Yzerman vs. Beliveau

[Rhiessan71]

That line is as about as use full as the old standby, "the best are always the best."

Context of the conditions that occur each season is extremely important, people tend to underplay it here.

It's just fact! The players that weren't draft eligible were signed as UFA's, the rest were drafted.
Again, just show me the top players that came over to the NHL after '90 that weren't drafted.
Prove me wrong, give'r!

For instance the level of scoring between 92 and 93 with the average going down 30 goals for per team, that's freaking huge.

Huh? Scoring went UP from 91/92 to 92/93

Are you sure you didn't mean from 92/93 to 93/94?

And I wonder if the addition of 4 full expansion teams in 2 years that only averaged 222 goals each had anything to do with that average drop?
Especially considering that only the Sens finished below the League average in goals against that season In fact, the other 3 XP teams all finished in the top 9 in GA.
So, for the most part these new teams weren't being beat up on but they were scoring well below the league average, further driving it down.

So you'll excuse me if I'm not really sure what point you were making because quite obviously an "integrated league" argument would be a very minor contributor compared to this data.

 

[vadim sharifijanov]

the word "integrated" makes me uncomfortable in this usage. but that aside, whatever we want to call it, i don't think '93 was really a high moment, or a first total moment, of the best players in the world constituting maximum competitiveness in the NHL.

obviously, the NHL over-expanded in the early 90s. the crazy scoring of '93 shows that. i think at the same time, there were too many europeans in the league, which is related to over-expansion, but doesn't correlate to it 100%.

what i mean is, in the early 90s, there were a lot of guys from europe coming over who had no business coming over. some of them even put up decent points: borschevsky and kvartalnov are the poster boys of short term success and then vanishing off the face of the earth.

an example: in the early 90s, the blues dropped a lot of offensive guys for help on the back end. courtnall and ronning (for garth butcher), quinn and brind'amour (for murray baron), emerson (for phil housley). in the '92 draft, the blues took three russian guys and then hinged their secondary scoring on those guys moving forward. the youngest of those guys was a legit NHLer for a long time (igor korolev). the other two were vitaly karamnov and vitaly prokhorov, who were drafted as overage, already-developed players and obviously didn't stick. in '94, the blues were a one line team and had to panic-sign petr nedved to remedy the situation. the point is, GMs looked at europe as this untapped talent source, which of course it was, but they overestimated how much talent was there. for every sergei nemchinov, there were three lomakins, jelineks, and sjodins. and i think the idea that some 25 year old guy from russian or the czech republic would be a quick fix instead of developing a promising young player (whether that young player was canadian or european) lessened, rather than heightened, the competitiveness of the league.

you guys remember jiri dopita and fabian brunnstrom, probably: swing and a miss quick fixes from europe that desperate GMs go for every now and then. back in '93, more than half the teams in the league were icing a couple of those guys.

the talent pool probably didn't catch up until the late 90s, which of course was set back again by another round of over-expansion. but i will certainly agree that we're right now probably as close as we've been in a long time in terms of competitiveness.

 

[Hardyvan123]

It's just fact! The players that weren't draft eligible were signed as UFA's, the rest were drafted.
Again, just show me the top players that came over to the NHL after '90 that weren't drafted.
Prove me wrong, give'r!

You are failing to understand the point of the matter, it doesn't matter which is the first year that any Russians and Czechs were allowed in the league, it's the quantity and quality of players overall that matter.

It's different, ie more impact after 90 than it had in 90 any way you want to measure it.

Huh? Scoring went UP from 91/92 to 92/93

Are you sure you didn't mean from 92/93 to 93/94?

And I wonder if the addition of 4 full expansion teams in 2 years that only averaged 222 goals each had anything to do with that average drop?
Especially considering that only the Sens finished below the League average in goals against that season In fact, the other 3 XP teams all finished in the top 9 in GA.
So, for the most part these new teams weren't being beat up on but they were scoring well below the league average, further driving it down.

