It's not just that Shore had more Harts than any other defenseman, he had more than any other player. Until Gordie picked up his 5th.
Contemporary opinion? What do you mean about that? The Hart and all-star voting pretty much IS contemporary opinion!
His team success needs to be discussed, but the most important thing to point out is that during nearly his entire career, the NHL placed the division winners in a series against eachother. That means that unless the league's two best teams were in one division, it was impossible to see a final with the league's two best teams. It also means that every season, a powerhouse would be out after 2-5 games, and not even because they were the victims of an upset, just that they had to play their (more or less) equal for a first opponent. This greatly deflates the GP and point totals of anyone who was on a typically strong team. The "most likely" occurrence for a division winner is to roll over an also-ran in round one, picking up nice stats along the way, then have a closer division final, but ultimately win, then have a finals matchup that could go either way. But division winners (which Shore's Bruins were 9 times in his career) had this scenario fast-forwarded for them. They had eight first round series (1928 was more logical) that could have gone either way, and they did - they won three times and lost five. Here are the results:
1929: 57-point Boston defeated 59-point Montreal, 3-0, 5 GF, 2 GA
1930: 77-point Boston defeated 51-point Maroons, 3-1, 9 GF, 5 GA
1931: 62-point Boston lost to 60-point Montreal, 2-3, 13 GF, 13 GA
1933: 58-point Boston lost to 54-point Toronto, 2-3, 7 GF, 13 GA
1935: 58-point Boston lost to 64-point Toronto, 1-3, 2 GF, 7 GA
1938: 67-point Boston lost to 57-point Toronto, 0-3, 3 GF, 6 GA
1939: 74-point Boston defeated 58-point New York, 4-3, 14 GF, 12 GA
1940: 67-point Boston lost to 64-point New York, 2-4, 9 GF, 15 GA
1939 and 1949 weren't quite like the other two - the league was one division, and the top-2 teams played a best of 7 to get to the finals, while the other 4 playoff teams had little best-of-3 series to get there. Again, pretty nonsensical.
We would look at the playoff records of a few 1930s stars a lot differently if the playoff format had made sense back then. Eddie Shore is affected by this more negatively than anyone else.
In total, Boston was 17-20 in these eight series, with 62 GF and 73 GA. On average, they were 6.6 points better than their first round opponent. These results are disappointing, of course - Boston was, on the whole, favoured to win more than three of eight series, but this is not a train wreck either.
FYI, based on my "defense VsX", Harvey' 10-year score is 113, Shore's is 110 and Bourque's is 108.
Really, Crosby a wildcard? At this point I kinda see him as a guy with a resume you can really set your watch to.