Top-200 Hockey Players of All-Time - Round 2, Vote 12

[seventieslord]

Procedure

• You will be presented with ~15 players based on their ranking in the Round 1 aggregate list
• 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 @seventieslord
• 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-5 players will be added to The List

Eligible Voters

• Ballots from voters who have submitted an approved Round 1 ranking of 220 players (which was used to shape the aggregate list) will have their votes tabulated in the History of Hockey ranking
• Batis, BenchBrawl, bobholly39, buffalowing88, Dennis Bonvie, DN28, Dr John Carlson, Hockey Outsider, MXD, Professor What, ResilientBeast, seventieslord, tarheelhockey, ted2019, TheDevilMadeMe, Vilica, Weztex

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
  
• 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, March 12th at midnight and continue through Sunday, March 14th at 8:59pm. Eastern time zone. I will release the results of the vote on Monday, March 15th.


Vote 9 Candidates

• Alexei Kasatonov
• Billy Smith
• Bryan Hextall
• Ernie "Moose" Johnson
• Georges Boucher
• Henrik Zetterberg
• J.C. Tremblay
• Johnny Bucyk
• Jonathan Toews
• Lionel Conacher
• Luc Robitaille
• Marian Hossa
• Mark Recchi
• Mickey MacKay

Click to read more...

 

[seventieslord]

J.C Tremblay, by far the youngest player to be added for discussion this round... by a margin of 26 years, actually.

 

[Hockey Outsider]

VsX summary (1927-2020)

Player	1st	2nd	3rd	4th	5th	6th	7th	8th	9th	10th	7 YEAR	10 YEAR
John Bucyk	128.9	89.4	82.4	82.1	81.5	80.2	76.1	73.2	73.1	72.3	88.7	83.9
Mark Recchi	98.3	96.8	89.2	86.2	83.6	83.1	81.3	80.2	73.4	71.1	88.4	84.3
Luc Robitaille	92.2	91.7	84.7	84.5	79.1	78.7	78.3	77.8	71.7	70.5	84.2	80.9
Marian Hossa	94.3	87.7	86.8	79.4	78.1	76.9	73.3	70.9	69.0	64.5	82.4	78.1
Bryan Hextall	103.7	100.0	90.7	81.9	79.5	56.8	53.3	51.9	47.7	47.6	80.9	71.3
Henrik Zetterberg	86.8	84.2	80.8	80.2	76.7	76.4	71.1	66.4	64.2	59.6	79.5	74.7
Jonathan Toews	84.2	78.2	76.8	76.7	69.8	65.2	65.2	62.7	62.4	61.9	73.7	70.3
Lionel Conacher	63.6	55.6	53.5	53.1	48.6	35.0	32.0	24.1	17.0	16.3	48.8	39.9
J.C. Tremblay	70.0	52.3	48.6	44.9	36.4	35.7	26.9	24.4	24.1	23.8	45.0	38.7

[TBODY] [/TBODY]

A few notes:

• I'm not reporting the results for Georges Boucher. The first nine years of his career were in the NHL pre-consolidation, which aren't captured in VsX. He had six years after consolidation, but was no longer a major offensive contributor.
• Tremblay's results above exclude his time in the WHA.
• As TDMM showed last round, it's pretty clear that Orr's Bruins broke the scale in 1971 (and a few other seasons), which inflates Bucyk's score. His estimate, which looked reasonable to me, suggested that more realistic results for Bucyk are around 79.3 and 76.7 - link. (On the other hand, seventies had some good arguments for why Bucyk's value isn't fully captured by this metric - link).
• I didn't bother posting Kasatanov's seven years in the NHL when he was past his prime (his seven- and ten-year results are 20.2 and 14.2, respectively).

