Top-200 Hockey Players of All-Time - Round 2, Vote 16

[blogofmike]

I think this is a pretty persuasive line of logic, similar to why I was pretty high on getting guys like Stamkos and Sundin inducted sooner rather than later.

That said, I think it's important to point out that "1953-now" includes multiple eras, and our list doesn't represent those eras equally:

1953-1962: nobody +1

1962-1971: Belfour, Hasek, Roy +4

1972-1981: Brodeur, Luongo +3

1982-present: Lundqvist +5

The "+X" represent players that haven't been inducted yet, but received votes on the master list that @quoipourquoi posted at the beginning of the project. Price and Fuhr are included here as "+".

I think what this shows is that goalies born in that first decade arrived in the NHL at a really bad time to be a pro goalie (late 70s - late 80s), at least from a legacy standpoint. First they would get lit up in the most offensively-potent environment in history, then they would be sent off to early retirement by a fundamental change in the position. I'm not sure we really have the choice to rank that cohort in equal numbers with goalies who played during more stable, long-career eras.

Then there's the most recent cohort, who simply haven't completed their careers yet. Based on the master list, we actually have a really large number of nominees among active goalies... it's just that we don't agree on which ones belong. That makes sense, when talking about active players. Right?

I think you have a valid point that it's a bit weird to have more goalies born 1885-93 than 1972-81. If all of the candidates come forward (I don't know if they will, or if we would induct that many goalies so quickly) it would even out a bit, but it does make the list look a bit odd. Still... from the standpoint of full-career greatness and legacy, it's not too hard to see why the top tier of 1910s-20s goalies would be ranked over the top tier of 1980s goalies.

True, but Fuhr stuck around into his mid-late thirties. He replicated Curtis Joseph's save percentage for the same team from the previous season (.902 for 95 CuJo, .900 for 96 Fuhr) while logging 79 games played. The following year he logged 73 games before he put up a .929 save percentage in the playoffs against the 97 Red Wings while facing 7.0 Powerplay opportunities against per game.

 

[tarheelhockey]

True, but Fuhr stuck around into his mid-late thirties. He replicated Curtis Joseph's save percentage for the same team from the previous season (.902 for 95 CuJo, .900 for 96 Fuhr) while logging 79 games played. The following year he logged 73 games before he put up a .929 save percentage in the playoffs against the 97 Red Wings while facing 7.0 Powerplay opportunities against per game.

Yep, and I would say that his late-career workhorse performances are a big reason why he's the one goalie born between 1953 and 1964 that we're likely to induct in this project. I think he'd still be up for consideration if he had stopped in 1991, because of the dynasty and his AS seasons. But with a shorter and more 80s-heavy career, he'd come up for consideration just a little later. With only 25 spots left to fill, that would have put him in danger of missing the list altogether. The seasons in St. Louis give him a little nudge to come up earlier, where he's going to safely make it even if it's in the 180-190 range.

Even if we induct Fuhr, we're still looking at a yawning gap of 10 years where not a single top-200 goalie was born. And I don't think that's wrong. It's just an oddity of how things played out at that position during a specific period, with Fuhr being the one guy who was able to break through that trend with a perfect storm of peak/longevity/team situation/timing.

 

[ResilientBeast]

People actually think Hap Holmes is a candidate here? I don't really see how that is justifiable. Holmes would be the 5th goalie on this list born before 1900 (in fact, the 5th born just between 1885 and 1893). In contrast, there are only 6 goalies already voted in who were born after 1952.

If you think Holmes should go in soon ahead of Fuhr and Price, then I'd love to hear an explanation of why you think there were almost as many Top 180 goalies born during a 9 year stretch in the 19th century as there were over roughly four decades of hockey history, a period that includes more than half of the Baby Boom generation as well as the vast majority of non-Canadian NHLers.

Look at the implied talent pool increase from the skaters in the current Top 175 (I just grabbed the first position given on the master list to keep things simple):

Centers:
Pre-1900: 6
1953-now: 25

Defencemen:
Pre-1900: 6
1953-now: 19

Wingers:
Pre-1900: 4
1953-now: 18

Goalies:
Pre-1900: 4
1953-now: 6

That's a total of 16 early era skaters, compared to 62 in the latter group. So if the representation of all-time great skaters born since 1953 is 3.9 times higher than in the pre-1900 talent pool, then why should we think that a split of close to 1-to-1 when it comes to goalies is in any way reasonable and not obvious evidence of a systematic underrating of modern netminders?

I agree this logic is quite persuasive looking at it from a quota perspective and I'm not sure where I rank Price/Fuhr against Holmes but Holmes' case rests upon his incredible playoff resume. As noted above by @TheDevilMadeMe Vezina/Lehman/Benedict were much highly regarded and Holmes was always the 4th wheel of this train his playoff resume considering the context might be the most impressive of the 4 of them.

Holmes bounced back and forth between the PCHA and NHA/NHL

1913-14, first year the NHA/PCHA played for the Cup Holmes and the Toronto Blueshirts win over Victoria

1916-17, Seattle has ascended to the top of the PCHA with Walker/Morris/Foyston Holmes takes down Lalonde/Pitre/Vezina

1917-18, Holmes is back in the NHL now with the Toronto Arenas and manages to win the Stanley Cup playing excellently against the Vancouver Millionaires. Talent wise Toronto was overmatched but they pulled it off.

1918-19, Back to Seattle still a dominating force in the PCHA, Holmes and Mets play in the Influenza Stanley Cup series against the Canadiens with Lalonde/Malone/Vezina and stood a good chance of winning. With mostly the same roster the Mets GAA dropped a full goal this season from the last without Holmes.

Seattle trails off during the next few years as Morris/Walker/Foyston age and Vancouver reemerged as the dominant team behind the core of MacKay/Duncan/Boucher/Cook/Lehman

1924-25, Now with Victoria after the merger they make the finals again and win against Montreal with Howie Morenz. Holmes plays excellently as Patrick's coaching helps neutralize Morenz

1925-26, Victoria runs it back only to fall to the Maroons.

In the split league cup era he played in 6 cup finals going 3-2-1*
*cancelled series was tied

That is an excellent record (considering the era) he managed to win in both (technically 3) leagues at ages 25, 28 & 36 in three different phases of his career.

 

[ResilientBeast]

Similar analysis when I compared Dye/Fredrickson a few rounds ago using point allocation. But only showing the team's balance that Holmes played on. Offence% is a rough measure for how much of a teams success (points) can be assumed to have been driven by the offence. The difference between the 1916-17 Mets and the 1917-18 Arena is stark.

