As a Swede I have to vote for Sundin and it isn't really close, at all.
For as long as I've followed hockey I have never seen a better Captain than Sundin was when he was playing for Tre Kronor, I wouldn't trade him for any other player.
Actually, it's just the strongest piece of evidence in support of Sundin - and one for which Sundin supporters have no rebuttal of equivalent weight. As such, you shouldn't be surprised to see a lot of people drop it as part of their opinion if they only post once in the thread. It's hardly surprising to see Alfredsson supporters trying to attack the strongest evidence against their horse as it's slapped in their face, and less surprising that people will continue to bring it up. On that note, I'm surprised that more people haven't brought up that the NHL has rewarded leaders with the Mark Messier trophy for leadership since '07, and Sundin is the only one of these two guys who has his name on tin
The award is selected by Mark Messier alone. I guess we shouldn't have run the poll at all since Mark though Sundin was worthy of the trophy in his last ever season.
BTW I love the hyperbole in the first half of that paragraph. You'd make a great politician.
The award is selected by Mark Messier alone. I guess we shouldn't have run the poll at all since Mark though Sundin was worthy of the trophy in his last ever season.
BTW I love the hyperbole in the first half of that paragraph. You'd make a great politician.
This is all you could come up with in rebuttal to my post (2/3rds of which you edited out, lol)? Deal with all of it, and let's not get drawn down ridiculous tangents. Let's forget about the periphery stuff (like reputation, results, leadership awards and post season all-star balloting) that favours Sundin, if you like, and get back to your argument for dismissing Sundin's tenure as captain of Sweden during the period they represented their country together as further representative of anything significant.
I showed that in consecutive years leading up to Sundin's run as Swedish captain that the club had no problem changing captains - even redistributing it while the incumbent still played for the squad, and not always going to simply the longest serving ("most experienced") member of the team, either. So, ball's in your court. What does Alfredsson have to counter the fact that not once in a 10 year span did Sundin's level of play and/or "leadership" ever drop to the point that anyone, let alone Alfredsson as just one possible option, was ever considered as a necessary captain change on any Swedish team he appeared with (after Nagano, as explained earlier)?
This is all you could come up with in rebuttal to my post (2/3rds of which you edited out, lol)? Deal with all of it, and let's not get drawn down ridiculous tangents. Let's forget about the periphery stuff (like reputation, results, leadership awards and post season all-star balloting) that favours Sundin, if you like, and get back to your argument for dismissing Sundin's tenure as captain of Sweden during the period they represented their country together as further representative of anything significant.
I showed that in consecutive years leading up to Sundin's run as Swedish captain that the club had no problem changing captains - even redistributing it while the incumbent still played for the squad, and not always going to simply the longest serving ("most experienced") member of the team, either. So, ball's in your court. What does Alfredsson have to counter the fact that not once in a 10 year span did Sundin's level of play and/or "leadership" ever drop to the point that anyone, let alone Alfredsson as just one possible option, was ever considered as a necessary captain change on any Swedish team he appeared with (after Nagano, as explained earlier)?
Alfie has nothing to counter to that in regards to team Sweden. I've said it before in this thread. Sundin deserved the captaincy, he earned it and there was never a good reason for team Sweden to take away his captaincy.
I have a lot of respect for Sundin and I think he's one of the greatest captains of all time, but that doesn't mean he's better than Alfredsson and holding on to the one simple fact that Sundin captained a team over Alfredsson for less than 25 games in their entire careers which spans thousands of games is odd.
When you compare what they accomplished for their respective NHL franchises and overall contribution to the team and community then Alfredsson is the better captain. He has always been team first to the extent of deferring pay cheques while the team went through financial hardships and fostered Karlsson when he first moved to North America. His entire career has been spent playing for the same organization and he's led that organization further than Sundin ever has while becoming the first European to ever captain a team in the finals.
Alfie has nothing to counter to that in regards to team Sweden. I've said it before in this thread. Sundin deserved the captaincy, he earned it and there was never a good reason for team Sweden to take away his captaincy.
I have a lot of respect for Sundin and I think he's one of the greatest captains of all time, but that doesn't mean he's better than Alfredsson and holding on to the one simple fact that Sundin captained a team over Alfredsson for less than 25 games in their entire careers which spans thousands of games is odd.
When you compare what they accomplished for their respective NHL franchises and overall contribution to the team and community then Alfredsson is the better captain. He has always been team first to the extent of deferring pay cheques while the team went through financial hardships and fostered Karlsson when he first moved to North America. His entire career has been spent playing for the same organization and he's led that organization further than Sundin ever has while becoming the first European to ever captain a team in the finals.