So you'll excuse me if I'm not really sure what point you were making because quite obviously an "integrated league" argument would be a very minor contributor compared to this data.

Yes it was 93 to 94 and only 2 teams topped the league average of the previous season of 305, Detroit with 356 and New Jersey with 306.

The expansion argument doesn't cover for the difference, there were only two teams in their first season in 94 from the year before, one would expect the tradeoff in less goals for from the new teams to be offset by more GA by other teams playing them.

also I'm not saying that the new talent streams were directly responsible for the drop in scoring, there are always other things at play, different defensive systems ect.. but considering that any player coming over from Europe would need to ahve a skillset on average better than his Canadian counterpart, the increased skill level probably does ahve something to do with it.

Guys from Europe weren't replacing the Gino Odjick's of the NHL.
Back to the topic on hand, the reason why scoring went down isn't important as the fact that the NHL was changing and evolving much more dramatically during Steve's career than it did in Jean's.

 

[pdd]

Doubt you will find any ES goals that may be attributed to a line featuring Beliveau with Moore during the 1955-56 season.

After reviewing it a second time, it seems the first one what I originally saw was a trick of the eye; Beliveau and Moore are involved on a PP goal and then the next goal is an ES goal also involving Moore.

But he did get a noticeable amount of points with Provost.

It seems that you are lacking a distinction between a three forward/two defensemen and four forward/one defenseman PP formations.

Oh really?

http://www.flyershistory.com/cgi-bin/poboxscore.cgi?H19870171
http://www.flyershistory.com/cgi-bin/poboxscore.cgi?H19870211
http://www.flyershistory.com/cgi-bin/poboxscore.cgi?H19870253
http://www.flyershistory.com/cgi-bin/poboxscore.cgi?H19870345
http://www.flyershistory.com/cgi-bin/poboxscore.cgi?H19870598
http://www.flyershistory.com/cgi-bin/poboxscore.cgi?H19870739

Previously in this thread there were attempts by HV and Sentinel at comparing the quality of the defensemen and goaltenders from the 1955-56 season to the 1988-89 season. Since its been raised by EUZ, I'll throw in the 1992-93 season.

AST voting is a misleading factor in such considerations. Fundamental to the positions studied is not allowing goals.

AST voting is misleading in general. It won't necessarily tell you the correct positions of players (for example, in 2007-08 Henrik Zetterberg was voted to the second-team at LW while Pavel Datsyuk was third in center voting, when Datsyuk played left wing with Zetterberg at center).

1992-93 season featured a fully integrated NHL. Yet if we look at the game results featuring the Red Wings:

Partially-integrated. More integrated than 1988-89 but hardly "fully-integrated". A lot of the best players in the world were outside of the NHL (and that's true today, also).

http://www.flyershistory.com/cgi-bin/hspgames.cgi

we see numerous games where one of the two teams scored six or more goals. In fact the Red Wings won, tied or lost defensive struggles that saw scores like 9-6, 10-5, 11-6, 10-7, 9-7, 8-5, 6-6. Junior B hockey.

1988-89 season featured a partially integrated NHL. Yet if we look at the game results featuring the Red Wings:

http://www.flyershistory.com/cgi-bin/hspgames.cgi

again numerous games where one of the two teams scored six or more goals including 6-6, 8-8, 10-5, 8-5, 8-6 games.

Little actual evidence of defensive or goaltending quality during the 1988-89 or 1992-93 seasons in Detroit. Yet the Red Wings were playoff teams both seasons.

1955-56 season Canadian based NHL. Canadiens games:

http://www.flyershistory.com/cgi-bin/hspgames.cgi

Canadiens, an offensive powerhouse were shutout five times, held to one goal eleven times, held to two goals thirteen times.

Conversely, the 6th place Blackhawks, gave up 6 or 7 goals 11 times during the 1955-56 season:

http://www.flyershistory.com/cgi-bin/hspgames.cgi

The 1988-89 Red Wings were weaker defensively than the 1955-56 Hawks, giving up 6 to 10 goals at least 15 times.

