points would indicate that he doesn't even need solid regular seasons, he just needs to show up for more seasons.

 

[Sentinel]

Voted.

My Richard suffered a big drop.

I hope Bourque keeps sliding down.

 

[danincanada]

*Can of worms opened...

And Bourque was more like Lidstrom with more offense, and more physical and longer longevity. Bourque was a slightly better and more evolved version.

Close that Can up for now.*

You should take that up with these folks then because they’re going to vote Harvey over both. It’s nonesense. Why didn’t you compare Bourque with Harvey if you are so passionate about Ray? Those are the two guys up for voting here.

 

[overg]

Players don’t necessarily peak at the same time. Terry Sawchuk is younger than Jacques Plante, but Sawchuk peaked in 1951-1955 while the older Plante peaked in 1956-1962.

If Dominik Hasek was better able to establish himself in October 1991 while Ed Belfour was a contract holdout instead of losing out to Jimmy Waite, he’d be another one of the 21 starting goaltenders and all but just one or two players who weren’t as good as Hart runner-up Roy in 1991-92 - and then the overlap might not look as lopsided. Instead, the clock on their overlap as NHL starters doesn’t start until 1992-93 (or maybe 1993-94, given how quickly Hasek was injured after becoming Buffalo’s starter in 1992-93) when Roy was already a guaranteed 1st ballot HOFer.

Even Belfour - the goaltender who beat out Hasek for a starting role in Fall 1990 - couldn’t establish himself in his first NHL run in 1989 when Roy was already on Final #2 and Jennings #3 despite also being older than Roy.

Essentially, this type of argument is one that demands that the player with the peak at an earlier age maintains that same high level of play for the second-half of their career or else they’re assessed to have been surpassed. That Patrick Roy’s career didn’t completely fall apart after 1993 doesn’t mean that Byron Dafoe, Chris Osgood, Jim Carey, John Vanbiesbrouck, Olaf Kolzig, Roman Cechmanek, and Roman Turek (other 1st/2nd Team All-Stars from 1994-2001) surpassed the player Roy was in the regular season in his twenties.

You raise a legit point, but what are we considering Roy's peak?

Roy, just like Hasek, took four years in the league to even sniff his first Vezina. But you look at who the competition was for both players when they broke out, and it's not even close. Roy's first two Vezinas were won against some incredibly mediocre competition. Roy then followed up his first two Vezinas with a second place finish (to a strong Belfour) and a third Vezina. Both of those years saw some strong competition. After that, he was essentially irrelevant to the Vezina for the rest of his career, except for the '02 season. So are we talking about a 4 year peak, during which he won one Cup?

It wasn't just that Roy and Hasek peaked at different times, it's that Hasek peaked higher, longer, and right smack in what should have still been Roy's prime.

Of course, all of this ignores the fact that Roy won three Cups outside of his peak. That's certainly worth something. A lot of something, in fact. But I've never been able to shake the feeling that Roy gets a little too much credit for those. Hell, I distinctly remember huge questions being raised about whether Roy had "lost it" during the early rounds of one of his Av's runs. He pulled himself together in later rounds, but if he'd been playing with a team like the 90's Sabres, would he have ever had that sort of chance? And it's not as if Hasek doesn't have at least three extremely notable runs of his own, his finals appearance with the Sabres, his gold in the Olympics, and the year he won the Cup with the Wings.

To put it simply, these players' careers heavily overlapped, and there were a lot more years when Hasek, not Roy, held the crown as the best goalie in the world.

 

[Tuna Tatarrrrrr]

You should take that up with these folks then because they’re going to vote Harvey over both. It’s nonesense. Why didn’t you compare Bourque with Harvey if you are so passionate about Ray? Those are the two guys up for voting here.

Because I don't know Harvey well and he is not as well documented as someone like the Rocket here in Quebec so I won't talk about that. However I know very well Bourque and Lidstrom to make right statements like I did. But you're right so why do you bring Lidstrom's name here since he is not even rightfully on the voting list?

 

[VanIslander]

It wasn't just that Roy and Hasek peaked at different times, it's that Hasek peaked higher, longer, and right smack in what should have still been Roy's prime.

 

[danincanada]

Because I don't know Harvey well and he is not as well documented as the Rocket here in Quebec so I won't talk about that. However I know very well Bourque and Lidstrom to make statements like I did. But you're right so why do you bring Lidstrom's name here since he is not even rightfully on the voting list?

Because another poster compared them. I’ve gone into decent depth comparing Lidstrom and Harvey and the arguments for Harvey are weak, especially when the same posters hold Bourque in between with Harvey on top.

Harvey is not well documented in Quebec? Seriously? He’s a legend there.

