Mark Messier (Murillo Pyramid Rank = #17)
Adjusted Stats
1979-1980 Edm 77 GP 11 goals 19 assists 30 points 0.39 PPG
1980-1981 Edm 74 GP 18 goals 33 assists 51 points 0.69 PPG
1981-1982 Edm 80 GP 39 goals 30 assists 69 points 0.86 PPG
1982-1983 Edm 79 GP 39 goals 47 assists 86 points 1.06 PPG
1983-1984 Edm* 75 GP 30 goals 51 assists 81 points 1.08 PPG
1984-1985 Edm* 56 GP 18 goals 26 assists 44 points 0.78 PPG
1985-1986 Edm 65 GP 28 goals 39 assists 67 points 1.03 PPG
1986-1987 Edm* 79 GP 32 goals 60 assists 92 points 1.17 PPG
1987-1988 Edm* 79 GP 32 goals 63 assists 94 points 1.19 PPG
1988-1989 Edm 74 GP 28 goals 51 assists 79 points 1.07 PPG
1989-1990 Edm* 81 GP 39 goals 72 assists 111 points 1.37 PPG
1990-1991 Edm 54 GP 11 goals 47 assists 58 points 1.08 PPG
1991-1992 NYR 81 GP 32 goals 66 assists 97 points 1.20 PPG
1992-1993 NYR 73 GP 20 goals 55 assists 75 points 1.03 PPG
1993-1994 NYR* 74 GP 24 goals 54 assists 78 points 1.05 PPG
1994-1995 NYR 79 GP 24 goals 68 assists 94 points 1.20 PPG
1995-1996 NYR 74 GP 46 goals 51 assists 97 points 1.31 PPG
1996-1997 NYR 71 GP 38 goals 51 assists 89 points 1.25 PPG
1997-1998 Van 82 GP 26 goals 44 assists 70 points 0.85 PPG
1998-1999 Van 59 GP 15 goals 41 assists 56 points 0.95 PPG
1999-2000 Van 66 GP 19 goals 41 assists 60 points 0.91 PPG
2000-2001 NYR 82 GP 27 goals 48 assists 75 points 0.91 PPG
2001-2002 NYR 41 GP 8 goals 19 assists 27 points 0.66 PPG
2002-2003 NYR 78 GP 21 goals 25 assists 46 points 0.59 PPG
2003-2004 NYR 76 GP 22 goals 30 assists 51 points 0.67 PPG
Adjusted Playoff Stats
1979-1980 Edm 3 GP 1 goal 2 assists 3 points 0.94 PPG
1980-1981 Edm 9 GP 1 goal 4 assists 5 points 0.55 PPG
1981-1982 Edm 5 GP 1 goal 2 assists 2 points 0.47 PPG
1982-1983 Edm 15 GP 12 goals 5 assists 16 points 1.09 PPG
1983-1984 Edm* 19 GP 7 goals 16 assists 23 points 1.22 PPG
1984-1985 Edm* 18 GP 9 goals 10 assists 19 points 1.04 PPG
1985-1986 Edm 10 GP 3 goals 5 assists 9 points 0.86 PPG
1986-1987 Edm* 21 GP 11 goals 14 assists 25 points 1.19 PPG
1987-1988 Edm* 19 GP 8 goals 17 assists 26 points 1.34 PPG
1988-1989 Edm 7 GP 1 goal 9 assists 10 points 1.47 PPG
1989-1990 Edm* 22 GP 8 goals 19 assists 26 points 1.19 PPG
1990-1991 Edm 18 GP 3 goals 9 assists 13 points 0.71 PPG
1991-1992 NYR 11 GP 6 goals 6 assists 12 points 1.11 PPG
1993-1994 NYR* 23 GP 12 goals 18 assists 29 points 1.28 PPG
1994-1995 NYR 10 GP 3 goals 9 assists 11 points 1.15 PPG
1995-1996 NYR 11 GP 4 goals 7 assists 11 points 0.96 PPG
1996-1997 NYR 15 GP 3 goals 9 assists 13 points 0.84 PPG
Career - 1809 GP, 647 goals, 1131 assists, 1777 points, 0.98 PPG
Career-Highs - 46 goals (95-96); 72 assists (89-90); 111 points (89-90); 1.37 PPG
Avg. (25 seasons) - 72 GP, 26 goals, 45 assists, 71 points, 0.98 PPG
Peak Avg. (89-97) - 73 GP, 29 goals, 58 assists, 87 points, 1.19 PPG, 2 Cups
Playoff Career - 236 GP, 93 goals, 161 assists, 253 points, 1.07 PPG
Playoff-Highs - 12 goals (82-83); 18 assists (93-94); 29 points (93-94); 1.47 PPG (88-89)
Accolades - 2 MVP awards, 1 Conn Smythe
All-Star Teams - 4-time 1st-team, 1-time 2nd-team
6-time Stanley Cup Champion
OK, it's time to get controversial folks. When Mark Messier announced his retirement and embarked on his subsequent "farewell tour", the accolades came pouring in. There was but one voice of dissent on the Canadian Sports Radio scene, the always-contrarian (and usually wrong) Bob McCown, who repeatedly said that, in his opinion, Mark Messier was overrated. Well, I can't believe it's come to this, but I'm going to have to agree with Bob McCown.