Nobody is saying "Gerard Gallant's 93 point season was better than Jean Beliveau's 88 point season!" which is the type of thing your analysis disproves. What is being said is that Yzerman, the only significantly skilled player on a bad team, faced the oppositions best attempts to shut him down every night. And that the "late-80s/early-90s" best-ever defense corps (as argued in Bourque arguments) would always be facing Yzerman, unless their team had an even better option defensively. Let's break down each team's top defensive defenseman (as far as matching up against the opposition scorers goes) in 1955-56. HHOFers in bold.

Team|Player
BOS| Fern Flaman
CHI|Frank Martin
DET|Marcel Pronovost
MTL| Tom Johnson
NYR| Harry Howell
TOR|Jim Morrison

Now, let's perform the same check on the 1992-93 Norris division.

Team|Player
CHI| Chris Chelios
DET|Steve Chiasson
MIN|Mark Tinordi
STL|Rick Zombo
TB|Shawn Chambers
TOR|Bob Rouse

One thing becomes clear; Toronto apparently doesn't get to have HHOF defensemen to rely on defensively. :thumbu

Ok. Aside from that, it's pretty clear that the 55-56 group of guys are more "two-way" styled guys with relation to their contemporaries, compared to the 92-93 group being made up almost entirely of (some of the best) guys who focus on defense alone. Chelios, Smith, and Chiasson are the only guys on that list to crack 40+ points twice or more. Tinordi was 40+ that year and no other. Chambers had a career-best 39 (albeit in 55 games).

So although most of those guys I just listed above aren't HHOFers, I'd bet that the better ones (guys like 1993 all-stars Chiasson, Tinordi as well as Rouse and some not listed like Konstantinov, Macoun, and of course Lidstrom) were as good or better defensively than Martin or Morrison. And if we take a quick peek into other divisions, we see these guys waiting (remember, this isn't a list of the best defenseman on the team; it's a list of best defensive defensemen.):

Adams: Ray Bourque, Doug Bodger, Adam Burt, Eric Desjardins, Norm MacIver, Curtis Leschyshyn
Patrick: Scott Stevens, Vladimir Malakhov, Jeff Beukeboom, Dmitry Yushkevich, Ulf Samuelsson, Sylvain Cote
Smythe: Gary Suter, Dave Manson, Charlie Huddy, Doug Wilson, Dana Murzyn, Teppo Numminen

So while it's true the defensive depth is probably weaker at the bottom end, Yzerman was facing the top guys. And his depth of competition on defense is similar or maybe a small bit behind what Beliveau faced. Now since I was prodded about using 92-93 instead of 88-89 as a comparable, let's move on to that for a second.

Centers divided by line, Norris division, 1988-89

Player|Team|Season|%1st|%2nd|Linemates
Yzerman |DET|88-89|1.67|2.18|Gallant, MacLean
Olczyk|TOR|88-89|1.20|1.96|Leeman, Osborne
Savard |CHI|88-89|0.94|1.05|Larmer, Graham
Gagner|MIN|88-89|1.32|1.56| Ciccarelli , Bellows
Zezel|STL|88-89|0.63|2.04| Hull , Momesso

Oates |DET|88-89|1.32|1.90|Barr, Klima
Fergus|TOR|88-89|0.99|1.24|Damphousse, Marois
Federko |STL|88-89|1.29|1.56|Paslawski, G.Cavallini
Broten|MIN|88-89|1.04|1.44|Habscheid, MacLellan
Murray|CHI|88-89|1.28|1.28|Thomas, Presley

Ronning|STL|88-89|1.22|1.31|Hrkac, McKegney

Top scoring centers in the NHL, 1988-89

Player|Team|Season|%1st|%2nd|Linemates
Lemieux |PIT|88-89|1.73|3.43|Brown, Errey
Gretzky |LA|88-89|2.63|2.71|Tonelli, Krushelnyski
Yzerman |DET|88-89|1.67|2.18|Gallant, MacLean
Nicholls|LA|88-89|1.53|2.38| Robitaille , Taylor
Carson|EDM|88-89|0.98|1.28| Kurri , Tikkanen
Hawerchuk|WPG|88-89|1.25|2.18|McBain, Duncan
Quinn|PIT|88-89|1.92|2.19|Cullen, Bourque
Messier |EDM|88-89|1.24|1.47|Simpson, Anderson
Olczyk|TOR|88-89|1.20|1.96|Leeman, Osborne

