Lidstrom has always been one of my favorite players, but some of these comparisons to Orr are making me not even want to get into this thread.
Anyways, I do not have time to read and respond to everything, but I will jump in on the end here.
Quote:
Originally Posted by jkrx
Not saying he should've won more Norrises or ASTs just saying he would've got more consideration and possibly votes if he was recognised for what he did earlier.
|
He was recognized early. This romanticizing of how Lidstrom was overlooked early is a bit misleading. Lidstrom was immediately noticed when he entered the league.
Lidstrom was not yet the perfect machine he would later become on defense early in his career. He made more mistakes and was not as good offensively. His passive "Bend, don't break" style was less effective before pads became much larger and goaltending styles changed. Konstantinov on the other hand always was a bit more solid defensively during that first score of years before the game evolved.
I have been in this argument countless times, and watched him evolve over the years, and nobody is ever going to convince me he was as good in his first 5 years as he became in the late 90's.
In his first season, 80 games, 60 points, he was ranked 8th among all defensemen in voting and was runner up for the Calder to Pavel Bure(Whom many argued he should have beaten). But who was beating him in voted that he should have been considered over in voting?
Leetch and Bourque hit #1 and #2. Housley was #3 and granted, he was sad defensively, but he lead his team in scoring that year by over 20 points, and outscored a not so perfect defensively Lidstrom by 26 points. Stevens scored 59 points in 11 less games than lidstrom, and while Stevens was not yet the defensive beast he would later become, he was still more of a force in that department. Macinnis also was a great two way player and scored 77 points. Murphy less so, but still very good and scored 77 points and Chelios was in his prime. A beast defensively with near the same amount of points.
In his second year, Lidstrom regressed a bit.
In 93-94, Lidstrom scored 56 points and was improving defensively and got his first Norris vote. But again, who should he be getting votes over? Top 3 for the norris were Bourque, Stevens and Macinnis, all who deserved to be there. Following them were Zubov, Leetch and Chelios. Zubov is the weakest of the 3, but he outscored Lidstrom by 33 points.
In 94-95, Lidstrom did not have a noteworthy regular season.
In 95-96, the top 3 were solid(Chelios, Bourque, Leetch), and he had no case to be above them although he had a great year and was ever improving. The 4th spot was split between Lidstrom and 2 of his teammates. Again, Konstantinov was a beast and this argument will go on forever, but I think he was the better Dman that year(I made a post once detailing how Konstantinov's points were severely limited by his lack of PP time due to Coffey/Lidstrom). You can make a case for Lidstrom over Coffey I suppose.
In 96-97, yes I agree you can make a case for Lidstrom over a few of those who were voted in above him as Lidstrom was coming into his own defensively. But those players had compelling cases that year as well. At this point, the game was evolving in a way that perfectly complimented Lidstrom's game.
