Jaromir Jagr

[Kin]

OMG I misspelled a word twice.

Four times. I was trying to be polite.

But I'm glad to see that you're moving the goal post now and saying that OH.... you meant GOALscorer... not just points... but goals.

Dude, I think the late hour might be getting to you in more ways than one. I'm not "moving the goalpost" because I've never said I thought that Gretzky had a less impressive overall career offensive output than Jagr. What I've said, or pointed out with numbers, is that I think Jagr was the better goalscorer, Gretzky the better overall offensive player but that to be better at anything than Gretzky is pretty remarkable. 

Also, it highlights the point I made earlier about how a lot of Gretzky's "dominance" was specifically related to the era he played in like Chamberlain and Ruth. Far from being "on his way out" at the age of 26 or 27 Gretzky went from putting up goalscoring numbers the sport had never seen(or has seen since) to being still very good but certainly not the best in the league. After leading the league in 86-87 he was never in the top 3 in goals again, only in the top 5 once. Seeing that, it's pretty hard for me to not conclude that a lot of Gretzky's outlandishly high goal totals had to do with the conditions of the time and his relative uniqueness as a player.

And, to be honest, it's hard for me not to "move the goalposts" when your whole argument is so scattershot. We agree that Gretzky's offensive numbers are better than Jagr's. That is not a subject of disagreement. We're disagreeing on where he ranks after Gretzky which you do by...constantly comparing him to Gretzky. If you want to compare him to Howe or Hull or someone else, why not do that?

Look, you're a big fan of comparing guys to their peers so think of it this way. In the history of the game there are only 5 players who've won 5 or more Art Ross trophies. Gretzky, Lemieux, Howe, Esposito, Jagr.

We agree on Lemieux/Gretzky. They're 1-2 all-time. So my choice for #3 is the guy who's not only tied for 4th all time in scoring trophy wins it's the guy that, as you point out, is the only one of the five whose career overlaps with the #1 and #2 best guys of all time. Absent those guys being in the league Jagr is tied for 2nd all time in Art Ross trophy wins and it's really not that controversial to think that the guy who's tied for 2nd all-time in Art Trophy wins is the 3rd best offensive forward of all time. If you think, as I do, that the quality/calibre of play has generally improved over time than, yes, I'll lean towards the guy who had to shoot on goalies who worked out in the off-season, played in a league with the world's best and so on.

Chill out.

 

[Kin]

Also, as a minor point and to bring the thread somewhat back on track, I'd say the era where Jagr is clearly the best offensive player in the league is from when Lemieux retired the first time to when Crosby entered the league. So a solid 10 year span.

 

[McGarnagle]

If you ask me, Jaromir Jagr, in his prime, was much better than anti-lock brakes.

 

[losveratos]

OMG I misspelled a word twice.

Four times. I was trying to be polite.

But I'm glad to see that you're moving the goal post now and saying that OH.... you meant GOALscorer... not just points... but goals.

Dude, I think the late hour might be getting to you in more ways than one. I'm not "moving the goalpost" because I've never said I thought that Gretzky had a less impressive overall career offensive output than Jagr. What I've said, or pointed out with numbers, is that I think Jagr was the better goalscorer, Gretzky the better overall offensive player but that to be better at anything than Gretzky is pretty remarkable. 

Also, it highlights the point I made earlier about how a lot of Gretzky's "dominance" was specifically related to the era he played in like Chamberlain and Ruth. Far from being "on his way out" at the age of 26 or 27 Gretzky went from putting up goalscoring numbers the sport had never seen(or has seen since) to being still very good but certainly not the best in the league. After leading the league in 86-87 he was never in the top 3 in goals again, only in the top 5 once. Seeing that, it's pretty hard for me to not conclude that a lot of Gretzky's outlandishly high goal totals had to do with the conditions of the time and his relative uniqueness as a player.

And, to be honest, it's hard for me not to "move the goalposts" when your whole argument is so scattershot. We agree that Gretzky's offensive numbers are better than Jagr's. That is not a subject of disagreement. We're disagreeing on where he ranks after Gretzky which you do by...constantly comparing him to Gretzky. If you want to compare him to Howe or Hull or someone else, why not do that?

Look, you're a big fan of comparing guys to their peers so think of it this way. In the history of the game there are only 5 players who've won 5 or more Art Ross trophies. Gretzky, Lemieux, Howe, Esposito, Jagr.

We agree on Lemieux/Gretzky. They're 1-2 all-time. So my choice for #3 is the guy who's not only tied for 4th all time in scoring trophy wins it's the guy that, as you point out, is the only one of the five whose career overlaps with the #1 and #2 best guys of all time. Absent those guys being in the league Jagr is tied for 2nd all time in Art Ross trophy wins and it's really not that controversial to think that the guy who's tied for 2nd all-time in Art Trophy wins is the 3rd best offensive forward of all time. If you think, as I do, that the quality/calibre of play has generally improved over time than, yes, I'll lean towards the guy who had to shoot on goalies who worked out in the off-season, played in a league with the world's best and so on.

