Should Mark Messier Come Back To Play!?!

[alanschu]

Messier does have those intangibles and the competitive drive.

[Kor Qel Droma]

And he'll shove you up against a wall if you're dogging it on the ice.

[alanschu]

I remember hearing about one old Oilers game, where the Oilers were getting their butts kicked after two periods.

 

They came out on fire in the third and erased like a 4 or 5 goal deficit or something. One of the players was asked after the game what Sather said to fire everyone up?

 

The player's response was that nothing was said in the locker room....Moose just glared at everyone.

[GhostofAnakin]

Some players have the ability to make the players around him better. Messier is one of them. He also has a morale impact and make his teammates work harder. If the leader on the ice throws his body in front of a slapshot to block a puck, it sends a message to the whole team. If the leader bodychecks an opponent outweighing him by 30 pounds, it sends a message to the team. If the leader ruthlessly and self sacrificingly drives to the net everytime he gets the puck, he sends a message to the team. I'm not trying to say Messier is still the player he once was (his stats speak for themselves) but there are plenty of other qualities that experienced GM's would love to have on his team. Don't forget that Messier is a franchise player too and having him on your team for economic reasons only could be reason enough.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

I never meant to imply he was useless or he didn't belong in the NHL anymore (although I do wish he'd retire because I want to remember him as a SUPERSTAR, not as just an average player). My main point was about Volourn saying he was still one of the better players in the league. That's just false.

[Volourn]

"My main point was about Volourn saying he was still one of the better players in the league. That's just false."

 

He is one of the better players. That doesn't mean he's in the top 10 or twenty. Those are the elite players. To me, 'one of the better players in the league' means you are a 1st or 2nd liner who gets 15-20 minutes a game, and are used in clutch situations.

 

You seem to forget that point totals in the NHl are down across the board. And, as others have mentioned, there is a lot more than points to be used to determine how good a player is espicially in a league where a team has tos truggle to average 3 goals a game. For illustraion, the absolute best point producer in the league (St Louis) didn't even reach 100 points even while playing every game. 'Nough said.

 

As for Lindros, you better look closer at where his points total puts him in the league. Lindros is still - when healthy - one of the better points producers in the league.

 

Messier is one of the better players in the league. Period. If he plays, and plays more than 70 games I expect him to have AT LEAST 40 points which is pretty darn good in the NHL; if not 50 points. Also of note, is his pretty impresisve shooting percentage. When checking that out, remmeber goalies in the NHL average .900 save %. And, oh btw, Mess was a plus on the Rangers last year in spite of their crappiness. Go figure.

 

Game over.

 

P.S. The Rangers' main problems have been their GM/coach who is wayyy overrated, and their pathetic goaltending.

[GhostofAnakin]

"My main point was about Volourn saying he was still one of the better players in the league. That's just false."

 

He is one of the better players. That doesn't mean he's in the top 10 or twenty. Those are the elite players. To me, 'one of the better players in the league' means you are a 1st or 2nd liner who gets 15-20 minutes a game, and are used in clutch situations.

 

You seem to forget that point totals in the NHl are down across the board. And, as others have mentioned, there is a lot more than points to be used to determine how good a player is espicially in a league where a team has tos truggle to average 3 goals a game. For illustraion, the absolute best point producer in the league (St Louis) didn't even reach 100 points even while playing every game. 'Nough said.

 

As for Lindros, you better look closer at where his points total puts him in the league. Lindros is still - when healthy - one of the better points producers in the league.

 

Messier is one of the better players in the league. Period. If he plays, and plays more than 70 games I expect him to have AT LEAST 40 points which is pretty darn good in the NHL; if not 50 points. Also of note, is his pretty impresisve shooting percentage. When checking that out, remmeber goalies in the NHL average .900 save %. And, oh btw, Mess was a plus on the Rangers last year in spite of their crappiness. Go figure.

 

Game over.

 

P.S. The Rangers' main problems have been their GM/coach who is wayyy overrated, and their pathetic goaltending.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Typical Volourn post. I actually backed my argument up with stats, and you back yours up with personal opinion.

 

But whatever, you think he's "one of the better players in the league" be my guest. I'm not going to bother debating with someone who uses zero evidence and 100% opinion to converse.

