Quote:
Originally Posted by CliffFletcher
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.
|
All true, however I was just reffering directly to the Stanley Cup portion of people's arguments. People always point to guys like Yzerman and Sakic and their cups as proof that they're better leaders than guys that haven't won cups. That comparison is made all the time in regards to Iginla. And my point was simply that you remove Sakic and Yzerman from their cup winning years and replace them with Iginla and there's a pretty damn good chance those teams still win the cup that year with a superstar cast and Iginla. You put those two players on the Flames, and there's no chance in hell those young gun teams win a cup.
My point is just that Stanley Cups are more of a team accomplishment than an individual accomplishment when the teams are stacked, which the Wings and Av's definitly were when they won their cups, and therefore when measuring the success of guys like Sakic and Yzerman, or lack of success of guys like Iginla, using cups as measurement, it has to factored in that two played on teams where the Stanley Cup was, for all intents and purposes "bought" by team salaries that made the small market teams look like they purchased their roster with pocket change.