Chill out.

It's getting later and I'm going to sleep pretty soon and I'll try to remember to check this again tomorrow. But Let's just take your final nail in the coffin there and expand on it with a few of my points.

1. There's a reason you said there's only x players that got 5 or more art ross's and thats because if you raise the number to six Howe clearly beats him for the 3rd spot. And using your logic he is clearly 3rd best offensive player ranked via number of Trophies in that category.

2. The person he's tied with for 4th wins the tie breaker incredibly easily. And I'll elaborate if you bear with me here. If I'm not mistaken assuming two players have identical point totals the player with the most goals wins the Art Ross correct? And seeing as we're using trophies as our measurement here and not numbers I'll now include the Rocket Richard (Assuming it actually existed to be awarded during the time period of these players) to see if we can break the tie. In the history of his time in the game Jagr would have won the Rocket Richard exactly zero times. Every single year he played he wouldn't have received it if it was available. However his cohort at the 4th position of Art Ross winners would have won it 6 years in a row from 1969 to 1974. Showing that theres yet another player besting him in scoring hardware.

3.And the number 1 winner of most (hypothetical) Rockey Richard trophies would have been Bobby Hull. Yet another player that I would say is a better historically offensive forward than him. And he also sported the Art Ross 3 times. Meaning 10 scoring awards to Jagr's 5.

Point me in another direction and I'll try to show how in my opinion you're wrong about the number 3 slot again.

The man is a machine driven to get points until all his hair and teeth fall out and that longevity and work ethic should be celebrated and heralded as maybe the best in the history of the sport. But far too many amazingly awesome offensively talented players have played the game through it's storied history for me to slide him in at number 3 talent wise. But given enough time assuming the world doesn't explode anytime soon... just his raw point totals as a 70 year old man still rocking 3rd line duties could even usurp Gretzky from the #1 all time career point totals. I wouldn't even be that surprised because I would have 30 years to witness it over.

I still wouldn't change my opinion. But I would follow his health regimen religiously.

 

[Kin]

1. There's a reason you said there's only x players that got 5 or more art ross's and thats because if you raise the number to six Howe clearly beats him for the 3rd spot. And using your logic he is clearly 3rd best offensive player ranked via number of Trophies in that category.

It's pretty clear that's not my logic as I've repeatedly said that the guy Howe is tied with for second is the best offensive player of all time, including Gretzky who has almost twice as many as Lemieux. Accordingly it's a pretty big misread to say I'm making a strict "art ross trophies determines rankings" argument. Disagree with me all you want, you have to admit the case I'm making is more nuanced than that.

I bring up the number of Art Ross trophies only to counter the fact that you think the idea of Jagr in this discussion is crazy, like he's barely in consideration for the spot when, again, he's won the 4th most scoring titles of anyone who ever played the game and did so at a time when the league was, in my opinion, at its very most competitive.

2. The person he's tied with for 4th wins the tie breaker incredibly easily. And I'll elaborate if you bear with me here. If I'm not mistaken assuming two players have identical point totals the player with the most goals wins the Art Ross correct? And seeing as we're using trophies as our measurement here and not numbers I'll now include the Rocket Richard (Assuming it actually existed to be awarded during the time period of these players) to see if we can break the tie. In the history of his time in the game Jagr would have won the Rocket Richard exactly zero times. Every single year he played he wouldn't have received it if it was available. However his cohort at the 4th position of Art Ross winners would have won it 6 years in a row from 1969 to 1974. Showing that theres yet another player besting him in scoring hardware.

I genuinely don't know what to make of this argument. It's a mishmash of competing statements that really don't bear any relation to anything I've said. Again, read above. I'm not making a case entirely based on any one consideration.

I still wouldn't change my opinion.

For the record I'm not overly interested in changing your opinion or "winning" the argument the way you seem to be. Being as you've made repeated reference to what you think my tendencies are in discussions like this I hope you'll not be too offended if I make my first about you and that is you, when someone disagrees with you, seem to get really invested in "winning" a discussion like it's something that can be scored which seemingly makes you especially resistant to any considerations that contradict what you want to talk about(like, say, the points I've made about your reliance on a very narrow definition of "dominance" ) and causes you to do what you did above when I bring up something that should act as a consideration(Jagr's position on the all time Art Ross leaders list) and act like it's the entirety of a position. 