League	Season	Team	GP	W	L	T	GF	GA	Points	% Offence
NHA	1912-1913	Toronto Blueshirts	20	9	11	0	86	95	18	54.94%
NHA	1913-1914	Toronto Blueshirts	20	13	7	0	93	65	26	43.72%
PCHA	1915-1916	Seattle Metropolitans	18	9	9	0	68	67	18	43.84%
PCHA	1916-1917	Seattle Metropolitans	24	16	8	0	125	80	32	42.33%
NHL	1917-1918	Toronto Arenas	22	13	9	0	108	109	26	77.22%
PCHA	1918-1919	Seattle Metropolitans	20	11	9	0	66	46	22	44.21%
PCHA	1919-1920	Seattle Metropolitans	22	12	10	0	59	55	24	40.15%
PCHA	1920-1921	Seattle Metropolitans	24	12	11	1	77	68	25	43.32%
PCHA	1921-1922	Seattle Metropolitans	24	12	11	1	65	64	25	45.39%
PCHA	1922-1923	Seattle Metropolitans	30	15	15	0	100	106	30	49.66%
PCHA	1923-1924	Seattle Metropolitans	30	14	16	0	84	99	28	62.50%
WCHL	1924-1925	Victoria Cougars	28	16	12	0	84	63	32	33.63%
WHL	1925-1926	Victoria Cougars	30	15	11	4	68	53	34	30.46%

[TBODY] [/TBODY]

The offensive support on the Mets 1916-1917

Name	Position	GP	G	A	P	PIM	OC %	Vs1
Bernie Morris	Center	24	37	17	54	17	27.1%	100.0%
Frank Foyston	Center	24	36	12	48	51	24.1%	88.9%
Jack Walker	Forward	24	11	15	26	3	13.1%	48.1%
Bobby Rowe	Right Wing	23	9	12	21	45	10.6%	38.9%
Jim Riley	Left Wing	21	11	5	16	34	8.0%	29.6%
Eddie Carpenter	Defense	24	5	3	8	19	4.0%	14.8%
Roy Rickey	Defense	22	3	3	6	19	3.0%	11.1%

[TBODY] [/TBODY]

The offensive support on the Arenas 1917-1918

Name	Position	GP	G	A	P	PIM	OC %	Vs1
Reg Noble	Center	20	30	10	40	35	25.3%	83.3%
Corb Denneny	Center	21	20	9	29	14	18.4%	60.4%
Harry Cameron	Defense	21	17	10	27	28	17.1%	56.3%
Harry Meeking	Right Wing	21	10	9	19	28	12.0%	39.6%
Alf Skinner	Right Wing	20	13	5	18	34	11.4%	37.5%
Ken Randall	Right Wing	19	12	2	14	96	8.9%	29.2%
Harry Mummery	Defense	18	3	3	6	41	3.8%	12.5%

[TBODY] [/TBODY]

So despite stronger offensive seasons from the Mets' players they also performed far stronger defensively, now lets look at the Mets in that one season with Holmes. AvgGF is the league average GF and is used in Marginal Goals calculations, shown to help demonstrate the defensive ability of the team.

Bolded are seasons with Holmes

League	Season	Team	GP	W	L	T	GF	GA	Points	AvgGF	% Offence
PCHA	1915-1916	Seattle Metropolitans	18	9.00	9	0	68	67	18	72	0.438356
PCHA	1916-1917	Seattle Metropolitans	24	16.00	8	0	125	80	32	114.75	0.423318
PCHA	1917-1918	Seattle Metropolitans	18	11.00	7	0	67	65	22	66.66667	0.490291
PCHA	1918-1919	Seattle Metropolitans	20	11.00	9	0	66	46	22	60.66667	0.442149
PCHA	1919-1920	Seattle Metropolitans	22	12.00	10	0	59	55	24	63.66667	0.401478
PCHA	1920-1921	Seattle Metropolitans	24	12.00	11	1	77	68	25	78.33333	0.433206
PCHA	1921-1922	Seattle Metropolitans	24	12.00	11	1	65	64	25	67.66667	0.453883
PCHA	1922-1923	Seattle Metropolitans	30	15.00	15	0	100	106	30	103.3333	0.496575
PCHA	1923-1924	Seattle Metropolitans	30	14.00	16	0	84	99	28	83	0.625

[TBODY] [/TBODY]

The Mets were average without Holmes in 1917-18 but super stingy with him, in other years

League	Season	Team	GP	W	L	T	GF	GA	Points	AvgGF	% Offence
NHL	1917-1918	Toronto Arenas	22	13.00	9	0	108	109	26	85.5	0.772189
NHL	1918-1919	Toronto Arenas	18	5.00	13	0	64	92	10	74.33333	0.579137
NHL	1919-1920	Toronto St. Pats	24	12.00	12	0	119	106	24	115	0.480469
NHL	1920-1921	Toronto St. Pats	24	15.00	9	0	105	100	30	101.5	0.50939
NHL	1921-1922	Toronto St. Pats	24	13.00	10	1	98	97	27	95	0.526042
NHL	1922-1923	Toronto St. Pats	24	13.00	10	1	82	88	27	78.25	0.593426
NHL	1923-1924	Toronto St. Pats	24	10.00	14	0	59	85	20	63.75	0.718543
NHL	1924-1925	Toronto St. Pats	30	19.00	11	0	90	84	38	75	0.648148
NHL	1925-1926	Toronto St. Pats	36	12.00	21	3	92	114	27	83	0.827869

[TBODY] [/TBODY]

The Arenas had a terrible season by most standards after Holmes left, going from Cup winner to bottom feeder. Then John Ross Roach emerges as a good goalie and the team rebounds.

Now finally the last team that Holmes played for during this era the Victoria Cougars, I'm going to truncate the team from the name change in 1922-23 forward. The team in the first two years had Hec Fowler in net who was a decent goalie, but the team really took off in 1924-25 when the Mets dissolved and all the noteworthy (old) players joined Fredrickson.

League	Season	Team	GP	W	L	T	GF	GA	Points	AvgGF	% Offence
PCHA	1922-1923	Victoria Cougars	30	16	14	0	94	85	32	103.3333	0.376855
PCHA	1923-1924	Victoria Cougars	30	11	18	1	78	103	23	83	0.62931
WCHL	1924-1925	Victoria Cougars	28	16	12	0	84	63	32	92	0.336283
WHL	1925-1926	Victoria Cougars	30	15	11	4	68	53	34	78.83333	0.304618

[TBODY] [/TBODY]

Before the league merger in 1924 the Cougars were kind of caught in no mans land, the PCHA was weaker than the WCHL and the Cougars had Fredrickson and that was kind of it offensively. The best scoring Met they added posted merger for the team was Jack Walker of all people. The team won by playing smart extremely stringent defensive hockey and allowing Frederickson to drive the offense largely alone.

1917-18 provides a good comparison point for both Toronto and Seattle
Toronto was run and gun with Holmes (statistically) and couldn't maintain that without him allowing relatively more goals (considering the GP and the avg)
Seattle was a strong two-way squad with Walker/Foyston defensively and Morris/Foyston offensively that regressed defensively without Holmes

Then the Cougars are a one man band before the merger, then with the addition of savvy veterans who aren't offensive threats anymore they become champions.

The one common denominator in all of this success is Holmes.

This was a roundabout way of talking about Holmes's impact on his teams defensive performance. Do I think he makes this vote? No. do I think he should sneak into the 200? Yes, or at the least be on the very fringes.

Edit: Lehman and Vezina get the contemporary praise, Holmes and Benedict have the excellent statistical results.

