JR Ewing

In the comments section, Cloutier filled in more of his take on Hemsky: I've been watching hockey my entire life, and ever since I reached the age of reason, I have never understood this line of thinking. Can we all agree that the best hockey players are the ones who drive play north, who get the puck moving in the right direction and create chances at the other end? Then, what is the obsession with trying to pigeon hole guys into a player type, and then engineering the team to attempt to fit this narrow description of what a player should be? -Then, what the hell could be better than having a RW with a career CorsiRel of +9.5 in that role? Hemsky gets the puck, gets it out of his end, and creates chances at the opposite end of the ice. -He's done this against tough opposition: every coach he had matched him against possession positive players, and Hemsk'ys come out on top. -You know what "big wingers who hit" means? It means the opposition has the puck more often. GMs who look for a player of a certain type, rather than a player of certain quality are the ones who wonder why they don't get bang for their bucks, and are constantly stuck spinning their wheels. JR

There's parts of this article I couldn't disagree more with: This doesn't even make sense. He begins by talking about how Gordon and Horcoff are different types of centers, and then identified their jobs: THE EXACT SAME ROLE. Each were used as tough-minute centers playing against good lines. So, does Gordon fill those shoes? Zone Starts: Horcoff was given the 2nd toughest Zone Starts among Oilers centers last season, at 42.1%, while Gordon had (by far) the toughest on the Coyotes: 32.6%. Gordon 1, Horcoff 0 Faceoffs: each were given tough starts, tasked by their coach to win the draw so they could get the puck moving out of their zone. In every situation which is measured, this is a massive advantage for Gordon. Horcoff: http://stats.tabita....r/shawn_horcoff Gordon: http://stats.tabita....yer/boyd_gordon Gordon 2, Horcoff 0 Quality of Competition: Gordon saw exceptionally tough opposition: 9th toughest among NHL centers last season. Horcoff? 108th. This one is a no contest. Gordon 3, Horcoff 0 Relative Corsi: this is our possession metric, which we can use to see who moved the puck out of their zone and away from their end. It's the primary role of the tough minutes center. Horcoff: -4.4, Gordon: +0.6. So, starting next to his own net most of the time, and against MUCH tougher opposition, Gordon's line still carried more of the play than their opponent. Horcoff had a tough minutes role against easier opposition, but was possession negative, surrendering more chances against. Gordon 4, Horcoff 0 Offense: Horcoff scored 1.34 P/60, while Gordon scored at a clip of 1.18 P/60. That works out to around 22 ES points over 82 games for Horcoff and 19 for Gordon, which is a pretty small difference. The advantage goes to Horcoff here, but with a big qualifier: Horcoff's two most common wingers were Nail Yakupov and Taylor Hall, while Boyd Gordon's were David Moss and Robin Klinkhammer. I have to think that Horcoff's wingers account for more than a 3 point difference. Gordon 4, Horcoff 1 I just don't get Cloutier here. He identified Horcoff's and Gordon's roles as the same and then talked about how Gordon has a long way to go in order to fill Horcoff's skates, but even a cursory glance shows you that it isn't the case. Based on recent history, and especially given their relative age and salary, Gordon is an upgrade in almost every conceivable way. TLDR - Cloutier's point about Gordon and Horcoff was obtuse. JR

Thanks to jammer for catching this one: Rest of the article: http://www.hockeybuzz.com/blog.php?post_id=53137&blogger_id=131#.Uf872qzd4uc JR

Yeah. I used it a few days ago, to get the date that Dave Brown took Stu Grimson apart brick by brick: http://dropyourgloves.com/fights/GameEvents.aspx?Game=18250&Fight=2156#Fight2156 JR

You should have seen what it was like living in Edmonton in those days. A sort of stunned disbelief, panic, and hatred washed over everybody. It was disbelief that somebody would trade the best player in the world during the prime of his career, panic that he wouldn't be the last, and hatred for Janet Jones. JR

LOL!!! A whole garbage bag? Yeah, I think I'd have had to retire from street hockey at that point, too. JR

August 9... In 1988, it was the day that Peter Pocklington kind of crushed my spirit. Our family was on vacation when we saw the news. In 2004, it was the day that, tied with the birth of my son, was the greatest of my life: the birth of my daughter. JR

When I was about 10, we moved from Ontario to Edmonton. Those balls, in that weather, achieve a kind of diamond-hard quality, and when they hit you, your ancestors felt it. I'm sure the NSA has satellite photos of prisoners in North Korean prison camps being tortured in this way. JR

