Gretzky tops all-time rankings
Which players have done best in annual top players awards voting?
Wayne Gretzky is the greatest player of all time. Nicklas Lidstrom is the greatest player of this generation. And Alex Ovechkin is the greatest player today.
At least, that’s how the three players are rated on The Cult
of Hockey’s list of the Top 50 NHL players of all time.
The Cult of Hockey first ran the list in 2008 and has now updated it in an attempt to rank players in a fairer and more accurate manner.
Unlike most other such alltime player rankings, The
Cult’s rankings are not based on hockey experts or on hardcore fans looking back in time and relying on memory or scoring statistics. Instead,
The Cult’s rankings are based on all-time NHL Hart, Conn Smythe and Norris Memorial Trophy voting results.
Such annual top player votes are seen as an excellent piece of evidence for determining alltime greatness in other sports, such as baseball.
“They provide the best record indeed, the best possible record of the value that players are perceived as having at the time they are active,” writes the renowned baseball analyst Bill James in The Historical Baseball Abstract. “It is a subjective record, compiled by on-the-scene, informed observers. It is not always right, but it deserves respect.”
James argues that no matter how much a sports history buff knows about a past era of the game, that buff can’t know as much as those who actually watched the games, day-in, day-out, and knew well the mannerisms, witticisms, confrontations, friendships, habits, accomplishments, failures and customs of the players of the day.
“That is why I believe that, in evaluating players, much respect should be given to the opinions of the player’s contemporaries, both afield and in the press box (or, for that matter, in the seats). It’s not that they’re always right; they’re not. The sportswriters of the 1920s were as prone to misjudgments, and outright partisanship, as we are today. But they knew so much more about those players than we do today, or than we ever can.”
The Hart Memorial Trophy has been awarded to the NHL’s MVP every year since 1924 and is the single best guide for determining greatness in NHL players, even if it has undervalued defencemen in recent decades.
In The Cult rankings, six players were given “top player points” for each NHL year, with the points going to three forwards, two defencemen and one goalie in each season.
A player earned three points if he finished first in MVP voting. So Gretzky, with his nine Hart Trophies, earned 27 of his 37 top player points in that manner.
A player earned two points if he finished second in Hart Trophy voting in the preSecond World War period. In the post-Second World War period, voters started to undervalue defencemen. To correct for this in our rankings, the winner of the Norris Trophy, awarded to the NHL’s top defenceman each year, took the second place points. Lidstrom, with his seven Norris Trophy wins, earned 14 of his 20 points that way. The four other top players in a season also got one point each.
Finally, we awarded three points to a player every time he won the Conn Smythe Trophy. The Smythe has only been awarded since 1965, so for the period before then, The Cult relied on reconciled Conn Smythe Trophy voting, done by a group of hockey historians and experts working with The Hockey News in 2001. This group selected playoff MVPs between 1917 to 1964.
The runaway winner of The Cult’s ranking is Gretzky. He collected 37 points, 32 of them when he was with the Oilers. Red Wings great Gordie Howe came in second with 29 points. Bobby Orr was third with 25 points. Rounding out the Top 10 were Mario Lemieux, 21 points, Lidstrom, 20, Jean Beliveau and Eddie Shore, 19, Maurice Richard and Ray Bourque, 16, and Howie Morenz and Doug Harvey, 15.
The rest of the top 50: Ted Kennedy, 14, Patrick Roy, Bill Cowley, Red Kelly, Guy Lafleur, 13, Bobby Hull, Bobby Clarke, Stan Mikita, Pierre Pilote, 12, Dominik Hasek, Syl Apps Sr., 11, Alex Ovechkin, Milt Schmidt, Mark Messier, Nels Stewart, Phil Esposito, 10, Terry Sawchuk, Bryan Trottier, 9, Charlie Conacher, Elmer Lach, Evgeni Malkin, Jaromir Jagr, Paul Coffey, Jack Stewart, Denis Potvin, Larry Robinson, 8, Ken Dryden, Bill Cook, Lionel Conacher, King Clancy, Brian Leetch, Chris Chelios, 7, Tiny Thompson, Glenn Hall, Jack Darragh, Andy Bathgate, Mike Bossy, Joe Sakic, Brad Park, Earl Siebert, Scott Niedermayer, 6.