Top 40 Canucks - Round 1 Discussion/Vote

[Alan Jackson]

strongly disagree. one two other goalies were in luongo's league in terms of year-to-year consistent eliteness in his monstrous five year stretch between 2007 and 2011: kiprusoff and lundqvist. and luongo was consistently better than both in that stretch, though those guys had their respective peak years directly before and after that stretch.

That probably sounded like I was more down on Luongo than I am. I just mean that other clubs were winning without an elite goaltender.

In the President's Trophy seasons, I believe you could replace Luongo and the club would likely have had roughly the same amount of points.

I don't think that's true of, say, his first season here- where he more or less carried the team to a playoff spot.

His second season here, he was very good - but some iffy goaltending down the stretch probably cost the team another playoff berth.

This is where I struggle with these kinds of lists, because it feels like you're demeaning one player to prop another up. We're quibbling about 1 or 2 spots on the list - I currently have Luongo at 7th. I could see him moving up to 6, and bumping Smyl, but I'm not sure I'd go any higher than that.

 

[Captain Bowie]

That probably sounded like I was more down on Luongo than I am. I just mean that other clubs were winning without an elite goaltender.

In the President's Trophy seasons, I believe you could replace Luongo and the club would likely have had roughly the same amount of points.

I don't think that's true of, say, his first season here- where he more or less carried the team to a playoff spot.

His second season here, he was very good - but some iffy goaltending down the stretch probably cost the team another playoff berth.

This is where I struggle with these kinds of lists, because it feels like you're demeaning one player to prop another up. We're quibbling about 1 or 2 spots on the list - I currently have Luongo at 7th. I could see him moving up to 6, and bumping Smyl, but I'm not sure I'd go any higher than that.

Depends on what you mean by "replace".

In that year you could have replaced him with Pekka Rinne or Tim Thomas. Maybe Lundqvist. I don't think a full-time Schneider would have done the job as well, nor an average NHL starter, like Ward or Fleury.

 

[Hardyvan123]

What proof do we have that Daniel would suffer any more without Henrik than vice versa? I mean if you are only talking about last 2 years then fine, but that is just a small part of his resume and not the biggest part at all. Overall, the chemistry works both ways.

Sure it based mainly on the last 2 years, and this year, and I'm not really even going to bother before then because like you say the twins were almost the same, and regarded that way in every respect for better or worse.

but in the last 2 years and even this year Hank has clearly looked the better player and Daniel is seriously slipping even as a good, never mind elite goal scorer.

Even Nassy when he slipped was a better goal scorer.

As for your comparison between Daniel and Naslund, it would be helpful if you presented the stats for both players in the same format.

I took the natural progressions, and regressions , in their careers to mark the different points in time.

Here is a 3-year running average for both, goals and points:

Sedin:
01-03: 14.3, 32.3
02-04: 13.6, 39
03-06: 18, 52
04-07: 25.3, 69.6
06-08: 29, 76.3
07-09: 32, 80
08-10: 32.6, 88.6*
09-11: 36.6, 98.6*
10-12: 37.8, 96.7*
11-13: 33.9, 86*
12-14: 24.8, 65.8

*adjusted for games missed and shortened season.

Naslund:
97-99: 23.6, 47
98-00: 25.6, 55
99-01: 36.3, 72*
00-02: 37.6, 80*
01-03: 44.6, 93*
02-04: 41, 92.6
03-06: 38.3, 89
04-07: 30.3, 74.3
06-08: 27, 64.6

*adjusted for games missed.

Are these raw counting stats or adjusted points?

And yes looking at guys in as many ways as possible does help.

 

[Hardyvan123]

If you're just looking at playoffs then sure. But Luongo has a drastically superior regular season edge by the Goals Above Replacement stat. And this despite the fact that it's probably a little harder to have a high GAR in this era (as I believe replacement-level goaltending now is probably better than replacement-level goaltending in the 80s and early 90s).

That's good to know and part of the reasons King Richard and Captain Kirk performances are more memorable to me is because yes I did have more connection with those teams, they were just very like able and classy.