Not one kid on my block, growing up, was goalie, so there were no goal pads. And when tennis balls (or those orange stone which they call balls) get cold or wet, it's like being kicked in the shins with an ice pick. A friend and I scoured the neighbourhood and found some couch cushions, so we took them home, removed the covers, cut them into the shape of golie pads, and secured them to our legs with some athletic wrap. It was great! No pain; just a soft THUD when a save was made. No mask or can, mind you. For some reason, we never thought about that until we got racked in the nuts. Now, they sell street hockey pads. No need to take the steps we were forced into. JR

I never see any kids playing street hockey here. None. Never. "CAR!!!" is dead and gone. JR

Not related specifically to Derek Boogaard, but appropriate to the conversation: http://www.universityherald.com/articles/4114/20130803/injuries-teen-fighting-deal-blow-iq.htm For the sake of saying it, Derek Boogaard had 34 fights just when he was 16... Just think of the damage which was done to his brain during this period. JR

Thanks for joining in. No, definitely not. Just off the top of my head there's Jagr, Sakic, Lidstrom, Hull, Recchi, Modano, Leetch all ahead of him, and that's just a quick list. During Mogilny's time, look at the RW in the NHL: Jaromir Jagr - 5 Art Ross, 1 Hart, 3 Lindsay, 7 time 1st All-Star, scored 516 more points during same period Brett Hull - 3 Richard, 1 Hart, 1 Lindsay, 3 time 1st All-Star, outscored Mogilny Selanne - 3 Richard, 2 time 1st All-Star, 2 time 2nd All-Star, outscored Mogilny That's just three guy. Alexander Mogilny was terrific, but was not the best RW in hockey. In 2000, Mogilny had a depth role and was the Devils 3 line RW, only scoring 7 points. In general, Mogilny's scoring really dropped in the playoffs over the course of his career, going from 1.04 PPG down to 0.69 in the playoffs. He just can't get a point here, either. -Actually, Jari Kurri was the first non-North American to lead the NHL in goal scoring, in 1986. Minor point, but worth mentioning. -Those other points are all fine accomplishments, and he was brave to defect, but I'm not how sure the NHL had intense focus brought upon it because of Mogilny. He didn't become a household name to those who are not fans. I think of this point this way: my wife doesn't like baseball, watch it, know about it, or care about: but she knows who Babe Ruth was. EVERYBODY knows who Babe Ruth was. Everybody who couldn't care about golf knows who Tiger Woods. People who know nothing about boxing know who Muhammad Ali is. This is meant to be an extremely difficult point to score on, and there's just no way Mogilny can get one here. Mogilny was dynamite, but did not innovate the game or find a way to exploit the sport to the extent that the league needed to change its rules. I have to respectfully disagree with your assessment of Mogilny, for the reasons outlined above. I count 6, which is a fine career. How about the rest of you? JR

Great. I hope to see you jump in here, too, with more players. Pretty soon, I think we can start really coming up with a concensus on each of the players in question, and then start adding them to the HF.net HOF. JR

I'll sleep when I'm dead. JR

Re all-time records: I've wrestled with the issue over time, but finally decided long ago not to use them in this sort of system (and trust me, this has evolved over the years). One thing which is important when creating something like this is that it treats players from all eras fairly, and if you add a section for records then it pretty much rules out anybody who wasn't born from about 1955 to 1965, give or take a year or two on each side. a] All of those lists are completely dominated by players who had their prime years in the 80s thru the early 90s. b] Schedule lengths are so disparate through the league's history, making such lists completely biased towards the modern player as well. c] The NHL didn't even begin tracking power play goals until 1967-68, making the all-time leader's list even more titled towards later players. If it was tracked previously, the numbers would possibly have been badly skewed in the opposite direction. Until 1957, a power play lasted the full two minutes, regardless of how many goals were scored. So, when you use a record like PP goals, etc, it tells you more about the era in which a guy played than it does about the quality of his play. Yes, we can compare him to the other players of his time and note that he was better at it than the them, but it gives no ability to compare him to the rest of the pool. It's the same reason that you don't see things like the Olympics, Canada Cup, etc on the list as well. I would LOVE to have that on there, but anybody from pre-1972 doesn't have the opportunity to score points there. Fun trivia - Andreychuk scored more PPG than anybody, but Ray Bourque was on the ice for 361 more PPG than Andreychuk, and 83 more than #2 (Al MacInnis). The forward who was on the ice for the most PPG: Wayne Gretzky (1162). JR