 

[Hockey Outsider]

Hart trophy - 5% threshold

Player	1st	2nd	3rd	4th	5th	6th	7th+	Total
Lionel Conacher		2					1	3
Jonathan Toews				1		1		2
Georges Boucher				1			1	2
Bryan Hextall					1			1
Mark Recchi						1		1

[TBODY] [/TBODY]

A few notes:

• Both of Bouchers' Hart placements were pre-consolidation.
• We also know that Conacher finished 7th for the Hart in another year, but we don't have the full voting results, so I'm not sure if he met the 5% voting threshold.
• Players who weren't eligible for the Hart - Johnson, Kasatanov (effectively), MacKay (effectively)
• Players who were eligible for the Hart, but never got a non-trivial number of votes - Bucyk, Hossa, Robitaille, Smith, Tremblay, Zetterberg

Norris trophy - 5% threshold

Not much to report here. We know that JC Tremblay finished 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th in Norris voting. For what it's worth - and it's probably not a whole lot - he won the Dennis A. Murphy trophy for best defensemen twice.

The other defensemen in this round either played most/all of their prime outside of the NHL (Johnson, Kasatanov) or before the Norris trophy was awarded (Conacher, Boucher).

 

[TheDevilMadeMe]

Very first impression - I might have all forwards in my top 5 this round. Kind of makes sense after adding 4 defensemen last time.

Among the new guys, I like:

Two-way star Mickey McKay. Widely considered the 2nd best player in PCHA history after Cyclone Taylor. (Easy comparison to defenseman Moose Johnson, also of PCHA fame).

I also like Bryan Hextall, a true power forward who led the NHL in points once and goals twice as the clearcut best player on his line. Relatively short career, but really, no shorter than those of Bure and Kariya, at least when talking about what I would call "relevant" years. I'm happy that I get to vote Hextall over Bucyk, though seventieslord made a good case for Bucyk last round, and I don't think he's the runt of this group by any means.

Among the leftovers from last round, I like the two-way forwards in Zetterberg, Toews, and Hossa. Last round, I decided I didn't really see what Hooley Smith had on any of them.

 

[ted2019]

Big fan of Georges Boucher and Ernie Johnson.

 

[seventieslord]

I know Sweeney Schriner is long gone, but we have a guy who is a direct contemporary and also a winger - how does he compare to the recently inducted Schriner?

- If you added one season to Hextall's career at approximately a point per game, you'd have Schiner's regular season career
- If you added three "meh" playoffs to Hextall's career (about 4 points in 7 games, three times), you'd have Schriner's playoff career
- Hextall managed to get a whole 1st all-star team selection above and beyond what Schriner managed, though. Was this due to the year-to-year fluctuations in top-end competition at their positions?
- Both surprisingly mediocre Hart records compared to their all-star selections and scoring finishes
- Hextall seems to have been seen as a more substantive player, a power forward, as opposed to a soft, one-dimensional scorer. Nonetheless, Schriner got into the HHOF seven years before his contemporary Hextall did.

Hextall likely deserves to be below Schriner, but there shouldn't be a huge gap between them, either. Still, this is a tough round.

 

[seventieslord]

I get that it's kinda canonized that Robitaille > Recchi, and I voted that way myself, and the voting from last round seems to indicate that is the trend (though too many NRs for both to say for sure). We should do a deep comparison of these guys to get a sense for who really belongs ahead. I think with the right nudge I could come around to Recchi being over Robitaille. The biggest advantage is all-star selections and I am not sure that advantage would stand up to scrutiny once the difficulty at their respective wings is closely analyzed.

 

[sr edler]

Not a big fan of any of Recchi or Robitaille, but I would go with Mark Recchi, without much of a doubt, if I had to pick one of them in front of the other. At least he brought some scrappiness. @vadim sharifijanov has won me halfway over with his tales about the "Wrecking Ball". Or how's it spelt, vadim? "Recching Ball"?

If I had a team though I would go with a more versatile guy like Theo Fleury in front of both Recchi or Robitaille, and I wouldn't have Luc Robitaille as a top 200 player at all, if I had to do one of these lists. Recchi, yeah could be, low top 200. At least he led the league in assists once and finished 3rd in league scoring, which is a nice accomplishment. But didn't the Canadian national team always go with both Fleury and Shanahan in front of both of those guys in the late 90s? Is Shanahan already added to this list? I know people here like him. I've lost track. I would probably go with Cam Neely over Robitaille too.

