Top 25 Slovakian Players Of All-Time – #3
 

1. Peter Stastny
2. Zdeno Chara

Hm, Bondra or Palffy? Or... Hossa (the heresy!)?

Hossa, and I don't think it's close either.

Purely by NHL careers, probably not.

Two things -

Maybe the choices could be listed alphabetically, to avoid any sort of bias.

And is there any chance we make this a modern hockey only thing? (80s and onwards). I sometimes find it very difficult to compare players across eras. I mean where do we put Dzurilla? I can easily make an argument for him to be as high as number 2, yet I don't see him going anywhere in the top 5 this way.

I'd vote for Nedomansky if he were in option. :deadhorse

Of the guys listed, I'd say Hossa by a hair over Palffy.

i see quite a bit of separation between hossa and palffy, personally. i love palffy and don't really care for hossa, but seems like hossa was just as impactful at his peak (goals finishes of 4, 4, 5, 6 and points finishes of 5 and 6) with a huge edge in longevity. hossa was not the greatest playoff performer over the course of his career, but he did outscore palffy's entire playoff career in one finals run with pittsburgh and came relatively close to it three other times.

Hossa got a lot of points getting fed by Crosby in 2009, that's for sure. :) He's still probably the right answer here. I see Palffy as much more consistent offensively, though.

yeah, hossa doesn't deserve all that much credit for '08, especially when he crapped the bed in the playoffs on numerous other occasions. but it's still more than palffy.

in terms of consistency, that's kind of weird because i kind of see hossa as a rich man's mike gartner. i said in the last poll, i can't believe i'm turning around and marian hossa is at 400 goals and 900 points. but he basically scored 30 goals for a decade, from his second year until he went to chicago. for era, that's very impressive.

2000: 19th in goals, 61st in points
2001: 30th, 33rd
2002: 25th, 35th
2003: 4th, 14th
2004: 6th, 5th
2006: 12th, 11th (one goal from tying for top ten in both)
2007: 5th, 6th
2008: 29th, 44th
2009: 5th, 37th
...
2012: 31st, 12th


whereas palffy has five full seasons where he was at the level of hossa's best offensively, but couldn't really be counted on to be healthy for most of the rest of his career. factor in that hossa is a very good defensive winger and palffy was useless when not scoring and

Yeah, among NHLer, I think it's clearly Hossa, then Palffy, then Demitra, then Bondra. Maybe there's an argument for Bondra over Demitra; I dunno.

Dzurilla and Marian Stastny are the best of the non-Nedomansky non-NHL Slovaks - comparing them to the career NHLers is the hard part! (I realize Marian played in the NHL but most of his prime was in Europe).

Hard to reconcile Dzurilla being an option for the final round of the goalie list but barely being considered for the top five of Slovaks.

I do think he should be considered for top 5. These poll threads are always very NHL-heavy though.

I have Bondra at #4, but I see where the Palffy over Bondra people are coming from (in other threads). What's your argument for Demitra (R.I.P.) over Bondra though? I believe it's impossible for Demitra to compete with 500 career NHL goals (dead puck era) and a two goal scoring wins.

Well, the NHL is the best concentration of talent in the sport of hockey. These poll threads should be NHL-heavy.

Demitra was top 10 in NHL points 3 times vs none for Bondra. That's a pretty big advantage in peak, though it's possible Bondra makes up for it in consistency. I haven't compared the two of them closely though.

It is now, but in the 70s and with a few exceptions the 80s, players from Czechoslovakia were barred from playing in the NHL for political reasons, and it doesn't make sense that their talent just sprang from nowhere when they were allowed to join the NHL.

With the exception of the Stastnys, nobody from Czechoslovakia made much of an impact in the NHL until the early 90s (Stan Mikita doesn't count). That indicates to me an emerging hockey nation, but one that wasn't quite there yet.

Yet their national team was capable of beating the Soviets. Looking at the performance of their national team in the World Championships and best on best tournaments is probably a better barometer.

How much credit the Slovaks vs Czechs on those teams deserve credit is the messy part.

I think it's true that for a variety of reasons, probably largely political, Czechoslovakia declined from the 70s to the 80s. I think that after the 1968 invasion, every great Czech or Slovak athlete wanted to join the national team to beat the Soviets, but by the early 80s, it had died down a little bit. This is just me wildly speculating, but it is true that the Czechoslovakian team saw much less success starting in the early 80s, and it couldn't all have been because the Stastnys defected.

What are you going on about? Maybe because almost nobody tried? Because they couldn't?

Or do you just think that all those great Slovaks and Czechs magically got good in the 90s?

Nobody made an impact in the NHL until the early 90s because they couldn't get out (iron curtain).

Shouldn't there be some basic history knowledge requirement to be able to post on the History board :)?

I'm old enough to remember communism, but I think a lot of posters here are too young to remember that the communist countries were not above punishing the families of defectors.

Yup, they were definitely not above that. In his book, Stastny says that this was one of his biggest worries. His family was fine in the end, but Czechoslovakia was really communism light when compared to Soviet Union, where the regime was much stricter.

As a fellow out of touch American, I like it. Definitely makes sense that would provide some extra motivation. Should common knowledge what it meant to Jagr at this point (see #68). They were playing back in the 20s and the Soviets essentially copied them when building their program, so the Czechoslovak hockey foundation was already there.

I know people point to lack of funding for the decline of some programs too, but I always thought that was a post-CSSR thing for some reason.

A few Czechs came over (Bubla, Hlinka, Nedomansky being the most successful) and while they were superstars at home, were far less effective in the NHL than in their home countries. They faltered against tougher competition. The Czechoslovak leagues were simply inferior.

edit: :)

Vaclav Nedomansky - he didn't make much impact in NHL, but trust me, if he's Canadian, he would be in HOF now.

Bondra, Palffy, Stumpel, Satan, Demitra, Svehla didn't came out of nowhere in early 90s.