 

[Captain Bowie]

Reminder:

You can vote starting tomorrow, deadline is Sunday at 6:00pm PST.

You will rank your top 10 players. 1 name should be absent from your list.

 

[vadim sharifijanov]

how many guys are going to make the list, and how many are going to get chucked back into round 2?

 

[Captain Bowie]

how many guys are going to make the list, and how many are going to get chucked back into round 2?

Top 5 is the target, unless there is a big gap elsewhere.

 

[Barney Gumble]

That's good to know and part of the reasons King Richard and Captain Kirk performances are more memorable to me is because yes I did have more connection with those teams, they were just very like able and classy.

Part of it I think is that those two teams were underdogs - who doesn't like an underdog?

 

[vadim sharifijanov]

This is where I struggle with these kinds of lists, because it feels like you're demeaning one player to prop another up. We're quibbling about 1 or 2 spots on the list - I currently have Luongo at 7th. I could see him moving up to 6, and bumping Smyl, but I'm not sure I'd go any higher than that.

okay so votes due today and the one guy i think we haven't discussed at all is smyl.

on my original list, i had him between daniel and naslund, with luongo ahead of both. smyl is maybe the toughest guy for me this round, because my brain says he should be below all of quinn-era and later guys, but at the same time it's pretty hard to square seven guys from the second half of this franchise's existence going before anyone from the first half.

at the same time, smyl certainly passes the "did something in the playoffs test."

but here's my memory of stan smyl: i remember him at the very end as the captain of the team, but an old guy who didn't really do anything. so one day my dad brings home from a game, this is back when a small business owner could buy a pair of good seats and take an out of town client to a game for a business meeting and get a couple of beers for under $100 total. he gives me the program from the game, which his client bought to send back as a gift for me and my brother. and we're going through that program, which in the back lists the canucks all-time leaders and of course smyl has all the records. so i ask dad: "whoa, tell me about stan smyl. he was good?" because to us he was just this old guy who looked like paul simon.

to this day, i imagine smyl as our version of shane doan, though a much smaller guy obviously. maybe shane doan's ability and inspirational workmanlike leadership in matt cooke's body, with mike keane's pound for pound toughness. the things people say about how hard he played, about him going at much bigger guys and winning those physical battles, how the team fed off him, i take those seriously. how he would fight anyone and hold his own, how he would kill anyone in his own weight class. i know there are a lot of people on this board who look at smyl and are embarrassed by his legacy, embarrassed that we remember him, to them it's a sign of how bad this franchise was until pat quinn took over. but those same people are impressed by markus naslund winning the pearson trophy so i think they and i have a fundamental difference of philosophy about what is memorable and what is shameful.

i didn't see '82 and i'm not that old, but i wasn't born yesterday either. and i think some of my fondness for smyl here is nostalgia for the days of the old coliseum where a small business owner could reasonably take his clients from the island to games for business meetings. but i think those times are important; and insofar as stan smyl was the beating heart of that team back then, what he did on the ice also maybe was representative of the beating heart of a scrappier vancouver that is now long long gone. i don't value that over pavel or henrik, but i also can't put every single "objectively elite" post-'88 canuck ahead of it.

 

[Barney Gumble]

For those that didn't see him playing, I would guess Smyl takes a hit from his career after hockey (re: coaching stint with the Moose) - though probably not as bad as Ron Delorme (who actually was a guy alot of people would've been a fan of *during his hockey career*).

I actually think of Smyl as an earlier version of Trevor Linden - obviously not as talented but had underrated skills as a fighter (that Linden unfortunately did not). Sure he was never a superstar, but you need guys like him to win championships (problem with us, you needed the "superstars" as well - which we didn't have during his prime years). I think just one guy like him might've made the difference in 2011.

 

[Hardyvan123]

Part of it I think is that those two teams were underdogs - who doesn't like an underdog?

Yes that is part of the appeal I think plus I was less jaded then and liked the style of hockey more too.

 

[Captain Bowie]

Just over 5 hours left until the voting deadline, and only 2 votes cast so far (3 including myself).

