Until “No Show Joe” actually SHOWS up in the playoffs, I have to say NO.

Posted by Matt from LA on 11/07/09 at 01:01 PM ET

I met him at a bar. He’s so big

Posted by dickshilling on 11/07/09 at 01:42 PM ET

It’s not that Joe hasn’t had playoff success, which indeed he hasn’t, it’s that he doesn’t show up during playoff games, shows no heart, and looks disinterested.  When the games matter most Joe looks like he’d rather be doing something other than playing hockey. An excellent player when it doesn’t matter… should we also start including pre-season stats as HHOF credentials?

Posted by Maytag from Peterborough on 11/07/09 at 01:47 PM ET

I like to try to pinpoint the time in a player’s career when he cements himself as Hall of Fame player...Today, I believe that Joe Thornton has made it to this level.

I guess that secondary assist in yet another loss at Joe Louis Arena Thursday finally made up your mind, eh?

Posted by IwoCPO from Washington, DC on 11/07/09 at 01:55 PM ET

I’m sure he can play a little more relaxed now that you think he’s a HOF’er.

Haha at IwoCPO.

Posted by moore00 from the Ohio State University on 11/07/09 at 01:58 PM ET

Any future hall of fame list that has Alexander Ovechkin on it should also have Crosby and Malkin; all three are on the same level right now.  In fact, Crosby (1.35) has a better ppg than AO (1.31), and has won a cup.

Posted by James from NY on 11/07/09 at 02:18 PM ET

You can see a debate of Ovechkin vs. Crosby’s Hall of Fame casese here.  The main case is Hart Trophies Ovechkin 2 Crosby 1, Richard Trophies Ovechkin 2 Crosby 0, Calder Trophies (both were rookies in the same year) Ovechkin 1 Crosby 0, First Team All Star Berths Ovechkin 4 Crosby 1.  That gives Ovechkin a clear lead.

Posted by PuckStopsHere on 11/07/09 at 02:35 PM ET

But until last year you didn´t consider Sergei Fedorov, a guy with 1 Hart, 2 Selkes, 3 Cups and more Stanley Cup Points in the 80´s and 90´s than everyone not named Lemieux, Gretzky and Messier.

Seriously, stop talking about HHOF, you are making yourself look bad.

Posted by Miquel from Palma de Mallorca (Spain) on 11/07/09 at 03:17 PM ET

1) It’s ignorant to use the Richard Trophy example, seeing as that isn’t Crosby’s game.

2) All Star stats are a joke because the fans control the starting lineup (and I believe Carey Price started for the East last year?).  Besides, they are also based on half of a season’s worth of stats, not the whole.

3) In the playoffs last year, when it matters most, Crosby clearly out played AO; that’s not even debatable, even a caps fan would begrudgingly agree.

Posted by James from NY on 11/07/09 at 03:21 PM ET

Well, since YOU’VE now spoken, I guess I can sleep at night, Joe Thornton, who has done bupkiss in the playoffs, is a Hall of Famer.  Thanks, dude.  I feel so much better.  I’m sure Jumbo Joe does, too.

Posted by Harrald The Red on 11/07/09 at 03:26 PM ET

1) It’s ignorant to use the Richard Trophy example, seeing as that isn’t Crosby’s game.

It is true Crosby doesn’t score goals nearly as well as Ovechkin.  Seeing how important goals are in hockey this is one clear reason Ovechkin is a better player.

2) All Star stats are a joke because the fans control the starting lineup (and I believe Carey Price started for the East last year?).  Besides, they are also based on half of a season’s worth of stats, not the whole.

?????  You don’t have the faintest idea what the first team all star is do you?

3) In the playoffs last year, when it matters most, Crosby clearly out played AO; that’s not even debatable, even a caps fan would begrudgingly agree.

Ovechkin has 30 points in 21 career playoff games.  Crosby has 63 in 49.  Clearly both have played well.  Ovechkin has a better points per game.  It is clearly debatable.