Robitaille had a monster (and partly inflated) statistical season in 92–93 which makes him look superficially better or more impressive overall than I think he actually was. Then in the 93 playoffs, with his team going on a deep run, he didn't really bring the hot coffee from an overall perspective. Yeah, 22 points in 24 games isn't bad at all on a first view, but cracks partly under scrutiny. He scored many of those points in spurts and was held off the scoresheet entirely in 11 out of 24 games, or 46% of the games. In the famous Toronto series in the WCFs he was held off the scoresheet entirely in 5 out of 7 games in a tightly fought series.

In the SCFs where Montreal glued Carbo on Gretzky, shouldn't that had freed up Robitaille somewhat to counter the move?

Also, Robitaille's plus & minus ratio in the 93 playoffs is one of those ugly instances. –13 when most of his teammates were in the plus column. Yeah, I know, "plus & minus, haha", but if you're that negatively removed from your own teammates it rings a little bell. He wasn't a plus player in any of the 4 series. Closest teammates Shuchuk (–6) and Zhitnik (–4). Shuchuk at –6 tells me he was probably thrown in on Robitaille's line at some point (or points) during the playoffs, but the project was scrapped when the line couldn't hold up and bled scoring chances & goals against.

Robitaille was a very good goal scorer, but there are just so many good or great players all throughout history, I don't think he stands out very much against the upper echelon of forwards.

 

[Dennis Bonvie]

Looking at Recchi's regular season numbers it surprised me that his plus/minus was even over his career. He played on a lot of good teams.

Also struck me that every year Recchi was traded he was a minus player, usually significantly minus.

 

[ResilientBeast]

PCHA players are back!

Still too early for either of them tbh and I would want Foyston to show up before inducting MacKay anyway

 

[TheDevilMadeMe]

PCHA players are back!

Still too early for either of them tbh and I would want Foyston to show up before inducting MacKay anyway

Wasn't MacKay more highly regarded than Foyston? I'll make a big MacKay post later, but for starters, he was inducted into the HHOF in 1952; Foyston in 1958.

MacKay also has a pretty substantial statistical case over Foyston AND finished significantly higher in the HOH Top Centers project.

 

[TheDevilMadeMe]

Bryan Hextall, Sr

Quick and dirty:

• All Star Team Finishes: 1st , 1st , 1st , 2nd (39-40, 40-41, 41-42, 42-43 in order)
• Top 10 Goals Finishes: 1st , 1st , 2nd , 5th , 5th , 10th
• Top 10 Assist: 2nd
• Top 10 Points: 1st , 2nd , 6th , 7th
• Stanley Cup Champion in 1940
• Scored the Championship Goal in Overtime
• Inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1969
• Games Played: 1st , 1st , 1st , 2nd , 2nd , 2nd , 2nd , 2nd

Posts from the HOH Top Wingers project:

Hextall was the best player on the best line in the league. Like Maurice Richard after him, he played his off wing, a LH shot on the right wing.

He had a late start, making the NHL at age 24. And he wasn't a star after 30 - he took two years off because of the war, and like many players his age had trouble getting back up to speed in the faster post-war NHL. As a result, he didn't have as many years as a star as some others - especially Bucyk and Shanahan - but he was a consistent scorer and an iron man during his short prime.

Hextall became a star in 1939-40 on the Rough House line with Phil Watson and Dutch Hiller. They played against other team's top lines all season, famously shutting down the Kraut line in the 1940 playoffs. Hextall led the league in regular season goals, and scored an overtime Cup-winning goal in the playoffs. He continued his scoring success in the next three seasons, forming the most dangerous scoring line in the league with Watson and Lynn Patrick.

Hextall was definitely a power forward of his day. Here's an AP piece published in the January 5, 1944 edition of the Troy Record with very high praise for his physical play.

