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Kevin Biestra

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Everything posted by Kevin Biestra

  1. Yeah pretty much in agreement. I just wrote a more comprehensive reply above but yeah I'm happy for the Canucks but I also don't think any of the three needed to be first ballot Hall of Famers. I'm glad it happened but stuff like that is for Coffey, Bourque, Yzerman, Roy, Sawchuk, Plante, Lafleur, Dionne, the Hulls, the Espositos, Denis Potvin etc. If there was no housecleaning left to do in terms of past snubs then I'd rush the Sedins and Lu in but we've got some people who have been waiting 20 years.
  2. Yeah Mogilny should have been in ages ago. How on earth we have two 70 goal scorers with over 1000 points not in the HOF is beyond me (Mogilny and Bernie Nicholls). Anyway, in response to an earlier message that Alfredsson was one of the best wingers in the league for a stretch, I came up with the following players still on the outside looking in, just for wingers... Rene Robert, Rick Martin, Charlie Simmer, Dave Taylor, Ken Hodge, John Tonelli, Tim Kerr, Theoren Fleury, Alexander Mogilny, Reggie Leach, Brian Propp, Keith Tkachuk, Rick Middleton, Kevin Stevens, Markus Naslund. Alfredsson's accolades were being a 2nd team All Star once. Almost every name there has him beaten handily in individual performance honors. Not to say Alfredsson shouldn't be in...there is just some catching up to do. Alfredsson had one trip to the final. Propp had five. Leach has a Cup and a Conn Smythe and a Rocket Richard Trophy if it had existed then. Tonelli was a 2nd team all star twice instead of once and also had four Stanley Cups and the Canada Cup. Rick Martin a 1st or 2nd team all star four times. Then of course you probably have heard my snubs at other positions by now... D - Randy Carlyle, JC Tremblay and maybe Gary Suter (Doug Wilson recently rectified) G - Tom Barrasso, Mike Vernon and maybe Roger Crozier, Glenn Resch, Mike Liut, Chris Osgood, Curtis Joseph and John Ross Roach (Rogatien Vachon recently rectified) C - where to start... Bernie Nicholls, Pierre Turgeon, Jeremy Roenick, Rod Brind'Amour and maybe Pete Mahovlich and Kent Nilsson Not entirely against discussing players like Neal Broten, Kirk Muller, Rick Tocchet, Steve Larmer, Butch Goring and Bobby Smith either... Nor would I be against discussing Vladimir Krutov and Alexei Kasatonov.
  3. I think he clearly sees himself more as a Panther but I wouldn't retire his number either way. I think Luongo in the rafters and McLean in the ROH with the same number is an insult to McLean.
  4. Yeah maybe. I think of Frank as a Leaf but he had good stints elsewhere. Chelios in Montreal vs. Chicago might be one. Messier ended up becoming so much more famous as a Ranger that I guess that might be one. I think of Coffey as an Oiler but his stints in Pittsburgh and Detroit were like Mahovlich I guess. Is Joe Mullen a Flame, a Penguin, a Blue...
  5. He has six career playoff games as a Panther. Two of his three Vezina nominations were as a Canuck. Yeah he played more regular season games as a Panther but his Canuck years are getting him in the Hall more than his Panther years. If he had stayed a Panther his whole career he would have been Curtis Joseph.
  6. Yeah you can kind of guess at the team from the collar in some of the exhibits but that's about it. I figure he would go in as a Panther though if it were up to him, though I believe most hockey fans think of him as a Canuck primarily. One of the relatively few players where you would have to think about it though. It's usually pretty obvious. Gets a little muddy with the Ciccarelli, Gartner, Francis, Shanahan, Andreychuk types I guess.
  7. Yeah Lu knew he was screwing the Canucks and made his choice. That said, if he had responsibilities, they were to his current team at the time.
  8. Taylor and Simmer both aren't in. Neither are Robert and Martin from Buffalo. I brought up all four as overlooked when talking about Alfredsson comparables. Triple Crown Line and the French Connection...possibly the two most famous lines of all time and 2/3 of both aren't in the Hall. As for Buffalo...it's a team history of guys who should be in and aren't: Tom Barrasso, Pierre Turgeon, Rick Martin, Rene Robert, Alexander Mogilny. And that's not thinking about players like Danny Gare, Roger Crozier, etc.
