OldTimeHockey
Active member
Potvin29 said:
I'm old, but the memory's still there
Actually, I have no idea, but if we can use the supposed lines that Shannahan played with, I can use the supposed lines Sundin played on
2013 HHOF Inductees
- Thread starter Justin
- Start date
I'm old, but the memory's still there
Actually, I have no idea, but if we can use the supposed lines that Shannahan played with, I can use the supposed lines Sundin played on
Brian Glennie
New member
RedLeaf said:Two Irishmen....
One proud, one befuddled...
"Loonie...tooonie for the bus?"
Stop. Brett Hull was one of if not the best goal scorer in the league at that time. But why are we even arguing over who was better in a short period of time? This is about if Shanahan deserves to be in the hall of fame. I just don't think he was one of the best players of his era, and yes, not even one of the best players on his team. Look, he'll probably get in, but all I'm saying here is he's not the slam dunk everyone says he is.Nik V. Debs said:
You can argue semantics with Herb Brooks but you're dancing around the facts. The HHOF doesn't take NCAA into account (show me an example where they did...oh wait), Brooks' time in the NHL was unimpressive by regular standards let alone HHOF standards, and he never would have gotten in if not for 1980. Henderson getting inducted comes down to whether you think his 1972 performance means something; I think it does, as do many. But there's just as many people who disagree. I just look at the fact that he created the most important moment in Canadian hockey history and one of the defining moments of Canadian history period. He was the greatest play in the greatest hockey series ever played and he changed hockey in a way most hall of famers never did.
maplesyrup
New member
Quinn actually looks the healthier of the two there. It looks as if the past few years have been incredibly hard on Burke and understandably so... and I'm only taking in part about professionally.
Kin
New member
Justin said:
Over those three years their respective goals scored per game: Hull .565, Shanahan .624 . So again, Shanahan was the better goal scorer in those years as well as, again, the better all around player
Anyways, the reason you brought it up was to establish your point that Shanahan was never the best player on his own team. I countered with A) it's not true and B) it's not a fair measurement. There are lots of Hall of Famers who were never the best players on their own team because, like Shanahan on the Red Wings, they played with guys who were all time greats. Paul Coffey, easy slam dunk hall of famer, was probably never the best player on his own team because he was always playing with Gretzky or Lemieux or Yzerman.
Shanahan comfortably fits the mold of guys that the HHOF has inducted over the years who were big cogs in great teams but not historic greats. I mentioned guys like Henri Richard and Cournoyer, which is a group Shanahan fits well into, and he's well ahead of guys like Glenn Anderson, Clark Gillies and so on
Justin said:
No, they do. I just showed you that they do. The problem you're having is that you seem to think what I'm saying is that absent everything else he did, Brooks would have made the Hall of Fame strictly as an NCAA coach, similar to the way that Kilrea made the Hall of Fame strictly as a CHL coach. I'm not saying that. I'm saying that his history as one of the better NCAA coaches of all-time in addition to his years in the NHL as well as his time with USA compose the body of a career that was elected to the Hall of Fame.
Here's his bio from when he was inducted:
http://www.hhof.com/htmlinduct/ind06Brooks.shtml
So, by your estimation, they sure talk a lot about things they "didn't count".
Remember, I'm not of the belief that the HHOF is beholden to "precedent" the way you are. I mean, Brian Kilrea is in the HHOF but it's not like every great CHL coach ever is in either. Herb Brooks, and the totality of what he did, got him elected. But, and now for the fourth time, I don't think that's a direct comparison to what a player may have done in one particular moment or series.
Justin said:
That's an entirely false dichotomy. You can think what he did in '72 means something without thinking he deserves to be inducted into the Hall of Fame. Much in the same way I think Wendel Clark "meant something" to Leafs fans without thinking he should go into the Hall of Fame(and for what it's worth, if I had to choose between Henderson and Clark, I'm choosing Clark).
As I said earlier, not inducting Henderson doesn't mean that the HHOF doesn't acknowledge that the '72 series happened or it's relative importance. I can understand the impact it had on this country and still be of the opinion that the HHOF should not pay attention to the geo-political significance of hockey games when it comes to inducting players.
