Grant Fuhr
Billy Smith
First thought: I like Fuhr a little better for his workload, his longevity, and "feeling" like his argument rests a little less heavily on a small number of high profile games.
I'm not sure about the workload and longevity parts. It's true that Fuhr was top-5 in minutes five times to Smith's one, but only two of those times were from when he was a peak level championship goalie (and I'm being generous by including 1989). From 83-87, Fuhr had 30, 44, 41, 37, and 38 decisions. Smith had 36, 40, 45, 39 and 38 in the five years he went to the finals.
Fuhr did have a huge workload in 1988, but he had a save percentage a point over the league average that season, so I don't know that it's really noteworthy that he played 75 games at an average level. 1996 was of course a noteworthy year in terms of maintaining a strong (I hesitate to say
high) level of play over a huge sample, but the other three times he was top-5 in minutes he was a below average goalie (1989, 1992, 1997).
As for longevity, Smith played till he was 38, despite coming from a generation where that was highly unusual. Fuhr played till 37 at a time when anyone noteworthy did so.
It's hard to separate team performance from goalie performance sometimes, but it's really hard to get around the fact that Smith was consistently highly above the league's average save percentage and Fuhr was not. These are their best GSAA numbers in the regular season:
| Fuhr | 38.3 | 20 | 14.4 | 14 | 14 | 10.1 | 4.3 | 1 | -6.3 | -6.8 | -8 | -8.2 | -10.8 |
| Smith | 36.4 | 32.6 | 28.9 | 25.9 | 23.6 | 23.2 | 20.5 | 19.5 | 18.1 | 16.1 | 14.6 | 8.3 | 4.8 |
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And the playoffs:
| Fuhr | 6.9 | 6.6 | 6.5 | 4.8 | 1.8 | 0.6 | 0.1 | -0.1 | -2.8 | -4.5 | -5 | -5.6 |
| Smith | 15.8 | 11.8 | 10.5 | 6.3 | 5.4 | 5.3 | 4.3 | 2.5 | -2.3 | -3.6 | | |
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Jean Ratelle
Luc Robitaille
Mark Recchi
First thought: I'd take these players in the order they're listed. As explained a few threads ago, I think Robitaille is a compiler whose peak output get seriously overlooked. Recchi is a compiler whose peak output does not get overlooked. Ratelle is probably the best hockey player of the three.
The longer this goes on, the less I see a reason to rank Robitaille ahead of Recchi. We've made a lot of how Recchi was suspect defensively early in his career - no one's said the same about Robitaille, even though he was bad defensively just about his whole career, and killed penalties one quarter as frequently as Recchi (who was not a particularly noteworthy PKer himself).
Just putting their scoring finishes next to one another...
| Recchi | 3 | 4 | 5 | 10 | 12 | 13 | 15 | 20 | 22 | 28 | 38 | 40 | 52 | 57 | 64 | 68 | 68 |
| Robitaille | 5 | 6 | 9 | 10 | 12 | 12 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 17 | 24 | 34 | 50 | 74 | 89 | 100 | 124 |
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I've bolded the superior seasons. It seems like we could say Recchi has the better three season peak, then they are practically even over their next-best four. By now we've discussed their best seven seasons and Recchi is well ahead. it would take a lot to change that. Well, look out, Mark, because while you were languishing in Montreal, Robitaille's surprising late 90s LA resurgence starts to bridge the gap, along with his "hit the ground running" rookie season and an off-peak 1994. After 11 seasons, dare I say it's almost even?
Whatever you think at that time, the 12th and 13th best years don't do anything to change it. But then, we have the 14th-17th best years where Recchi crushes Robitaille in his ability to be a useful contritutor for longer, thanks to his post-lockout years, rookie season and a 1999 that should have been one of his 10 best years but somehow wasn't. By this time Recchi should have removed all doubt, but I haven't even mentioned that even his 18th-20th best seasons (84th, 106th, 112th) are all better than Robitaille's 14th! (whether that has to matter, or even should matter, is an open question).
As far as playing with superior teammates is concerned, both have undeserved reputation as shotgun riders for better players. Robitaille put up a collab score of 1.40 or better seven times in his career, and these were by far his highest marks:
1987: 1.45
1988: 1.61
1992: 1.65
1993: 1.66
1999: 1.99
2000: 1.43
2001: 1.44
These put his best seasons in perspective, I think. After all, shouldn't we hold his 1999 (17th) and 2000 (16th) seasons in higher regard than his 1989 (10th), 1990 (12th) and his 1991 (15th) for what he was able to do as a mostly one-man show, without a prime Gretzky? Isn't prime Gretzky worth at least as many points as the difference from 10th to 16th-17th?