Posted by PuckStopsHere on 11/07/09 at 03:44 PM ET

?????  You don’t have the faintest idea what the first team all star is do you?

Komisarek was a “first team all star” last year over Zdeno Chara, the future Norris trophy winner.  I’m not certain how you can derive much a sense of a player’s value from something that is totally controlled by the whims of fans, i.e. Komisarek receiving an absurd amount of votes because his team was hosting the all-star game that year.

Posted by JBM from Pittsburgh on 11/07/09 at 04:04 PM ET

PSH ?????  You don’t have the faintest idea what the first team all star is do you?

JBM Komisarek was a “first team all star” last year over Zdeno Chara, the future Norris trophy winner.  I’m not certain how you can derive much a sense of a player’s value from something that is totally controlled by the whims of fans, i.e. Komisarek receiving an absurd amount of votes because his team was hosting the all-star game that year.

PSH I rest my case.  You have no idea what the first team all star is.  It is voted upon by the hockey writers at the end of the season and announced at the NHL Awards ceremony. 

If you would like to learn how horribly wrong you are, check this link.

Posted by PuckStopsHere on 11/07/09 at 04:13 PM ET

By the decade:
90’s, 89-90 thru 98-99 Gretzky 1020 pts.
80’s, 79-80 thru 88-89 Gretzky 1837 pts.
70’s 69-70 thru 78-79 Esposito 1108 pts
60’s 59-60 thru 68-69 R. Hull 800 pts.
50’s 49-50 thru 58-59 G. Howe 801 pts.
40’s 39-49 thru 48-49 D. Bentley 441 pts.
30’s 29-30 thru 38-39 N. Stewart 376 pts.
20’s 19-20 thru 28-29 C. Denneny 265 pts

I think:question:

Posted by Lindas1st from New England on 11/07/09 at 07:07 PM ET

Oh, yeah, Ovechkin’s clearly the better player, what with all of his Stanley Cups and all.  Yo, PuckWentByYou, in order to score a goal, a pass is necessary.  Look, you clearly have NO idea what you’re talking about when it comes to hockey, so I guess we can take whatever you say with a grain of salt, anyway.  Jesus.  Give an idiot a platform…

Posted by Harrald The Red on 11/07/09 at 08:07 PM ET

PSH,

Does it ever get frustrating writing bullshit articles that people only read to try and pick you apart in them? Please, stop man. It’s a lost cause

Posted by dickshilling on 11/08/09 at 02:00 AM ET

Neither AO nor Crosby are HOF players right now. Malkin isn’t even close. If something happened to either one of them next week that either ended their career or severly limited their production, the writers are not going to vote them into the HOF. It just wouldn’t happen; not with just 4 years in the league and its silly to think otherwise.

As for Thornton, I think he’ll get in. By the time he retires, he’ll probably be top 6-8 centermen during his playing time. First ballet, probably not but I think he’ll eventually get in.

Posted by UMFan from Colorado on 11/08/09 at 01:31 PM ET

Personally, I think it’s premature to make the call on Joe Thornton. My assessment of his achievements to this point in his career (were it to end today) would qualify him as a below-average HHOFer, but in a 30 team NHL and the huge player population, there are a number of players who sit at that ranking, and the standard to enter the HHOF for the times needs to be set a little higher.

I’ve been developing a HHOF index to try and rank different skills and accomplishments to produce a rating on the likelihood of a player gaining entry to the HHOF. While still under-development and subject to further refinement, I’ve calculated the average HHOF forward has 1472 points on the induction scale (IS), gained from statistical performance, playoff success, individual awards and international play.

As of the end of last year, Alexander Ovechkin had 989 IS points, while Joe Thornton had 953 IS points, both well short of the 1472 average HHOFer. (For the record, Malkin and Crosby have 866 and 865 IS points, respectively). While I haven’t updated the rankings for the handful of games played this year, there wouldn’t be a significant change.