The only players who have better rates than Yzerman are Lemieux, Gretzky, and Quinn. And with Quinn, he played the PP and many ES shifts with Lemieux... so that's sort of a ghost effect from Lemieux's production. Gretzky and Nicholls took turns with the Robitaille/Taylor unit, with a mish-mash of Tonelli, Krushelnyski, Allison, Carpenter, Duguay going to whoever wasn't between them.

the point is, yeah we can very safely predict that brown and quinn don't come close to their totals without mario. and ditto nicholls w/o gretzky. but if you look at robitaille's prime, he tends to score more without gretzky than with.

in fact, you could even say that when gretzky has a monster year ('89, '90, '91, '94), robitaille tops out at just over 100 points, and scores as little as 86. when gretzky isn't there yet ('88), has an off-year by his own monstrous standards ('92), and is hurt for more than half the year ('93), robitaille tops 105 each time, finishes 5th, 5th, and 9th in points, cracks the top five in goals twice (the only two of his career), and the year he wasn't top five in points cracked top ten in assists (the only time in his career). the highest robitaille ever finished in the scoring with gretzky putting up a monster year is 10th.

1987-88 21 LAK NHL 80 53 [4] 58 [13] 111 [5] (gretzky in edm)
1988-89 22 LAK NHL 78 46 [10] 52 [23] 98 [10] (gretzky finishes 2nd, scores 160)
1989-90 23 LAK NHL 80 52 [6] 49 [33] 101 [12] (gretzky wins art ross, 140)
1990-91 24 LAK NHL 76 45 [7] 46 [39] 91 [15] (gretzky wins ross, 160)
1991-92 25 LAK NHL 80 44 [7] 63 [10] 107 [5] (gretzky "slumps," finishes 3rd, 120)
1992-93 26 LAK NHL 84 63 [4] 62 [20] 125 [9] (gretzky injured, 65)
1993-94 27 LAK NHL 83 44 [12] 42 [55] 86 [24] (gretzky wins ross, 130)

[finishes in square brackets]

It's possible; Robitaille missed the 100-point mark because he was crazy ineffective (compared to normal) on the PP. He scored 74 ES points, his second-highest career total (76 in 92-93), but failed to make 100 total points. And Robitaille in 90-91 had another "bad" year on the PP. I wouldn't qualify 87-88 or 93-94 as part of Robitaille's prime.

 

[Rhiessan71]

Partially-integrated. More integrated than 1988-89 but hardly "fully-integrated". A lot of the best players in the world were outside of the NHL (and that's true today, also).

Oh? A lot???
By all means, enlighten us to them.

Now don't get me wrong, I do believe there are a lot of talented players that are no longer fast enough to be the NHL that would be here pre 2005 but saying that the NHL is missing the "best" players has no basis in reality.

But these talented, slower players would not be the "best". The absence of them has affected secondary scoring though on the mid to lower lines where those spots are now held by, in this order, fastest, cheapest, most talented.

 

[Canadiens1958]

Reality Check

After reviewing it a second time, it seems the first one what I originally saw was a trick of the eye; Beliveau and Moore are involved on a PP goal and then the next goal is an ES goal also involving Moore.

But he did get a noticeable amount of points with Provost.



