Top-100 Hockey Players of All-Time - Round 2, Vote 3 (Secret of the Ooze)

[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 16th at midnight and continue through Sunday, November 18th at 8:59pm. Eastern time zone. I will release the results of the vote on Monday, November 19th.


Vote 3 Candidates

• Alex Ovechkin
• Denis Potvin
• Dominik Hasek
• Eddie Shore
• Howie Morenz
• Jacques Plante
• Jaromir Jagr
• Mark Messier
• Nicklas Lidstrom
• Ray Bourque
• Sidney Crosby
• Stan Mikita

Click to read more...

 

[solidmotion]

A lot of the participants championing Hasek are beating around the bush. Trying to enhance the pre-NHL resume, placing enormous value on a tiny sample (98 Olympics), not really addressing accusations that he quit on his team in the playoffs twice, or putting forth "Buffalo sucked, but almost won the Cup in 99". These are topics to explore, but don't make the case on their own. How valuable is this 1999 playoff run? Hasek missed games against Toronto that Buffalo still won. Buffalo in general had an easy path to the Final after the Devils and Flyers got conveniently eliminated by other teams. I'm not set in stone here, but I just haven't seen the mountain of evidence in Hasek's favour that I expected to see for a guy who some feel is already a serious omission.

i don't have a mountain of evidence for you but thought i would mention that hasek missed two games vs toronto in 1999 in which toronto—the top-scoring team in the regular season—scored 4 and 5 goals on roloson. buffalo won one of those two games because toronto as always had shit for d. hasek came back and toronto was held to 2 goals in each of the remaining three games which buffalo won.

maybe it's a generational thing but i definitely grew up in total awe of hasek and even though the styles and resumes are very different i never saw a ton of daylight between him, roy and brodeur. to me it would look weird to have them more than a handful of spots apart. were i a voter he'd be near the top of my list this round.

 

[Michael Farkas]

Super flashy player becomes slightly overrated historically...? Well, I never!

 

[quoipourquoi]

Sorry I was late on this one. Have to catch up on the last 6 pages.

 

[Nick Hansen]

Maybe there is a generational thing with Hasek? Any one who was a kid in the 90's and liked hockey would be awed by Hasek. I know I was.

Do you consider flashiness and unique style or is that more just descriptive without much inherent value with regards to the ranking?

 

[VanIslander]

Shore advocacy? Whistled in the darkness past the whole Ace Bailey assault as though it never happened.

Whew.

That means you won't hold it against Seibert that he killed Morenz with the death-caused-by-complications-from-injury hit.

(,Certainly, Earl held himself responsible for the subsequent death)

 

[ImporterExporter]

@ehhedler

In 99-00 the Pens had Straka, Lang, Kovalev, Hatcher, Kasper, Hrdina, Barrasso beyond Jagr. Again, were they an elite roster? No. But I keep hearing about how it was Jagr and a bunch of nobodies which is complete fantasy. The Pens didn't fold until the Jagr trade. Jagr never played on any sort of expansion level roster in Pittsburgh.

 

[Kyle McMahon]

i don't have a mountain of evidence for you but thought i would mention that hasek missed two games vs toronto in 1999 in which toronto—the top-scoring team in the regular season—scored 4 and 5 goals on roloson. buffalo won one of those two games because toronto as always had **** for d. hasek came back and toronto was held to 2 goals in each of the remaining three games which buffalo won.

maybe it's a generational thing but i definitely grew up in total awe of hasek and even though the styles and resumes are very different i never saw a ton of daylight between him, roy and brodeur. to me it would look weird to have them more than a handful of spots apart. were i a voter he'd be near the top of my list this round.

Fair points re Hasek/Toronto series.

I agree with your second paragraph. I think they're all pretty close. I'm not going to upgrade where I vote for Hasek just because Roy already got onto the list though. I had Morenz, Crosby, Bourque, and Shore ahead of both in the last vote and I'll have those four ahead of Hasek again in this one, barring a late compelling argument that convinces me otherwise.

 

[sr edler]

@ehhedler

In 99-00 the Pens had Straka, Lang, Kovalev, Hatcher, Kasper, Hrdina, Barrasso beyond Jagr. Again, were they an elite roster? No. But I keep hearing about how it was Jagr and a bunch of nobodies which is complete fantasy. The Pens didn't fold until the Jagr trade. Jagr never played on any sort of expansion level roster in Pittsburgh.

No one is denying that team had some guys up front who could do things (score), but the team was really badly structured and was bad on D. You won't go anywhere in the playoffs with a team that is straight out bad defensively. Jagr should get criticized for being bad on D himself, but not for not dragging a heavily listing team anywhere near the Cup. Kasparaitis was a decently good player on D, I guess, but come on now.

