Trying to rank Skor McFleury among the all-time great defensemen

[Alex 3,199]

I set out this week trying to figure out a way to do two things;1) Figure out objectively where Skor McFleury would rank among the best defensemen, and 2) map out an accurate era adjustment formula. However, that turned out to be fairly difficult, the two main factors that made it difficult was that early season indexes are missing (S1-S19), and there was only 1 pure defensemen award prior to S59. If we go off the S75 top 75 players list we end up with the below ranking for the top 10 we end up with this list:

 

1.      Ryan Sullivan

2.      Sterling Labatte

3.      Daniel Braxton

4.      Japinder Singh

5.      Smitty Werbenjagermanjensen

6.      Tomas Jenskovic

7.      Alexander Valiq

8.      Jochen Walser

9.      Phil Hampton

10. Elijah Incognito

11. Jeff Hamilton

12. David Walcott

13. Fabio Jokinen

14. Joseph McWolf

15. Matt Bentley

16. Lincoln Tate

 

The main thing to note there is that the list is only up until S75 and notably excludes both Condor Adrienne who likely slots in comfortably in the top 10 as well as Hard Markinson, who would likely be in the same area, but the lack of a cup likely drops them a couple spots as well as multiple other defensemen that have had spectacular careers in the past 20 seasons.

 

One thing that made placing McFleury difficult was how to weight the whole 9^th season thing, the only player in the top 16 as of S75 who played 9 seasons was Sterling Labatte. But with that being said the general conclusion I came to was that we can weight S80 players on a equal level since while the 9 season players do play an extra season, they start their rookie season at a lower TPE (compared to other high earning players), and have to navigate a much harsher regression, which results in them being a lower TPA later in their careers. The other main question is the impact of hybrid attributes, which we’ll just ignore. Lastly, for simplicity’s sake we’ll just assume that all players are on an equal playing field with regard to era, even though players in early seasons that were high earning produced at levels that we don’t see today.

 

Strictly based off of production Skor McFleury slots in 3^rd behind Sterling Labatte, and Japinder Singh, and joins Singh as the only 2 players in league history to have 700+ points, 1000+ hits, and 1000+ shots blocked. The main thing that would push McFleury down the order would be having fewer individual awards then some previous greats (this is kind of another thing that makes it difficult to compare eras as it was much more common for players to win awards across multiple seasons in the early seasons).

 

As of right now I would probably pencil McFleury somewhere in the 6 to 10 range, but it’s hard to know a 100% certain spot, especially with all the above reasons. When season 100 hits VSN will have it’s work cut out trying to map out a list, but it should be interesting none the less.

 

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[Banackock 8,047]

Bana tries to rank himself amongst best GMs of all time:

 

1) Bana

 

Thank you