Oh really?

http://www.flyershistory.com/cgi-bin/poboxscore.cgi?H19870171
http://www.flyershistory.com/cgi-bin/poboxscore.cgi?H19870211
http://www.flyershistory.com/cgi-bin/poboxscore.cgi?H19870253
http://www.flyershistory.com/cgi-bin/poboxscore.cgi?H19870345
http://www.flyershistory.com/cgi-bin/poboxscore.cgi?H19870598
http://www.flyershistory.com/cgi-bin/poboxscore.cgi?H19870739





AST voting is misleading in general. It won't necessarily tell you the correct positions of players (for example, in 2007-08 Henrik Zetterberg was voted to the second-team at LW while Pavel Datsyuk was third in center voting, when Datsyuk played left wing with Zetterberg at center).



Partially-integrated. More integrated than 1988-89 but hardly "fully-integrated". A lot of the best players in the world were outside of the NHL (and that's true today, also).



Nobody is saying "Gerard Gallant's 93 point season was better than Jean Beliveau's 88 point season!" which is the type of thing your analysis disproves. What is being said is that Yzerman, the only significantly skilled player on a bad team, faced the oppositions best attempts to shut him down every night. And that the "late-80s/early-90s" best-ever defense corps (as argued in Bourque arguments) would always be facing Yzerman, unless their team had an even better option defensively. Let's break down each team's top defensive defenseman (as far as matching up against the opposition scorers goes) in 1955-56. HHOFers in bold.

Team|Player
BOS| Fern Flaman
CHI|Frank Martin
DET|Marcel Pronovost
MTL| Tom Johnson
NYR| Harry Howell
TOR|Jim Morrison

Now, let's perform the same check on the 1992-93 Norris division.

Team|Player
CHI| Chris Chelios
DET|Steve Chiasson
MIN|Mark Tinordi
STL|Rick Zombo
TB|Shawn Chambers
TOR|Bob Rouse

One thing becomes clear; Toronto apparently doesn't get to have HHOF defensemen to rely on defensively. :thumbu

Ok. Aside from that, it's pretty clear that the 55-56 group of guys are more "two-way" styled guys with relation to their contemporaries, compared to the 92-93 group being made up almost entirely of (some of the best) guys who focus on defense alone. Chelios, Smith, and Chiasson are the only guys on that list to crack 40+ points twice or more. Tinordi was 40+ that year and no other. Chambers had a career-best 39 (albeit in 55 games).

So although most of those guys I just listed above aren't HHOFers, I'd bet that the better ones (guys like 1993 all-stars Chiasson, Tinordi as well as Rouse and some not listed like Konstantinov, Macoun, and of course Lidstrom) were as good or better defensively than Martin or Morrison. And if we take a quick peek into other divisions, we see these guys waiting (remember, this isn't a list of the best defenseman on the team; it's a list of best defensive defensemen.):

Adams: Ray Bourque, Doug Bodger, Adam Burt, Eric Desjardins, Norm MacIver, Curtis Leschyshyn
Patrick: Scott Stevens, Vladimir Malakhov, Jeff Beukeboom, Dmitry Yushkevich, Ulf Samuelsson, Sylvain Cote
Smythe: Gary Suter, Dave Manson, Charlie Huddy, Doug Wilson, Dana Murzyn, Teppo Numminen

So while it's true the defensive depth is probably weaker at the bottom end, Yzerman was facing the top guys. And his depth of competition on defense is similar or maybe a small bit behind what Beliveau faced. Now since I was prodded about using 92-93 instead of 88-89 as a comparable, let's move on to that for a second.

Re the two types of PP formations the point also touches the 1955-56 season where your appreciation of the distinction was completely missing.Examples from the 1987-88 season do not change this.


As for your table of defensive defensemen from 1955-56, Marcel Pronovost, a Red Wing, is a HHOFer should be bolded. Allan Stanley, another HHOFer, replaces Frank Martin as Chicago's defensive defenseman while using Tom Johnson instead of Doug Harvey for Montreal is simply wrong. Jim Morrison as a defensive defenseman? Now I've seen it all. He was always viewed as weak defensively. Tim Horton, another HHOFer, until injured then Jim Thomson.

 

[Canadiens1958]

Very Interesting

You are failing to understand the point of the matter, it doesn't matter which is the first year that any Russians and Czechs were allowed in the league, it's the quantity and quality of players overall that matter.