Now, as a comparison, Jarome Iginla finished last season with 1104 IS points to his credit. In theory we should place Iggy closer to induction than AO and Thornton at this point, although it should be noted that Iginla has achieved that IS score after 942 regular season games, versus 836 games for Thornton and 324 games for Ovechkin. For a practical matter, it’s premature for the lot of them.

With this call for Thornton (like his previous call for Ovechkin), TPSH is making an early projection much like CNN or Fox News calling the winner election night shortly after the polls close. He’s probably not wrong on the result—Thornton will likely make the HHOF grade—but I’d like him to make his case a little bit more convincing by earning a higher IS score.

Posted by Matthew McCallum from Redding, California on 11/08/09 at 05:33 PM ET

I am not making premature calls on either Joe Thornton or Alexander Ovechkin.  I am making the call as soon as I think it is clear that they have earned Hall of Fame induction.  I think it should be impossible that a two-time MVP and four time first team all star such as Ovechkin fails to make the Hall.  Should he suddenly stop scoring, he will be seen as a player who didn’t live up to expectation from his early days, but his early days are enough to put him there.  The same is true of Thornton.  I cannot imagine and MVP winning top scorer in the NHL over a decade not making the Hall of Fame.

I am interested in Matthew McCallum’s attempt to quantify Hall of Fame induction, but I don’t think it can be the final word.  I have written quite a bit on this in years past.  It is obvious that a player would be well below average in any good ranking when he first earns Hall of Fame induction and if his career continues, he will continue to accumulate points.  Any newcomer to the group will be below average when they first arrive.

The problem with this kind of technique (as I imagine it is being done) is that it is a counting stat.  The longer ap layer plays, the more points he accumulates.  Great players with shorter careers are shortchanged.  For example, it is almost impossible to not rank Ray Bourque well ahead of Bobby Orr in such a system because Bourque had a much longer career.  This is problematic.

If i had to develop my own ranking system, I would try to follow Bill James somewhat in his Historical Baseball Abstract where he ranks players based on their best three year period and five year period as well as their career numbers (assuming I had a meaningful way to come up with a number as useful as win shares are to baseball - otherwise this is mpossible) - Bill James also includes other factors some of which may be needed here but the other factors in hockey are different than in baseball.  It is important to not have players who had short but great careers buried under players who never rose to the same heights but lasted a long time.

Ovechkin obviously doesn’t have outstanding career numbers (yet?), but his best three years are among the best all time and his best five years (even though it would only include four NHL seasons) would be better than average among Hall of Famers.  Joe Thornton has given us a longer portion of his career to look at, but again the peaks have been high enough to justify his inclusion in the Hall of Fame despite not seeing the tail of his career.

The difference comes into how we value the tail end of a player’s career when he is in decline.  If his peak value was high enough, it doesn’t matter what he does when he is past his prime accumulating stats (or not accumulating them).  If his peak value is not quite as high, then he must hang on longer to make it based on career totals.

Jarome Iginla is an interesting case.  He is clearly one of the better candidates to be included on my Hall of Fame list who is not yet there.  I certainly can imagine him having a strong enough season to get there this year, but it is no certainty.  He has not had the same peak value of Ovechkin or Thornton.  This is clear by looking at Matthew’s IS values when looked at on a per game rate.  I think in the system that I have attempted to lay out (the idea behind) he is currently behind Ovechkin and Thornton.

Posted by PuckStopsHere on 11/08/09 at 06:29 PM ET

TPSH,

Goodness forbid that anything I might write would ever be considered the final word on the HHOF! Until I’m one of the 18 members of the selection committee, I’m just a dedicated amateur trying to develop a better method of reading the tea leaves in advance of the June vote.

