Quote:
Originally Posted by flameswin
You remove Yzerman or Sakic from the Av's and Wings when they were winning cups and place them on the young gun Flames and see if they're still "leading teams to cups because they're amazing leaders"? **** no, they'd be just like Iginla; Superstar players, and great leaders who play on a crappy team.
..and I'm not suggesting they aren't better than Iginla, just that playing on a star studded team like the Wings or Av's was absolutely a factor in those players accomplishments. And it's the comments like "Sakic and Yzerman are true leaders and that's why they have Stanley cups, while Iginla wasn't on that level because he didn't lead a team to a cup" that's such BS, imo.
|
That's true to an extent. Bernie Federko, Dale Hawerchuk, and Dave Babych don't get the individual recognition they deserve because they played on weak teams.
However, as I've already noted, Sakic played on bad teams for half of his career. For Yzerman's his first eight seasons the Wings fluctuated between mediocre and terrible. Both of those guys proved they could be superstars on lousy teams, long before they were surrounded by other elite players.
And being a superstar player on a mediocre team isn't all down-side. The whole offence of the team will be structured to run through you. You will have all the ice time, especially on the powerplay, your body can handle. You probably won't be expected to back check.
Stars on stacked teams often have to share ice time, adapt their game to other players and systems, and in general don't get everything their way the way individual superstars do. Yzerman is an perfect example. His most productive seasons were on a lousy Wings teams. In Yzerman's three most productive seasons, the Wings lost in the first round twice and did not qualify once. Once management got him the supporting players and coaches to build a true contender, he had to pick up his defensive game, share quality ice time and linemates, and consequently his stats suffered.
Lots of players of Iginla's calibre played on mediocre teams for most of their career - Sundin, Alfredson, Gartner, Bure. Iginla's situation isn't unique, or even remarkable.
So it's not at all obvious to me that Iginla would have seen more personal success playing on stacked teams.