Top-200 Hockey Players of All-Time - Voting Results
- Thread starter quoipourquoi
- Start date
Dennis Bonvie
Registered User
So with a single second team all-star selection, Serge Savard somehow gets in ahead of Langway, Lapointe and Stewart?
tarheelhockey
Offside Review Specialist
I feel like we barely talked about Savard out of head-to-head'ing him with Lapointe. Wasn't expecting him to go just yet.
Professor What
Registered User
Dennis Bonvie
Registered User
Seems that some voters are simply voting for the players highest on their own lists.
Discussions are having little influence.
tarheelhockey
Offside Review Specialist
I hope that's not true, and I suppose it'll be revealed one way or another when we do the post-project review.
TheDevilMadeMe
Registered User
Savard wasn't talked about much last round, but he was talked about quite a bit the round before
ted2019
History of Hockey
Savard/Langway should've both made it. Ridiculous to see Langway being penalized for getting injured early in his career and "only" being a defensive defenseman.
The Macho King
Back* to Back** World Champion
- Jun 22, 2011
- 48,772
- 29,301
Habs players as a whole are wildly overrated. There is a trickle down "playoff success" where they all get collective credit for being on a dynasty.
I seriously don't get the benefit of ranking dynasty members so high when they're at best the fourth best player on their team *for* their team success while simultaneously penalizing someone for little playoff success while being the team's best player.
Edit: I mean generally - I think the stars are appropriately rated, but we give the second/third/fourth/fifth best players of these particular dynasties a huge bump when it probably isn't warranted.
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Yeah. I've been wanting him to go for a while - but I'm kind of shocked he went. The 6NR is pretty hilarious. 6 NR out of 15 votes - that's 40% NR. Is that a record, being voted in with 40% NR'ing you?
tarheelhockey
Offside Review Specialist
And did it without a first-place vote, which is very Ron Francis.
The Macho King
Back* to Back** World Champion
- Jun 22, 2011
- 48,772
- 29,301
ted2019
History of Hockey
He won 2 Norris Trophies as a Capital, so your argument doesn't really hold up here.
The Macho King
Back* to Back** World Champion
- Jun 22, 2011
- 48,772
- 29,301
Was referring to Savard. Generally Langway doesn't get a lot of love for his Habs years.
I haven't followed this project closely.
I find it strange to make the cut between Francis and Bure.
In the previous round, Bure was clearly ahead of Francis.
In this round, they were very close.
Here are their finishes on each voting ballot, sorted from best to worst.
Francis: 2-2-2-4-5-5-6- 7- 7
Bure___: 1-1-1-3-5-6-8-10
We see that Bure has 1-1-1-3 compared to 2-2-2-4 for Francis. Then each have a 5th place. Then Francis is 5-6-7-7 while Bure is 6-8-10.
I think it would have been interesting to see both of them in the next round.
A thought experiment... Let's say the above is Norris finishes (as are often looked upon when comparing defensemen) or AST finishes (I know Francis and Bure are forwards), or similar.
Wouldn't a three time Norris winner be considered better than someone finishing runner up three times (with both having the same competition)?
In the big picture, it probably doesn't matter if a player finish 120 or 122 or so. I just thought they seemed so close.
Edit: I also understand the need to not let this project become too "slow", going on "forever". So generally I think making the cut after 4 players wouldn't be ideal.
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Dennis Bonvie
Registered User
Voters that have Bure as a NR are not changing. They don't believe Bure should be close to this high. They value highly longevity and two-way play.
tarheelhockey
Offside Review Specialist
| Pavel Bure | 34 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 12 |
| Pavel Bure | 48 | 3 | 1 | 1 | 3 | 8 |
| Pavel Bure | 53 | 3 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 7 |
Most of the votes are migrating upward. At this pace he should go in either at the bottom of this round or the top of the next.
We expected Bure to be one of the most polarizing candidates, and he delivered.
TheDevilMadeMe
Registered User
For Bure to go even where he went in the wingers project, he'd probably have to wait another round.
tarheelhockey
Offside Review Specialist
Notably, the order in the wingers project was:
Jackson
Bentley
Bure
Phillips
All 4 of these players are currently eligible, so either we're creating an echo chamber or these guys really do compare well to each other. IMO Bure compares best to Perreault, who is also currently eligible.
quoipourquoi
Goaltender
Pretty much that, yes. If there was a gap of 22.5 points (1.5 points per ballot cast), I could have held back Savard (who trailed Stastny by 22 points) or Francis (who trailed Savard by 12 points), but neither the gap between 3 and 4 or between 4 and 5 fell within that range.
I really don’t want us to get too hung up on the final list itself; it would be way too ambitious to think that we can nail this thing on the first try.