 

[Professor What]

Yep, and I would say that his late-career workhorse performances are a big reason why he's the one goalie born between 1953 and 1964 that we're likely to induct in this project. I think he'd still be up for consideration if he had stopped in 1991, because of the dynasty and his AS seasons. But with a shorter and more 80s-heavy career, he'd come up for consideration just a little later. With only 25 spots left to fill, that would have put him in danger of missing the list altogether. The seasons in St. Louis give him a little nudge to come up earlier, where he's going to safely make it even if it's in the 180-190 range.

Even if we induct Fuhr, we're still looking at a yawning gap of 10 years where not a single top-200 goalie was born. And I don't think that's wrong. It's just an oddity of how things played out at that position during a specific period, with Fuhr being the one guy who was able to break through that trend with a perfect storm of peak/longevity/team situation/timing.

It's odd, but it seems that goalies tend to cluster up. We had Hasek, Roy, and Brodeur all at the same time. We had Plante, Sawchuk, and Hall all at the same time. It's not as extreme, perhaps, but we also had Dryden and Tretiak at the same time. (Not including Parent in there, just because his peak was so short.) I'd argue those are clear cut eight out of the top ten goalies of all time, and there's so much overlap that they cover a pretty small piece of the sport's history compared to what you'd expect from so many top ten players at a position. Far more than any other position, it seems to go on a roller coaster. The 80s seem quite weak, and at least as far as the top of the stack is concerned, the modern era does as well. (That could well change when some time has passed and we have some additional perspective, but it feels that way for now.) Now, whether that's a matter of adjusting to changes in the game or a perception issue, I don't know, but I tend to agree with your assessment that it's not really an issue. Personally, I don't want to see the concept of a quota of some sort or another push anyone into or out of the list. If we decide we have to have a player at a certain position born in a certain time, that's what we're doing in effect.

 

[tarheelhockey]

It's odd, but it seems that goalies tend to cluster up. We had Hasek, Roy, and Brodeur all at the same time. We had Plante, Sawchuk, and Hall all at the same time. It's not as extreme, perhaps, but we also had Dryden and Tretiak at the same time. (Not including Parent in there, just because his peak was so short.) I'd argue those are clear cut eight out of the top ten goalies of all time, and there's so much overlap that they cover a pretty small piece of the sport's history compared to what you'd expect from so many top ten players at a position. Far more than any other position, it seems to go on a roller coaster. The 80s seem quite weak, and at least as far as the top of the stack is concerned, the modern era does as well. (That could well change when some time has passed and we have some additional perspective, but it feels that way for now.) Now, whether that's a matter of adjusting to changes in the game or a perception issue, I don't know, but I tend to agree with your assessment that it's not really an issue. Personally, I don't want to see the concept of a quota of some sort or another push anyone into or out of the list. If we decide we have to have a player at a certain position born in a certain time, that's what we're doing in effect.

I agree with all that, and would add that the sausage-making of rankings makes it hard to integrate goalies in a satisfying evenly-placed pattern. They’re just very difficult to compare to skaters, so they cluster together when we compare them primarily to one another. That’s more of a commentary on the exercise of ranking them, than on their value compared to skaters.

 

[ContrarianGoaltender]

You're not wrong, but I'd really like to hear from you about these modern goaltenders. How would you vote? Who's missing here?

I had Price, Smith, Worsley and Fuhr all in a row on my THN list from a couple of years back, so I don't know if I really have strong opinions on how they should rank other than I absolutely think all 4 are deserving of discussion here. I have a couple of posts in the works on Fuhr and Price in particular which I'll do my best to get up some time this week to try to reconcile some of the differences between their stats and their reputations within hockey.

For reference, I have all 4 of them plus Joseph and Vanbiesbrouck not just above Holmes, but also ahead of Thompson and Hainsworth, because I think performance relative to era is important to take into account.

I think this is a pretty persuasive line of logic, similar to why I was pretty high on getting guys like Stamkos and Sundin inducted sooner rather than later.

That said, I think it's important to point out that "1953-now" includes multiple eras, and our list doesn't represent those eras equally:

1953-1962: nobody +1

1962-1971: Belfour, Hasek, Roy +4

1972-1981: Brodeur, Luongo +3

1982-present: Lundqvist +5

The "+X" represent players that haven't been inducted yet, but received votes on the master list that @quoipourquoi posted at the beginning of the project. Price and Fuhr are included here as "+".

I think what this shows is that goalies born in that first decade arrived in the NHL at a really bad time to be a pro goalie (late 70s - late 80s), at least from a legacy standpoint. First they would get lit up in the most offensively-potent environment in history, then they would be sent off to early retirement by a fundamental change in the position. I'm not sure we really have the choice to rank that cohort in equal numbers with goalies who played during more stable, long-career eras.

Why not? Aren't we supposed to be comparing everyone against their peers? Don't get me wrong, there are definitely variations in the strength of talent pools by position which should be considered, but I'm quite comfortable giving someone like Mike Liut more credit for longevity than someone from another era who might have played a bit longer, because Liut retired at 36 after a season where there were a grand total of 18 GP by other goalies older than 33.

The other thing that is interesting is that the 1953-62 gap hits both North American and European goalies. You can actually make a pretty strong argument that high-end European goaltending matched or surpassed North American goaltending among goalies born in the 1950s, with guys like Tretiak, Lindbergh, Kralik, Lindmark, Myshkin, how European goalies won pretty much all the awards at world championships and were very competitive in best-on-bests, etc. We have a bunch of 1970s-era non-NHLers on the list already, are we sure we aren't missing a couple of goalies as well? Or was it just bad luck that Lindbergh died young? Are we properly giving credit for WHA performance/talent drain, given that it was a relevant factor in this period? Are we sure we're properly accounting for team effects in an era with very low parity?

I find it interesting that on this forum people will defend against almost every claim of a weak talent pool. In this project we've seen people defend Jacques Laperriere's competition at defence in the 1960, for example. People will defend Gordie Howe's competition at forward in the early 1950s. On the other hand, it seems to be much more widely accepted that 1980s goalies were terrible, full stop. Are we sure that the biggest elite talent gap at any position in all of hockey history happened to both North America and European goalies at exactly the same time? And even if it did, if it happened for structural reasons (i.e. technical revolution in goalie equipment and technique), is it still really fair to blame that generation of goalies just for having the wrong birthday?

Then there's the most recent cohort, who simply haven't completed their careers yet. Based on the master list, we actually have a really large number of nominees among active goalies... it's just that we don't agree on which ones belong. That makes sense, when talking about active players. Right?

Well, we don't exactly know whether someone like Tuukka Rask got significant support or if he was ranked 219th on one list. Are the active guys finishing ahead of Percy LeSueur or Paddy Moran? If not, then my point gets even stronger.

I do agree that people valuing different things is a big part of the problem with rating modern goalies. It is much, much harder to "check all the boxes" on your goaltending resume in a 30-team league against a much deeper talent pool than it was in a prior era, and so you'll have very divergent opinions depending on what boxes aren't checked. I don't know how to resolve this issue, other than continuing to point out the relative value of accomplishments across history.

