Making it Look Easy
Congratulations to Canada's Junior Hockey team, whose overwhelming dominance of this year's tournament makes them clearly the best junior hockey team ever assembled.
As an aside (and to make a dull entry a bit more interesting), I find it odd how people have debates over which sports teams are the best ever, in which they compare teams from different eras. In every measurable field of athletic endeavour, the athletes of today are far better than those of the past.
Similarly today's athletes in team sports are bigger, stronger, faster, in better shape and better trained than those of the past. I for one, am very confident that the 2004 Edmonton Oilers could easily defeat the 1986 Oilers.
As a further aside, the argument that the NHL is suffering from dilution of talent is equally nonsense. Just the infusion of foreign talent alone would have been enough to compensate from going from 21 teams (as in the high scoring 80's) to the current 30. Add in the constant improvements in the overall talent base and it seems pretty clear that the league has a greater depth of talented players than ever before. In fact, it's more likely that scoring is down because there's too much talent (especially in net and on defense), rather than the other way around.
As an aside (and to make a dull entry a bit more interesting), I find it odd how people have debates over which sports teams are the best ever, in which they compare teams from different eras. In every measurable field of athletic endeavour, the athletes of today are far better than those of the past.
Similarly today's athletes in team sports are bigger, stronger, faster, in better shape and better trained than those of the past. I for one, am very confident that the 2004 Edmonton Oilers could easily defeat the 1986 Oilers.
As a further aside, the argument that the NHL is suffering from dilution of talent is equally nonsense. Just the infusion of foreign talent alone would have been enough to compensate from going from 21 teams (as in the high scoring 80's) to the current 30. Add in the constant improvements in the overall talent base and it seems pretty clear that the league has a greater depth of talented players than ever before. In fact, it's more likely that scoring is down because there's too much talent (especially in net and on defense), rather than the other way around.
Labels: amateur hour, canadian junior hockey team, greatest of all time, sports
posted by Declan at
Wednesday, January 05, 2005
4 Comments:
The current track results are closer to 1988 results than I thought. You have planted a small seed of doubt, and maybe now I would only say that the 2004 Oilers would beat the 1986 ones, but perhaps not with ease, rather with superior tactics, speed, checking and goaltending.
One thing to consider: The 3% increase (roughly) in track results is the improvement on the base of a zero length jump. So if you imagine a 0% talent hockey player as being one who can't skate or even hold a stick (the equivalent to someone who can't jump even a single inch) then the 1986 hockey player would be 100% and the 2004 player would be 103%. This could be a very significant difference. If you put my hockey skills at 30%, then a decent beer league player could be 60% and a decent junior player would probably be upwards of 90%. The difference between 100 and 103% in hockey talent could be the difference between the best player in the NHL and the worst (or larger - or less, hard to say).
Since you can't take the worst player in the NHL (with 0 points) as being the 0 against which you measure your percentage improvement, you can't just take 3% of the '86 Oilers points away and still have a valid comparison with the track results.
That wasn't particularly articulate, but hopefully you get what I'm trying to say: A 3% improvement on a scale ranging from absolute worst to absolute best can look like a very big change in a league which only contains people from a very small range of the total distribution.
If you measured the % increase in track results using the last place finisher in the finals of each event as '0' then you would have a more accurate number for adjusting points with.
Also, I suspect the improvement in hockey players has been greater than that in track athletes over the last 20 years (especially in net as Spearin notes) but it's not really a fruitful line of debate, since there's not much to prove either way, it's just my opinion.
By
Declan, at 7:52 PM
I'll concede this much - if the rate of improvement of NHL players has been the same as the rate of improvement of track and field athletes (from mid 80's to current day) then the 1986 Oilers would beat the 2004 Oilers.
It seems hard to imagine watching footage of those old games, but perhaps I am being fooled by some optical illusion which makes the players of the 80's look slow, small and defensively inept in comparison to today's players.
By
Declan, at 11:34 PM
I'm a bit slow posting here, but the 86 Oilers vs the 04 edition you say... perhaps it would depend on whether Steve Smith figured out which net he was supposed to shoot on :)
Interesting stat - last year Mark Messier, even as an old geezer, still managed to outscore Shawn Horcoff, 43 points to 40 (and he played a couple fewer games).
If the 86 Oilers did play the 04 Oilers, what pads would the goalies wear? Would Conklin still be a first ballot hall of famer if he had to wear 80s size pads (Spearin)?
For the record I guess, I think that if the two teams played a best of seven series, the 86 Oilers would win in six. I agree with Declan insofar as the average player today is superior to the average player 20 years ago, and an average team from last season probably would beat most of the teams from the 80s, but the 86 Oilers weren't an average team. Looking at how long players like Gretzky, Messier, Lemieux, Bourque and MacInnis contributed after their 80s heyday finished leads me to believe you're overrating the improvement of today's players. I think the 86 Oilers had enough elite level talent that they could beat what was a very mediocre 2004 Oilers team, regardless of how much stronger, faster and better conditioned their fourth liners were (sorry, no stats analysis).
Shaun
By
Anonymous, at 10:11 PM
I think even with the little pads, Conklin would still be far superior to Fuhr. You guys have at least convinced me that it could be a pretty interesting series to watch. Perhaps someday we'll be able to realistically simulate it (probaly not, though).
By
Declan, at 10:17 PM
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