It's different, ie more impact after 90 than it had in 90 any way you want to measure it.






Yes it was 93 to 94 and only 2 teams topped the league average of the previous season of 305, Detroit with 356 and New Jersey with 306.

The expansion argument doesn't cover for the difference, there were only two teams in their first season in 94 from the year before, one would expect the tradeoff in less goals for from the new teams to be offset by more GA by other teams playing them.

also I'm not saying that the new talent streams were directly responsible for the drop in scoring, there are always other things at play, different defensive systems ect.. but considering that any player coming over from Europe would need to ahve a skillset on average better than his Canadian counterpart, the increased skill level probably does ahve something to do with it.

Guys from Europe weren't replacing the Gino Odjick's of the NHL.
Back to the topic on hand, the reason why scoring went down isn't important as the fact that the NHL was changing and evolving much more dramatically during Steve's career than it did in Jean's.

Everyone reading your posts on this matter understands very well HV.

Specifically using your words in the bolded and extending the logic to the complete history of hockey, then:

1.) if quantity and quality of players overall is all that matters as you just admitted, then the when, whether or all the other qualifiers about provenance that posters wish to introduce, do not matter at all. Regardless of year or era, basic and simple meritocracy is all that matters.

2.) Penalizing or rewarding players based on the provenance or composition of the NHL is no longer an issue. Likewise the KHL, SEL or any other league. Just degrees of talent regardless of provenance or era.

 

[pdd]

Re the two types of PP formations the point also touches the 1955-56 season where your appreciation of the distinction was completely missing.Examples from the 1987-88 season do not change this.

As for your table of defensive defensemen from 1955-56, Marcel Pronovost, a Red Wing, is a HHOFer should be bolded. Allan Stanley, another HHOFer, replaces Frank Martin as Chicago's defensive defenseman while using Tom Johnson instead of Doug Harvey for Montreal is simply wrong. Jim Morrison as a defensive defenseman? Now I've seen it all. He was always viewed as weak defensively. Tim Horton, another HHOFer, until injured then Jim Thomson.

I used Johnson because he served as the "defensive lock" for Harvey.

I will admit that with Morrison I was unsure, but Toronto had four defensemen with middling to weak offensive numbers receive All-Star votes and I used Morrison because he was the only one who received significant votes. I did not use Horton because he was injured for half the season and therefore not serving as the team's primary shut-down defenseman.

I placed Martin ahead of Stanley because he was used less offensively yet placed higher in Norris and All-Star voting. Neither played in the All-Star game that season, but both did the previous season (when Stanley had 25 points, and Martin was even less effective offensively).

Not bolding Pronovost was simply an error.

 

[mbhhofr]

Toronto had four defensemen with middling to weak offensive numbers receive All-Star votes and I used Morrison because he was the only one who received significant votes.

You can put down all the stats that you want to, but until Bobby Orr came along, defensemen were just that, defensemen. Orr changed the game.

The benchmark for a player, back then, was a 20 goal season.

 

[Hardyvan123]

Everyone reading your posts on this matter understands very well HV.

Specifically using your words in the bolded and extending the logic to the complete history of hockey, then:

1.) if quantity and quality of players overall is all that matters as you just admitted, then the when, whether or all the other qualifiers about provenance that posters wish to introduce, do not matter at all. Regardless of year or era, basic and simple meritocracy is all that matters.

2.) Penalizing or rewarding players based on the provenance or composition of the NHL is no longer an issue. Likewise the KHL, SEL or any other league. Just degrees of talent regardless of provenance or era.

I really have no idea what you are sayiong here but I will clarify my comments.

Salming was a Swede playing in the NHL in the 70's, one could say that Swedes were integrated then but the impact of Swedish integration would become much stronger and meaning full in the 90's and beyond.

We can argue the impact, and god knows we will, but Yzerman played in a vastly changing NHL both ion terms of integration and style of play and then the "clutch and grab era."

Jean's time in the NHL was much more stable league wise.

