Top-200 Hockey Players of All-Time - Round 2, Vote 15

[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

• Babe Dye
• Billy Smith
• Brendan Shanahan
• Carey Price
• Denis Savard
• Grant Fuhr
• Jacques Lemaire
• J.C. Tremblay
• Jean Ratelle
• Lionel Conacher
• Luc Robitaille
• Mark Recchi
• Michel Goulet
• Rob Blake

Click to read more...

 

[seventieslord]

not a huge fan of the four new candidates. The ten players remaining from last round look really good here.

 

[Professor What]

not a huge fan of the four new candidates. The ten players remaining from last round look really good here.

I tend to agree. I could probably be convinced on a couple of them, but it would probably be hard, if I'm being honest. And the others would probably be all but impossible. I try to be open-minded, and I've been swayed plenty of times by good arguments as we've gone, but there seems to be a fall off here.

 

[Hockey Outsider]

VsX summary (1927-2020)

Player	1st	2nd	3rd	4th	5th	6th	7th	8th	9th	10th	7 YEAR	10 YEAR
Jean Ratelle	100.0	92.9	90.4	89.5	88.2	86.0	80.0	77.1	75.2	73.6	89.6	85.3
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
Denis Savard	100.0	96.8	83.3	82.3	81.0	77.8	77.7	62.0	60.3	59.0	85.5	78.0
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
Michel Goulet	100.0	88.9	84.7	80.9	73.0	70.4	57.1	56.5	54.3	52.6	79.3	71.8
Brendan Shanahan	85.0	83.3	83.0	80.7	79.2	76.4	65.4	65.0	63.5	62.6	79.0	74.4
Jacques Lemaire	91.3	89.0	76.0	74.3	73.6	71.4	69.8	62.2	58.9	50.0	77.9	71.7
Rob Blake	62.2	61.5	60.6	56.7	54.9	52.9	48.1	43.3	40.9	40.0	56.7	52.1
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 excluded Babe Dye. He played eleven years in the NHL, but seven of them were pre-consolidation (and my numbers only go back to the 1926-27 season). He had one big year post-consolidation (5th in scoring) and then his scoring touch vanished overnight (one goal in 59 games spread over three more years). Dye's claim rests almost entirely on regular season offense, but it's worth noting that during his seven-year peak, he virtually matched Cy Denneny's regular season statistics and the two of them were far ahead of anyone else offensively in the (mostly) pre-consolidation NHL.
• Tremblay's results above exclude his time in the WHA.

 

[Hockey Outsider]

Hart trophy results - 5% threshold

Player	1st	2nd	3rd	4th	5th	6th	7th+	Total
Lionel Conacher		2					1	3
Carey Price	1						1	2
Grant Fuhr		1				1		2
Denis Savard			1		1			2
Jean Ratelle				1			1	2
Babe Dye				1				1
Mark Recchi						1		1

[TBODY] [/TBODY]

A few notes:

• 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. His 9th place finish was pre-consolidation.
• Dye's 4th place finish was pre-consolidation. He placed 10th in another season (also pre-consolidation), but not sure if he met the 5% threshold I've been using.
• Players who were eligible for the Hart, but never got a non-trivial number of votes - Blake, Goulet, Lemaire, Robitaille, Shanahan, Smith, Tremblay (half the players up this round - ouch)

Norris trophy - 5% threshold

Three defensemen are up. As I posted last round - 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.

Rob Blake has finished 1st, 3rd, 3rd, 4th, 5th and 8th in Norris voting.

Lionel Conacher spent his whole career before the Norris was awarded.

 

[BenchBrawl]

No Cournoyer? Lame.

Didn't expect Price to show up, but he deserves some love. His reputation is much bigger than his resume. Played his entire career in the toughest job in hockey: goalie in Montreal. He played behind a pretty bad supporting cast on average, and never a strong one. Great leader and foundation type goalie. Excellent puck handler too.

 

[Hockey Outsider]

For the record (and not that anybody has called me out on this) - but I typically post my tables right after seventies posts the new thread simply because I don't have much (if any) time to post during the week. I'm not posting things ASAP because I think it's so important that everyone would be lost without seeing it right away. It's just a matter of me having free time on Sunday nights and very little during the week (at least this time of year).

 

[BenchBrawl]

I trust JC Tremblay will make it this time, so won't comment on him.

Lionel Conacher has to go now. He got kind of stuck in limbo in the last few rounds, but in the grand scheme of things he's just as good as many defensemen already ranked.