"Toughest fire-eater on ice"..."hands out more body checks than 99% of defense men"..."invariably see Hextall skate out of the corner with the puck"...

1939-40 - The Rangers had three strong lines that played together all season. The team was incredibly healthy so changes weren't required because of injuries. All three lines scored at least 35 goals.


Hiller - Watson - Hextall (44 goals and checked top lines)
Shibicky - N Colville - M Colville (37 goals)
L Patrick - Smith - Macdonald (35 goals)

The lines were the same for the first half of the 1940-41 season, except that Alf Pike was in the lineup as a 10th forward and was in the mix with the third line. Phil Watson, who had been second to Cowley in league scoring for much of the first half, missed 8 games to injury and the lines became

Shibicky - Smith - Hextall
Patrick - N Colville - M Colville
Hiller - Pike - MacDonald

After Watson returned, he was back with Hextall on the top line, with first Shibicky and then Patrick. Hiller had a poor second half to the season and was banished to the third line and traded after the season.

Patrick played with Watson and Hextall in each of 1941-42 and 1942-43.

The two constants for the Rangers lines in Hextall's prime were:
1. Neil and Mac Colville played together
2. Bryan Hextall and Phil Watson played together.

Everything else changed at various times.

It's interesting that Watson was a RHS and Hextall a LHS, but Hextall played on his right. Can anyone think of any other great C-W combinations where they were on each other's backhands on the rush? Edit: I got one - Ovechkin and Backstrom.

 

[TheDevilMadeMe]

More newspaper articles (mostly from @BenchBrawl 's ATD profile):

The Lewiston Daily Sun April 4 1940:

The New York Rangers , paced by Bryan Hextall , overpowered the Toronto Maple Leafs , 6 to 2 , to gain their second straight victory in the final playoffs series for the stanley cup.

Hextall , the NHL's leading goal-getter during the regular season , slammed three goals past goalie Turk Broda of the leafs and drew an assist on another.In addition , he was indirectly responsible for a couple of other goals.

...a fast cross-fired shot by Bryan Hextall...

...Hextall raced in to scoop up the rebound for a score

The Lewiston Daily Sun - Google News Archive Search

New York Times January 10 1941:

Bryan Hextall moved the Rangers in front half way through the second period after a scramble

MAPLE LEAFS WIN FROM RANGERS, 3-2; Apps's Goal Snaps Deadlock Three Seconds Before End of Overtime at Toronto GOLDUP INJURED IN CRASH Suffers Fractured Left Hip -- Chicago Tops Canadiens, 3-1, on Two Extra-Period Shots

New York Times December 26 1941:

Bryan Hextall gave a fine passing exhibition that carried them to the mouth of the Chicago goal

BLUE SHIRTS WIN ON GARDEN ICE, 5-2; Rangers Move to Third Place -- Yield Both Chicago Goals Before Beating Lo Presti LYNN PATRICK SHOWS WAY Warwick, Mac Colville, Kuntz, Smith Follow -- No Penalties in Game Seen by 13,126

Philadelphia Daily News - Nov 16, 1986:

At 5-10, 195 pounds, Bryan Hextall Sr. was a bullish winger who could skate over an enemy defenseman without breaking stride. He played tough, but seldom fought. He didn't feel a man had to drop his gloves to prove himself on the ice.

Secondary Sources:

Who's who in hockey:

He had a terrific burst of speed , was appropriately tough , and could stickhandle with the best of them.

Joe Pelletier:

Bryan Hextall was one of the highest skilled and most respected players ever to grace a sheet of NHL ice.

He was also one of hockey's hardest hitters. Herb Goren, a long time reporter for the New York Sun once said "He was the hardest bodychecking forward I had seen in more than forty years of watching hockey."

He scored 20 goals in 7 consecutive seasons back in the days when 20 goals was a benchmark of a very good player.