 

[Nick Hansen]

By games played, these were the seven guys on defense who played the most games for Penguins year by year.

97/98

Kasparaitis
Tamer
Olausson
Hatcher
Slegr
Werenka
Wilkinson

98/99

Werenka
Dollas
Hatcher
Slegr
Galanov
Kasparaitis
Serowik

99/00

Roszival
Slegr
Kasparaitis
Moran
Jonsson
Werenka
Popovic

00/01

Kasparaitis
Jonsson
Boughner
Laukkanen
Slegr
Moran
Ference

 

[ChiTownPhilly]

Shore advocacy? Whistled in the darkness past the whole Ace Bailey assault as though it never happened.

That means you* won't hold it against Seibert that he killed Morenz with the death-caused-by-complications-from-injury hit. (Certainly, Earl held himself responsible for the subsequent death)

*Not really sure what the one quote has to do with the other, nor even where this "you" stuff came from. Perhaps my identity was mistaken for the identity of someone who advocated extensively for Shore?

I'm also pretty sure that I can distinguish between a serious but relatively accidental injury and a willfully deliberate attempt to injure. But- we'll have plenty of time to talk about that later, as players relevant to that distinction continue to materialize in the nomination process.

 

[overpass]

Shore advocacy? Whistled in the darkness past the whole Ace Bailey assault as though it never happened.

The Ace Bailey incident was a nasty business and it will always be part of Eddie Shore’s hockey legacy. I don’t think anyone is pretending it never happened.

Nobody is saying Shore was never suspended for 16 games, or that Shore should have been a first-team all-star or won a retro-Norris for the 1933-34 season, or saying Shore and the Bruins were unjustly excluded from the 1934 playoffs. Shore did what he did to Bailey, paid the price, did what he could to support Bailey along with the rest of the NHL with benefit games, etc, and everyone moved on. Shore continued to play great hockey and win awards and accolades, and was a part of organized hockey until he died. The THN panel was fully aware that Eddie Shore had ended Ace Bailey’s hockey career when they placed him ninth on their list of top players in 1998. Not that you have to agree with the placement, but it’s not as though Shore has to be rehabilitated somehow to get him into this list.

 

[Theokritos]

"If you guys like polls where 44 sportscasters and sports editors who may - or may not - follow hockey closely, each named one player the best of all-time, 10+ years after their careers were over, with one prominent player deceased, then boy, have I got some great data for you to check out! It's these votes that were conducted every year, by hockey people, immediately following dozens of hockey games, with detailed, multiple-player ballots, and no romanticism at play."

What does the better, more detailed, more first hand data tell us? Well, it's inconclusive. It really doesn't prove Morenz or Shore was better, considering the oddity that one peaked in his 20s and the other in his 30s. But it is the better data.

The basic idea here is very reasonable, but: Which better, more detailed, more first hand data do we actually have?

I assume you refer to the Hart voting record. But back in the day, wasn't the Hart voting more faithful to the definition "most valuable to his team" (or, as the Montreal Gazette put it when Morenz won his third Hart Trophy in 1932, "most useful to his club")? Which would render comparing Morenz and Shore on their Hart record rather meaningless since they, of course, played for different teams.

 

[Canadiens1958]

The basic idea here is very reasonable, but: Which better, more detailed, more first hand data do we actually have?

I assume you refer to the Hart voting record. But back in the day, wasn't the Hart voting more faithful to the definition "most valuable to his team" (or, as the Montreal Gazette put it when Morenz won his third Hart Trophy in 1932, "most useful to his club")? Which would render comparing Morenz and Shore on their Hart record rather meaningless since they, of course, played for different teams.

In hockey utility and value refer to different qualities. Utility refers to multiple roles, value the quality of a specific role. Playing multiple roles does at times bring great value.

No problem comparing players on two distinct teams. Value of a player who contributes at a two or three roster spot level compared to a player who contributes at a one roster spot level.

 

[danincanada]

I haven't seen enough presented in favour of Lidstrom or Potvin to convince me they had a greater impact than Bourque or Shore did. I think Potvin vs Messier is a worthwhile debate to explore in further detail. Lidstrom's trophy case is exceptional. One thing that hurts him a little for me is that Detroit flamed out in the playoffs repeatedly during the 2003-2007 span where he was clearly driving the bus. Yzerman, Fedorov, and Shanahan left/declined after 2002...and Zetterberg and Datsyuk didn't really evolve into their peak forms until around 2008 when Detroit win again. It shows me that as great as Lidstrom was, he was limited in just how far he could drag the rest of the roster. Bourque comes out favourably in this comparison.

You mean ‘03 to ‘06, minus ‘05 due to the lockout, right? That’s 3 playoffs when the Red Wings lost to teams that went to the finals and nearly won it all. Just to clarify.