 

Just to add though to your "you seem to forget point totals are down across the board", yes they are. But what is your point? If he was still "one of the better players in the league" his point totals would still put him in AT LEAST the Top 50 in scoring (I was being generous giving you 50 instead of 20), and he's not. He's ranked 118th, tied with a rookie from Pittsburgh (Ryan Malone) and a career 3rd line grinder (Trent Klatt).

 

But hey, if you want to think he's still one of the better players in the league, be my guest. Just please invite me to join one of your hockey pools so that I can select good players while you're busy selecting Messier and Lindros.

[Volourn]

Eh. Keep spinning. The stats you used proved nothing as you didn't contrast and comapre. It's easy to look at 40-50 points and say meh comapred to the past; but in the New Age NHL 40-50 points is definitely pretty good. You accused Mess of being a 'medicore' player which is obviously false if you knew what the word 'medicore' meant. Period.

 

If Mess was so medicore teams like Detroit and Tornot wouldn't have been constantly rumoured to be interested in trading for him at the tradeline to boost their chances to win the Cup every year.

 

Keep your ehad under the ice since it is obvious you know very little about hockey.

 

It is nice you convinetly ignored my mention of shooting percentage and plau/minus, of course.

 

Go figure.

[GhostofAnakin]

I know nothing about hockey? That's a pretty lame shot, considering atleast I kept my arguments to the topic not about whether or not you had a clue what icing even was.

 

I'm not sure what other stats you want me to present you. You say I didn't "compare and contrast", well I told you where he finished in scoring (118th place), so that is a good "comparison" to point totals of other players in the league.

 

Shooting percentages mean nothing. Take a look at guys like Pavel Bure's shooting percentages. His shooting percentages were always between 10 to 15%, which never was close to leading the league, yet when he was healthy he was considered one of, if not THE best snipers in the league.

 

+/- is also a weak stat to judge a player because you have to take into account the situations they're placed in. A defensive forward will likely have a worse +/- than a scorer because they're on the ice against the other team's top line.

 

And a mediocre player, IMO, is an average player. Perhaps I should have used "average" instead, since you seem to want to ignore the FACTUAL STATISTICAL evidence I presented and instead latch on to the word mediocre. So instead, use whatever word you want to describe a player that is a decent, average NHLer, but way past his prime as a "great" player.

[mkreku]

+/- is also a weak stat to judge a player because you have to take into account the situations they're placed in.  A defensive forward will likely have a worse +/- than a scorer because they're on the ice against the other team's top line.

Geez, I hate when I have to agree with Volourn on something, because everytime I see his idiocy it feels like I must be wrong to think like him even when I know I'm right.

 

Anyhow, I actually consider the +/- to be one of the best stats for my personal use. If you look at a player like Fredrik Modin (Tampa bay) and check his stats before Tampa Bay was winning anything, you'll see that he's put up decent stats point-wise and almost always has had a positive +/-. On a losing team, that's a VERY impressive figure, if you manage to combine it with some offense. If you then take a player like Ilya Kovalchuk and check his offensive stats (and become awed by them like everyone is) but then notice he never goes above like.. -30 in +/-, those goals don't seem as impressive anymore.

 

Especially in the play-offs the +/- statistic is a great source of information of how a player has behaved during the game. And yes, in the last play-offs Sundin had negative numbers. For 6.8 million dollar per year, you'd expect him to take much more defensive responsibility than that.

 

But the Leafs in 2006 anyhow!

[EnderAndrew]

Hockey is more than stats for certain players. Thugs and defensemen can contribute in ways stats fail to recognize.

 

For a player whose role is to score goals however, stats are a fair comparison.

[GhostofAnakin]

+/- is very misleading. It's not indicative of how a player plays. If it was, then why is there such a discrepancy from year to year?

 

Just look at Messier's +/- stats that I posted. He goes from one year being a -25 to a +3. Are you going to tell me that in one season he was so horrible that he got a -25 all on his own, whereas the next season he was so good as to have a +3?

 

Any stat that fluctuates that much can't be an accurate stat. Just think about it coming up this year. You can predict, relatively, where someone like Kovalchuk will finish in point totals over the next 5 years or so. You can predict how many goals someone like Nash will score on average over the next five years. But I bet their +/- stat will all depend way too heavily on how their team does, rather than how well or poorly they play.

[mkreku]

+/- is very misleading.  It's not indicative of how a player plays.  If it was, then why is there such a discrepancy from year to year?