Hex may have continued on as the best right winger in hockey had his career not been interrupted by World War II. Hextall served in the Canadian military during the 1944-45 season. He would miss most of the 1945-46 season as well due to a serious stomach and liver disorder

The most famous goal Bryan scored immortalized him in New York sporting history forever, although he didn't know that at the time. Bryan scored the overtime winning goal of game six of the 1940 Stanley Cup game against Toronto

In 1939-40 and 1940-41 Hextall led all NHL snipers in goals scored. In 1941-42 he captured the Art Ross trophy as the league's leading point scorer. On four other occasions he was in the top ten of scoring. With three selections to the First All-Star team and another to the second All-Star team, it is obvious that Bryan Hextall was the dominant right winger of the era directly before the arrival of Rocket Richard and Gordie Howe.

Poor circulation in his legs forced doctors to amputate both legs below the knees in 1978. Bryan Hextall died in 1984.

HockeyLegends:

He would become a permanent fixture with the Blueshirts the following year playing on his "off wing," many years before the tactic was to become common practice in the league. Hextall found that he had a better shooting angle, as a left-handed shot, by cutting in on goal from the right wing

Hextall was considered the dominant right winger of his day

NYHistory:

Bryan Aldwyn Hextall was a key piece in the superb Rangers teams of the pre-World War II era that won the Stanley Cup in 1940

Dennis Hextall:

Bryan Sr. scored 20 or more goals in seven of his 12 NHL seasons. "A 20- goal season then was the equivalent of a 40-goal season today," Dennis Hextall said. "It was a different game. If you scored 20 then, you were a helluva player."

"Our father never talked about his career," said Dennis Hextall, now a manufacturers representative in Detroit. "He was a modest guy. If he had pushed himself (in the press) he could have been an NHL coach. But it wasn't his nature. He was low-key.

"Our father would come to our junior games," Dennis said, "and he'd curse us out if we fought. I had 20 goals and 20 major penalties (fighting) in one season. My father said, 'You'd have 30 (goals) if you didn't spend so much time in the box.'

"I told him, 'Dad, if something happens out there, I'm not gonna back away.' He understood, he just didn't like the cheap penalties. He said there was a difference between being tough and being dumb."

James Dunn:

"He is a very clean-living individual and an excellent ambassador for professional hockey."

Ron Hextall:

"He told me to quit taking dumb penalties," the Flyers' goalie said. "He told me to leave the fighting to the other players. I had a pretty short temper back then."

 

[TheDevilMadeMe]

So the case for Bryan Hextall as the best winger this round: He was the dominant power forward of his day, and the best player on the best line in hockey, a line that was intentionally used in a head-to-head situation against the opponent's best players.

Great statistical peak, and his relatively weak longevity should be forgiven a bit because he left for WW2 after his age 30 season, and wasn't the same player when he came back 2 years later.

FWIW, the HOH Wingers project would have Bucyk as the next winger to be added, followed by Hextall. But IMO, Hextall's offensive peak (as the best player of his line), would have me rank him over Bucyk.

 

[ResilientBeast]

Wasn't MacKay more highly regarded than Foyston? I'll make a big MacKay post later, but for starters, he was inducted into the HHOF in 1952; Foyston in 1958.

MacKay also has a pretty substantial statistical case over Foyston AND finished significantly higher in the HOH Top Centers project.

I know, but the more I read for my PCHA project I become less convinced about MacKay's standing in PCHA history. After Cully Wilson broke his jaw and returned to the PCHA, those Millionaires teams and MacKay weren't super effective until they moved MacKay to wing when they got Frank Boucher.

Disclaimer I have MacKay in the ATD right now, but will be objective about this.