Shanahan was a career-long second fiddle who had seasons of over 80 points only 4 times and has a PPG out of the top 115. His numbers look better due to longevity. Again, he's not a slam dunk. He's borderline in my books.Nik V. Debs said:
Where you're seriously erring is Herb Brooks. I vehemently disagree. Herb Brooks spent a life time in hockey and all that, but MANY people do. Do they all get into the HHOF? No. And again, Herb Brooks' NCAA accomplishments DO NOT count because they've never considered any other NCAA coaches for the HHOF ever! Brian Kilrea is the exception, not the rule. Let's look at Brooks' body of work:
-Many years in the NCAA which by all indications doesn't count as criteria for the HHOF
-Largely unimpressive NHL tenure
-1980 "Miracle on Ice' team
It's clear Brooks was inducted because of 1980. He undoubtedly never would have gotten inducted otherwise. Brooks was the coach of a team that unexpectedly won a tournament and got inducted for it. Surely the PLAYER who actually won the series for their team should get inducted as well.
Henderson was the greatest player in the greatest series ever played and changed hockey forever. His goal is hugely important to hockey history, Canadian history, and yes, Russian history. But you already know the magnitude of Henderson's accomplishment. The Hockey Hall of Fame took into consideration Brook's momentary brilliance and have been ignoring Henderson's momentary brilliance for far too long.
Brooks was inducted posthumously in 2006 as an ode to the 1980 US Olympic team. Let's please not let the same thing happen with Henderson where they inevitably induct him posthumously as well. Henderson deserves to be in the HHOF - get him in there.
bustaheims
Active member
Justin said:
Phil Esposito, that team's leading scorer, was the best player on that team, not Paul Henderson.
Justin said:
I'm pretty sure every single Russian on the planet would disagree with you there.
GhostofPotvin29
New member
Justin said:
I'm pretty sure every single Russian on the planet would disagree with you there.
[/quote]
I think I agree with him. The Russians just celebrated the 72 series recently, so I believe it's considered an important series there. While the goal wasn't a positive memory for them, it's still a big part of their hockey history I think.
Potvin29 said:
I think I agree with him. The Russians just celebrated the 72 series recently, so I believe it's considered an important series there. While the goal wasn't a positive memory for them, it's still a big part of their hockey history I think.
[/quote]
When the 72 reunion traveled to Russia this past September one of team members (can't remember which one) said that Canadians would be surprised how important the series is in Russia. Apparently they're selling commemorative DVDs in Russia right now just as they are in Canada. The Russians considered the series a "win" for them because they proved to the world that they're as good as the best of them.
bustaheims
Active member
Justin said:
Which would mean that series is important to them, not the goal itself.
Kin
New member
Justin said:
I'm sorry but your argument can't just be contradiction. I've emphatically shown that you're wrong about him being the "second fiddle" on the Blues for most of his time there and the same is true when he was on the Devils. I appreciate that you never saw him play during these years and so you're working at a handicap here but saying he was worse than Hull or McLean in those years is like someone twenty years from now saying PA Parenteau was better than Alex Ovechkin last year because he scored one more point. It's a facile argument that doesn't account for the totality of Shanahan's actual career which was where he was the best player on a series of bad to so-so teams until he became one of the most important players on one of the greatest teams of all time.
Justin said:
Which is fine. I don't think I'd say borderline but at least there's some nuance there. I'd say he probably deserves to get in. He's certainly better qualified for it then guys like Gillies, Anderson or Ciccarelli and probably even better than guys like Henri Richard, Cournoyer or Jari Kurri. He'd be a worthy choice but he's not someone like a Sakic or a Chelios who should be an automatic, no-brainer induction which is evidenced by the fact that he didn't get in last year. The problem is that you didn't say he was "borderline" you said that "he doesn't deserve to be in the HHOF plain and simple" something that is demonstrably false, both empirically and argumentatively.
