Ciccarelli - A power-play specialist who ranks high here because he scored a lot of goals in a high-scoring era but was never close to being one of the best goal scorers in the game. Despite playing his prime years in the league`s weakest division, he was only a top 10 goal scorer twice in his entire career, a mark bettered or equalled by players like Hodge, Redmond, Maruk, Vaive, Bullard, Richer, Carson, and Sheppard - guys who likely never received a single vote for the Hall.
It would be something if he excelled in other areas as well but he didn`t. Was never much of a playmaker, was a liability defensively and I must have missed his great playoff play. Other than his first year, his playoff resume is pretty mediocre. In fact, after Detroit didn`t win as expected in `96, Bowman singled him out as one of the guys he had to get rid of in order for the Wings to win a Cup. He did, and they did.
Nieuwendyk - A very good player, far better than Ciccarelli, but IMO not quite up to Hall standards. The major argument people have in his favour is that he hit 500 goals and won 3 Cups with 3 different teams. Well due to expansion diluting the quality and inflated scoring in the 80s and early 90s, the 500 mark lost any
signifance it used to have (hello Pat Verbeek). His three Cups: the Calgary team in `89 was a powerhouse, he was nowhere near the top of the team in playoff scoring and didn`t contribute much defensively, he played well with Dallas in `99 but Belfour or Modano were far more deserving of the Conn Smythe, with New Jersey in `03 he was injured and didn`t even play in the Final. What about the rest of his career? If you consider the 3 cups, you also have to consider the 10 years he lost in the 1st round.
Bottom line: there`s a few players in the Hall who Nieuwendyk was better than, but there`s far more players not in the Hall who were better than him.
Before anybody jumps over me with "How dare you criticize anything about a 1000 point scorer" the first message in this thread acknowledged that all these players were great but who would rank near the bottom of that list. If anybody`s upset that I put Ciccarelli in the bottom five, then what five players from that list would you rank below him?
These scoring lists are nothing more than trivia if you`re not going to examine the different variables from each players eras and the other aspects of their game. I mean, it would be pretty stupid for somebody to say Luc Robitaille was better than Maurice Richard because of more career goals, without looking at the entire picture.