 

[Hardyvan123]

You can put down all the stats that you want to, but until Bobby Orr came along, defensemen were just that, defensemen. Orr changed the game.

The benchmark for a player, back then, was a 20 goal season.

Except there are those who suggest Hod Stuart, Shore and Harvey (among others) revolutionized the way Dmen played the game.

Orr is definitely the most dramatic example as terrific skill met opportunity and expansion.

 

[TheDevilMadeMe]

I really have no idea what you are sayiong here but I will clarify my comments.

Salming was a Swede playing in the NHL in the 70's, one could say that Swedes were integrated then but the impact of Swedish integration would become much stronger and meaning full in the 90's and beyond.

We can argue the impact, and god knows we will, but Yzerman played in a vastly changing NHL both ion terms of integration and style of play and then the "clutch and grab era."

Jean's time in the NHL was much more stable league wise.

Europeans didn't really have a strong impact on the NHL en masse until probably 1992-93, towards the end of Yzerman's prime, so I really don't think that should be much of a factor in this comparison.

 

[Canadiens1958]

Previous Claim

I really have no idea what you are sayiong here but I will clarify my comments.

Salming was a Swede playing in the NHL in the 70's, one could say that Swedes were integrated then but the impact of Swedish integration would become much stronger and meaning full in the 90's and beyond.

We can argue the impact, and god knows we will, but Yzerman played in a vastly changing NHL both ion terms of integration and style of play and then the "clutch and grab era."

Jean's time in the NHL was much more stable league wise.

Your previous claim as cited above:

You are failing to understand the point of the matter, it doesn't matter which is the first year that any Russians and Czechs were allowed in the league, it's the quantity and quality of players overall that matter.

So in your own words provenance does not matter rather it's the quantity and quality of players overall that matter. Or as it pertains to Jean Beliveau all that matters is that the overall quality of all the contemporary players he faced or played with in the 1955-56 NHL season and playoffs had the ability to play in the 1988-89 or 1992-93 NHL.

It's no longer that the Swedes, Russians or Czechs were not playing in the NHL during a certain O6 season but did the O6 NHL players from the NHL, certain seasons, have the ability to play in the NHL during a season you portray as integrated.

 

[vadim sharifijanov]

It's possible; Robitaille missed the 100-point mark because he was crazy ineffective (compared to normal) on the PP. He scored 74 ES points, his second-highest career total (76 in 92-93), but failed to make 100 total points. And Robitaille in 90-91 had another "bad" year on the PP. I wouldn't qualify 87-88 or 93-94 as part of Robitaille's prime.

well PP is where he played with gretzky and ES is where he didn't so...

i know this isn't the point of the thread, but can we officially all just agree that the robitaille was a product of gretzky has been myth-busted? if anything, the exact opposite seems to be the case.

also, not sure why the year he had his highest goals, second highest assists, and highest points finish ('87-'88) wouldn't be considered part of his prime.

 

[pdd]

well PP is where he played with gretzky and ES is where he didn't so...

i know this isn't the point of the thread, but can we officially all just agree that the robitaille was a product of gretzky has been myth-busted?

Anyone who has been paying attention knows that Robitaille is not a product of Gretzky. That does not mean that taking Gretzky away when Robitaille is having one of the worst years of his prime would IMPROVE his finish as you seem to be suggesting.

also, not sure why the year he had his highest goals, second highest assists, and highest points finish ('87-'88) wouldn't be considered part of his prime.

Because:

His PPG from 88-89 through 92-93 never dipped below 1.20. His lowest GPG was 0.55, but three times he was at or above 0.65 GPG. His APG was never below 0.61 (a mark he only reached one other time in his career, when he was a second-team all-star in 2000-01).

 

[BraveCanadian]

And I thought I was good at going off on tangents in threads.

This one is all over the place. Wheee!

 

[Hardyvan123]

Europeans didn't really have a strong impact on the NHL en masse until probably 1992-93, towards the end of Yzerman's prime, so I really don't think that should be much of a factor in this comparison.