Justin said:
Well, first of all, neither of us has any idea who the HHOF selection committee has or hasn't considered. All we know is who they've elected, their criteria and their stated reasons for doing so. They have elected Herb Brooks and they say in pretty clear language that his NCAA time played a part in his election, as it should. The reason not a lot of CHL or NCAA coaches are going to be elected entirely on the basis of their time there is that those are largely seen as minor leagues and the truly successful will move on and have a relatively short tenure there, as Herb Brooks did. His three national titles at the University of Minnesota came in only seven years as a head coach there. The HHOF, as you say, made an exception for Kilrea by acknowledging his terrific career in the CHL much like when they elected Herb Brooks, they acknowledged his accomplishments at all levels of the game and took into account his success in the NCAA as well as elsewhere. Brooks, like Kilrea, was an exception, not the rule.
Justin said:
Well, here's where I'm inclined to say for the fifth time that it's disingenuous to compare someone elected as a builder directly to someone you think should be inducted as a player but, for the sake of fun, let's.
Justin said:
Except, of course, their stated criteria and their own web page on the guy's induction. So you'll forgive me if when weighing the HHOF's stated selection criteria as well as their stated rationale for Brooks' induction against your use of capital letters(are you yelling?) in simply stating your opinion I'm inclined to go with what the HHOF says about his time in the NCAA vs. what you say.
Justin said:
Like you and the early years of Shanahan and Chelios' career, I'm unfamiliar with Herb Brooks' tenure as a NHL coach for the most part so I decided to look at it in a little depth.
First and foremost, I think you're relying a little too heavily on the most simplistic possible measurement of a coach's work. A won-loss record doesn't tell the whole story of how a coach did, as evidenced by the fact that the Jack Adams award is almost never given to the coach who simply has the best won loss record. Most coaches performance are weighed by looking at the won-loss record vs. the result one would expect given the talent on the team.
Right away, there seems to be some confusion about what Brooks' record actually was. Hockey-reference.com has him at 219-219-66-2, the HHOF has him at 219-221-66 and Wikipedia has him at 219-222-66-0 which they probably got from Hockeydb. Either way, referring to it as a "losing record" may be technically true but it's only just and doesn't tell us much.
(for the purposes of my digging, I'm going to use the Hockey-Reference numbers just because I find them pretty reliable, either way the difference isn't much)
For starters, the thing that immediately jumps out at me is that like your misleading presentation re: Shanahan and Hull on the Blues, there's one season that throws our picture off a little. Brooks finished 19-48-13 with the '87-'88 North Stars. That was a terrible team. He probably deserves some of the blame there but I'd challenge you to look over that team and tell me they should have been significantly better than they were.
Anyways, without that season, Brooks record becomes 200-171-53-2, which isn't all that bad. In five of the remaining six years his record is at or above .500. That includes a year going 40-37-7 with an ok Devils team before being knocked out of the playoffs by the then two-time defending Stanley Cup champion Penguins and taking over a 99-00 Penguins team mid-season that had a record of 6-13-3-4 and turning them around to go 29-21-5-2 and winning a playoff round. I don't know that an argument can really be made that he should have gotten more out of either team. The Devils' team's three leading scorers were Claude Lemieux, Alexander Semak and Stephane Richer. In net they had a tandem of Chris Terreri and Craig Billington. Then he took over a floundering Penguins team and got a pretty good result out of them. That team did have Jagr near his best but their #1 goalie was JS Aubin and their defense stunk. I think he did a pretty good job there, all things considered.
That leaves us with the bulk of his coaching career, three and a half seasons coaching the Rangers. His record there was 131-113-41 and winning two playoff rounds in three years. Pretty good, not great, but I think it looks a little better if you dig a little deeper.
To consider
-There's not a single Hall of Famer or great player on these teams. His leading scorers were guys like Mike Rogers, Mark Pavelich, Anders Hedberg, Don Maloney and guys like that.
- The goaltending was handled by the likes of Steve Weeks, Eddie Mio and Glen Hanlon. None of whom, I think you'd agree, are household names.
- Defense, one of the harder things to judge with a stat sheet, wasn't home to a bunch of Norris winners either.
