I thought Reen was questioning it earlier and Dwight was defending it. To be fair to you BB I only skimmed the thread really quickly so if I misconstrued something that's my fault.
If you want to get cute with the number of top 10 finishes , might as well analyze them in details:
In 1938:
Hextall: 10th in goals
Blake: 10th in goals
In 1939:
Hextall: 5th in goals
Blake: 2nd in goals , 7th in assists and 1st in points.
In 1940:
Hextall: 1st in goals , 6th in points
Blake: 8th in goals , 10th in assists and 9th in points.
In 1941:
Hextall: 1st in goals and 2nd in points.
Blake: Nothing that season.
In 1942:
Hextall: 2nd in goals , 2nd in assists and 1st in points.
Blake: 8th in assists and 6th in points.
In 1943:
Hextall: 5th in goals and 7th in points.
Blake: 8th in assists and 7th in points.
In 1944:
Hextall: Nothing that season
Blake: 3rd in goals , 3rd in assists and 3rd in points.
In 1945:
Hextall: WAR
Blake: 3rd in goals , 9th in assist and 3rd in points.
Overall , except for his 1939 year , Blake is good but unspectacular offensively.I think we can safely say Hextall's record is superior pre-war than Blake offensively.A lot of his Top 10 are very low-end Top 10 while Hextall has more high end finishes , especially in goal scoring , which will be his main job playing with Adam Oates.
If you want to get cute with the number of top 10 finishes , might as well analyze them in details:
In 1938:
Hextall: 10th in goals
Blake: 10th in goals
In 1939:
Hextall: 5th in goals
Blake: 2nd in goals , 7th in assists and 1st in points.
In 1940:
Hextall: 1st in goals , 6th in points
Blake: 8th in goals , 10th in assists and 9th in points.
In 1941:
Hextall: 1st in goals and 2nd in points.
Blake: Nothing that season.
In 1942:
Hextall: 2nd in goals , 2nd in assists and 1st in points.
Blake: 8th in assists and 6th in points.
In 1943:
Hextall: 5th in goals and 7th in points.
Blake: 8th in assists and 7th in points.
In 1944:
Hextall: Nothing that season
Blake: 3rd in goals , 3rd in assists and 3rd in points.
In 1945:
Hextall: WAR
Blake: 3rd in goals , 9th in assist and 3rd in points.
Going by season does not change anything. The two players had identical career spans. It all comes out in the wash the same. You also continue to ignore the years AFTER the war.
Going by season does not change anything. The two players had identical career spans. It all comes out in the wash the same. You also continue to ignore the years AFTER the war.
I don't see how it doesn't change anything , your argument was basically built around the number of top 10 Blake had which made him look better , and then I showed you that many of his top 10 were low-end ones in none-war years except 39 which wasn't the case for Hextall , especially for goal scoring which his is job.
Not all Top 10s are created equal.
I'm not ignoring the year after the war , basically Blake had a 7th in assist.I'm not going to blame Hextall for his play and retirement after the war years , but it's not like Blake played a lot or made anything significant after the war era ended anyway.
I don't see how it doesn't change anything , your argument was basically built around the number of top 10 Blake had which made him look better , and then I showed you that many of his top 10 were low-end ones which wasn't the case for Hextall , especially for goal scoring which his is job.
Not all Top 10s are created equal.
Of course his top 10s make him look better - he is better.
Of course his top 10s make him look better - he is better.
Blake's goal scoring finishes outside the war years are very concerning for a guy who is suppose to be your best goal scorer on the line playing with a playmaking center with no goalscoring abilities.Taylor only has a 6th in goalscoring and Watson has none , even Patrik Elias has a better scoring record than both of them , so while my two wingers are better goal scorers , my center is also VASTLY superior than Watson in the playmaking department.Basically my line is a better mix on top of having the superior record when taking the three guys into account.
Even if you consider Blake to be better than Hextall offensively , the rest of my line is still more explosive and are a better fit.