MacKay's positions from my bio

1914-15 - C, eastern rules LW (according to Trail)
1915-16 - C
1916-17 - C
1917-18 - C, eastern rules RW/LW
1918-19 - R
1920-21- R
1921-22 - R, part time W. Eastern rules C
1922-23 - MacKay starts the season on D, plays about 8-10 games from there (early Nov-early Jan) before playing wing/RW regularly beside Boucher
1923-24 - W
1924-25 - W
1925-26 - W

Bolded are from seasons he was definitely a winger
5 x PCHA First Team All-Star (1915, 1917, 1919, 1922, 1923)
3 x PCHA Second Team All-Star (1916, 1918, 1921)
WCHL First Team All-Star (1925)

Scoring:
PCHA Points – 2nd(1915), 2nd(1922), 2nd(1923), 3rd(1924), 6th(1917), 9th(1918), 10th(1916), 10th(1919), 10th(1921)
PCHA Goals – 1st(1915), 1st(1924), 2nd(1923), 5th(1922), 6th(1917), 9th(1918), 9th(1921), 10th(1919)
PCHA Assists – 1st(1922), 2nd(1915), 2nd(1923), 3rd(1916), 6th(1924), 8th(1921)

WCHL Points – 2nd(1925)
WCHL Goals – 1st(1925)

The other offensive players in the PCHA

MacKay: 2, 2, 2, 3, 6, 9, 10, 10
Foyston: 2, 3, 3, 4, 4, 4, 10
Morris: 1, 2, 2, 2, 4, 6, 7
Dunderdale: 1, 1, 3, 3, 5, 6, 6, 9, 10
Frederickson: 1, 1, 2, 3

MacKay IMO doesn't have a claim to the second best offensive player in PCHA history. Defensively, he's not Jack Walker but he's probably in that second tier of forwards. His playoff performance in 1915 (playing with a fantastic team) was strong, and he gets a lot of praise in 1918 when Taylor had a bad series.

The two "PCHA" MVPs we know of are Taylor and Foyston, I'm looking for quotes about this and will report back if I find anything since I'm now at 1917 for my project. MacKay beat him in the C position project, but I doubt MacKay even came up in the playoff performers project.

 

[ResilientBeast]

Ultimately my doubts on MacKay are about how the performance of the Millionaires as Taylor got older and eventually retired. I've already made it clear how I view Lehman's performances and someone has to shoulder some of the blame here and unfortunately it's MacKay.

His legacy gets complicated because of the time out from the broken jaw, but he wasn't exactly lighting the world on fire before the incident.

Edit: His playoff numbers after the broken jaw are even worse than I remembered.

 

[ted2019]

My early thoughts:
For me, Boucher is highly underrated and he is the top guy from my original list.
Bucyk/Hextall/Recchi will be in my top forwards.
I forgot to put Moose Johnson on my list, so I need to look into him a bit.
Lionel Conacher should be a good shot in making my top 5
I had Zetterberg over Toews in my original and he's still ahead of him. Hossa is one spot ahead of Zetterberg.
Not sure what to do about Tremblay yet.

 

[vadim sharifijanov]

I get that it's kinda canonized that Robitaille > Recchi, and I voted that way myself, and the voting from last round seems to indicate that is the trend (though too many NRs for both to say for sure). We should do a deep comparison of these guys to get a sense for who really belongs ahead. I think with the right nudge I could come around to Recchi being over Robitaille. The biggest advantage is all-star selections and I am not sure that advantage would stand up to scrutiny once the difficulty at their respective wings is closely analyzed.

hmm, gut says recchi because he had multiple spikes and they were really high. but i think we need a forensic side by side for this.

robitaille's case isn't the ASTs, it's the eight straight years of consistently high level scoring. what post-expansion winger has ever had an eight year run as consistently good as robitaille? bossy, jagr, ovechkin, is that it?

here are their fifteen year primes, with their placements. this cuts off robitaille in detroit and his third LA stint, and takes recchi up to the lockout. it also counts recchi's first year as his first full season, not his 15 game audition in 1989.