 

Just look at Messier's +/- stats that I posted.  He goes from one year being a -25 to a +3.  Are you going to tell me that in one season he was so horrible that he got a -25 all on his own, whereas the next season he was so good as to have a +3?

Of course +/- isn't going to tell the whole story. The +/- is only useful to you if you watch the games, watch the team and watch the individual players. Also, you need to judge a players +/- against other players on the team. If the entire team averages -30 then -25 is actually a pretty good +/-. As I said in my previous post, it depends a lot on your team, if it's above .500 or not.

 

+/- is only misleading if you don't know how to translate it into hockey knowledge. The discrepancy from year to year is one of the reasons +/- is one of the more exciting stats to follow, as it can tell you how well a line is composed, how motivated a player is or what his role in the team was. Just imagine what would happen to Kovalchuk's stats if he suddenly found himself playing together with Brendan Morrow and PJ Axelsson (for example).

[GhostofAnakin]

My point being +/- are so unpredictable that it can't be used as an indication of how well or how poorly a player is playing.

 

Atleast if you look at their primary stats (ie. goals, assists, points) you can get a good idea what type of production he'll put up. If you sign a guy that had 3 straight 40 goal seasons, there's a very good chance he'll be a 40 goal man for you. He might turn out to be a bust, but atleast you have a general idea what type of player he is.

 

Plus/minus on the other hand, fluctuates so much that you can't look at a player and say "I want to sign this guy because I think he'll be a +30 for us this year". I like to think of +/- as a "secondary" stat, whereas the "primary" stats are the three main offensive stats of goals, assists and points.

 

Regardless, I've made my views known. So let's just agree that Messier is not the worst player in the NHL and move on. "

[alanschu]

Messier is one of the better players in the league. Period. If he plays, and plays more than 70 games I expect him to have AT LEAST 40 points which is pretty darn good in the NHL; if not 50 points. Also of note, is his pretty impresisve shooting percentage. When checking that out, remmeber goalies in the NHL average .900 save %. And, oh btw, Mess was a plus on the Rangers last year in spite of their crappiness. Go figure.

 

Game over.

 

 

You did NOT just use shooting percentage as your hammer at the end of the post prior to saying "game over."

 

Shooting percentage is the goofiest stat recorded in Hockey. I'd much rather let Messier with his 17% shooting percentage get an open shot than Jagr with his "meager" 12% shooting percentage. All it means is he was lucky enough to get the puck on his stick when there was an excellent opportunity to score.

[Volourn]

"Perhaps I should have used "average" instead"

 

So, the 'average' NHL skater (not counting goalies) gets 40-50 points a year. Uhuh. Just going by point totals shows at MINIMUM he is avergae. Add everything else into he is obviously one of the better players.

 

 

"All it means is he was lucky enough to get the puck on his stick when there was an excellent opportunity to score."

 

So shooting percentage is just luck? Riiigghhht!!! Afterall, it takes the player to get themselves in a position to score, and the intelligence to take smart shots. Shooting percentage isn't the most important stat (points, face off percentage for centers and plus/minus are my favorites for skaters); but to say it's the'goofiest' stat is just plain silly. The goofiest stats are ones like 'most major penalties in a season', 'most PIMs', and I'm sure if we did some diggin' we'd likely be reminded of even goofier stats since all sports have asanine stats that simply should be ignored.

[EnderAndrew]

Anyone know off hand how much he is making?

[Volourn]

Hmm.. I think it's about 3 million. Not sure. However, he's actually a free agent so he's technically making nothing.

[EnderAndrew]

Given last year's would-be-economy I might consider signing him for one year at 3 mil again.

 

Is he still in shape? How did he spend the year off? Does he want a long-term contract?

 

I'd need to know those things if I were to decide to take him back.

[Volourn]

"Given last year's would-be-economy I might consider signing him for one year at 3 mil again."

 

Aye. 3 mil is a good price for him. 2 mil as a low, 4 mil as a high.

 

 

"Is he still in shape?"

 

Yes. If he wasn't I doubt he'd even think of returning.

 

 

"How did he spend the year off?"

 

Keeping in shape like he does during all off seasons. In fact, he's said in the past he has to work harder at it so he atcually works harder at keeping in shape than ever before.

 

 

"Does he want a long-term contract?"

 

Doubtful.

 

 

"I'd need to know those things if I were to decide to take him back."

 

I'm sure the GMs would too.