So I guess what Reen is trying to say is that they aren't actually that far apart. Not counting war years is probably fair here because it is weak that the Habs kept all of their best players around while everyone else but the old men went to war. Blake and Hextall's five best years look very similar, though obviously Blake wins the longevity comparison here. Blake definitely had the better career, at any rate, though they seem to have been similarly talented players.
Yeah my point wasn't to say that Hextall was clearly better or anything , but both Hextall and Blake will be the best goal scorer of their line , and in that department Hextall is clearly superior.
If someone had just asked me to comment, off the top of my head, about how close Blake and Hextall were, I'd have said "not at all. Blake is a top-100 player, Hextall a top-200 player."
But Reen kinda opened my eyes here. Hextall is actually fairly close in terms of regular season offense. Blake, I think, has much better substantiated glue guy/power forward skills, and then there's that playoff record, of course. I also wouldn't completely throw out 1944 and 1945, he still played hockey at a very high level those years, my system gives him scores of 74 and 60, which still adds to his career value. But in terms of "best 5 seasons" they are practically even.
I can't imagine that they should be taken 100 picks apart. More like 20. Should Blake still be considered a top-100 player? Or is it Hextall that deserves a bump?
They should be picked way more than 20 picks apart when you consider
1) Blake is a LW - a much scarcer position
2) Blake's superior playoff record.
3) Blake won a Hart Trophy for 1939. In Hextall's best season, he was 5th. Neither placed again in a non-war year.
That said, I think Blake is a prime candidate to be dropped from the top 100 players of all time. I think his linemates Lach is in the 75-100 range and Lach has better record than Blake.
I don't see any reason to rank Blake above Selanne or Ovechkin at this point, though Blake obviously has added ATD value as a glue guy.
They should be picked way more than 20 picks apart when you consider
1) Blake is a LW - a much scarcer position
2) Blake's superior playoff record.
3) Blake won a Hart Trophy for 1939. In Hextall's best season, he was 5th. Neither placed again in a non-war year.
That said, I think Blake is a prime candidate to be dropped from the top 100 players of all time. I think his linemates Lach is in the 75-100 range and Lach has better record than Blake.
I don't see any reason to rank Blake above Selanne or Ovechkin at this point, though Blake obviously has added ATD value as a glue guy.
False , between Blake and the 200th pick , they are 15 LWers while they are 13 RWers.Not to mention after Hextall Sr. , there is quite a big of a gap between him and the next RWers.
Either way , picking someone ahead of another because of position doesn't make him better on the ice.I understand your other two points and I agree that Blake had a better career , but he's not that ahead.
That being said , I still think Hextall Sr. is in a better position to succeed on my team than Blake is on Dwight's team.
If someone had just asked me to comment, off the top of my head, about how close Blake and Hextall were, I'd have said "not at all. Blake is a top-100 player, Hextall a top-200 player."
But Reen kinda opened my eyes here. Hextall is actually fairly close in terms of regular season offense. Blake, I think, has much better substantiated glue guy/power forward skills, and then there's that playoff record, of course. I also wouldn't completely throw out 1944 and 1945, he still played hockey at a very high level those years, my system gives him scores of 74 and 60, which still adds to his career value. But in terms of "best 5 seasons" they are practically even.
I can't imagine that they should be taken 100 picks apart. More like 20. Should Blake still be considered a top-100 player? Or is it Hextall that deserves a bump?
They were 42 picks apart his year...I can't see Toe Blake being taken any later than he was (at least in terms of other LW's). I can definitely see Hextall being bumped up above some of the RW's that went before him. Obviously the whole LW vs. RW is a factor as well.
False , between Blake and the 200th pick , they are 15 LWers while they are 13 RWers.Not to mention after Hextall Sr. , there is quite a big of a gap between him and the next RWers.
Either way , picking someone ahead of another because of position doesn't make him better on the ice.I understand your other two points and I agree that Blake had a better career , but he's not that ahead.
That being said , I still think Hextall Sr. is in a better position to succeed on my team than Blake is on Dwight's team.
