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Top Five Players
by PuckStopsHere on 01/25/09 at 01:19 AM ET
Comments (3)
A few days ago, Paul Kukla asked people to post their opinions of the top five players by position. The task was not entirely defined. Most people listed 5 forwards, 5 defencemen and 5 goalies, a few listed only 5 players and others broke up their forwards into right wingers, left wingers and centremen. Some people picked the top five players so far this season, while others looked longer term and included injured players who would belong on their list.
I went through the comments as best I could and tallied the votes. Most comments were votes. A few comments were merely musings on the voting so far and were ignored. A few of the votes were not selections of players (for example picking “New Jersey’s defence’ as one of the top five defencemen) and were ignored.
Here are the votes:
Forwards
1. Alexander Ovechkin 33
2. Sidney Crosby 27
3. Evgeni Malkin 23
4. Pavel Datsyuk 22
5. Jarome Iginla 20
—————————————————
Joe Thornton 15
Henrik Zetterberg 7
Vincent LeCavalier 6
Rick Nash, Mark Savard 5
Dany Heatley, Patrick Kane 4
Ryan Getzlaf, Marian Hossa, Ilya Kovalchuk, Thomas Vanek 3
Shane Doan, Patrick Marleau, Zach Parise, Mike Richards 2
Daniel Alfredsson, Patrik Elias, Marian Gaborik, Simon Gagne, Ales Hemsky, Alexei Kovalev, Bobby Ryan, Teemu Selanne 1
Perhaps the biggest surprise here is the fact that Ovechkin wins by such a larger margin over Crosby and Malkin, despite currently being behind them in the scoring race.
Defencemen
1. Nicklas Lidstrom 30
2. Zdeno Chara 18
3. Dion Phaneuf 16
4. Dan Boyle, Mike Green 14
—————————————————————————-
Chris Pronger 13
Shea Weber 12
Scott Niedermayer 8
Brian Rafalski 6
Brian Campbell, Duncan Keith, Andrei Markov 5
Jay Bouwmeester 4
Rob Blake 3
Sergei Gonchar 2
Tomas Kaberle, Sheldon Souray, Dennis Wideman 1
There is a huge drop after Lidstrom.
Goaltenders
1. Roberto Luongo 30
2. Martin Brodeur 29
3. Evgeni Nabokov 20
4. Henrik Lundqvist 18
5. Tim Thomas 14
———————————————-
Miikka Kiprusoff 10
Niklas Backstrom, Steve Mason 6
Ryan Miller 5
Carey Price 4
Jean-Sebastien Giguere 3
Nikolai Khabibulin, Mike Smith 2
Craig Anderson, Scott Clemmenson, Ty Conklin, Marc-Andre Fleury, Jonas Hiller, Marty Turco, Cam Ward 1
Luongo and Brodeur run away with the show despite their injuries this season.
Obviously this poll is non-scientific, but it gives an idea who fans think are the top five forwards, defencemen and goaltenders.
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Comments
I still don’t understand how Phaneuf could be one of the top 5 defensemen when he’s not even the top defenseman of his team. There are three Flames defensemen who are playing tougher minutes than Phaneuf, still he’s the one who’s -4 while all the other regulars are at least 0. He might be the best offensive defenseman of the Flames and the most entertaining Flames defenseman to watch, but according to stats, he’s not the best overall.
While it is true that Mike Green for example also plays soft minutes, at least when he’s on the ice, it’s usually the Caps who are scoring, not the opponents.
Posted by Eetu from Helsinki, Finland on 01/25/09 at 04:14 AM ET
Hey Eetu, its the same with Giguere being an all-star, when he’s been terrible this year, and his backup Jonas Hiller, is the better goalie. Fan voting is stupid.
Posted by SJSharkie on 01/25/09 at 06:06 AM ET
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It doesn’t really matter that Crosby and Malkin have more points than Ovechkin. Ovechkin has 31 goals, and Crosby/Malkin have a combined 36. Goals have more than value than assists. Its also harder to score goals, an assist could be just a dump-in into the zone, and if a teammate scores you will get credit for an assist. There are secondary assists, but there are is no such thing as secondary goals.
Posted by SJSharkie on 01/25/09 at 01:44 AM ET