It's odd, but it seems that goalies tend to cluster up. We had Hasek, Roy, and Brodeur all at the same time. We had Plante, Sawchuk, and Hall all at the same time. It's not as extreme, perhaps, but we also had Dryden and Tretiak at the same time. (Not including Parent in there, just because his peak was so short.) I'd argue those are clear cut eight out of the top ten goalies of all time, and there's so much overlap that they cover a pretty small piece of the sport's history compared to what you'd expect from so many top ten players at a position. Far more than any other position, it seems to go on a roller coaster. The 80s seem quite weak, and at least as far as the top of the stack is concerned, the modern era does as well. (That could well change when some time has passed and we have some additional perspective, but it feels that way for now.) Now, whether that's a matter of adjusting to changes in the game or a perception issue, I don't know, but I tend to agree with your assessment that it's not really an issue. Personally, I don't want to see the concept of a quota of some sort or another push anyone into or out of the list. If we decide we have to have a player at a certain position born in a certain time, that's what we're doing in effect.

Elite goalies do often show up together (and I agree that is in part because it is easier to compare them to each other rather than against other positions), but that's generally when we're looking at the top 2 or 3 of an era, not the 5th ranked guy in his decade of birth like Holmes. And again, we're talking about an implied talent pool increase of 4-to-1 when it comes to skaters, and 1-to-1 when it comes to goalies. You can't handwave that away by gesturing to elite goalie clustering.

If it was only 2-to-1 or something, then I probably wouldn't even bring it up. To be clear, I'm not advocating a strict quota, by any means. All I'm saying is that the difficulty of various goalie accomplishments has changed massively over the last 120 years, because of changing league parity, talent pool size, and perhaps above all, the extra performance variability at the goaltending position relative to skaters which makes goalie accomplishments so strongly affected by the size of the league. This is both theoretically true and objectively true by observation since expansion. And with all due respect, I don't think that you can adequately weight those changes based on feelings alone.

I've looked at all positions across all eras as viewed by HOH, and there is nothing even remotely close to the underrepresentation of goalies born after 1950. They are underrepresented by at least a factor of 2 in pretty much any accounting, both relative to the other positions and relative to goalies from other eras, and it is even more notable because pretty much everything else is quite consistent in terms of representation. What the numbers are unmistakably telling us is that pretty much as soon as the Original Six stranglehold on the NHL started fading in the mid-'70s, goalies stopped getting the same historical credit they were getting previously relative to everyone else. If you're aware of all these factors and you think there is a good reason for the 1920s goalies to be so highly represented, then that's fine, I just think it's relevant to ask people to consider the fairness of their goalie evaluation process, particularly in this round where we're looking at two goalies born 99 years apart.

 

[ted2019]

Similar analysis when I compared Dye/Fredrickson a few rounds ago using point allocation. But only showing the team's balance that Holmes played on. Offence% is a rough measure for how much of a teams success (points) can be assumed to have been driven by the offence. The difference between the 1916-17 Mets and the 1917-18 Arena is stark.

League	Season	Team	GP	W	L	T	GF	GA	Points	% Offence
NHA	1912-1913	Toronto Blueshirts	20	9	11	0	86	95	18	54.94%
NHA	1913-1914	Toronto Blueshirts	20	13	7	0	93	65	26	43.72%
PCHA	1915-1916	Seattle Metropolitans	18	9	9	0	68	67	18	43.84%
PCHA	1916-1917	Seattle Metropolitans	24	16	8	0	125	80	32	42.33%
NHL	1917-1918	Toronto Arenas	22	13	9	0	108	109	26	77.22%
PCHA	1918-1919	Seattle Metropolitans	20	11	9	0	66	46	22	44.21%
PCHA	1919-1920	Seattle Metropolitans	22	12	10	0	59	55	24	40.15%
PCHA	1920-1921	Seattle Metropolitans	24	12	11	1	77	68	25	43.32%
PCHA	1921-1922	Seattle Metropolitans	24	12	11	1	65	64	25	45.39%
PCHA	1922-1923	Seattle Metropolitans	30	15	15	0	100	106	30	49.66%
PCHA	1923-1924	Seattle Metropolitans	30	14	16	0	84	99	28	62.50%
WCHL	1924-1925	Victoria Cougars	28	16	12	0	84	63	32	33.63%
WHL	1925-1926	Victoria Cougars	30	15	11	4	68	53	34	30.46%

[TBODY] [/TBODY]

The offensive support on the Mets 1916-1917

Name	Position	GP	G	A	P	PIM	OC %	Vs1
Bernie Morris	Center	24	37	17	54	17	27.1%	100.0%
Frank Foyston	Center	24	36	12	48	51	24.1%	88.9%
Jack Walker	Forward	24	11	15	26	3	13.1%	48.1%
Bobby Rowe	Right Wing	23	9	12	21	45	10.6%	38.9%
Jim Riley	Left Wing	21	11	5	16	34	8.0%	29.6%
Eddie Carpenter	Defense	24	5	3	8	19	4.0%	14.8%
Roy Rickey	Defense	22	3	3	6	19	3.0%	11.1%

[TBODY] [/TBODY]

The offensive support on the Arenas 1917-1918

Name	Position	GP	G	A	P	PIM	OC %	Vs1
Reg Noble	Center	20	30	10	40	35	25.3%	83.3%
Corb Denneny	Center	21	20	9	29	14	18.4%	60.4%
Harry Cameron	Defense	21	17	10	27	28	17.1%	56.3%
Harry Meeking	Right Wing	21	10	9	19	28	12.0%	39.6%
Alf Skinner	Right Wing	20	13	5	18	34	11.4%	37.5%
Ken Randall	Right Wing	19	12	2	14	96	8.9%	29.2%
Harry Mummery	Defense	18	3	3	6	41	3.8%	12.5%

[TBODY] [/TBODY]

So despite stronger offensive seasons from the Mets' players they also performed far stronger defensively, now lets look at the Mets in that one season with Holmes. AvgGF is the league average GF and is used in Marginal Goals calculations, shown to help demonstrate the defensive ability of the team.

Bolded are seasons with Holmes

League	Season	Team	GP	W	L	T	GF	GA	Points	AvgGF	% Offence
PCHA	1915-1916	Seattle Metropolitans	18	9.00	9	0	68	67	18	72	0.438356
PCHA	1916-1917	Seattle Metropolitans	24	16.00	8	0	125	80	32	114.75	0.423318
PCHA	1917-1918	Seattle Metropolitans	18	11.00	7	0	67	65	22	66.66667	0.490291
PCHA	1918-1919	Seattle Metropolitans	20	11.00	9	0	66	46	22	60.66667	0.442149
PCHA	1919-1920	Seattle Metropolitans	22	12.00	10	0	59	55	24	63.66667	0.401478
PCHA	1920-1921	Seattle Metropolitans	24	12.00	11	1	77	68	25	78.33333	0.433206
PCHA	1921-1922	Seattle Metropolitans	24	12.00	11	1	65	64	25	67.66667	0.453883
PCHA	1922-1923	Seattle Metropolitans	30	15.00	15	0	100	106	30	103.3333	0.496575
PCHA	1923-1924	Seattle Metropolitans	30	14.00	16	0	84	99	28	83	0.625

[TBODY] [/TBODY]

The Mets were average without Holmes in 1917-18 but super stingy with him, in other years