Your opinion is noted. Realize though, that for every Karlsson story, there are countless other comparable Sundin ones. Even in his last season, on a new team, he is given a lot of credit for the emergence of Kesler and mentoring of the Sedins on their way from excellent players to greatness. Going back to his time in Toronto:
(Pat Quinn): "He’s what we built that team around,” Quinn said. “He was the strength. He was our captain. We had a lot of factions in that room a couple of times, but he just dealt with that. That was his area. He had that ability to manage factions so that, when you went out onto the ice, he pretty much got rid of them."
Considering how loved he became in Toronto after the initial uproar of him taking the torch from Doug Gilmour, and considering the only reason he even left Toronto was via waiving his no trade clause in order to help the Maple Leafs, I think the relative volume of internet faff you can turn up searching "Sundin + leadership" vs "Alfredsson + leadership" proves that Sundin is at least on similar ground to Alfredsson in NHL leadership terms alone... but then there's internationally on top of that.
And I'd be willing to give Alfredsson more credit for what his team did in the '07 playoffs if he didn't have such a pattern of inconsistency in the playoffs both before AND after that year. One point getting swept by Sundin's Maple Leafs in '01, good year in '02, one point in his last 7 games of the '03 playoffs, 1 G, 3 pts in '04 is still worse than any of Sundin's playoffs in terms of production, 8 straight games (out of 10 total) without a goal in the '05 playoffs, etc.
While being the first team to captain a team in the Finals is kinda cool, how much credit does that trivia factoid really deserve? Relatively speaking, mind you, because we're weighing it against some quality earlier round loss efforts put in by other European captains in previous years, mind you (Koivu and Sundin, of course). Alfredsson doesn't get 1 "point" weighted against their collective zero - especially if this is meant as part of a larger argument concerned more with performance pattern/record (particularly in the playoffs) than trivia.
Last edited by Ohashi_Jouzu: 01-06-2013 at 06:54 PM.
Your opinion is noted. Realize though, that for every Karlsson story, there are countless other comparable Sundin ones. Even in his last season, on a new team, he is given a lot of credit for the emergence of Kesler and mentoring of the Sedins on their way from excellent players to greatness.
And I'd be willing to give Alfredsson more credit for what his team did in the '07 playoffs if he didn't have such a pattern of inconsistency in the playoffs both before AND after that year. One point getting swept by Sundin's Maple Leafs in '01, good year in '02, one point in his last 7 games of the '03 playoffs, 1 G, 3 pts in '04 is still worse than any of Sundin's playoffs in terms of production, 8 straight games (out of 10 total) without a goal in the '05 playoffs, etc.
And while being the first team to captain a team in the Finals is kinda cool, but how much credit does that trivia factoid really deserve? Relatively speaking, mind you, because we're weighing it against some quality earlier round loss efforts put in by other European captains in previous years, mind you (Koivu and Sundin, of course). Alfredsson doesn't get 1 "point" weighted against their collective zero - especially if this is meant as part of a larger argument concerned more with performance pattern/record (particularly in the playoffs) than trivia.
If you're going to let Mats take credit for that then you might want to give him credit for what he was leading the Leafs into in his last few years after the lockout. That team was a complete mess.
As for the 2nd paragraph, Alfredsson led his team to the playoffs a total of 15 times compared to Mats who led the Leafs to the playoff only 9 times and both have comparable PPG numbers with Mats being higher. You'll find statistically weak playoff rounds for any great player including guys like Steve Yzerman and even Mark Messier since each opportunity is going to be a relatively small sample size. So I wouldn't put too much stock into in especially since Alfredsson has put up good numbers several times including leading the playoff scoring race in 2007.
I'm not really sure what you're getting at with your 3rd paragraph but if you put any one thing under a microscope it will come out insignificant since we're judging based on multiple decades and thousands of games.
If you're going to let Mats take credit for that then you might want to give him credit for what he was leading the Leafs into in his last few years after the lockout. That team was a complete mess.
That was a terrible roster, and they still did better than the supposedly improved rosters Toronto has had since Sundin's departure. The guy tried to drag the Leafs kicking and screaming into the playoffs.
Deal with all of it, and let's not get drawn down ridiculous tangents. Let's forget about the periphery stuff (like reputation, results, leadership awards and post season all-star balloting) that favours Sundin, if you like, and get back to your argument for dismissing Sundin's tenure as captain of Sweden during the period they represented their country together as further representative of anything significant.