In two rounds so far, we’ve had a player go #1 in his first round of eligibility, leapfrogging ~10 players from the previous round. We started to see that at the end of the top-100 project as well. That means that people are learning and adjusting previous perceptions (even of more recent players) but it also means that certain players are probably capped at a lower rank based on the aggregate list than they should have been.
But it’s also important to remember that the list really just shows a general perception of a player when the range of opinions on any player could be massive. If there is a block of people on the low end of that range, there is more voting power in that than if there is a block of people on the high end of that range (that’s just the nature of the voting system), but that doesn’t make one more right than the other.
MXD
Original #4
- Oct 27, 2005
- 50,810
- 16,548
Both players were goalies. Also the first player to whom this happened was Gardiner, also a goalie.
quoipourquoi
Goaltender
seventieslord
Student Of The Game
I thought the opposite was true, and that this was exactly why we only rank 10 players when 15 are available.
If you just really low opinion of a player and don't want him advancing, your last place vote (0 points) would be seriously damaging to his chances when every other player gets at least one point from you. By ranking just 10 of 15 players we ensure that you have to put four other players on the same level as the one you don't like.
To illustrate what I'm saying, let's say we only ranked 7 instead of 10:
| Player | Total | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | NR |
| Valeri Vasiliev | 66 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 1 |
| Bill Quackenbush | 64 | 4 | 3 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 2 | |
| Peter Stastny | 50 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 3 | 2 | 3 | 2 | 1 |
| Serge Savard | 37 | 2 | 1 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 7 | ||
| Ron Francis | 32 | 3 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 2 | 6 | ||
| Pavel Bure | 31 | 3 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 9 | |||
| Busher Jackson | 25 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 9 | ||
| Alex Delvecchio | 19 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 9 | ||
| Rod Langway | 23 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 9 | |||
| Bernie Parent | 20 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 11 | ||||
| Gilbert Perreault | 17 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 10 | ||
| Jack Stewart | 12 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 11 | |||
| Guy Lapointe | 13 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 10 | |||
| Pavel Datsyuk | 10 | 2 | 2 | 11 | |||||
| Doug Bentley | 1 | 1 | 14 |
Bure, the poster child for polarizing players, does better on a smaller ballot. His number of NRs no longer stands out. No meaningful rankings change. It's noteworthy that instead of being 10% behind 5th and virtually tied with 7th, he's now virtually tied with 5th and 20% ahead of 7th - because the power of the NRs was lessened.
On the other hand, let's say we ranked every player 1-15. Of course we can't get inside people's heads and predict how they'd have ranked their 5 NRs, but if we spread them out mostly proportionally and a little skewed towards polarization by assuming that people who gave Bure an NR really don't like him, we get something like this:
| Player | Total | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 |
| Valeri Vasiliev | 186 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 1 | |||||||
| Bill Quackenbush | 179 | 4 | 3 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 1 | |||||||
| Peter Stastny | 168 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 3 | 2 | 3 | 2 | 1 | |||||||
| Serge Savard | 144 | 2 | 1 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 1 | |||||
| Ron Francis | 124 | 3 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | |||||
| Pavel Bure | 103 | 3 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 5 | ||||||
| Busher Jackson | 122 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 3 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | |||
| Alex Delvecchio | 116 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | |||
| Rod Langway | 99 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 3 | 2 | |||||
| Bernie Parent | 104 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 1 | |||||
| Gilbert Perreault | 95 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 1 | ||
| Jack Stewart | 108 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 1 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 0 | |||
| Guy Lapointe | 95 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 2 | 1 | |||
| Pavel Datsyuk | 99 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 0 | |||||
| Doug Bentley | 58 | 1 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 3 | 2 | 4 |
Jackson, Delvecchio, Parent and Stewart all pass Bure, and four players are dangerously close to him too. This isn't just due to most NRs being worth a handful of points (it's also the ripple effect of a 9th now being worth 6 instead of 2, and so on), but these larger ballots don't help a polarizing player, they hurt him, because now if you really want to give him zero points, you have to rank him last, and everyone else but him gets points from your ballot.
quoipourquoi
Goaltender
If I think Pavel Bure is the 50th best player of all time (I don’t), while Guy Lapointe is the 120th best player of all time (I don’t), they would be separated by 70 points on my 220-player ballot, but they might only be separated by a single point if they’re my top-2 players this week.
There is a cap on how highly I can rate Bure in Round 2 - exactly one point of separation between him and the next eligible player.
So my thinking Bure is 50th (10 points) and Lapointe is 120th (9 points) would be offset by someone else thinking Lapointe is 120th (10 points) and Bure is 121st (9 points).
Having fewer players on each ballot than are eligible doesn’t really mitigate the problem. It’s better (because there would be more NRs, thereby lessening its power), but it doesn’t solve the issue of detractors having more voting power than those who feel a player is heavily underrated.
That’s why polarizing players drop from Round 1 to Round 2.
