Hey guys, my Red Wings friend was talking about some 'Things hockey with me (I affectionately refer to them as "The Dead Things") and in the midst of his usual bluster about only injuries denying a solid chance of them making it to the finals against the Blackhawks he gave me this choice nugget:



So yeah, since I'm a hockey ignoramus I've decided to go and ask you guys to point me in the right direction in regards to figuring out who the best player in hockey is. I threw out the first names that came to mind along with a perfunctory look at the individual points leaders over @ NHL.com, so if you choose other be sure to tell me who you think it is.

Naturally, I told my friend that I was making this post and now he's trying to feverishly downgrade his original prognosis to "no, but he's very good!" before saying that Sergei Fedorov was definitely the best player in 2002, but I'm going to wait to make that thread until tomorrow night because I don't wanna clutter up the board too much, I mean, Don Tiny could be reading and pissing him off means that I'm pissing you off and I really don't wanna piss you off.

kthxbye

edit: enjoy some bonus bluster that came after my friend was informed that I was making this post!

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I just don't dig this whole bandwagon bs with the Hawks now

you know that, yeah yeah you guys have Stan Bowman, I could ask 80% of the fans and they wouldn't know who the fuck I'm talking about

however if say the Wings and the Hawks went to the cup and the Wings won, you better belive I would talk so much shit people would want to fight me, daily

I read what you said, I stand by my remarks

((and la Pièce de résistance))

I'll look do it later, anbody that says either Kane or Toews tell them I said they can go fuck themselves

((yeah at this point it's blatant grandstanding, but hey, here's your chance to vote for Pavel Datsyuk and prove him right. Don't let him down! He's now putting in effort to troll you guys so I'm going to cap it off with this one...))

the majority of Hawks fans can't even talk with me, they lose what I am saying cause I have like this for so long now, that they become lost in ownership/GM's/coaches, they know nothing, they are weakminded hockey fans

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Datsyuk isn't even in the discussion.

Crosby and Ovechkin are top 2, that's not even up for debate. Even the top 5 is almost unanimously agreed on by all hockey fans.

99% of hockey fans would give you this list as this their top 5...

Crosby
Ovechkin
Stamkos
Malkin
Kane

Datsyuk is past his prime but you can still make a strong case to put him in the top 10. No way is he in the top 5 though. Your friend is just a huge homer.

so my friend was on to something when he said that if anyone picks kane or toews that they should go fuck themselves? they're not even in top-5 conversations?

i figured if either of them had a chance it'd be toews, but he wouldn't be in the #1 discussion because he doesn't score enough to complement his all-around game (whereas KANER is all scoring and little else. great complements to each other, eh?)

edit: holy shit it's 1:45 in the morning? i guess it makes sense cuz he didnt get off work til 12:30 and he's reportedly entering the bag..... i've efforted getting him to sign up over here and plead his case and "just take it" so let's hope that comes to fruition cuz when this guy enters the bag i think there's some CSFMB legend potential =D

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Kane is in the top 5, not Toews.

woops, didn't notice. anyways i'm pretty sure my friend just decided to blow off signing up for the board in favor of wanking it to some porn he was downloading, as he suddenly went off of AIM without even so much as a goodbye. i just called him to be like WTF?!?! assuming he was across the house, but i quickly got a pissed off shouty whispering DON'T CALL THIS LATE MAN I'VE GOT A WIFE AND KID.... which begs the question, who jerks off within 5-10 feet of their sleeping wife and kid?

the future CSFMB legend, that's who!

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Kane is not there, sorry I'm talking all around playing ability, Kane is not there. Btw fuck the Hawks and their dumb ass bandwagon fans, I hate them

I see Ovechkin and Malkin, helll even Crosby, but Kane fuck that guy

I can see, Malkin, Ovechkin and Crosby, I see that (not really) but then you throw Kane in there give me a fucking break I'm talking about an all round player. Sorry you lose, as I hope the Shithawks lose and don't get the cup again. Btw who was the last team to repeat the Stanley Cup? (Redwings) I hate most Blackhawks fans cause they don't know shit, they don't know that their team is more or less great because they are following the Detroit system, aka the Bowman system. If you do no know what I am talking about, get bent and go watch marching bands or walking or some shit cause you suck

dude420 2:17 am
still didn't work
sinicalypse 2:18 am
dude wtf make a screencap
show me what it says
dude420 2:18 am
I don't know I wrot a paragraph it sucked but fuck these people
I don't have it, its over, sorry
sinicalypse 2:18 am
you can hit back on the browser if you hit submit
dude420 2:18 am
I'm done I have to sleep here soon, sorry

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welp, so much for the CSFMB legend in waiting. i tried. i can only imagine the paragraph of raw 75% trolling emotion you will have to live the rest of your lives knowing you'll never be able to read =(

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Yea, what a shame.