 

 

Actually, they had a little piece on him last night on Sportsnet. He hasn't officially mad eup his mind if he is returning let alone to where he'd want to. Though, I'd wager sinc ehe hasn't retired yet he isn't going to this year.

[EnderAndrew]

I've found it seems most players retire at the end of a season when they are banged up and convinced they can't do it again rather than at the beginning of a season when they think they have one more shot to win.

[alanschu]

"Perhaps I should have used "average" instead"

 

So, the 'average' NHL skater (not counting goalies) gets 40-50 points a year. Uhuh. Just going by point totals shows at MINIMUM he is avergae. Add everything else into he is obviously one of the better players.

 

 

"All it means is he was lucky enough to get the puck on his stick when there was an excellent opportunity to score."

 

So shooting percentage is just luck? Riiigghhht!!! Afterall, it takes the player to get themselves in a position to score, and the intelligence to take smart shots. Shooting percentage isn't the most important stat (points, face off percentage for centers and plus/minus are my favorites for skaters); but to say it's the'goofiest' stat is just plain silly. The goofiest stats are ones like 'most major penalties in a season', 'most PIMs', and I'm sure if we did some diggin' we'd likely be reminded of even goofier stats since all sports have asanine stats that simply should be ignored.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

I guess Milan Micahelek it the most dominating player on the ice. He had a 100% shooting percentage in 2003-2004. Matt Johnson had a dominating 33.3%. If you wish to overlook those guys because they didn't score many goals, then I guess Pavel Datsyuk is one of the most feared guys on Detroit, given that he had a 22.1% shooting percentage with 30 goals. Who needs to look out for Yzerman or Shanahan when you have a sniper like that on your team! A game where you get a few lucky bounces, or catching a goalie on an off night can balloon your shooting percentage, especially when you don't score a plethora of goals.

 

As for Mark Messier's point totals, it puts him tied at 116 with players like Ryan Malone, Steve Rucchin, Trent Klatt, Wade Redden, Henrik Zetterburg, and Ray Whitney.

[EnderAndrew]

Actually I think Datsyuk is a really good player saturated with alot of talent around him. With a full offense driven though him, who knows what we would see.

[mkreku]

If you wish to overlook those guys because they didn't score many goals, then I guess Pavel Datsyuk is one of the most feared guys on Detroit, given that he had a 22.1% shooting percentage with 30 goals.

 

As for Mark Messier's point totals, it puts him tied at 116 with players like Ryan Malone, Steve Rucchin, Trent Klatt, Wade Redden, Henrik Zetterberg, and Ray Whitney.

The two high-lighted guys are the future of Detroit, should they choose to keep them under the new CBA. Datsyuk might not be one of the most feared guys now, but..

[alanschu]

If you wish to overlook those guys because they didn't score many goals, then I guess Pavel Datsyuk is one of the most feared guys on Detroit, given that he had a 22.1% shooting percentage with 30 goals.

 

As for Mark Messier's point totals, it puts him tied at 116 with players like Ryan Malone, Steve Rucchin, Trent Klatt, Wade Redden, Henrik Zetterberg, and Ray Whitney.

The two high-lighted guys are the future of Detroit, should they choose to keep them under the new CBA. Datsyuk might not be one of the most feared guys now, but..

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

 

Actually yeah, Datsyuk was a bit of a gaffe on my part.

 

But I don't think people take it "easy" on Kovalchuk when he's rushing the net because he "only" has a shooting percentage of 12%, or Joe Sakic and his "meagre" 13%, or Markus Naslund, who is considered a sniper, and his "blah" 11.8% shooting percentage.

[Volourn]

"I guess Milan Micahelek it the most dominating player on the ice. He had a 100% shooting percentage in 2003-2004."

 

What did he have? One or two shots? Don't be silly.

 

Once again, I never said shooting percentage was the be all end all of NHL stats, doofuses.

 

Use your brains or just admit you don't know what youa re talking about as shown below:

 

 

"As for Mark Messier's point totals, it puts him tied at 116 with players like Ryan Malone, Steve Rucchin, Trent Klatt, Wade Redden, Henrik Zetterburg, and Ray Whitney."

 

When these guys cna bring the same leadership skills, experience, and other intangibles that make up a player's quality then come talk to me about putitng them at Mess' level.

 

Next retarded comment, please. The very fact that you equalized some dink named Ryan Malone to someone who has won 6 stanley cups is absolute proof that you have no idea what youa re talking about, Willis.