Yeah, Gartner's another one of those guys, too. JR

Standing on the shoulders of giants... Not the first time, won't be the last. JR

Exactly. This is prime summer stuff here. I played marbles and tag and baseball, rode every square inch of Trenton, Ontario on my bike, ran around in the woods with a jack knife and a BB gun all of that stuff, too. But, I also made sure to get to the library as much as I could because I liked to read, too. And man... Kids are sheltered now. JR

Career like his are ones where the sum is greater than the whole of its parts: never had a great season, but wound up with great career numbers. It couldn't be any different than the best players in the history of the game. If Gretzky had quit after ten years, he'd be a shoe-in HOFer, and his results on this list would likely be exactly the same. The first ten years are largely about establishing the HOF argument, and the rest of the career is more about padding those numbers. Andreychuk built his case with padding. JR

See, and I wouldn't even give him a point in any of those. 10. He stuck his butt in one spot and didn't move. He was definitely really good with the puck right there, but he wasn't a physical beast who intimidate the opposition. With that question, I'm looking for animals; bulls. We're looking for Gordie Howe, Ted Lindsay. Coiled springs lubricated with testosterone. 17. He was well known in the cities he played in, but he didn't exactly transcend the sport. 18. Andreychuk was definitely not the first guy to do that, so I don't see a point for innovation. I agree, though: definitely not a clear-cut HOFer. JR

Yeah, Katz has no interest in moving the team. He has a great thing going, and he's not going to screw it up by moving the team where he can't get fans misty-eyed with old photos of Wayne Gretzky holding Cups and Mark Messier back when he still had hair. Besides, like you said, the NHL would never consider it anyway. People in Canada (sometimes fairly) bitch endlessly about Gary Bettman, but he did everything he could to keep the Oilers in Edmonton back when the Canadian dollar was so low, and Peter Pocklington was trying to sell the team to Les Alexander down in Houston. That's the way it should be done. Maybe I'm crazy, but I think it's right for a man to pay for what it his. JR

4 - Yes. Forsberg led the NHL in A and Pts in 2003. 13 - Perhaps a minor point, but of the ten most similar players, 3 are in the HOF. I don't know if that's "many", but it's still impressive. 17 - At first I was going to disagree, on the basis that Forsberg isn't exactly a household name among non-hockey fans the way Gretzky is, or the way Babe Ruth, Muhammad Ali or Tiger Woods are for non-fans of their sport. But then, I have to admit, the man is on a postage stamp in his country. Not exactly a common honour, and it does brings positive and intense focus to hockey. 18 - My vote would be for no, but it's extremely tough to get one here. I really really really think this is an area best avoided. We can say "Man, that guy would have been great if he wasn't injured", but there's really no stopping once you start. It's hypothesizing about what might have been rather than focusing on what the player was. Orr WAS great despite the knees, Bossy and Lemieux were great despite their bad backs, etc, etc, etc. JR

Hockey's just too expensive for many families. It was for mine when I was that age too (thus, I played baseball), and it's only gotten worse in the last 30 years. JR

And it's about to get bigger in the next few years. The land the arena is being built upon was owned by, yup, Oilers owner Daryl Katz. The city will buy that from him, naturally. The construction company the city is paying to build the arena is owned by Daryl Katz. The firm hired by the city to design the arena? What? Daryl Katz owns that? Who gets the money from naming rights, concessions, parking and non-hockey events? Daryl Katz. The city will own the arena, and will have to pay for 100% of the maintenance on the building. All savings for Katz. The arena will be built, it will be damn near 100% taxpayer funded, and Katz will receive most, if not all, of the profits... This is what has happened in virtually every community where this sort of thing comes up. As an Oilers fan, the last thing I'm worried about is the team to moving to Seattle, that's for sure. The last thing the BoG would approve is moving a revenue rich team to an unsure market. This has all just been part of tightening the screws in Edmonton. JR

Another thing I'd like to propose: If we're going to go through the process of voting, I'd like to ensure that we don't just concentrate on the last two or three decades, and make an attempt to look at players from decades gone by. For those who know about these guys, it's a chance to fill other people in about them, to spread knowledge of the game. For those who don't know about some of those players, it can help create more appreciation for different eras of hockey, those players, and help provide context for how to view modern players as well. JR