So in that light, the record's actually pretty good. Consider, for instance, that the team Brooks took over the year before had gone 30-36-14 and in Brooks' first year went 39-27-14. A one year jump of 29 points. When Brooks was fired in 84-85 the team was at 15-22-8. Without Brooks, the team was worse, going 11-22-2. The next year, they were lousy again, going 36-38-6.
So then we get to the playoffs. Being as you started watching hockey well after the days of the Norris/Smythe/Adams/Patrick division days you might not know that a team's first two playoff rounds would be against teams from within their division. Now, Brooks' teams, never made it out of their division. They went 12-12 in the playoffs under Brooks, never making it to the third round. Pretty unimpressive at a glance, right?
Except, of course, when you look at their actual division. Every single year Herb Brooks was there, the Rangers got knocked out of the playoffs by...the New York Islanders. One of the all-time greatest teams. Loaded with Hall of Famers. Mike Bossy, Bryan Trottier, Denis Potvin, Bobby Smith...in two of those seasons those teams won the back end of their four straight Stanley Cups.
And Herb Brooks? He actually did pretty well against them. With his group of Mike Rogers, Steve Weeks and Anders Hedberg's he went 6-11 against them. Not impressive? Against everyone else in the playoffs over those three years the Islanders went 30-12, 29-8 without their one series loss to the Oilers. In 82-83 the Islanders swept the Gretzky/Messier/Coffey Oilers, a team that had gone 48-17-15, but were taken to six games by the 35-35-10 Rangers. To even get to the Islanders the Rangers first swept the 49-23-8 Flyers in the opening round. To me, that looks like a heck of a coaching job.
In retrospect, and with some proper context, the job Herb Brooks did as a NHL coach actually looks pretty good. His time with the Rangers, especially. Throw in his work as a scout/executive and I wouldn't describe his time in the NHL as unimpressive at all. Not independently worthy of HHOF induction but another argument in his favor.
Justin said:
More on this later, but I do think that you should have to also acknowledge the 2002 Silver Medal. Between 1976 and 2006 this is where the USA finished in Olympic Hockey: 5th, 1st, 7th, 7th, 4th, 8th, 6th, 2nd, 8th. For a thirty year span, the only success that the US Olympic Hockey team had was when Herb Brooks was coaching them.
Justin said:
See, this is the problem. I actually agree with the second sentence there and I'd agree with the first if you put in "in large part". Absent the 1980 victory, Brooks probably doesn't get inducted(unless, of course, he went back to Minnesota, won a bunch more NCAA titles, and ended up getting inducted similarly to the way Kilrea was)
But you just can't discount his other accomplishments as parts of the resume that added to his argument. He was a great NCAA coach and he was a good NHL coach and he was a well respected scout and executive and, yes, he may well be one of the great international coaches of all time. The men who are on the HHOF selection committee, no matter how often I disagree with them, aren't idiots. They didn't elect Herb Brooks because they didn't understand the sum of his contributions to the sport. When they discussed it, as they do, they certainly talked about the entirety of his career.
So does Brooks go in, absent 1980? No but that isn't the same thing as saying nothing else mattered to the committee. By saying it didn't you're not contradicting me, you're contradicting what the HHOF said on the matter. With all due respect, that's an argument you can't win.
Justin said:
Aside from the main disagreement, I do think that you're also mistaken in the way you're characterizing the USA's victory in Lake Placid.
One of the arguments I've made is that the HHOF selection committee should largely ignore the geopolitical aspects of international tournaments. I don't think they should weigh in on what the '98 gold medal meant for Czech sovereignty or what beating Sweden meant for Belarus in '02. They should focus on the hockey.
The 1980 gold medal, stripped of it's significant geopolitical import, is a far more impressive feat than Canada's win in 1972. The Summit Series was the Soviet national team against a team of NHL all-stars. Hall of Famers like the Espositos, the Mahovlich's, Bobby Clarke, Brad Park, Stan Mikita, Ken Dryden. Canada winning wasn't an upset at all. The drama in the series didn't come from the fact that Canada won, it came from the fact that Canada didn't demolish the USSR as had been largely predicted.
