felixhockey
Registered User
- Jan 28, 2016
- 86
- 27
Just curious.... because his career's longevity was absurd and he put up some incredible seasons
A list is going to be heavily dominated by Canadians. So once you've got those out of the way (players that were superior to Selanne, that is), you start with the Europeans and Americans. I don't know. 77th maybe?
Come on. The best American player (Chelios or Brimsek) and the best Finnish player (Selanne) are obviously going to be behind some Canadian players. It’s not a slight against them.
Selanne has a 5-year gap in the middle of his resume because of wear-and-tear, otherwise he’d place higher than he will, but we can’t ignore that he was treated incredibly fairly in the Wingers project. If HOH goes back to asking if he was as good as Johnny Bucyk, I’d get where you’re coming from, but it hasn’t been like that for years.
What do you mean "come on"?
Any way, looked at the lists on here. Didn't appear on the top 100 players of all time but that one was made in 2008 so not sure if that does justice to Selanne. He was 15th on the wingers list made in 2014-2015 though. Treated incredibly fair as you say, as he was placed above Brett Hull and Jari Kurri for instance.
With all that said. Somewhere between 65 and 75 seems like a good guess.
Oh, in 2008 and 2009? No, Selanne was not properly received on HOH. Not at all. No, no, no, no, hell no, no. And if that was what you were going off of to gauge the current temperature on his ranking, then the above comment is pretty justifiable.
I just want to be clear - HOH isn’t like that anymore. It’s not just that new people have come in - those who were around back then are better informed now than they were. The difference in research and the increased quality in discussion just from 2008 to 2012 was night-and-day.
it’s still hard for me to accept selanne > kurri, though my sense is that’s orthodoxy by now.
Except in the playoffs, where Kurri completely destroys Selanne. And Kurri increased his scoring totals immediately after Gretzky was traded....Selanne was matching Kurri’s raw numbers in a lower scoring environment and with Paul Kariya instead of Wayne Gretzky.
I think any time there is a head-to-head comparison of two players and one is defensively strong and the other defensively ambivalent, it’s hard to not have a “but” argument in the former’s favor. (Did anyone see the lopsided Datsyuk vs. St. Louis poll? Yikes.)
That they are both from Finland is the only reason I feel the comparison still comes up, because Selanne was matching Kurri’s raw numbers in a lower scoring environment and with Paul Kariya instead of Wayne Gretzky. A top-10 scorer at 40 and an Olympic MVP at 43, while Kurri was a double-digit minus player in 5 of 7 seasons in his 30s. Two-consecutive Pearson nominations and three-consecutive top-5 Hart placements against the infamous single career Hart ballot.
Olympic MVP at 43
kurri was 69 on the last top players list. makarov was 61. assuming those two players stay close to where they are, i think the high end of almost everyone who's posted's range (~50) seems way too high. even without directly comparing kurri and selanne, i can't see less than ten guys separating makarov and selanne.
Except in the playoffs, where Kurri completely destroys Selanne. And Kurri increased his scoring totals immediately after Gretzky was traded.
Having said that, if I have to take one or the other, I might take Selanne... but it's not one-sided, like you're implying.
i only mention kurri because upthread you completely matter-of-factly called selanne the best finnish player of all time. otherwise, yes i don't know that comparing him to kurri helps us too much here because they were in such different situations and, as you say, one guy's case is all offense while the other finished 2, 3, 4, and 5 in selke voting in consecutive seasons.
i'm not going rehearse the kurri/selanne argument, other than to say that hart voting wasn't especially kind to kurri. obviously kurri was in gretzky's shadow the entire time gretzky was there (and he wasn't alone; coffey and fuhr each had one season of serious hart consideration while gretzky was still an oiler, but messier only received three votes total in nine seasons as gretzky's teammate). but more unfortunate for kurri was that his best post-gretzky season was 1989, when the hart was almost literally a three-horse race and also back when it was also a three-man ballot. compare that to messier, who had his career year in 1990, which was pre-suter gretzky's most mortal season.
selanne still would have the much better hart record, against much lighter competition, but if they had used the five-man ballot, it wouldn't be as enormous as three good years of placements vs. practically nothing.
kurri was 69 on the last top players list. makarov was 61. assuming those two players stay close to where they are, i think the high end of almost everyone who's posted's range (~50) seems way too high. even without directly comparing kurri and selanne, i can't see less than ten guys separating makarov and selanne.
I still don’t get how he got this one. His team got bounced in the semi-finals and he didn’t score a point past the quarter-finals, plus he was outscored by his own linemate (Granlund). Karlsson would obviously have been a better choice, and I say that as someone who likes Selänne more than Karlsson. Demitra in 2010 probably would have been a less dubious choice too. I don’t like the "lifetime achievement award" narrative, and it’s the same reason Ovi’s Smythe left a sour taste in my mouth, because some people in the media actually uttered those words.
I still don’t get how he got this one. His team got bounced in the semi-finals and he didn’t score a point past the quarter-finals, plus he was outscored by his own linemate (Granlund). Karlsson would obviously have been a better choice, and I say that as someone who likes Selänne more than Karlsson. Demitra in 2010 probably would have been a less dubious choice too. I don’t like the "lifetime achievement award" narrative, and it’s the same reason Ovi’s Smythe left a sour taste in my mouth, because some people in the media actually uttered those words.
It's pretty obvious why he won, and yes it's pretty much a lifetime achievement award. IIHF award voting tends to be pretty dubious, with Jagr winning a lifetime achievement award at the 2015 IIHF World Championship being a very similar example. I remember a defenceman on Canada's third pairing winning the top defenceman award in 2016 as well. Selanne won the award but he pretty obviously wasn't the best player in that tournament. It should have been Karlsson.