League	Season	Team	GP	W	L	T	GF	GA	Points	AvgGF	% Offence
NHL	1917-1918	Toronto Arenas	22	13.00	9	0	108	109	26	85.5	0.772189
NHL	1918-1919	Toronto Arenas	18	5.00	13	0	64	92	10	74.33333	0.579137
NHL	1919-1920	Toronto St. Pats	24	12.00	12	0	119	106	24	115	0.480469
NHL	1920-1921	Toronto St. Pats	24	15.00	9	0	105	100	30	101.5	0.50939
NHL	1921-1922	Toronto St. Pats	24	13.00	10	1	98	97	27	95	0.526042
NHL	1922-1923	Toronto St. Pats	24	13.00	10	1	82	88	27	78.25	0.593426
NHL	1923-1924	Toronto St. Pats	24	10.00	14	0	59	85	20	63.75	0.718543
NHL	1924-1925	Toronto St. Pats	30	19.00	11	0	90	84	38	75	0.648148
NHL	1925-1926	Toronto St. Pats	36	12.00	21	3	92	114	27	83	0.827869

[TBODY] [/TBODY]

The Arenas had a terrible season by most standards after Holmes left, going from Cup winner to bottom feeder. Then John Ross Roach emerges as a good goalie and the team rebounds.

Now finally the last team that Holmes played for during this era the Victoria Cougars, I'm going to truncate the team from the name change in 1922-23 forward. The team in the first two years had Hec Fowler in net who was a decent goalie, but the team really took off in 1924-25 when the Mets dissolved and all the noteworthy (old) players joined Fredrickson.

League	Season	Team	GP	W	L	T	GF	GA	Points	AvgGF	% Offence
PCHA	1922-1923	Victoria Cougars	30	16	14	0	94	85	32	103.3333	0.376855
PCHA	1923-1924	Victoria Cougars	30	11	18	1	78	103	23	83	0.62931
WCHL	1924-1925	Victoria Cougars	28	16	12	0	84	63	32	92	0.336283
WHL	1925-1926	Victoria Cougars	30	15	11	4	68	53	34	78.83333	0.304618

[TBODY] [/TBODY]

Before the league merger in 1924 the Cougars were kind of caught in no mans land, the PCHA was weaker than the WCHL and the Cougars had Fredrickson and that was kind of it offensively. The best scoring Met they added posted merger for the team was Jack Walker of all people. The team won by playing smart extremely stringent defensive hockey and allowing Frederickson to drive the offense largely alone.

1917-18 provides a good comparison point for both Toronto and Seattle
Toronto was run and gun with Holmes (statistically) and couldn't maintain that without him allowing relatively more goals (considering the GP and the avg)
Seattle was a strong two-way squad with Walker/Foyston defensively and Morris/Foyston offensively that regressed defensively without Holmes

Then the Cougars are a one man band before the merger, then with the addition of savvy veterans who aren't offensive threats anymore they become champions.

The one common denominator in all of this success is Holmes.

This was a roundabout way of talking about Holmes's impact on his teams defensive performance. Do I think he makes this vote? No. do I think he should sneak into the 200? Yes, or at the least be on the very fringes.

Edit: Lehman and Vezina get the contemporary praise, Holmes and Benedict have the excellent statistical results.

Curious on how you came up with the % offense?

 

[ResilientBeast]

Curious on how you came up with the % offense?

Hockey Historysis: Puckerings archive: Point Allocation (09 Apr 2002)

Essentially

Offence% = Marginal Goals For/Total Marginal Goals

Marginal Goals For = GF - LeagueAvgGF*0.5
Marginal Goals Against = 1.5*LeagueAvgGF - GA

 

[tarheelhockey]

Why not? Aren't we supposed to be comparing everyone against their peers? Don't get me wrong, there are definitely variations in the strength of talent pools by position which should be considered, but I'm quite comfortable giving someone like Mike Liut more credit for longevity than someone from another era who might have played a bit longer, because Liut retired at 36 after a season where there were a grand total of 18 GP by other goalies older than 33.

I think that's a totally valid point. Personally I look at Liut and most of his peers and say "what if?" more than anything else. That's compelling enough to make them interesting to me, but I'm not likely to rank them over someone who had a better run of actual achievements, a career that was actually longer, etc.

I'm inclined to be slightly more forgiving of early-era players, particularly someone like Gardiner who was just an absolute world-beater until he passed away. But even at that, we don't have a lot of early era guys on here who didn't have a career similar to modern length (e.g. Russell Bowie was controversial, but even he had a career spanning 12 years). I think the lack of sympathy we're showing to 80s goalies is consistent with that.

The other thing that is interesting is that the 1953-62 gap hits both North American and European goalies. You can actually make a pretty strong argument that high-end European goaltending matched or surpassed North American goaltending among goalies born in the 1950s, with guys like Tretiak, Lindbergh, Kralik, Lindmark, Myshkin, how European goalies won pretty much all the awards at world championships and were very competitive in best-on-bests, etc. We have a bunch of 1970s-era non-NHLers on the list already, are we sure we aren't missing a couple of goalies as well? Or was it just bad luck that Lindbergh died young? Are we properly giving credit for WHA performance/talent drain, given that it was a relevant factor in this period? Are we sure we're properly accounting for team effects in an era with very low parity?

I think those are all good questions and something we should be asking ourselves regularly. The 70s and 80s are problematic for precisely this reason, and yes I'm inclined to say Canadian players are probably overrepresented because of those effects (mea culpa, having just voted for Ratelle).

FWIW, Tretiak was a 1952 birthday so just misses the cutoff. Lindbergh died young. I'm not seeing any other European goalie from that timeframe who has a serious top-200 argument but I'd certainly be open to hearing about it.

I find it interesting that on this forum people will defend against almost every claim of a weak talent pool. In this project we've seen people defend Jacques Laperriere's competition at defence in the 1960, for example. People will defend Gordie Howe's competition at forward in the early 1950s. On the other hand, it seems to be much more widely accepted that 1980s goalies were terrible, full stop. Are we sure that the biggest elite talent gap at any position in all of hockey history happened to both North America and European goalies at exactly the same time? And even if it did, if it happened for structural reasons (i.e. technical revolution in goalie equipment and technique), is it still really fair to blame that generation of goalies just for having the wrong birthday?

To be fair, we would have rated Gordie Howe rather differently if he had only been relevant for part of one decade. That was... decidedly not the case.

Is it fair to those goalies to blame them for being born when they were? No, it's not fair, but what are we supposed to do? If we have the 4th best goalie of 1985 on our list, that's like... what, Pat Riggin or somebody? I mean we can't very well give Pat Riggin with the same treatment we would give to the 4th best goalie in 1955 or 1995. We can only rank these guys on what they were, not what they could have been in an alternate timeline.

Well, we don't exactly know whether someone like Tuukka Rask got significant support or if he was ranked 219th on one list. Are the active guys finishing ahead of Percy LeSueur or Paddy Moran? If not, then my point gets even stronger.

I do agree that people valuing different things is a big part of the problem with rating modern goalies. It is much, much harder to "check all the boxes" on your goaltending resume in a 30-team league against a much deeper talent pool than it was in a prior era, and so you'll have very divergent opinions depending on what boxes aren't checked. I don't know how to resolve this issue, other than continuing to point out the relative value of accomplishments across history.