Lidstrom has the most playoff game wins as a skater in the playoffs (and regular season) all-time so those voters who like “winners” and players who contribute most to winning, should have been voting high on him all along. Not you Kyle but I have someone else in mind here who always uses that argument for his Bleu Blanc et Rouge.

 

[Canadiens1958]

You mean ‘03 to ‘06, minus ‘05 due to the lockout, right? That’s 3 playoffs when the Red Wings lost to teams that went to the finals and nearly won it all. Just to clarify.

Lidstrom has the most playoff game wins as a skater in the playoffs (and regular season) all-time so those voters who like “winners” and players who contribute most to winning, should have been voting high on him all along. Not you Kyle but I have someone else in mind here who always uses that argument for his Bleu Blanc et Rouge.

Benefit of playing in an OT/SO era. How does Lidstrom rank in terms of losses? Playoffs Lidstrom and the Wings had app a 59.5% winning percentage. 1956 - 60 Canadiens were 40- 9 or app 81%. Big gap to overcome.

 

[danincanada]

Benefit of playing in an OT/SO era. How does Lidstrom rank in terms of losses? Playoffs Lidstrom and the Wings had app a 59.5% winning percentage. 1956 - 60 Canadiens were 40- 9 or app 81%. Big gap to overcome.

Comparing 5 years to a whole 20 year career is cherry picking stats. Not surprised. You loving winners and players who contribute to winning so please be consistent.

 

[seventieslord]

The basic idea here is very reasonable, but: Which better, more detailed, more first hand data do we actually have?

I assume you refer to the Hart voting record. But back in the day, wasn't the Hart voting more faithful to the definition "most valuable to his team" (or, as the Montreal Gazette put it when Morenz won his third Hart Trophy in 1932, "most useful to his club")? Which would render comparing Morenz and Shore on their Hart record rather meaningless since they, of course, played for different teams.

I think it would be disingenuous to suggest that the overall best, and overall most valuable players, regardless of team, didn't have a tendency to show up highly and repeatedly in hart voting - in any era. They do. These two players are pretty much the consensus two best of the post-consolidation, pre-WW2 era, and well, look who hogged all the Hart votes - to the extent that two players could hog Hart votes, that is.

There are also plenty of reports about their greatness in newspaper reports and books that make it pretty clear that they were both very highly regarded throughout their careers. It's subjective, but it's still good information we all like to refer to.

I'm just saying, you wouldn't look at 15 years of hart votes, and read everything written about them during their careers, and then come to the conclusion that it's reasonable that one should win a poll 27-1 (votes for other players eliminated).

(Also, I don't think the thing about valuable vs. useful is really all that important here, but personally I wouldn't concern myself with how one newspaper in one season worded the definition of the Hart trophy. It didn't change; it was always for most valuable to his team.)

 

[bobholly39]

I feel as though discussion kinda run out of steam a bit early in this round. Pretty quiet past cpl days. I may end up voting early if no one brings up any other interesting points.

I think my biggest question mark right now remains the argument QPQ brought up about Messier > Bourque. And tbh - if i buy into that Messier > Bourque argument and the reason behind it - it's not outlandish to extend the same Jagr > Bourque and Ovechkin > Bourque argument as other modern forwards who I tend to rank above Messier.

I think an anti-defenseman bias is definitely a part of it - but to a certain extent i'm not sure how much i disagree with it. I value offense above defense - and as such someone like Jagr winning an Art Ross is more impressive to me (by quite a bit at times) than Bourque winning a Norris. Maybe i'm ok being a bit anti-defenseman bias in my votes.

 

[BenchBrawl]

Dumping some stuff in here, not sure if this is of any interest

Winnipeg Tribune, 4 Avril 1946

 

[Michael Farkas]

It ran out of steam despite being a lot of hot air at times...I'm scouting tonight, so I'm not sure I'm going to be able to piece together anything new or shocking before most of the panel has voted...which is disappointing...I also am not withholding anything new or shocking either...

I personally flipped Lidstrom over Bourque in my head earlier in the week. Talking to a coaching friend of mine this weekend, who is old enough to still complain about Orr's penalty with 3 minutes left in the 1974 Final, he re-affirmed where I was at (before I said my feelings)...he'd take Bourque offensively and full well realizing he needed to bring offense to a rather incomplete Bruins team(s), but Lidstrom was the better overall player probably...albeit he could play a quieter game because of his surrounding cast. I think that's where I'm at too...Lidstrom (who gets paraded about this place by a couple of goons in an amateur-hour whirlwind) was surprisingly undercooked in this round I thought...and frankly, it's for the better.

Crosby was in the top half of my ballot (quite surprisingly, as I wasn't really ready for him yet I didn't think) last time, and that status has been re-affirmed this time through...hard to distance him from Morenz too much I think...