The way that I’ve gotten around the counting stat issue is developing a second level of comparison called the Accomplishment Index, which essentially divides the Induction Scale points against career length. So looking at Ray Bourque vs. Bobby Orr, for example, Bourque has 2104 IS points compared to Orr’s 1629 IS points. Bourque scores a higher IS ranking thanks to a career that was roughly 1000 games longer than Orr’s. But Orr has a raw AI of plus 1.480 versus Bourque’s raw AI of plus 0.305. One could try to get a truer calculation by comparing peak-career-to-peak-career of the two players, but the key insight is that while Bourque may have accomplished more over his career (with a 1000 more games to work with), Orr was incredibly efficient in achieving what he did within in a very short time span.

The main use of the Accomplishment Index is that you can compare two players with equivalent IS scores, and then grade them on how the rate on AI versus the average HHOFer.

For example, Dave Andreychuk has an IS score of 1253 (a below average HHOFer), but his adjusted AI is minus 0.520 below the average HHOF forward. Compare that to Pavel Bure who has an IS score of 1074 (another below average HHOFer), but holds an adjusted AI of plus 0.246 above the average HHOF forward. This suggests that although both players would be considered at best below average HHOFers and therefore neither is a lock for HHOF induction, Bure should have a better chance of earning election due to his greater productivity.

Earlier I shared that Alexander Ovechkin has an IS of 989 while Joe Thornton has an IS of 953. What I didn’t share earlier (because I hadn’t discussed the concept until this post and I try to avoid total geekdom at the onset) is that Ovechkin’s adjusted AI is plus 1.767 versus the average HHOF forward, while Thornton’s adjusted AI is minus 0.145 versus the average HHOF forward.

That’s why I suggest it may be a bit premature to crown Thornton as a bona-fide HHOFer-in-waiting at this time. He’s getting there, but to my mind he’s still a couple of seasons away. That said, a productive year with Dany Heatley on his wing, a successful turn at the Olympics, and an extended playoff run for San Jose would do wonders for improving his outlook.

Posted by Matthew McCallum from Redding, California on 11/09/09 at 12:31 AM ET

The criticism that Thornton has not had significant playoff success is partially valid (with the expansion in the number of teams in the NHL this criticism is more and more common of potential Hall of Famers).

No, the criticism is completely valid.  It’s a fact that Thornton has not been as successful in the playoffs as he should have been.  The fact that there are more teams in the entire league doesn’t have anything to do with it.  It’s been a 16-team playoff format since 79-80.  You continue to think that the talent of the league is somehow “watered down”, but the fact remains that a team has had to win the same number of games for nearly thirty years now to get the cup.  If the talent in the league is so watered down by expansion, then it would stand to reason that a Hall-of-Famer like Thornton should be more successful in the playoffs against what logically should be relatively weaker competition. 

No one player should be ultimately responsible for a team’s playoff successes or failures.  I agree that on the last decade of play that his numbers do warrant an eventual Hall of Fame induction.  Probably not a first-balloter, but in there eventually.  Still, you begged the question when invalidating his playoff failures, especially in Boston, when you called that argument only partially valid and then backed it up with an unrelated reminder that you feel cheated by NHL expansion.  I believe that his career numbers and accolades are strong enough to get him in the Hall.  If somebody believes his playoff failures are strong enough to keep him out, that’s their prerogative and all I can do is disagree. Their argument is still valid.

Posted by J.J. from Kansas on 11/09/09 at 09:06 AM ET

JJ

You are conflating two different issues.

If the NHL is expanded, a smaller portion of the NHL`s players will win the cup each year.  In a small NHL, almost everyone eventually wins a cup.  In a large NHL many players play long careers without winning cups.

Also, top teams are weaker today than they had been in the past.  That is another symptom of over-expansion, but it does not make it easier for a very good player to win the Stanley Cup.  Hockey is a team game.  Teams win Stanley Cups.  Players can be important parts of top teams, but there is no such thing as a one-man team.  In an expanded NHL a player (good, bad or indifferent) has a lesser chance of winning the Stanley Cup in a given year.  That is true whether the player is Joe Thornton or whether he is Colton Orr (fill in your favorite borderline player if you don`t like this choice).