Well I can tell you Rask was a lot higher than that on one list... mine. I had him above a lot of guys who are already inducted, but then again my top-200 list was a total acid trip that is going to look hilarious next to the actual list. FWIW, Percy and Paddy did not make appearances.

I think these are all good healthy issues to raise, and to some extent this comes down to what people value in one career over another.

 

[ResilientBeast]

Well I can tell you Rask was a lot higher than that on one list... mine. I had him above a lot of guys who are already inducted, but then again my top-200 list was a total acid trip that is going to look hilarious next to the actual list. FWIW, Percy and Paddy did not make appearances.

Yeah....I haven't looked at that initial list and never want to revisit it

I'm the reason the JS Giguere will show up on the aggregate list when I tried to find goalies to spice up the list

 

[ted2019]

My early musings:
Top Tier: Denis Savard/Babe Dye/Siebert
Next Tier: Fuhr/Worsley/Holmes/Smith/Bouchard/Brewer/Lemaire
Not yet, maybe never: Shanahan/Blake/Larionov/Price/Goulet

 

[ted2019]

Igor Larionov Case: (Stats from RB's Bio)
- Canada Cup Champion 80/81
- Canada Cup Runner-Up 86/87
- Hockey Hall of Fame 07/08
- IIHF Hall of Fame 2008
- NHL Stanley Cup Champion 96/97, 97/98, 01/02
- Olympic Bronze Medal 01/02
- Olympic Gold Medal 83/84, 87/88
- Olympic Most Assists 87/88
- Triple Gold Club 96/97
- U20 WJC All-Star Team 79/80
- U20 WJC Gold Medal 78/79, 79/80
- World Championship All-Star Team 85/86, 82/83
- World Championship Bronze Medal 84/85
- World Championship Gold Medal 81/82, 82/83, 85/86, 88/89
- World Championship Silver Medal 86/87
Canada Cup/World Cup Career Scoring leaders

19. Igor Larionov, USSR/RUS 15 Pts in 26 Games

87 Points in 103 Senior International Games

One of the smartest players in the history of the game. Known as the Professor, he played almost a perfect 200 foot game and he was always in position according the historians who have/had followed his career. He fed the engine know as Makarov & Krutov with pin-point passes on a nightly basis. The main question is did he benefit from having 2 World Class players in Makarov & Krutov, or was he the main cog on their success?

 

[Hockey Outsider]

VsX summary (1927-2020)

Player	1st	2nd	3rd	4th	5th	6th	7th	8th	9th	10th	7 YEAR	10 YEAR
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
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
Babe Siebert	78.0	65.1	62.2	53.2	52.5	51.1	48.6	43.2	43.2	36.4	58.7	53.3
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
Igor Larionov	60.8	58.9	56.0	51.6	50.0	49.5	47.8	46.7	41.7	41.3	53.5	50.4
Carl Brewer	45.3	32.5	30.9	28.9	28.8	27.4	16.7	16.7	16.5	12.2	30.1	25.6
Butch Bouchard	43.6	28.3	25.0	24.3	20.0	19.7	19.0	18.0	17.4	16.7	25.7	23.2

[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.
• Larionov's results only reflect his NHL career (age 29 to 43), which excludes what was probably (definitely?) the best of his career on CSKA Moscow.

 

[Hockey Outsider]

Hart trophy results - 5% threshold

Player	1st	2nd	3rd	4th	5th	6th	7th+	Total
Babe Siebert	1		1					2
Carey Price	1						1	2
Grant Fuhr		1				1		2
Denis Savard			1		1			2
Gump Worsley			1				1	2
Babe Dye				1				1

[TBODY] [/TBODY]

A few notes:

• 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, Bouchard, Brewer, Goulet, Larionov (though most of his best years were in the Soviet league), Lemaire, Shanahan, Smith
• Players never eligible for the Hart - Holmes (effectively - just eligible for the Hart the last two years of his career)

 

[tarheelhockey]

Rob Blake hasn't been talked about much. Does he have a case in this group? I feel like he's a guy who gets very little benefit of the doubt, but I've never been completely sure whether it's fair.

 

[ted2019]

Rob Blake hasn't been talked about much. Does he have a case in this group? I feel like he's a guy who gets very little benefit of the doubt, but I've never been completely sure whether it's fair.

I see Blake as a someone who might be overlooked due to the fact that he played his entire career west of the Rockies. Is it fair to stay that he might be a bit underrated or is he overrated?
Blake Norris: 1,3,3,4,5,8
Blake AS: 1,2,2,2,5,8

He played top end minutes until the day he retired at age 40, but in the group that has just came in, does he really fit in with those names? Is he better then Bouchard? Brewer? Siebert? I think it would help to have someone who saw him play on a nightly basis to help fill in the gaps on Blake.

Here are a few quotes from various Bio's.

MileHighHockey said:

Rob Blake is part of a dying breed. Many defensemen these days seem to have just one good quality. Whether it's speed, or a big point shot, or a crushing hip check, most defensemen specialize in just one aspect of their game, and their teammates must compensate for their weaknesses. Rob Blake is one of those rare, multi-talented blueliners that not only dominates in sheer size and hitting ability, but can put a big blast on net and still keep up with the quick-footed youngsters so many years his junior.

legends of hockey said:

...being named a Hobey Baker Award finalist, and getting called up to the Kings for the last four games of the regular season to experience a taste of NHL life. The following season, he made the team with an outstanding performance in training camp and became the team's number one defenseman.

Blake was thrilled to be joining an L.A. team that featured Wayne Gretzky. An offensive defenseman who was equally adept in his own end, Blake cherished the opportunity to join the rush when Gretzky had the puck, and in his first year he had 12 goals and 46 points from the blue line. Gretzky took to Blake immediately, and likened him to a young Paul Coffey due to his offensive talent and his superb shot, which became an integral part of the Los Angeles powerplay that Gretzky orchestrated.
...
An early highlight of Blake's career came during the 1993 playoffs when the team, led by Gretzky, made it to the Stanley Cup finals. Along the way they beat Calgary and Vancouver and then eliminated Toronto in game seven at Maple Leaf Gardens. But in the finals Blake and the Kings faced a Montreal team that had won 10 overtime games in these playoffs, and the Kings lost in six games. Blake had 10 points that spring and anchored a defense that was virtually impenetrable until that Habs series.
...
After parts of 12 seasons with the Kings, Blake was acquired by the Colorado Avalanche in the latter stages of the 2000-01 season. Upon his arrival with the Avs, Blake was instrumental in leading the Avs to the 2001 Stanley Cup title.

Larry Robinson said:

"He can get from the front of the net into the corners as quickly as anyone I've ever seen. He's jumping up into the play without any hesitation and that's really encouraging. Our whole team seems to build off of him."

LA Times said:

Asked about the 6-foot-3, 215-pound Blake, Cap Raeder, who coaches the defensemen and goalies, shakes his head in wonder.

"He has just played outstanding," Raeder said. "He's got a great head on his shoulders. He's got size and he's just what we needed, a right-handed shooter with good mobility."

So suddenly, Blake has been thrust into the Stanley Cup playoffs.

From no pressure to high drama.