 

[Tuna Tatarrrrrr]

Because another poster compared them. I’ve gone into decent depth comparing Lidstrom and Harvey and the arguments for Harvey are weak, especially when the same posters hold Bourque in between with Harvey on top.

Harvey is not well documented in Quebec? Seriously? He’s a legend there.

I didn't say he was not a legend, he is obviously one of the greatest defensemen of all time and an all time great in Montreal Canadiens history. But compared to the Rocket, he is not well documented AS MUCH AS the Rocket (no other player is in Quebec). Harvey is a legend but the Rocket is THE legend here.

 

[BM67]

Roy's record in PO OT games split for H/R and Montreal/Colorado.

Player	GP	Min	W	L	GA	GAA	SA	SV%	SA/60
Roy T	58	4122:30	40	18	140	2.04	1921	0.927	27.96
Roy H	23	1612:33	15	8	54	2.01	710	0.924	26.42
Roy R	35	2509:57	25	10	86	2.06	1211	0.929	28.95
Roy M	29	2011:45	23	6	69	2.06	987	0.930	29.44
Roy M H	14	1009:03	12	2	31	1.84	436	0.929	25.93
Roy M R	15	1002:42	11	4	38	2.27	551	0.931	32.97
Roy C	29	2110:45	17	12	71	2.02	934	0.924	26.55
Roy C H	9	603:30	3	6	23	2.29	274	0.916	27.24
Roy C R	20	1507:15	14	6	48	1.91	660	0.927	26.27

[TBODY] [/TBODY]

The splits for the OT only.

Player	GP	Min	W	L	GA	GAA	SA	SV%	SA/60
Roy T	58	662:22	40	18	18	1.63	346	0.948	31.34
Roy H	23	233:57	15	8	8	2.05	114	0.930	29.24
Roy R	35	428:25	25	10	10	1.40	232	0.957	32.49
Roy M	29	290:31	23	6	6	1.24	163	0.963	33.66
Roy M H	14	169:35	12	2	2	0.71	75	0.973	26.54
Roy M R	15	120:56	11	4	4	1.98	88	0.955	43.66
Roy C	29	371:51	17	12	12	1.94	183	0.934	29.53
Roy C H	9	64:22	3	6	6	5.59	39	0.846	36.35
Roy C R	20	307:29	14	6	6	1.17	144	0.958	28.10

[TBODY] [/TBODY]

His SA/60 go up as does his SV%, except at H in Colorado.

 

[daver]

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.

Based on the GA finishes of Belliveau's and Hull's opponents (e.g. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, or 6):

Beliveau's opponent's averaged a 2.9 finish.

Hull's opponent's average a 2.5 finish.

Translating this to the current era (e.g. a 1-5 finish in GA = an O6 1 finish in O6 GA, a 6 - 10 finish = an O6 2 finish in the O6 era, etc... ) Crosby's opponents averaged a 2.6 finish.

 

[MXD]

Because another poster compared them. I’ve gone into decent depth comparing Lidstrom and Harvey and the arguments for Harvey are weak, especially when the same posters hold Bourque in between with Harvey on top.

Harvey is not well documented in Quebec? Seriously? He’s a legend there.

I see that you managed to add "Argumentum ad rectum" to your usual "Argumentum ad nauseam".

Because the bolded in underlined is, litterally... fertilizer.

 

[K Fleur]

Was only a matter of time before Marleau’s name showed up!

How many GWGs does he have again?

 

[quoipourquoi]

You raise a legit point, but what are we considering Roy's peak?

He was a 1st/2nd Team All-Star and ranked 1st in save percentage four times and 2nd on the other occasion across five seasons from 1987-88 through 1991-92.

Roy, just like Hasek, took four years in the league to even sniff his first Vezina.

That makes it sound like they had similar paths to establishing themselves. Roy was the Conn Smythe winner for a Stanley Cup champion in Year One while Hasek - even with Belfour out of the way in Year Two - couldn’t earn a starting role over Jimmy Waite, and his pulled stomach muscle in Year Three necessitated Buffalo trading Dave Andreychuk for another goaltender.

They may have both won their 1st Vezina in Year Four, but Roy was already on his 2nd Final, his 3rd Jennings, his 2nd-consecutive save percentage title, and his 2nd-consecutive All-Star selection by the time Alan Thicke called him up on stage for that Vezina.

But you look at who the competition was for both players when they broke out, and it's not even close. Roy's first two Vezinas were won against some incredibly mediocre competition.

Again, I think you’re letting the marquee value of the names retroactively dictate what is and is not good competition.