The 1980 gold medal? Stripped of anything to do with the cold war it might be the single greatest upset in the history of sports. The Soviet team demolished international hockey in those years and Herb Brooks beat them with a bunch of college kids, the best of whom in an NHL sense was probably Neal Broten. Not a Hall of Famer in the bunch. Viewed strictly through the prism of sport, the two accomplishments are not really comparable.
Justin said:
Except, of course, that Henderson didn't "win the series" for Canada, no more than Sidney Crosby "won" the gold medal for Canada in 2010. Scoring a crucial goal, even a winning goal, is not tantamount to winning the series by yourself. It was a team effort and, as busta points out, the best player on the team was probably Phil Esposito anyways.
The most important player for the US in their 1980 victory was probably Jim Craig and a goalie, more than anyone on the ice, probably has the best claim to "winning" anything. Craig's not in the HHOF. Henderson's induction would make a far better argument for Craig than Brooks' does for Henderson.
Justin said:
It's a different argument because I don't think historical significance should matter to the HHOF but I think there's a big difference between something having a great deal of social/cultural significance and it being hugely important to history. When I think of things that are "hugely important" to Canadian history I tend to think of things like Confederation, Juno Beach, the Kitchen Accord and the various other pages of my grade 12 history textbook I doodled on. The '72 Summit Series has a great sporting significance and has an impact on the sort of nebulous search for a national identity in the 60's and 70's but I think the importance you're talking about is probably overstated by hockey fans.
(edit: Also, the "Greatest Series ever played"? Eh, not from a talent point of view. Remember, Canada's two best players weren't even there. The 87 Canada Cup probably trumps it)
Justin said:
The HHOF should be about rewarding greatness. It should be about the sport. It should be about accomplishment within the sport. It shouldn't be about the subjective attribution of cultural significance to the sport. There's a place for history and there's a place for acknowledging the impact the sport has outside of a traditional context but that is not in the wing of the HHOF that inducts historically great players. By advocating Henderson be inducted you're saying that that impact should trump the actual sport and who was better at playing it.
Let me use another example. Willie O'Ree has tremendous historical importance to the game of hockey. Willie O'Ree has received numerous honors from institutions whose mandate it is to recognize those contributions, including the Order of Canada. Is Willie O'Ree in the HHOF? No, he isn't. Because he wasn't a great NHL player, whether because he wasn't afforded the opportunity or not. His legacy, his historical importance, can be recognized and celebrated without putting him in a class with the calibre of inducted players in the HHOF. So can Henderson's.
In a way, the two topics dovetail nicely. Brendan Shanahan has an international record that's terrific, including an Olympic gold medal, Canada Cup and World Championship. Brendan Shanahan won three Stanley Cups to Henderson's none. Brendan Shanahan's career numbers dwarf Henderson's, both in total, scoring almost three times as many goals in the NHL as Henderson did and in terms of opportunity, with a PPG much higher than Henderson's. In short, Brendan Shanahan was twice the player Paul Henderson was. To induct Henderson and not Shanahan, regardless of the cultural significance you want to ascribe to 1972, would be a complete perversion of the stated mandate of the HHOF.
Wow that was long.
-The Henderson file is a matter of personal opinion rather than hard facts. Obviously his NHL career doesn't get him in, it's whether you think 1972 merits and induction or not. I am of the personal opinion that he deserves to be in the HHOF, you do not share that opinion. Whatever.
-Brooks never would have gotten in without 1980, I'm pretty sure you agreed to that in your long mish-mash, so again, whatever.
-Shanahan is borderline rather than "doesn't deserve to be in," I've already conceded that, but if it were up to me he wouldn't get in unless it's a weaker year.
-The Henderson file is a matter of personal opinion rather than hard facts. Obviously his NHL career doesn't get him in, it's whether you think 1972 merits and induction or not. I am of the personal opinion that he deserves to be in the HHOF, you do not share that opinion. Whatever.
-Brooks never would have gotten in without 1980, I'm pretty sure you agreed to that in your long mish-mash, so again, whatever.
-Shanahan is borderline rather than "doesn't deserve to be in," I've already conceded that, but if it were up to me he wouldn't get in unless it's a weaker year.