I guess I don't quite get what people are seeing in Mark Recchi, because viewing him on the same tier as Mats Sundin is something that doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me.
Recchi made Team Canada at a best-on-best tournament once in his career, and even that was only as a last-minute injury replacement in 1998. Obviously it's easier to make Team Sweden than Team Canada, but it's still a whole lot easier to make Canada once in your entire career than it is to be the best player on Sweden, as Sundin was repeatedly. If I'm reading
this thread correctly, it looks like The Hockey News never once ranked Mark Recchi higher than 30th on their annual player lists, not even in 1993, 1994 or 1995 after several high scoring finishes, while they put Sundin in their top 20 at least six times. Sundin and Recchi had substantial career overlap, and yet Sundin made nearly $30 million more in his career even though Recchi played longer. Sundin was a first-ballot Hall of Famer, Recchi was not. I don't think it's incorrect at all to say that the overwhelming subjective evidence is that Sundin was viewed as a much better player during their careers, and not just because of international play.
I know you used different metrics, but in the ones I prefer, Sundin definitely didn't score quite as much as Recchi. Of course teammates do matter; did Recchi's teammates really prop him up that much?
I think it's pretty clear that Recchi's teammates did prop him up by that much, yes. At the very least, they definitely had a much greater hand in Recchi's scoring numbers than Sundin's teammates did in his.
Here are the NHL's
all-time leaders in secondary assists among forwards. Recchi ranks 6th (compared to just 19th in primary assists), and if you look at the top 100 scoring forwards of all-time, only 4 of them have a higher ratio of secondary assists to total assists than Recchi's 44.5%. Sundin, on the other hand, is 24th in primary assists and 46th in secondary assists, with the 13th
lowest ratio of secondaries to total assists of the top 100 (34.8%).
Now, I don't think secondary assists are valueless by any means, but I do think there is good reason to view them as somewhat less valuable than primary points, particularly at even strength, and the better your teammates, the more likely it is that they will create some additional points for you. Even leaving aside the A2s, Sundin also had a higher even strength IPP (percentage of points on on-ice goals), which is another indicator of linemate strength, along with more impressive scoring finishes relative to his teammates.
I just never bought that playing for Toronto hurt Sundin's stats. Of course, his linemates weren't great, but they weren't particularly terrible. And more importantly, he played for one of the very few teams in the NHL that didn't play defense-first/trapping hockey at the time. Toronto was usually in the top half in the NHL in scoring when Sundin played there, sometimes very close to the top.
So I'd really need to be convinced that Recchi was propped up by his teammates if I'm going to rank Sundin ahead of him based on the NHL.
I think it is a mistake to focus too much on total goals scored when considering team effects. Usage within the team is often a more significant factor than the overall level of team offence, particularly in that era. For example, Detroit was a stacked team that was always near the top of the league in offence from 1996-97 to 2003-04, and yet no Red Wing skater finished higher than 10th in scoring during that entire period because they spread the scoring around more than many other teams.
Pat Quinn was also a coach that liked to roll 4 lines, which was a disadvantage for Sundin. From 1997-98 to 2003-04, despite being obviously the best player on his team, Sundin ranked only 45th among forwards (min. 150 GP) in average TOI at even strength, despite scoring at a very elite rate (tied with Joe Sakic in ESP/60 at 2.66).
It is possible that the weakness of Sundin's even strength linemates is sometimes a bit exaggerated, given that rate of production, although it could simply indicate that he was such a good 5-on-5 player that he could score with anybody. However, I do think the biggest teammate issue for Sundin was on the power play, particularly from 1996-97 to 2001-02, a time period when he peaked at even strength (outscoring everyone in the league but Jagr over those 6 seasons) while ranking a mediocre 38th on the PP.
Power play production wasn't an issue beside Sakic in Quebec, or with Gilmour, Andreychuk and company in Sundin's first two years in Toronto, and wouldn't even be a problem post-lockout, when the Leafs again had a relatively mediocre set of scoring forwards (although they did at least have some good offensive defencemen). So I'm not entirely sure what happened with Sundin during those years, but it doesn't seem too likely that a guy would forget how to score on the power play between the ages of 25 and 30, while at the same time continuing to be one of the best 5-on-5 performers in the league.
Toronto PP goal scorers, 1996-97 to 2001-02:
| Rank | Player | GP | PPG |
| 1 | Mats Sundin | 483 | 49 |
| 2 | Sergei Berezin | 357 | 34 |
| 3 | Steve Thomas | 216 | 21 |
| 4 | Jonas Hoglund | 246 | 15 |
| 5 | Igor Korolev | 297 | 14 |
| 6 | Gary Roberts | 151 | 14 |
| 7 | Mike Johnson | 226 | 12 |
| 8 | Yanic Perreault | 146 | 12 |
| 9 | Derek King | 161 | 12 |
| 10 | Bryan McCabe | 164 | 11 |
| 11 | Wendel Clark | 132 | 10 |
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Other than Sundin, I think that's a very weak group of forwards. If you're not convinced, consider what they did on other teams:
- Berezin would go on to score just 14 PPP in 145 games on four other teams before washing out of the NHL
- Thomas scored 7 PPP in 112 games in two years in New Jersey, before going to Toronto and leading the team in PP scoring two years in a row
- Hoglund scored 8 PPP in 152 GP in the two seasons before going to Toronto, then was third on the team in power play scoring in his first year as a Leaf
- Korolev had one decent year in Winnipeg (15 PPP), but other than that never scored more than 5 PPP in a season outside of Toronto (where he scored 10+ PPP for three years straight)
Sundin's scoring finishes on the power play in the 4 seasons prior (15th, 62nd, 25th, 49th) and the 4 seasons after (25th, 17th, 16th, 29th) average out to about 30th. If we replace his scoring from 1997 to 2002 with a number equivalent to finishing 30th in the league on the power play, here's the result:
| Year | Total Pts | PP Pts | PP Rank | 30th best PPP | Adj Tot Pts | Adj Rank |
| 1997 | 94 | 20 | 57th | 24 | 98 | 4th |
| 1998 | 74 | 21 | 59th | 26 | 79 | 10th |
| 1999 | 83 | 15 | 117th | 25 | 93 | 9th |
| 2000 | 73 | 19 | 68th | 24 | 78 | 13th |
| 2001 | 74 | 22 | 73rd | 30 | 82 | 16th |
| 2002 | 80 | 24 | 37th | 25 | 81 | 4th |
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No idea how the VsX shakes out in this scenario, but that would have given Sundin two extra top-10 finishes, as well as putting him just one point away from tying for 10th in 1999-00. Sundin's ES vs PP numbers during that period are hugely anomalous in a historical context (as well as the context of his own career), so I think it's very likely that in another team scenario he would have had results like those above (or better).
I think both Sundin and Recchi performed better alongside other good players on the power play, and at least on the power play there is little question that Recchi had way better linemates during his career (especially during their peak seasons). I still think the main difference between the two players overall is that at even strength Sundin drove his own offence to a much greater degree while also being clearly better at outscoring the other team while he was on the ice.