1992,
1993 and
1988 are unassailable - he placed very highly, and he can't be said to have been helped too much by anyone else.*
1989,
1990 and
1991, he was the beneficiary of Gretzky, but of course playing on the same team as Gretzky is not an automatic top-15 scoring placement.
1987,
1999,
2000 and
2001 are like the first group, except without much help he couldn't place too highly, but a deeper look shows there is good value there.
His dropoff in seasons as a real catalyst seems a little steep, though. His next best collab scores (8th to 15th) are 1.30, 1.26, 1.24, 1.15, 1.14, 1.11, 1.02, 0.99.
*What does a Luc Robitaille-led team look like when he places very highly in league scoring and is the catalyst? In these three seasons the Kings had 64, 88 and 84 points, and were 5th, 10th and 5th in offense.
Recchi had a total of eight seasons with a collab score above 1.40:
1991: 1.46
1993: 1.82
1994: 1.48
1995: 1.51
1999: 1.43
2000: 1.74
2001: 1.51
2004: 1.55
Right away,
1991,
1994 and
2000 are unassailable - he was a top-5 scorer in the NHL and did so with catalyst-like collab scores (though, Robitaille closes the gap there a bit, I'd say).
However, he has his own version of Robitaille's 1999:
1993, when he was 10th in scoring with a 1.82 score on a brutal Flyers team. Throw in
2004, when he finished 12th by himself (that sounds wrong, but take a look, it's not!) Throw in
1992, when he was 12th but did have some help (1.37), and he's matched Robitaille's best 6 without trying too hard.
And then comparable to Robitaille's 7th to 10th best ('87 and '99-01):
1995 (20th, 1.51),
1998 (15th, 1.35),
2001 (28th, 1.51) and
1997 (22nd, 1.29) - an average of 21st and 1.41, to Robitaille's 16th and 1.58. Overall, not quite at the same level, but we have not touched on Recchi's sneaky good 1999, when Montreal was anemic and he missed more games than anyone else in their injury-riddled top-6 (due to being traded late) and came away with a decent 1.43 score. He led the team in scoring despite the trade, at both even strength and on the PP, and outscored whichever of Koivu and Damphousse was his center (I believe Vinny).
Also, following his eight seasons with the least help reaching his point totals, his next best (9th to 15th) are 1.37, 1.35, 1.34, 1.29, 1.29, 1.25 and 1.16. Just like when looking at raw points, vsx, rankings, etc, the further you go, the more distance he creates.
* What does a Mark Recchi-led team look like? 88, 80, and 105 points, 2nd, 6th and 10th in offense.
tl;dr version, across their respective 11 best seasons, their average performances:
Recchi: 975 adjusted points in 891 adjusted games (1.094), averaged 15.5th in scoring, 1.476 collab score
Robitaille: 945 adjusted points in 887 adjusted games (1.065), averaged 13th in scoring, 1.459 collab score
Also, Mark Recchi's playoff career is what you get if you take Luc Robitaille's, and add 20 more points in 30 more games. That's impressive enough, but consider this:
During the 1st round in 1994, Recchi played his 95th playoff game, which constitutes his career playoff midpoint. He was 36 years and 2 months old at this time, and league scoring was at just 2.46 (lower in the playoffs, as per usual).
Robitaille reached his midpoint 80th game during the first round of 1995, at the age of 29 and 2 months, when the NHL's GAA was 2.89
All of this is to say, that even though Recchi's playoff resume looks much greater on the surface, a deeper look considering the ages and scoring environments they played their games at, would see Recchi open up a considerable gap on Robitaille.
Ah, the heck with it, I haven't hit submit yet, so just to make that point clearer, the NHL's weighted average RS gpg average during Recchi's playoff career is 2.755 and Robitaille's was 3.08, which is 12% higher. So Recchi scored 2.7% less per game than Robitaille in the playoffs, but, in a 12% lower scoring environment, in a 19% larger sample, at an average age of 36.4 to Robitaille's 29.2, at an average age where he should have been expected to score about 10% less. All told, Recchi's playoff scoring record is perhaps as much as 30% more impressive than Robitaille's.
