| T O P I C R E V I E W |
| andyhack |
Posted - 04/04/2008 : 20:34:31
Beans - I am shifting your "I just don't get this whole peak value vs. career value thing" comment from the Best Winger thread over here.
Actually, you said "total value", but I think a better reference is "career value". The difference is that, when doing a best ever list, if one emphasizes "career value" over "peak value", then guys who have been cut down due to injuries (like Forsberg and Neely) probably should get edged out by a player like Ron Francis, but if you emphasize "peak value", perhaps Forsberg and/or Neely should get the edge. I mean, in the 1991 playoffs , Neely was in the prime of his career, and he really was, if not "unstoppable", well pretty frigg'n hard to stop anyway (was well on his way to a 20 plus goal playoff year before Ulfie changed history). That was simply an incredible peak he reached. As we all know, he had a few years leading up to that incredible peak where he played at an extremely high level too. Overall, I'd say that as good as Francis was, he never reached the level of excellence that Cam did for a three a four year period from the late 80s into the early 90s .
So, in my view, if you emphasize "career", Ronnie gets the edge. If you emphasize "peak", Cam gets the edge.
With Wayne/Mario the "peak" vs "career" thing comes into play for me too. I give Wayne the edge career-wise (I'm not a Gretzky guy, but the guy did have a pretty decent career ), but I give Mario the slight edge "peak-wise" as you can see from my comments in the Gretzky-Lemieux thread. BUT, for me anyway, Mario's slight edge on the "peak" side isn't significant enough to vault him over Wayne when analyzing the overall question of who was better.
I'm not really starting this topic to debate Wayne and Mario further (God knows many on the Gretzky side disagree with my "peak" determination and many on the Mario side, including my buddy Willus, disagree with me on the overall assessment). I just wanted to answer your point about the "peak vs. career thing" because I do think in certain instances, such as Neely and Forsberg, the distinction between the two is important. |
| 1 L A T E S T R E P L I E S (Newest First) |
| leafsfan_101 |
Posted - 04/05/2008 : 06:42:08
Nice read. I would agree with the notion that Neely was better "peak" wise then Francis, but career wise Francis has the edge just because he was able to play more consistently because of his health.
If Neely never got injured, do you think he would be reffered to as being better then Francis all time? He was more dominant in his peak, but without the injury could Neely have kept that level of play for anothe 3-4 seasons? Probably, but I haven't watched enough Neely.
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