You're clearly a much bigger hockey fan than I am, but is that really true? I know Kane is having a giant season and he's exciting to watch in a way that no one has been in Chicago since Savard. Kane seems to have matured to a point that few people thought he might. I remember calls to trade him after the first Cup. But even with as well as Kane is playing now and all that scoring he is doing, don't real hockey people consider Toews to be the more complete and more important player overall?

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Don't take it personally.

Kane is a monster now.

Tavares should be in the discussion over Getzlaf and Datsyuk for sure.

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I'll take Toews over Kane all day.

Also, should probably find a way to shoehorn a defenseman in the top-5. Either Suter or Karlsson.

Toews might be the best two-way center in the league, or at least is in the conversation with Pavel Datsyuk and Patrice Bergeron. Personally, I think it's neck and neck between Toews and Datsyuk with Bergeron #3; Dats has lost a little off the top since his 2005-2009 zenith but Toews has developed a disturbing tendency to have weeks where he's just a big floating turd -- such as against Datsyuk's Red Wings this spring, which is not wholly coincidental. He finally made point-per-game last year, but it was a short season.

Kane has always been a better scorer than Toews, but he made enormous strides on the defensive side last year, not to mention his maturity. The time he spent living with his mom during the lockout seemed to make up for a lot of arrested development in the guy's life. I think he left home at like age 13 to play club hockey in Detroit and junior in London (Ont.). I can see where that lifestyle would mess a lot of people up, but because Kane is of a white and middle-class upbringing, he never got to be treated as this weird blameless savant whose only job is to make us clap. But enough about that, he's a great scorer having a career year. I love both, but Toews is definitely the reason for the season with this team.

As for where Toews and Kane rank among the NHL's elite, it's hard to say because the structure of the Blackhawks is so different from the structure of the Penguins or Capitals or Lightning. The West/East split has become very pronounced in recent years, and never more so than now. Western teams are more about balance, depth, and discipline. Part of this is having to keep pace with the Red Wings, the other is that the West has more (ugh) "emerging" markets that can only afford to play not to lose. Eastern teams tend to be shallower but top-heavier; the bottoms of the rosters out East can be downright horrifying. The other thing out East, again not wholly coincidental with the star players and shitty depth players, is fighting, fighting, fighting. End result of this? No one from the Hawks can ever really lead in scoring because there are too many scoring options on each team.

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You can talk to blue in the face about the rest of them but Sid is by far the current greatest by far.

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If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.

welp, i have no idea how i missed those..... but yeah everyone, i wanna introduce you to the man, the myth, the legend that is THE DUDE..... aka butter (the unequivocally smooth wonder condiment)

here's the tale of how he got the nickname butter. circa 2001-02 a mutual friend of ours dated this chick named mimi, which ended up fizzling out due to the guy's drug/life problems and rah rah rah. me and my friend paul were hanging out with a recently-broken-up and currently-drunk mimi, who told us as we were going to pick up jeff that she wanted to fuck his brains out. paul and me looked at each other kind of like "oh wow this is going to be memorable" so we endeavored on. after picking up jeff mimi was all about getting a hotel room via paul's bigtime discount (he was a holiday inn employee at the time) so we did and ended up kicking back and drinking/smoking a few when the self-proclaimed "meemstress" decided to make her move.

she proceeded to start showing off her lil bee-sting tits to jeff (with completely hard/ready-to-go nipples, mind you), which he observed alongside me (paul meanwhile was masterminding his plan to win her favor by hiding under some blankets refusing to watch her degrade herself like that... yeah he ultimately stuck out badly there) and then she walked over to jeff and opened up her pants enough to slide them down and show him that she was totally shaved down there. it was a rather brazen display of not only exhibitionism but also sexual desire, cuz the agreed-to-plan was that once they started making out me and paul had already promised mimi that we'd leave them to their own orifices if and/or when they started going to town....

the only problem was that she decided to ask jeff in a rather sultry voice "what do you think of my body, jeff?" which led to one of the greatest moments i've observed in my lifetime..... a moment of pure 100% brazen unequivocal righteous manhood that i can only hope to feebly emulate throughout the rest of my life..... jeff looked her straight in the eyes and matter-of-factly said with a 100% straight face "well if you had some bigger tits you'd be hot, dude"

mimi literally was aghast and like OMFG JEFF!!!! and quickly refastened her belt and buttoned up her shirt demanding to get a ride home ASAP. indeed, her little plan to serenade THE DUDE had backfired because this man wasn't just the dude, he was also BUTTER: THE UNEQUIVOCALLY SMOOTH WONDER CONDIMENT for keeping it real and pure in the face of for-sure sexual hedonism.