  9. I'll try to think of the 80s and 90s... 80s Blues had Joe Mullen, Doug Gilmour and Bernie Federko 80s Capitals had Mike Gartner, Larry Murphy, Scott Stevens and Rod Langway 90s Blues had Brett Hull, Brendan Shanahan and Adam Oates (and CuJo) - another version had Hull, Oates and Scott Stevens - another version had Hull, Shanahan, Al MacInnis, Guy Carbonneau (past prime), Peter Stastny (past) and Glenn Anderson (past) - another version had Hull, Gretzky, Chris Pronger, Grant Fuhr, Al MacInnis, Glenn Anderson (past) and Dale Hawerchuk (past) 90s Blackhawks had Chelios, Belfour, Michel Goulet (slightly past prime), Dominik Hasek (slightly before) (and Steve Larmer and Jeremy Roenick) 90s Maple Leafs had Doug Gilmour, Grant Fuhr, Dave Andreychuk and Glenn Anderson 90s Kings had five: Gretzky, Robitaille, Coffey, Kurri and Rob Blake at once.
  10. I think Luongo and McLean deserve the same recognition from the team, whatever that is. ROH is what I would give Lu (and Richard Brodeur). I would have been hesitant myself to retire Bure's number as well. He was really lacking in longevity...and his claim to a retired number was entirely on ice scoring performance as opposed to the other stuff that Linden and Smyl and the Sedins brought to the table (Naslund as well).
  11. A Cup is nowhere near a Hart or Art Ross Trophy. Win either of those and you are almost 100% guaranteed to get into the Hall. Even a Cup plus a Conn Smythe Trophy doesn't count for as much as a Hart or Art Ross. I think these four guys all going in with no Cups is going to usher in a new era of Cups being a bonus feature, which is how it should be in a 32 team league where a player with a sixteen year career would thus have about a 50% chance of winning one Cup. Anyway, Marcel Dionne getting in with zero playoff success in his entire career kind of set the stage for players not being dragged out of Hall of Fame consideration by weak teams.
  12. He was one of the best wingers in the game for a while but the same can be said for a bunch of players who aren't in... Rene Robert, Rick Martin, Charlie Simmer, Dave Taylor, Tim Kerr, Theoren Fleury, Alexander Mogilny, Reggie Leach, Brian Propp, Keith Tkachuk etc. I have plenty of respect for Alfredsson but I'm not sure I would personally pick him over any of those players. Alfredsson was a 2nd team All Star once, 3rd in voting another time, 5th once, and never above 7th in any other season. Most people have never heard of Tim Kerr now. Three straight seasons top 3 in voting. Charlie Simmer: 1st team all star twice. Rick Martin: 1st or 2nd team all star 4 years in a row. Reggie Leach: led the league in goals (61), led the league in playoff goals and set the record, Conn Smythe Trophy. Tkachuk: 2nd team all star twice. Fleury and Mogilny need no introduction. And let's not forget Markus Naslund was a 1st team All Star three years in a row. Alfredsson never achieved this once. Let alone Naslund's Pearson / Lindsay Award as league MVP. And top five in Hart Trophy voting three times. Some of my listed players suffer from injuries or shorter careers with lower career scoring numbers. But not Mogilny, Fleury, Taylor, Propp or Tkachuk. Alfredsson was a great player. I just think he's in a tier with some other guys who not only aren't in but don't even get discussed.
  13. No complaint about Alfredsson getting in but I think he's on the same level as or even a little inferior to some guys who have been waiting a decade or even two. Fleury, Mogilny, Pierre Turgeon, Bernie Nicholls, etc. I'm not sure why he bypasses them. It's also a little odd to have Luongo in first ballot while having Mike Vernon and Tom Barrasso on the outside for at least 15 years.
  14. Well how about that. To think that we didn't have a Hall of Famer in for Canuck accomplishments until Bure and now we just quadrupled it. Lu should pump Tim Thomas' tires in his induction speech.
  15. I think they're Hall of Famers but I don't know about first ballot. If it happens, great. If it doesn't...their day will likely come. But it still hasn't for a lot of players...Bernie Nicholls, Mike Vernon, Tom Barrasso, Pierre Turgeon, Theoren Fleury, Reggie Leach, Charlie Simmer, Rick Martin, Rene Robert, Randy Carlyle, Dave Taylor, Alexander Mogilny...