Well Steve had close to 10 more seasons as a top 20ish scoring forward in the league still after that, as well as his playoff prime so it should be taken into consideration don't you think?

After 92 he still averaged around 80 adjusted points/season for another 7 seasons, then 2 more at a PPG pace.

That's all after his "prime."

 

[Fish on The Sand]

Alright, let's test this hypothesis.

Lemieux was named on every ballot, with 49 first-place votes and 1 second place vote.

Turgeon put up a fifth-place finish, (0-2-6) for 12 points.
Selanne was sixth with (0-0-5) for 5 points.
Chelios was seventh with (0-0-3) for 3 points.
Yzerman was eighth with (0-0-2) for 2 points.

Now throw into the mix Lemieux's 248 points. We can assume a large number of them are scooped up by Gilmour and LaFontaine. But there would still be a significant number of points left. Is it such an impossible suggestion that Yzerman (who would then be the ES points leader by a wide margin) could have passed Chelios, Selanne, Turgeon, or even Oates?

I wouldn't be shocked if ALL of them went to Lafontaine or Gilmour.

 

[pdd]

And I thought I was good at going off on tangents in threads.

This one is all over the place. Wheee!

I am kind of the king of tangents. This thread was started because of a tangent in another thread, actually.

I wouldn't be shocked if ALL of them went to Lafontaine or Gilmour.

It's not possible for them all to have gone to Patty La or Gilmour.

http://hfboards.mandatory.com/showpost.php?p=6536156&postcount=104
1992-93
HART: Mario Lemieux 248 (49-1-0); Doug Gilmour 99 (0-29-12); Pat LaFontaine 52 (1-12-11); Adam Oates 28 (0-6-10); Pierre Turgeon 12 (0-2-6); Teemu Selanne 5 (0-0-5); Chris Chelios 3 (0-0-3); Steve Yzerman 2 (0-0-2); Eric Lindros 1 (0-0-1)

There are fifty ballots. We know that Lemieux's second-place vote is a result of LaFontaine getting a first-place vote, and that all other first-place votes went to Lemieux. Gilmour is already on 41 ballots; the absolute maximum point increase for him if all voters voted the same way (sans Lemieux, instead inserting a new third player at the bottom) would be 91 points. The maximum for LaFontaine (24 ballots) would be 72 points. That's a total of 163 points as the maximum those two could take away from the 248-point pot. Oates (16 ballots) can take up to 66 more; but only 47 more if Gilmour and LaFontaine max out on (new) third place votes.

Of course, it's highly likely that Art Ross winner LaFontaine, not Gilmour, is the one standing on top with the Hart in a Lemieux-less world, and that Yzerman (a top-three scorer with Lemieux removed) gets significantly more notice in the voting.

 

[seventieslord]

i know this isn't the point of the thread, but can we officially all just agree that the robitaille was a product of gretzky has been myth-busted? if anything, the exact opposite seems to be the case.

Yes, absolutely. The stats are pretty clear on this one.

 

[BraveCanadian]

Of course, it's highly likely that Art Ross winner LaFontaine, not Gilmour, is the one standing on top with the Hart in a Lemieux-less world, and that Yzerman (a top-three scorer with Lemieux removed) gets significantly more notice in the voting.

No. Gilmour was the odds on favourite before Lemieux made his miraculous comeback.


Not to mention Gilmour should technically have won it anyways -- he was the Toronto Maple Leafs.

 

[pdd]

No. Gilmour was the odds on favourite before Lemieux made his miraculous comeback.

Not to mention Gilmour should technically have won it anyways -- he was the Toronto Maple Leafs.

Ok, fine, we'll say "far more likely".

And if we're awarding Harts based on players who played as well as Gilmour did that season relative to competition, and "were their team" to the degree he was... Yzerman could have won it every year in his prime.

 

[vadim sharifijanov]

No. Gilmour was the odds on favourite before Lemieux made his miraculous comeback.


Not to mention Gilmour should technically have won it anyways -- he was on the Toronto Maple Leafs.

fixed that for you