Hart nominees Ed Belfour, Grant Fuhr, John Vanbiesbrouck, Pete Peeters; Pearson winner Mike Liut; Pearson nominee Sean Burke; and Conn Smythe winners Bill Ranford, Mike Vernon, and Ron Hextall all played in 1988-89, but I’m not going to pretend that their existence gives Roy’s 1988-89 any more validation. Patrick Roy went 20-0 at home that year; it’s not exactly a season that needs to be compared to other goaltenders to be considered good.

Hell, I distinctly remember huge questions being raised about whether Roy had "lost it" during the early rounds of one of his Av's runs.

It’s true. People were pretty upset that during Colorado’s sweep of Vancouver, Roy had 19/23 and 20/23 games to go along with the 18/19 and 22/23 ones. But that begs the question of how high of a standard you have to set that people are calling for your retirement after a 2-2 split of quality games.

Hasek and the Red Wings beat that same Vancouver times in 6 games despite Hasek’s 3-3 split of quality games (including 15/19, 22/26, and 25/29 games). So maybe Vancouver and the West Coast Express were just explosive.

Anyway, like you said, Roy’s rounds 2-4 were pretty good:

Top Round 2-4 Performances
EvE, 1980-2017
1. John Vanbiesbrouck, 1996 (52.1% on 558 shots)
2. Patrick Roy, 2001 (55.7% on 534 shots)
3. Tuukka Rask, 2013 (56.0% on 527 shots)
4. Patrick Roy, 1996 (57.2% on 493 shots)
5. Tim Thomas, 2011 (57.6% on 620 shots)
6. Arturs Irbe, 2002 (57.9% on 394 shots)
7. Pelle Lindbergh, 1985 (58.2% on 385 shots)
8. Patrick Roy, 1993 (60.1% on 444 shots)
9. Patrick Roy, 1986 (61.3% on 426 shots)
10. Kirk McLean, 1994 (62.1% on 598 shots)

 

[danincanada]

I see that you managed to add "Argumentum ad rectum" to your usual "Argumentum ad nauseam".

Because the bolded in underlined is, litterally... fertilizer.

What exactly are you trying to say? He’s not a legend in Quebec?

Either way, it’s not that difficult to look into his career and watch games. The poster claiming he didn’t know enough about Harvey sure loves to spout off about how Lidstrom’s competition was the “weakest ever” but now he’a admitted he doesn’t know much about previous eras.

 

[BenchBrawl]

What exactly are you trying to say? He’s not a legend in Quebec?

Either way, it’s not that difficult to look into his career and watch games. The poster claiming he didn’t know enough about Harvey sure loves to spout off about how Lidstrom’s competition was the “weakest ever” but now he’a admitted he doesn’t know much about previous eras.

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

 

[solidmotion]

Roy's first two Vezinas were won against some incredibly mediocre competition. Roy then followed up his first two Vezinas with a second place finish (to a strong Belfour) and a third Vezina. Both of those years saw some strong competition. After that, he was essentially irrelevant to the Vezina for the rest of his career, except for the '02 season. So are we talking about a 4 year peak, during which he won one Cup?

tbh i have never understood this. iirc roy was always considered a top 3 goalie alongside brodeur and hasek. cujo and belfour were a tier down. vezina winners like kolzig and carey and others who did well in voting for a year or two like byron dafoe and roman cechmanek were never really considered to be in the same class... i mean i was a leafs fan and even when cujo and belfour were vezina finalists i would have traded them for roy straight up... so, i don't know, i think roy's greatness is somewhat understated by his vezina/all-star finishes. look instead at top-5/top-10 finishes in gaa and sv%—he's up there every year where other names come and go. kind of like lundqvist now.

 

[danincanada]

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

Sounds like a rule for scared people. I know you are frightened.

 

[quoipourquoi]

Sounds like a rule for scared people. I know you are frightened.

I’m scared of losing five months of my life to re-living four years of positional projects, sure.

There are plenty of players to compare Nicklas Lidstrom to besides Doug Harvey and Ray Bourque and Eddie Shore. We’re making a list with Forwards and Goaltenders too.

But you’ll all have to wait because he’s not eligible.

 

[seventieslord]

Luc Robitaille had a better 1st/2nd all-star team selection record after his first 7 seasons than Crosby has had in his near 14-year career.

Crosby has been top-5 in NHL goals just twice and top-5 in assists five times.

This punishes him for being a center and acts as though it's just as easy to get all-star votes as a center as it is for a left winger.

This also breaks goals and assists out of the more important metric - points - and fails to note that, because he is such a balanced offensive machine, he has eight top-5 finishes in points.

Both of these things you are more than smart enough to know. So I don't know if you're actually being disingenuous or just playing devil's advocate, or what.