  16. Well Benning was right there. In a redraft Hughes definitely goes top three and I would probably take him first overall.
  17. As it is Hughes is something like on par with the talent of a young healthy Paul Reinhart or Dave Babych, both of whom we acquired after some injuries. I expect Hughes to keep developing and surpass that level but he hasn't done it yet. Dale Tallon came into the league with a lot of talent (broke Bobby Orr's record for points by a rookie defenseman) and no support scoring as well.
  18. I'd learn to live with it pretty quickly I imagine. The Canucks don't have much history of acquiring people that were scumbags previously or scumbags specifically to the Canucks. Just Messier offhand...and that sure went well. We've acquired past rivals from Edmonton and Calgary especially...Reinhart, Tikkanen, Randy Gregg, Dana Murzyn. Never any issues there and was always happy to get those kinds of players. Maybe someone or something is slipping my mind. I mean players like Tiger Williams and Randy Holt were considered absolute lunatics on the ice before we acquired them, but at least then that wasn't really a drawback.
  19. Well, it's kind of like Gretzky just naturally understands DOS and doesn't even need to learn the program...whereas everyone else has to learn those commands to get going. That's kind of what I was saying...where the savants like Gretzky, Lemieux, Orr, Esposito, Hawerchuk, Bure, McDavid, Denis Savard, Lafleur, Bossy, etc. can't teach their talents to a team full of normal players. I had a little more hope for players like Trottier or Bobby Clarke who reinvented themselves late in their careers as defensive forwards to stay relevant in the league and thus had more stuff to teach that would be transferable to the average player. It's like the math whiz in grade school. They can't really help the other kids because they don't really understand why the other kids don't immediately get it. Meanwhile the B student who grinds away at memorizing formulas and steps can actually help get another kid from a D to a C.
  20. I wasn't sure Gretzky would do well. Scoring superstars have given it a try and often not done that well or not stuck around. Denis Savard, Bryan Trottier, Adam Oates, Phil Esposito. Solid stay at home defensemen or Selke winning forward types tend to become the great coaches... Pat Quinn, Al Arbour, Quenneville, Lindy Ruff, Dave Tippett. Or hard nosed physical players who just barely made it to the NHL for a cup of coffee... Alain Vigneault, Marc Crawford. Sometimes Hall of Fame or close to it caliber players do well as coaches - Randy Carlyle, Jacques Lemaire, Bill Barber, Paul MacLean, Larry Robinson, Rick Tocchet, Gerard Gallant - but they have tended to be defensemen or support scoring forwards rather than Art Ross winners. For whatever reason Lemaire rather than Lafleur, MacLean rather than Hawerchuk, Barber rather than Clarke, Gallant rather than Yzerman. Sometimes I guess because the all time team legends just bypass coaching and go straight into GM / Presidencies ... Yzerman, Linden, Neely, Sakic, Brett Hull, Lafontaine, etc. which also sometimes goes poorly and ends that career quickly (Hull, Linden, Lafontaine). So when I think of guys from that era who I was maybe a little surprised I never really heard much about as coaches down the road, I think of Brad Marsh, Troy Murray, Mike McPhee, Brian Skrudland, Mike Foligno, Joel Otto, Scott Mellanby, Rick Meagher, Adam Foote, Ric Nattress, Lee Fogolin etc. I would have thought a guy like Dave Babych who adjusted from scoring star defenseman to rugged positionally sound defender over the years would have been a good candidate. But there are only so many spots... Brad McCrimmon was exactly that kind of guy and was unfortunately killed in the KHL plane crash. Craig Ramsay...who seemed happy to just be an all time great assistant coach like Rick Bowness. Rob Ramage is another one who seemed fit to go that route before the Keith Magnuson car crash...with Magnuson himself another one of those admirable kinds of players I would have listed above. When I think of guys that were scoring stars to some degree that I thought would potentially have good careers and an impact in coaching... Dave Taylor, Kirk Muller, Trevor Linden, Doug Wilson, John Tonelli, Brent Sutter, Brian Sutter, Randy Carlyle, Gary Roberts, Steve Larmer, Rod Brind'Amour, Brendan Shanahan. Some of those happened, some didn't.
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