"It's one step to go from college to the NHL," he said. "It's another to go from the NHL to the playoffs. The speed, the strength and the intensity are all greater."

If Blake is intimidated, fellow defenseman Robinson hasn't noticed.

"He has accounted for himself really well," Robinson said. "He's done everything. He's big, strong, moves the puck well and seems like he has a great attitude."

"I don't even know what to say about the guy," Gretzky said. "This kid has great skills and is tough. I don't know if he even knows how good he's going to be.

LA Times said:

"Blakey's played that way his whole career," Kings forward Michael Cammalleri said Monday. "He's been a great teammate and a passionate guy and never afraid to stand up for his teammates or to set a statement when it needs to be done.

"So I know when I played against him when he was in Colorado, it was no fun. If you did something, you were going to get a good stiff left hand, a straight arm right to the chin. So he's just continuing to do what he's always done."

LA Times said:

"Once Blake gets it in his hands, we've got to close him out more and not give him as much time as he had [Tuesday]," Pronger said. "He was able to kind of walk down and take his pick of shooting or trying to make a pass across the crease or, like you saw on the winning goal, he threw it in the slot."

LoH said:

Blake stayed on for a third year, making the M division's First All-Star team, being named a Hobey Baker Award finalist, and getting called up to the Kings for the last four games of the regular season to experience a taste of NHL life. The following season, he made the team with an outstanding performance in training camp and became the team's number one defenseman.

Blake was thrilled to be joining an L.A. team that featured Wayne Gretzky. An offensive defenseman who was equally adept in his own end, Blake cherished the opportunity to join the rush when Gretzky had the puck, and in his first year he had 12 goals and 46 points from the blue line. Gretzky took to Blake immediately, and likened him to a young Paul Coffey due to his offensive talent and his superb shot, which became an integral part of the Los Angeles powerplay that Gretzky orchestrated.

In each full season Blake played, his numbers increased, but at the same time injuries were forever taking up a large part of his season. In 1994-95, he missed 24 games with a pulled groin and the next year he tore an anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) just six games into the season and missed the remainder of the year. He has also broken his hand and foot, resulting in further long stretches away from the ice.

An early highlight of Blake's career came during the 1993 playoffs when the team, led by Gretzky, made it to the Stanley Cup finals. Along the way they beat Calgary and Vancouver and then eliminated Toronto in game seven at Maple Leaf Gardens. But in the finals Blake and the Kings faced a Montreal team that had won 10 overtime games in these playoffs, and the Kings lost in six games. Blake had 10 points that spring and anchored a defense that was virtually impenetrable until that Habs series.

The Kings performed well on a regular basis during most of the 1990s, but never fared well in the playoffs beyond 1993. The result was that Blake had a chance to successfully represent Canada internationally on many occasions, each time happily taking advantage of the honor and experience. He played at the World Championships in 1991, 1994, 1997, 1998 and 1999, winning a gold medal on the 1994 and 1997 teams and a silver in 1991. He also played in the World Cup in 1996, and was key to Canada's defense at the Nagano Olympics in 1998, where he was named the best defenseman in the tournament. Following Nagano, Blake returned to the Kings lineup and continued his strong play, enabling him to capture the 1998 James Norris Trophy as the league's Top Defenseman. After parts of 12 seasons with the Kings, Blake was acquired by the Colorado Avalanche in the latter stages of the 2000-01 season. Upon his arrival with the Avs, Blake was instrumental in leading the Avs to the 2001 Stanley Cup title. On the international stage, Blake has represented Canada in the Winter Olympics on three occasions (1998, 2002, 2006), earning a Gold-Medal in 2002.​

 

[Dennis Bonvie]

Rob Blake hasn't been talked about much. Does he have a case in this group? I feel like he's a guy who gets very little benefit of the doubt, but I've never been completely sure whether it's fair.

Might be a little early for Blake but he wouldn't be out of place at this point. Especially for those who value longevity. Played until he was 40 and his last two seasons were solid. Excellent goal scorer for a defenseman due to his great shot.

 

[Hockey Outsider]

People actually think Hap Holmes is a candidate here? I don't really see how that is justifiable. Holmes would be the 5th goalie on this list born before 1900 (in fact, the 5th born just between 1885 and 1893). In contrast, there are only 6 goalies already voted in who were born after 1952.

If you think Holmes should go in soon ahead of Fuhr and Price, then I'd love to hear an explanation of why you think there were almost as many Top 180 goalies born during a 9 year stretch in the 19th century as there were over roughly four decades of hockey history, a period that includes more than half of the Baby Boom generation as well as the vast majority of non-Canadian NHLers.

Look at the implied talent pool increase from the skaters in the current Top 175 (I just grabbed the first position given on the master list to keep things simple):

Centers:
Pre-1900: 6
1953-now: 25

Defencemen:
Pre-1900: 6
1953-now: 19

Wingers:
Pre-1900: 4
1953-now: 18

Goalies:
Pre-1900: 4
1953-now: 6

That's a total of 16 early era skaters, compared to 62 in the latter group. So if the representation of all-time great skaters born since 1953 is 3.9 times higher than in the pre-1900 talent pool, then why should we think that a split of close to 1-to-1 when it comes to goalies is in any way reasonable and not obvious evidence of a systematic underrating of modern netminders?

Good post. I don't think we should have explicit quotas based on position or era, but a check like this helps us identify if we're systematically over- or underrating certain types of players.

 

[plusandminus]

I think one of the first times I read about Blake, was when LAK teammate Gretzky spoke very highly of him, like Blake being some kind of superstar defenseman that had it all (or soon would have it all, since he was still young).
It gave me the picture of quite a great defenseman. (At the time, I didn't know/think of Gretzky's habit of praising other players.)
Unfortunately Blake then was injured a lot, but at age 28 he suddenly got a Norris. And then he had some more top-4 Norris finishes.
Today I wonder a little about if Gretzky's words might have made others rate Blake a little higher than his actual play on the ice warranted..??

 

[Hockey Outsider]

The main issue with Blake is there's a perception that he wasn't very strong defensively, and he often put himself out of position to make big hits. I've sometimes seen him compared to Ed Jovanovski or Dion Phaneuf (not in terms of ability, but in terms of having very clear strengths and weaknesses).

Maybe I'm forgetting, but I don't think this perception existed during his career. Sure, he wasn't Scott Stevens defensively, but did anyone question his defensive play while he was active? I think a lot of the pushback has arisen because he's one of a small handful of defensemen to win the Norris with a negative plus/minus. And he's been widely criticized - perhaps rightly so - for taking the Norris from Lidstrom 1998.

The other issue is, despite having a long career (20 years, nearly 1,300 games), he was in the conversation for best defenseman for only a short period (pretty much 1998 to 2003). Only Lidstrom got more Norris trophy votes during that five year period. But Blake got surprisingly little support for the Norris outside of that five year window.

One thing that helps his case - after it was apparent LA would trade him in 2001, he was considered a hugely valuable addition to any contender. And he delivered immediately - he was arguably Colorado's 3rd most valuable player that spring as they won the Stanley Cup.

All that being said - still not sure where I'll rank him.