Yeah, but how many LW's and RW's were taken before Blake?
They should be picked way more than 20 picks apart when you consider
1) Blake is a LW - a much scarcer position
2) Blake's superior playoff record.
3) Blake won a Hart Trophy for 1939. In Hextall's best season, he was 5th. Neither placed again in a non-war year.
That said, I think Blake is a prime candidate to be dropped from the top 100 players of all time. I think his linemates Lach is in the 75-100 range and Lach has better record than Blake.
I don't see any reason to rank Blake above Selanne or Ovechkin at this point, though Blake obviously has added ATD value as a glue guy.
Yeah. I'd say Blake gets a bit of addded career value from historians (THN panel, etc) because of his years as a coach as well, which shouldn't obviously be the case. I'd say due to positional scarcity, glue guy ability and obvious skill (plus playoff skill), he's still around 100-110 overall here. Hextall should probably be in the 140-150 range to me, which is pretty much where they are. Maybe Hextall up 5 slots and Blake down five slots from where they were selected (107 for Blake, 149 for Hextall), but Blake is still more valuable here to me for sure.
However I would agree that Blake is probably a candidate to be dropped from the top 100 players of all time if we make such a list in the future.
Yeah, but how many LW's and RW's were taken before Blake?
I counted real quickly , and I had 14 LWers and 15 RWers.
I'm starting to think this whole ''position scarcity'' is a myth and is fueled by the fact there are more RWers at the very top of the food chain like Howe , Richard ,Lafleur , Jagr , Bossy.But when you get out of the elite , the difference ain't that big , and there might even be more below-elite LWers than RWers.
You can guy quality scoring line RWs like Vladimir Martinec, Babe Dye, Martin St Louis, apparently Helmut Balderis, etc well after Hextall (not that any bring his exact skill set). But the quality of LW falls off a cliff not long after Toe Blake is selected
Anyway , I wasn't trying to play that card of Hextall vs Blake as a way to prove my 2nd line was better , I just thought it was interesting to compare the two in depth as I was taking a look at their record.
Blake is a vastly inferior goal scorer than Hextall , which is too bad since he's the only good goalscorer on his line.
I think my Blake-Wtason duo could be quite explosive, almost as much so as Oates-Hextall. ...
Overall, I actually believe that our 2nd lines are even
I just completely disagree with both statements.
We can all agree that having a playmaking center with a good goal scorer is a good recipe for offensive explosiveness , especially with a center like Oates who proved his recipe with no less than three goalscorers.
Here are Watson and Oates top 10 assists finishes without the Mario/Wayne outliers:
Oates is such a superior playmaker than it isn't even funny at this point.The worst of all is that Watson goalscoring record is as poor as Oates.
Now take a look at Hextall and Blake goal scoring record without the war years:
Toe Blake: 2nd , 8th , 10th ( 3rd , 3rd during the war )
Bryan Hextall Sr.: 1st , 1st , 2nd , 5th , 5th , 10th
Again , clear superiority for Hextall , who was one of the first player to use his off wing as an advantage.
Basically you got a weaker goal scorer who has to score goals with a weaker playmaker.Of course Blake is also capable of playmaking , in a very superior way than Hextall , but who is going to score the goals? Watson and Taylor?
It doesn't say much betwee nElias and Taylor , but one thing it says is that Taylor won't be capable of scoring enough goals so that leaves the almost entire work of scoring goals to Blake , which is fine but isn't his bread and butter normally.
I just see no way that the Blake-Watson combo can produce as much as Hextall-Oates , and I think my line is clearly superior at this point.
Heh I wonder how much that 1 assist in game 82 increased Elias' value here. 10th in scoring is so much sexier than 11th
I didn't even tried to sell Elias in my last post...It was more a defensive move if he wanted to sell Taylor as superior in the future , and it was an offensive move to prove Taylor/Watson weren't capable of being a good goal scorer on the line , forcing Blake's playmaking abilities to be greatly diminished.
