This is Brad Park. If we're making a list of all-time greats to never win the Stanley, he'd be on it along with some outstanding names over the years (Propp, Ratelle, Ullman, there's a bunch).Watching tonight's G1 of the SCF and the fine players on each side reminds me of the feeling I had during last year's finals: do you think we put too much importance on winning it all?
I mean Ryan Smyth doesn't really have to win it all in order to prove he's legit. Does he? Normie Ullman came to the Red Wings the year after Detroit won their last cup before the second coming of Jesus (Steve Yzerman) and even though he was top drawer rolling out 15 years he never won it.
Does that mean Normie Ullman is somehow a lesser player? No.
Why then do we punish these players? Mark Howe would be in the HHOF if he'd spent even one season on one of those Montreal clubs of the 70s.
I don't have the answer to this question, but isn't there a way to allow these great men out of hockey's purgatory? Isn't there a way to credit Ryan Smyth with SOME glory for the Oilers cup run last season?
Maybe I'm just getting old, but the reality is that a team must climb a higher mountain now than ever before in order to win the Stanley, and giving more weight to actually making the final may be long overdue.
I'm writing this now so that when the Ottawa Senators lose the final I'll feel better about their place in history.
I also cannot let go of that 05-06 Oilers team and how special they were. They lost G7, SCF. Is there NO glory in that? Shouldn't history reflect that a beauty team caught some tough breaks at the very end and lost by a goal? I know it sounds like a cop out and I know that a long forgotten Philadelphia team laid it all out only to lose to the Oilers in a G7 and no one near me said a thing.
But maybe, just maybe, we need to revisit the Hextall crew. Maybe they deserve better than to be thrown in with the lesser lights the Oilers faced during their 5 Stanley Cup wins.
Mark Howe isn't in the HOF? That is a travesty.
ReplyDeleteI completely agree with you LT. I'm of the school of thought that says you evaluate the player's contributions to the team. In a 30 team NHL, there are going to be more and more elite players who never get to the top of the mountain. If hockey is such a team sport, as we're always told, how can you hold that against them?
ReplyDeleteHey LT, I have started to read your blog of late (and a few others that all seem to be interconnected) and first of, its fantastic.
ReplyDeleteSecondly, I agree fully, I think people consider too many players to not be 'winners' simply because of the awful teams they played on. The guy I always think of is Bill Gadsby, somehow I think if he had have traded places with Red Kelly or Doug Harvey, he would be looked on a lot more favourably.
And yes Art, Mark Howe is not in the HHOF, and it is a travesty in my books.
Great post LT.
ReplyDeleteBecause you wrote this to prepare yourself for the Sens losing the Cup, I decided to throw in that it's only fitting that Pronger wins the Cup in a year when Lowe's bragging about handing his old buddy "Burkie" the ticket to the Finals.
ReplyDeleteWhy not help him lift the Cup too, just for the fuck of it!!
I agree with your bit about memorializing the Oilers run last season...
ReplyDeleteIt kinda bothered me (not in any serious way) when five minutes after G7 ended there were Oilers fans demanding that ______ be fired and what sort of action should be taken in the offseason.
I mean, don't we get a few days off from that, ever? Isn't that the time to look back on the season, think about what we learned as hockey fans, remember the highs and lows, and cry in our beer? That year was a hell of a ride, something really spectacular towards the end, and people just want to keep moving on, keep looking ahead?
sorta off-topic, sorry.
I was thinking if Ovechkin will ever win the cup. Then I thought about Lindros - has he ever won the Cup?
ReplyDeleteHawerchuk, Stastny, Dionne... Ciccareli, Gartner, Bure.
ReplyDeleteYou're right — there are a lot. And there'll be a ton more as the expansion era players turn in here in the next half dozen years.
Nope, he was on the 96-97 Philly team that was swept by Detroit in the cup finals though.
ReplyDeleteHad a fantastic year that season too, and a great playoff run.
Definitely no shame on him that his team fell short.
Sadly (for me at least) Sundin is almost certainly going to retire without a cup barring some sort of miracle in the next year or two or a radical change of mind with regard to ever playing elsewhere.
ReplyDelete