All I'm interested in is presenting my argument as best as I can. I'm far more interested in other people reading it and it informing their opinion than I am in trying to score points in whatever system you think this sort of discussion amounts to. I don't see this as adversarial.

 

[losveratos]

For the record I'm not overly interested in changing your opinion or "winning" the argument the way you seem to be. Being as you've made repeated reference to what you think my tendencies are in discussions like this I hope you'll not be too offended if I make my first about you and that is you, when someone disagrees with you, seem to get really invested in "winning" a discussion like it's something that can be scored which seemingly makes you especially resistant to any considerations that contradict what you want to talk about(like, say, the points I've made about your reliance on a very narrow definition of "dominance" ) and causes you to do what you did above when I bring up something that should act as a consideration(Jagr's position on the all time Art Ross leaders list) and act like it's the entirety of a position. 

All I'm interested in is presenting my argument as best as I can. I'm far more interested in other people reading it and it informing their opinion than I am in trying to score points in whatever system you think this sort of discussion amounts to. I don't see this as adversarial.

If you're going to quote a word in relation to me then show how you rise above it and you're better than said word and not interested in doing or acting upon said word... then maybe it should be a word the person actually said no? Might help make your point better. And on this particular website you are the definition of adversarial. I've changed my opinion dozens of times in numerous situation when logical arguments are presented to me in a way that makes sense to me. (Like most people of course)

But seeing as you have risen above the conversation and that you're just presenting your ideas for the universe to look upon and have stated now that you have no interest in having your mind open to actually changing. Something that I said a few times during this back and forth that I was willing to do if I could see it better from your vantage point and made aware of something I wasn't previously considering. Then theres no point continuing to trade information.

So you keep your opinion and I'll keep mine. Have a good day ^_~

 

[Kin]

If you're going to quote a word in relation to me then show how you rise above it and you're better than said word and not interested in doing or acting upon said word... then maybe it should be a word the person actually said no?

Keep moving the goal line if you want but that doesn't win an argument.

I'm pretty comfortable with my characterization.

Anyways, the last thing I want to say is that I think one of the main things wrong with the way you're looking at things is that when it comes to creating a context for the numbers a player puts up the only sort that you seem interested in is one that pits players vs. players from their own era. While that's a useful piece of information and does help us when it comes to normalizing numbers in a historical context when we're trying to weigh players against one another from different eras we need to be able to contextualize these players in a sort of historical norm.

So take the comparison of Jagr vs. Esposito. I think there are two important reasons where a strict "This is how they scored relative to the rest of the league" comparison is flawed and heavily weighted unfairly against Jagr.

The first is simple and largely irrefutable. When Esposito was leading the league in anything the simple truth is that many of the best hockey players in the world were not playing in the NHL. Scandanavians hadn't broke into the game, the Red Army team may have been the best in the world and there was a whole separate North American league that had attracted players like Bobby Hull and Gordie Howe and so on and so forth. "Leading the NHL in points" was a very different thing to do in 2001 than it was in 1971.

The other main difference, and we touched on it earlier, is that just because all players played under similar conditions it doesn't mean that those conditions affect all players equally. Take two players like Keith Tkachuk and Pavel Bure. Both of them very, very good players and terrific goal scorers but that's where the similarity ends. If you or I were going to sit down and think of ways to change the game, I don't think it would be very hard to think of scenarios where changes would effect each player differently. The conditions of a game don't simply affect the total number of points everyone has, it greatly changes the types of players that succeed. I don't think, for instance, it's controversial to suggest that the hooking/holding/obstruction heavy era of the 90's were kinder to Tkachuk and his way of scoring goals than it was to Bure and his.

And when you hear people talk about Esposito and what he was good at, they tend to tell a pretty limited story. He was a guy terrific at parking himself in front of the net and scoring goals from in close. Two of the great hockey jokes of the time are directly related to his fairly limited skill set both his line of "They all look like slapshots in the newspaper" and "Jesus Saves...and Esposito scores on the rebound". I think there's quite a bit of evidence to suggest that Esposito, as good as his numbers were, are very much a product of time and place.

So adaptability counts and one of the great things we've seen about Jagr is his ability to succeed in what are essentially different eras. He was a terrific scorer in the high scoring early 90's. He was the best offensive player in the hook and hold years. Post 04-05 lockout he returned to being one of the league's very best players in the PP heavy years and now, at the age of 44 no less, he's proven himself to still be a very effective NHL player in the speed and structure focused game we have today.

On good teams, bad teams, with talented teammates and not so talented teammates, at age 19 and 44...we've seen Jagr in just about every situation there is and he's excelled in all of them. To me, that separates him quite a bit from the pack of strong contenders for that #3 spot.

 

[Bullfrog]

He's a legend. And he's a genuinely interesting guy, too.

Jagr gonna Jagr.