I will extend it if we don't get more votes, since 3 just isn't enough, but I don't want this thing going on forever.

 

[vadim sharifijanov]

voted. only one change from my original list: mclean > gradin instead of vice-versa. kesler was the guy i left off.

 

[kmad]

okay okay, so does anyone have naslund top three? or are we mostly agreed that he's battling daniel and luongo (and maybe even smyl?) for 4-5-6...7?

Actually got convinced to drop Naslund 1 spot, putting him behind Linden but just ahead of McLean. Linden's playoff record and longevity contrasted to Naslund's abysmal playoff record was the dealbreaker. Smyl is a solid 8th, and I think everyone should have the same eight players in their top eight. I can't put Smyl any higher. He was the team's best player for a while, but it was a pretty bad team. I don't know if he has more career value than Shane Doan, and I wouldn't put Doan ahead of McLean, or Naslund, or Luongo or the rest.

Also I moved Kesler up three spots from my original top 60 after giving it some more thought. He was an extremely effective player for a very good team. I don't like him, but even when he didn't want to play for Vancouver, he still gave 110%.

Ohlund is 10th for me.

 

[Regal]

Very nice take on Smyl. Part of me wants to put him higher, and I keep going back to the idea of weighing how good a player is with how much of a Canuck they are and whether Linden was that much better than Smyl for one to jump over objectively better players but not the other. I like the Shane Doan comparison, although the longevity isn't there, but in the grand scheme of things is Linden any better than Doan either? I believe he lost a poll to him on the history board. I kept my ranking of the top 7 but part of me is feeling like perhaps Luongo is the odd man out in terms of identifying with the franchise, and maybe Smyl should even be as high as number 5.

in the end my only switch was to have McLean in 8th ahead of Ohlund, as I started looking again at how long Ohlund was the gut I think if him as and it wasn't as long as I remember. Still the best defenseman in history easy, but McLean had probably higher peaks as while as VS said, Ohlund isn't really remembered poorly for his playoffs, nothing sticks out the way obviously McLean's 94 run does

 

[MS]

Apologies as I've been super busy and haven't had a lot of time to put more thought into this.

The 11 guys in this round are exactly the same as the top 11 on my preliminary list, so I'm in agreement with that, for starters.

As someone stated earlier, there's a pretty clear top-4 of Sedins/Linden/Bure and then a 'next 3' of Luongo/Naslund/Smyl.

Bure, to me, can't be higher than 4th. He played less than half the games of Sedins/Linden and didn't have double the impact. He was clearly the most exciting player in franchise history, but nothing about his peak is better than the Sedins. I put Linden in between the Sedins, who I had at 1 and 3. Nothing in this thread so far has changed my opinion.

I'm a bit torn on Luongo vs. Naslund and wonder if I'm under-rating Naslund because of how insipid his last couple years were.

Is it a dick move to stick with my original top-10? Ha.

 

[Regal]

Is it a dick move to stick with my original top-10? Ha.

I don't think so. We all know quite a bit about these guys to the point where not a lot is likely going to change our opinions. I think outside of the top 10 then especially outside of the top 30 that things will really start to get interesting.

 

[kmad]

Very nice take on Smyl. Part of me wants to put him higher, and I keep going back to the idea of weighing how good a player is with how much of a Canuck they are and whether Linden was that much better than Smyl for one to jump over objectively better players but not the other. I like the Shane Doan comparison, although the longevity isn't there, but in the grand scheme of things is Linden any better than Doan either? I believe he lost a poll to him on the history board. I kept my ranking of the top 7 but part of me is feeling like perhaps Luongo is the odd man out in terms of identifying with the franchise, and maybe Smyl should even be as high as number 5.

If you factor in playoff performances I see no way for Doan to be ranked close to Linden.

 

[Hardyvan123]

voted

 

[Captain Bowie]

Having inbox issues. If you sent me a PM in the last few minutes please try again.

 

[Captain Bowie]

Waiting for one last voter. If I do not get their vote by morning, I will post the results and the next thread sometime tomorrow.