you see, immediately after she left both paul and I were like "dude, what the fuck?!?!?!" and all he said back was a walter sobchak-ian "well am i wrong?" to which we couldn't say anything but "no...." followed by the mandatory "but" and some sort of explanation. that is the exact moment that i officially christened him with the nickname BUTTER, because he truly earned it.

not to mention he was truly a better man than us years later cuz he reminded us that chick was gene's girl for years and he's not going to do that to a friend of his now or ever. good point..... but yeah he only mentioned a year or two later.... right around the time he candidly told me after smoking a bowl "man.... i shoulda fucked mimi"

=D

anyways, i hope you've enjoyed the most unnecessarily long and ballyhooed buildup/intro for a guy who's 95% likely to never post here beyond the 2-3 posts he's made in this thread..... tally ho!

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Thats pretty much it right there. Im on record as not being the biggest fan of Kane but this year he really has stepped up his game and became the player I wanted him to be. That said, in a straight up choice between the 2, I feel Toews is just the more complete play. The gap between his offensive abilities and Kanes is smaller than the gap between everything else Toews does better ( defensive responsibilities,create turnovers, corner play, kill penalties, etc). I would wager most NHL GM's would take Toews over Kane as well. Like Pittsburgh Michael said above though, Crosby is so much better than anyone else its a moot point anyway.

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Proud member of the white guy grievance committee

It aint the six minutes. Its what happens in those six minutes.

also, to stay on topic..... looking at the NHL scoring leader stats.... ovechkin's way out in front of everyone else with 30 goals..... but his team is -12 with him on the ice? wow..... i mean the guy has 30 damn goals but they're STILL -12, and they're a 19-13-4 team good for 6th in the east..... and when the #1 scorer in the league is on the ice they're -12 goals? how/why does that happen?

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While plus minus are sometimes skewed numbers, I'll let Curious Hair answer that. Im going to guess its because Ovechkin could care less about coming back on defense most nights and teams take advantage of that while he's on the ice.

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Proud member of the white guy grievance committee

It aint the six minutes. Its what happens in those six minutes.

Simple. Power play goals don't count toward on-ice differential and Ovechkin is a power play beast. Ovechkin's commitment to defense in one helpful gif:

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Fucking Q would send him to Rockford for that

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Proud member of the white guy grievance committee

It aint the six minutes. Its what happens in those six minutes.

I don't know who the best player is, but Stu Grimson is most aggressive...

The other thing that makes Washington fun this year is that Adam Oates is apparently some sort of weird anal-retentive who has to play a bunch of his wingers out of position so that they're on the same wing as their handedness, e.g. Ovechkin is a natural left wing, but also right-handed, so therefore he's been moved to right wing. They traded their best forward prospect for Martin Erat and then played him on his off wing, or at center, or healthy-scratched him altogether. Combine this with a woeful bottom six, defensemen who don't know how to play defense, and Braden Holtby, and the Crapitals are in the holiday spirit by getting lit up like a Christmas tree and a menorah in the same living room. At least when Q does dumb shit like this (Kane at #2 center), he's disabused of it fairly promptly.

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Toews has some nifty moves but he's a guy who works hard and beats you on the boards and drives it to the net. Has a nice shot and an accurate pass but he's not on the same level as Kane offensively. You couldn't put Toews with players like Versteeg and Handzus and expect the same results. Kane is going to produce no matter who he plays with and give everyone else a ton a chances in the process. That's why he gets put in the top 5 by hockey fans more than Toews does.

Toews has the better two way game and the leadership skills. If you were to ask GMs to pick one for their team it would probably be a split, depending on what their team needs. Toews is around there in the top 10 as it is. I know he's in my top 10.

As for the fans that wanted Kane traded; Just an overreaction and total idiocy at the time. I was never on that bandwagon.

Kaner is a monster superstar and is maturing into that role. Expect more Hawks fans. He is by far my favorite Hawk. It used to be Hossa. I appreciate Toews a great amount but never considered him my favorite.

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If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.

Quoting this just because it makes me lol.

I'm with this.

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Its Crosby in a landslide.

And I am loving the fact that the Hawks have become hugely popular.

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CSFMB 2014 Nascar Pick 'em Champion

We don’t have a trillion-dollar debt because we haven’t taxed enough; we have a trillion-dollar debt because we spend too much. — Ronald Reagan

I really enjoy looking at national stats and seeing Hawks everywhere. Particularly a maturing Kaner.

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If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.

I've always liked comparing the point totals of other rosters with ours. Like when I was doing a game thread for the Kings last weekend and saw how steep the drop is from their top point producers. We have so many weapons.

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