 

[ted2019]

The main issue with Blake is there's a perception that he wasn't very strong defensively, and he often put himself out of position to make big hits. I've sometimes seen him compared to Ed Jovanovski or Dion Phaneuf (not in terms of ability, but in terms of having very clear strengths and weaknesses).

Maybe I'm forgetting, but I don't think this perception existed during his career. Sure, he wasn't Scott Stevens defensively, but did anyone question his defensive play while he was active? I think a lot of the pushback has arisen because he's one of a small handful of defensemen to win the Norris with a negative plus/minus. And he's been widely criticized - perhaps rightly so - for taking the Norris from Lidstrom 1998.

The other issue is, despite having a long career (20 years, nearly 1,300 games), he was in the conversation for best defenseman for only a short period (pretty much 1998 to 2003). Only Lidstrom got more Norris trophy votes during that five year period. But Blake got surprisingly little support for the Norris outside of that five year window.

One thing that helps his case - after it was apparent LA would trade him in 2001, he was considered a hugely valuable addition to any contender. And he delivered immediately - he was arguably Colorado's 3rd most valuable player that spring as they won the Stanley Cup.

All that being said - still not sure where I'll rank him.

I'm thinking of having Blake near the bottom part of my list. I remember the part about Blake going for the "big hit" and that would put him as somewhat of a defensive liability. I'd rather have the more defensively responsible player with a little less offense then a player like Blake. Blake also was a -4 for his entire career and for me, that doesn't help his cause either. He also had a bit over 48% of his points of the PP, not sure if that helps or hurts his cause.

 

[TheDevilMadeMe]

Rob Blake is like an anti-Scott Niedermayer in that his prime years were all early in his career, so it's easy to forget how highly regarded he was at his best. Whereas someone like Niedermayer gets overrated (not by this forum but by the public) because his best years were towards the end of his career.

Compare their Norris records:

Rob Blake: 1, 3, 3, 4, 5, 8

97-98: 1st
99-00: 3rd
00-01: 4th
01-02: 3rd
02-03: 5th
03-04: 8th

Scott Niedermayer: 1, 2, 2, 5, 9, 10, 12

97-98: 5th
98-99: 12th
03-04: 1st
05-06: 2nd
06-07: 2nd
07-08: 10th
08-09: 9th

I'm 100% in agreement with those who think that Nicklas Lidstrom deserved Rob Blake's Norris, but it's not like Blake was a 1-season wonder. The man actually beats Niedermayer 5-4 in top 5 Norris finishes.

Blake was also voted best defenseman at the 1998 Olympics - against a weak field, sure, but it wasn't like it was just fans of hard-hitting good-old-boy hockey who appreciated his game.

 

[TheDevilMadeMe]

Norris/All-Star records of available defensemen:

I'm using Norris records for Carl Brewer and Rob Blake.

I'm using combined LD/RD All-Star voting for Babe Siebert and All-Star voting for Butch Bouchard.

This time, I'm showing competition for every Top 4 finish.

Babe Siebert: 1, 2, 2, 5 (and 4, 8 at LW)

As a LW (I don't think I'm missing anything here, I just double checked both relevant hfboards threads):
30-31: 4th (behind Joliat, Bun Cook, and Nels Stewart)
31-32: 8th

As a D:
35-36: 2nd (behind Shore, ahead of Goodfellow and Earl Seibert)
36-37: 1st (ahead of Goodfellow, Earl Seibert, and Lionel Conacher)
37-38: 2nd (behind Shore, ahead of Art Coulter and Earl Seibert)
38-39: 5th

Butch Bouchard: 1*, 2, 2^, 3*, 6, 8

43-44: 3rd (behind Babe Pratt and Earl Seibert, ahead of Dit Clapper) - *WAR YEAR*
44-45: 1st (ahead of Flash Hollett, Babe Pratt, and Glen Harmon) - *WAR YEAR*
45-46: 2nd (behind Jack Crawford, ahead of Ken Reardon and Jack Stewart) - ^PARTIAL WAR YEAR^
46-47: 2nd (behind Ken Reardon, ahead of Quackenbush and Stewart)
47-48: 6th
53-54: 8th

Carl Brewer: 2, 3, 4, 6, 6, 9, 9

59-60: 9th
60-61: 6th
61-62: 4th (behind Harvey, Pilote, and Talbot)
62-63: 2nd (behind Pilote, ahead of Horton)
63-64: 9th
64-65: 6th

• Note Brewer left the NHL from 65-66 to 68-69 due largely to disputes with Punch Imlach. His efforts in Europe were strong enough to be inducted into the Finnish Hockey Hall of Fame in 2003.

69-70: 3rd (behind Orr and Park)

Rob Blake: 1, 3, 3, 4, 5, 8

97-98: 1st (ahead of Lidstrom and Pronger)
99-00: 3rd (behind Pronger and Lidstrom)
00-01: 4th (behind Lidstrom, Bourque, and Stevens)
01-02: 3rd (behind Lidstrom and Chelios)
02-03: 5th
03-04: 8th

____________________

Comments:

• Babe Siebert has an amazing 3-year peak. With a solid 4th year at the end. Easily the best peak left of any defenseman available. But outside of his short peak, he was rarely considered an all-star level player.
• Rob Blake has an impressive 4-5 year stretch against some really tough competition.
• Carl Brewer's record isn't quite as good as Siebert or Blake, but he missed some prime years playing overseas. It should also be noted that he was considered the #1 defenseman of the Leafs team that won the Cups in 1962 and 1963. Tim Horton looks to have taken over as #1 (at least in the eyes of the voters!) starting in 1964 (the 3rd Cup in a row).
• Hard to know what to make of Butch Bouchard's record - 3 of his 4 years of strong All-Star recognition happened in a depleted NHL. Even 1946-47 probably wasn't up to full strength yet, due to lack of development among young players during the war.
• On my Top 100 defensemen list submitted to THN, I actually had all these guys ranked very close (44, 46, 47, 48), though looking at their records again, I'm becoming a little more skeptical of Bouchard.

 

[TheDevilMadeMe]

VsX summary (1927-2020)

Player	1st	2nd	3rd	4th	5th	6th	7th	8th	9th	10th	7 YEAR	10 YEAR
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
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
Babe Siebert	78.0	65.1	62.2	53.2	52.5	51.1	48.6	43.2	43.2	36.4	58.7	53.3
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
Igor Larionov	60.8	58.9	56.0	51.6	50.0	49.5	47.8	46.7	41.7	41.3	53.5	50.4
Carl Brewer	45.3	32.5	30.9	28.9	28.8	27.4	16.7	16.7	16.5	12.2	30.1	25.6
Butch Bouchard	43.6	28.3	25.0	24.3	20.0	19.7	19.0	18.0	17.4	16.7	25.7	23.2

[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.
• Larionov's results only reflect his NHL career (age 29 to 43), which excludes what was probably (definitely?) the best of his career on CSKA Moscow.

Not surprised to see Denis Savard tower above the rest of the NHLers in this group as an offensive producer.

Re: Babe Dye - I remember back when we used to overrate the value of high goal scoring finishes in a pre-consolidated league, most of us considered an insult to compare him to Luc Robitaille (who went last round of course). Now I think that the comparison might have been pretty accurate. I think we're at least at the point of the project where he's worth discussing.