This may be true of several ineligible defensemen though. We're stuck in some sort of defensemen plateau, leading to unavoidable injustices.

 

[TheDevilMadeMe]

JC Tremblay and Jean Ratelle should really go this round.

I like seeing Savard and Shanahan appear. Not sure I'll vote for them yet, but I really think they shouldn't fall far behind Hawerchuk and Bucyk, respectively.

Carey Price is a wild card this round... I feel he has some of that "best goalie in the world for a bit" vibe that Fuhr also has. Glad to see we get to discuss him before Smith and Fuhr go off the board. Not sure what I'll do with him at the moment.

 

[plusandminus]

No Europeans at all this time. (Edit: not meant as criticism.)

I can say about Blake that the Swedish expert commentator (Anders "Ankan" Parmström) used to speak about Blake as an overrated player with bad defensive positioning. Blake didn't look good Internationally, on large ice. I think he ended up on a tournament all-star-team, but comments here in Sweden was that he got it due to his name rather than his play. He probably was more suited for NHL play, where the ice surface is smaller and he could use his size.

 

[Yozhik v tumane]

No Europeans at all this time.

Well, “we” got three of “our” boys voted in last round and they only added four new players, so I think it’s alright. Who are you waiting for?

Look on the bright side, there’s a lot of French Canadians up on the board: the Europeans of North America.

Rob Blake was a surprising addition I’ll admit, but I’m interested in hearing the arguments.

 

[MXD]

That's... errhhmmm... early for Carey Price. Probably a candidate for the tail end of the list.
I'm not comfortable with the gap between the already voted in Jack Stewart and the not yet available for voting Émile Bouchard. If we're to have a Hab, can we swap Price for Bouchard?

 

[Dennis Bonvie]

That's... errhhmmm... early for Carey Price. Probably a candidate for the tail end of the list.
I'm not comfortable with the gap between the already voted in Jack Stewart and the not yet available for voting Émile Bouchard. If we're to have a Hab, can we swap Price for Bouchard?

Well said.

 

[The Macho King]

Price has one Vezina and one other top 3 finish, no signature playoff runs. His peak season was absolutely *insane*, but it was one season (plus the first 10 games of the following season).

International - is there an easier job than goalie for Team Canada this decade? He did the job - fine - but a) international QoC was at a lull during that period with every other team being far below Canada at multiple positions, and b) that defense suffocated every team it was up against.

For instance - can we really say that Price's career is better than say - Tim Thomas? As far as the people on this list, he certainly has the highest peak with a Hart + Vezina, but especially with Smith and Fuhr on the table, I don't see how that creates any separation there.

 

[Dennis Bonvie]

Price has one Vezina and one other top 3 finish, no signature playoff runs. His peak season was absolutely *insane*, but it was one season (plus the first 10 games of the following season).

International - is there an easier job than goalie for Team Canada this decade? He did the job - fine - but a) international QoC was at a lull during that period with every other team being far below Canada at multiple positions, and b) that defense suffocated every team it was up against.

For instance - can we really say that Price's career is better than say - Tim Thomas? As far as the people on this list, he certainly has the highest peak with a Hart + Vezina, but especially with Smith and Fuhr on the table, I don't see how that creates any separation there.

One huge season, 3 year peak, lots of ups and downs. Isn't that every starting goalie of the last 15 years?

 

[MXD]

Price has one Vezina and one other top 3 finish, no signature playoff runs. His peak season was absolutely *insane*, but it was one season (plus the first 10 games of the following season).

International - is there an easier job than goalie for Team Canada this decade? He did the job - fine - but a) international QoC was at a lull during that period with every other team being far below Canada at multiple positions, and b) that defense suffocated every team it was up against.

For instance - can we really say that Price's career is better than say - Tim Thomas? As far as the people on this list, he certainly has the highest peak with a Hart + Vezina, but especially with Smith and Fuhr on the table, I don't see how that creates any separation there.

Well, there's a 300 games gap between Carey Price and Tim Thomas...

Also, the previous round has established that the lack of playoff success isn't an impediment for a player to get on the list.

As for Price's signature run, he was on a pretty good one before Kreider happened. Also played really well a few years and made close series that should'nt have been close.

I mean, you can't seriously argue the issue of QoC and Team Canada being dominant, while disregarding that he didn't exactly play for a powerhouse in the NHL (all the while comparing him to Tim Thomas).