I had questions on Morenz and Shore coming into the project. And I think a couple of the really good posters took those questions to task and actually help to answer a lot of my issues with them. I thank the other panelists for that and engaging in that challenge so that we didn't just pass these guys through because they smelled nice last time. That said, I don't see Shore as better than Bourque or Lidstrom certainly. And thus, he'll be behind at least both of them. I'd like to see another full Potvin game from the 70's before I decide on what side on Shore he falls on for me as well.

It's not time for Ovechkin or Messier. Mikita will not feature prominently either for me, which is a little bit at odds with my prelim list. But I saw two playoff games of his since I made my list and it's very clear who was driving the...ship? bus? Whatever...and it wasn't him in my eyes. Which is enough to put him on cinderblocks on this particular ballot.

 

[Kyle McMahon]

You mean ‘03 to ‘06, minus ‘05 due to the lockout, right? That’s 3 playoffs when the Red Wings lost to teams that went to the finals and nearly won it all. Just to clarify.

Lidstrom has the most playoff game wins as a skater in the playoffs (and regular season) all-time so those voters who like “winners” and players who contribute most to winning, should have been voting high on him all along. Not you Kyle but I have someone else in mind here who always uses that argument for his Bleu Blanc et Rouge.

No, I mean what I stated. Detroit lost to underdog Anaheim in 2007 after finishing in 1st place, 4th consecutive year they were upset in the playoffs. I'd be inclined to forgive the 2003 loss to Anaheim though. Giguere played maybe the greatest series of all time against them, tough to find a lot of fault there. But is Detroit's four year stretch of playoff underachieving perfectly overlapping with the time span where Lidstrom was pretty clearly their top player just coincidental? Maybe. I mean, I certainly wouldn't direct outright blame in his direction. But it does put a big damper on any suggestion that Lidstrom could get a less-than-great roster to swing above their weight class. Not that all the other candidates necessarily could either. But Bourque specifically did demonstrate that he could. As far as my vote goes, this will be a key reason why I have a gap between Bourque (3rd this vote pending further arguments) and Lidstrom (undecided).

 

[BraveCanadian]

@ehhedler

In 99-00 the Pens had Straka, Lang, Kovalev, Hatcher, Kasper, Hrdina, Barrasso beyond Jagr. Again, were they an elite roster? No. But I keep hearing about how it was Jagr and a bunch of nobodies which is complete fantasy. The Pens didn't fold until the Jagr trade. Jagr never played on any sort of expansion level roster in Pittsburgh.

They were struggling financially and declining year by year.

Those late 90s squads that Jagr was somehow supposed to drag to the promised land were paper thin rosters, especially on defense and in goal. Considering how much he could be focused on by the opposition it is a miracle (and usually due to Jagr) that they won any series at all.

 

[BenchBrawl]

Ottawa Journal, 2 Septembre 1936

 

[Theokritos]

I think it would be disingenuous to suggest that the overall best, and overall most valuable players, regardless of team, didn't have a tendency to show up highly and repeatedly in hart voting - in any era. They do. These two players are pretty much the consensus two best of the post-consolidation, pre-WW2 era, and well, look who hogged all the Hart votes - to the extent that two players could hog Hart votes, that is.

No doubt, but it stands to reason that it's more difficult to ramp up Hart votes when you play on a stacked team with multiple other elite players. At least when the focus is indeed on value "to the club".

There are also plenty of reports about their greatness in newspaper reports and books that make it pretty clear that they were both very highly regarded throughout their careers. It's subjective, but it's still good information we all like to refer to.

I'm just saying, you wouldn't look at 15 years of hart votes, and read everything written about them during their careers, and then come to the conclusion that it's reasonable that one should win a poll 27-1 (votes for other players eliminated).

I don't quite agree. What you say here could also be said about Hull and Mikita. And yet Hull beats Mikita 436½ to 7 in that 1970 poll on the Best Player of the 1960s. Unreasonable? I don't think so. A big difference in a voting result doesn't necessarily mean two players were miles apart. As you rightly pointed out in your earlier post: A single-name ballot is not likely to deliver a nuanced picture. Yes, the numbers aren't close: The vast majority of voters thought player A was better than player B. But that doesn't mean the vast majority of voters also thought A was much better than B. If almost everyone thinks: It's close, but Morenz for me... then you get a landslide victory for Morenz like 27-1.

(Also, I don't think the thing about valuable vs. useful is really all that important here, but personally I wouldn't concern myself with how one newspaper in one season worded the definition of the Hart trophy. It didn't change; it was always for most valuable to his team.)

Sure, I don't disagree, in the context of the Hart Trophy I don't even consider "most valuable to his team" and "most useful to his team" as opposites. In fact I think the wording "most useful to his club" emphasizes the "to his club" aspect even more, which highlights how the Hart trophy was viewed back then.