#	robitaille	recchi
1	17	68
2	5	4
3	10	12
4	12	10
5	15	5
6	5	19
7	9	37
8	24	22
9	34	14
10	50	64
11	99	3
12	122	27
13	16	40
14	16	84
15	11	12

[TBODY] [/TBODY]

in those 15 years, robitaille is sixth, behind gretzky, yzerman, mario, oates, and messier. all centers of course. he is 21 points behind oates (in 32 more games), 14 points behind messier (in 56 more games). he outscores ron francis (more points in fewer games), brett hull (55 more points in 5 more games), and gilmour (58 more points in 14 more games). all to say, even with those four lost years robitaille was a stunningly consistent point producer for 15 years.

in recchi's 15 years, he's fifth. behind sakic, jagr, hull, and oates. recchi outscores all of his other exact contemporaries: turgeon, modano, roenick, sundin. those four guys, plus yzerman and francis, are the six guys separating recchi and robitaille on the top scorers between 1990 and 2004 list. i.e., robitaille is twelfth in that same stretch of years, which is bonkers, given that it cuts off 3/8 of his prime and 1/3 of his peak and replaces them with three old man years, ages 35 to 37.


and if you look at the table, you get a year-by-year comparison if you just go diagonally by three—

robitaille outscores recchi in 1992, 1993, 1999, and 2001.

recchi outscores robitaille in 1991, 1994 through 1998, and 2000.

this to me is surprising. i wouldn't have thought robitaille would take two peak recchi years in a head to head, and definitely not two late prime recchi years.


and sorted placements, robitialle is the first row, recchi is the second—

5, 5, 9, 10, 11, 12, 15, 16, 16, 17, 24, 34, 50, 99, 122

3, 4, 5, 10, 12, 12, 14, 19, 22, 27, 37, 40, 64, 68, 84


i don't really know which one i'd side with, tbh. the case for robitaille is a case for consistency. ten years in the top twenty is really special for a winger, especially one not known as a playmaker. the case for recchi is higher spikes (but less than you'd think, because i think we underrate robitaille's '88 and '92 seasons as legitimately elite scoring seasons) and obviously playoffs.

and one of my big recchi arguments is there is no mario '91 cup without recchi because they probably wouldn't have made the playoffs without recchi leading the way in the regular season. i would make the same argument for gretzky's 93 cup run. if robitaille didn't step up and lead his team in scoring by 38 points, is there even a playoff team for gretzky to come back to?

love both these guys. immodestly, i think a lot of the turnaround on people's opinion on recchi in an all-time context has been due to my advocacy for him over the years. i've done a lot of legwork to show that recchi accomplished a lot more than most people think.

it's time this happened with robitaille too.

 

[vadim sharifijanov]

one more thing with robitaille's stunning consistency. here are his goals placements over his fifteen year prime —

9, 4, 10, 6, 7, 7, 4, 12, 14, x, x, x, 10, 9, 16, and even in year sixteen he was 29th, one goal out of the top 25 and two goals out of the top 20. the other wingers that played in the 80s/90s/2000s who recently made the top 200 — kariya, bure, krutov — none of them were still playing in year sixteen.

Is Shanahan already added to this list? I know people here like him. I've lost track.

given the current crop, shanahan should probably be on deck. feels like hawerchuk when modano and kariya were getting in where it's like, what maybe everyone just forgot about him. feels like either shanny and denis savard should be on deck now too, or most of the 80s/90s/2000s guys who recently made the list got in too early.

 

[ted2019]

J.C Tremblay, by far the youngest player to be added for discussion this round... by a margin of 26 years, actually.

How many voters are taking his WHA years unto account?

 

[Dennis Bonvie]

How many voters are taking his WHA years unto account?

At least one.

 

[MXD]

How many voters are taking his WHA years unto account?

We kindof have to. It's not significantly different than the European national leagues from that era.

 

[ted2019]

At least one.

I plan to, but how much stock should we put into it? His numbers went through the roof and I'm trying to decipher if he always had this in him or if it's because he played in the WHA only.

 

[Dennis Bonvie]

I plan to, but how much stock should we put into it? His numbers went through the roof and I'm trying to decipher if he always had this in him or if it's because he played in the WHA only.

For me the WHA Tremblay was the only one I saw live. He may as well have been Nick Lidstrom compared to everyone else on the ice.

But he also looked darn good on the black & white TV when in Montreal.