(The above doesn't change anything to the fact that it's a bit early for Price)

 

[The Macho King]

One huge season, 3 year peak, lots of ups and downs. Isn't that every starting goalie of the last 15 years?

Not the Big Cat Andre Vasilevskiy baybee.

 

[The Macho King]

Well, there's a 300 games gap between Carey Price and Tim Thomas...

Also, the previous round has established that the lack of playoff success isn't an impediment for a player to get on the list.

As for Price's signature run, he was on a pretty good one before Kreider happened. Also played really well a few years and made close series that should'nt have been close.

I mean, you can't seriously argue the issue of QoC and Team Canada being dominant, while disregarding that he didn't exactly play for a powerhouse in the NHL (all the while comparing him to Tim Thomas).

(The above doesn't change anything to the fact that it's a bit early for Price)

Carey Price being shitty for four seasons and racking up games played while doing so shouldn't be a mark in his favor. Tim Thomas' case doesn't rest on his games played, it's a trophy case with Two Vezinas and a Conn Smythe while tying the single-season save percentage record.

And a CF run is not a "signature run".

On the Team Canada issue - that was just getting ahead of the eventual attempt to beef up his resume by pointing to that and ignoring everything else. His NHL team wasn't great - sure - but they always played defensive systems which tend to benefit goalies. The lack of team success I don't blame him for, but it still isn't there. And the fact is, Montreal's most iconic run during his career took place with him on the bench.

 

[MXD]

But we can consider goals scored for Stamkos and disregard everything else?

And when were these four "shitty" seasons, exactly? 17-18 is one. 12-13 is mostly due to playing visibly hampered at the end of the season. 08-09, if you stretch the meaning of "shitty" to include "mediocre" (when he was also very young, not many 21 years old regular). In other words, one has to be of really bad faith to see three shitty seasons. You're seeing four, which is par for the course.

Besides, why you feel the need to preempt anything here?

 

[Dennis Bonvie]

Not the Big Cat Andre Vasilevskiy baybee.

Next season he'll have .902 SP and 2.94 GA.

Three years from now he'll be playing goal in Kickasistan.

 

[Dennis Bonvie]

Carey Price being shitty for four seasons and racking up games played while doing so shouldn't be a mark in his favor. Tim Thomas' case doesn't rest on his games played, it's a trophy case with Two Vezinas and a Conn Smythe while tying the single-season save percentage record.

And a CF run is not a "signature run".

On the Team Canada issue - that was just getting ahead of the eventual attempt to beef up his resume by pointing to that and ignoring everything else. His NHL team wasn't great - sure - but they always played defensive systems which tend to benefit goalies. The lack of team success I don't blame him for, but it still isn't there. And the fact is, Montreal's most iconic run during his career took place with him on the bench.

The eye test leads one to believe that Price is an all-time great and Thomas should have never played in the NHL.

But then there are the results, which leads to a different conclusion.

 

[The Macho King]

But we can considering goals scored for Stamkos and disregard everything else?

And when were these four "shitty" seasons, exactly? 17-18 is one. 12-13 is mostly due to playing visibly hampered at the end of the season.

Besides, why you feel the need to preempt anything here?

I totally remember making that point last discussion. Don't be salty a player you don't like made it - I'm not even a voter.

And if you really want to stake Price's position on his performances being "non-shitty" for the past three or four seasons, I'm here for that argument.

On preempting - I'm discussing a player up for consideration, and one that was actively being discussed on this page. I'm sorry if you don't like that.

Price stands out to me because he's at least a bit in that Luongo/Lundqvist generation, and clearly behind there, but he's also kind of in the modern goalie generation (where I don't think anyone would take him before Vasi or Helleybuck for instance). So finding where he fits in that discussion is an interesting exercise. A lot of the guys who started around the same time as him - Ryan Miller for instance - lack consistency to be worthy of the top 200. So is his "best in the world" argument for a period of three seasons because of merit, or because of odd generational construction (not dissimilar from say Niedermayer's peak as a defenseman coinciding with a changing of the guard)?

 

[MXD]

Not the Big Cat Andre Vasilevskiy baybee.

Okay. Habs bad. Bolts good. We got your drift the first time around.

 

[The Macho King]

Next season he'll have .902 SP and 2.94 GA.

Three years from now he'll be playing goal in Kickasistan.

Don't put that evil on me.

 

[The Macho King]

Okay. Habs bad. Bolts good. We got your drift the first time around.

Yeah I'm sorry Habs players are getting really underrated on this list.