As the NHL is expanded, more Hall of Fame worthy players will wind up playing full careers and not winning the cup.  That is a direct consequence of expansion.  The solutions are either to induct them anyway (understanding that a Stanley Cup is a team award), not induct them (and hence induct less Hall of Famers) or not induct them (and induct other weaker players who were on better teams).  The most logical move is the first.

Yes, Joe Thornton has not had playoff success (if we define playoff success as winning several rounds in the playoffs - he has in fact been the top scorer on San Jose in the playoffs several times), but that is not a reason to keep him out of the hall.  In the over-expanded NHL there will be more and more hall-worthy players who have not had playoff success.  That is merely a function of the number of teams.  There will be an increasing number of Thornton-like cases as time passes (assuming the NHL size stays the same or increases).

Posted by PuckStopsHere on 11/09/09 at 10:14 AM ET

I’m not conflating different points.  I’m stating that the argument that Thornton’s lack of playoff success is a valid one, not just “partially valid” as you had previously claimed.

As the NHL is expanded, more Hall of Fame worthy players will wind up playing full careers and not winning the cup.

That begs the question.  Many people think that Cup championships and playoff success is an important necessary milestone for getting into the HoF.  The point is especially valid if he’s a guy that’s commonly considered a leader on his team like Thornton is supposed to be.  More weight is put on the leaders for failures than on the guys who don’t have a letter on their shoulder.

In a small NHL, almost everyone eventually wins a cup.

“Almost everyone” huh?  Exactly how many or what percentage is “almost everyone”?  Show me the stats by percentage of players in 1980 versus 2008 who had been on a cup-winning team at some point of his career.  Even standing the 1980 players by themselves, did that percentage of the league consist of “almost everyone”?

Posted by J.J. from Kansas on 11/09/09 at 10:44 AM ET

Here is James Mirtle showing something similar.  Percantage of NHL players by birth year who win the Stanley Cup in their careers.  For the most part, it has been dropping as the league has expanded.

Posted by PuckStopsHere on 11/09/09 at 11:08 AM ET

I appreciate you actually finding those figures.  I also appreciate that they support my claim that your use of the phrase

“almost everyone eventually wins a cup.”

was completely off-base.

I accept that a difference of more than ten percent between 1980 and today is statistically significant, I took umbrage to your wording because saying that almost everyone eventually wins the cup has never been correct.  It’s never been more than 50%.  There is a very large difference between saying almost everyone and saying that statistically, there is a significant difference.  You made it sound like they were handing out cup engravings like participation medals.

Bottom line is that your argument that it is harder to win the cup is a valid counter argument to those who would say Joe does not belong in the Hall of Fame at this point because of his playoff failures.  However, it’s snobbish to say that it even partially invalidates the claim.

...especially in a guy who’s worn a letter on his shoulder most of his career and completely disappeared in the playoffs for the years that the letter was a consonant.

Posted by J.J. from Kansas on 11/09/09 at 12:29 PM ET

As I’ve detailed at my FoxSports, since NHL expansion in 1967 there have been approximately 40 future HHOFers playing in the league each season. Prior to that, the average bubbled in the mid-thirties.

Now, with 5-times as many teams today compared to the Original Six era, you could in theory have 5-times as many potential HHOFers with qualifying statistics. Since the gates are HHOF are not going to swing wide open, the logical conclusion is that standards for admission are going to increase, and a number of players with “HHOF statistics” (i.e. they clear the minimum qualification based on prior era inductees) are going to be left waiting.

Frankly, that’s not necessarily a bad thing, unless, of course, one of those waiting players happens to be a personal favourite…

Posted by Matthew McCallum from Redding, California on 11/09/09 at 01:10 PM ET