Understand, saying someone (or something) is overrated doesn't mean that it can't still be great. The Godfather is a great movie, but it's overrated. Mark Messier is one of the twenty greatest players to ever play the game, there's no doubt in my mind. But it stops there. He's not in the top ten, and I think a lot of people think he is. And I'm going to shock you with some of the names I'd put ahead of him: Sakic, Lidstrom, Esposito, Lafleur, even (mercurial as he was) Jagr!
Looking at it from afar (and without the benefit of my adjusted-stats system), Messier would seem to be a shoo-in for the top ten, and even hobknobbing with Howe in the pantheon: six Stanley Cups, second all-time in scoring to only Gretzky, way up there in career playoff points. It's when you realize that Messier benefited immensely from playing in the run-and-gun 80s and start looking closer at the stats that his contribution seems less special. Consider: in real-life stats, Gordie Howe had one 100-point season while Mark Messier had six. In adjusted stats, Howe had ten 100-point seasons while Messier only had one!
Look again at those adjusted averages: 26 goals, 45 assists, 71 points. Quite good, to be sure. But not even close to the same league with the elites. And well short, as we will see in their posts, of the numbers put up by Mikita, Sakic, Jagr, Yzerman, Espo and the Flower.
Well, yes you might say, his career averages look kinda meh, but that's only because he pulled a Paul Coffey and played for far too long, draining his career averages with so-so seasons at the tail end of his career. So let's look at his peak 8-year average. Interestingly enough, Messier's peak isn't even spent with the Oilers for the majority...it begins in 1989 when he has his one true elite-level season, 89-90, leading the Gretzky-less Oilers to a Stanley Cup and winning the MVP with adjusted numbers of 39 goals and 111 points. And it continues into his Ranger days...which is, if you think about it, the time when Messier emerged as not just one of about three or four supporting Oilers playing in the shadow of Gretzky but rather a great player in his own right.
But even when you look at that 8-year peak, it's underwhelming: 29 goals, 58 assists, 87 points, 1.19 PPG. Very good, no doubt. But compared to other 8-year peaks, Messier is way off the pace of Forsberg, Sakic, Howe and Beliveau, and is even bested by Yzerman. He's more in the company of Bryan Trottier, Ron Francis, Peter Stastny and Mats Sundin. Now, those are still great players. But there are great players and there are great players, and you can see that Messier belongs in the non-italicized category. Messier is still top twenty in the pyramid, but to be named in even the same sentence as a Gretzky, Lemieux or Beliveau is heresy.
I can already hear some of the arguments, so let's address them:
"There's more to hockey than just point totals"
Yes, there is, and Messier was lacking in those areas too. Lest we forget, Messier was for the bulk of his career (at least his first six or seven years; and certainly his last seven or eight) a clear defensive liability. Kevin Lowe talks about Glen Sather's frustration with Messier's defensive positioning in his memoirs of the Oiler days (and Sather isn't known for being a stickler for defence).
Certainly, Messier was a prototype power forward in that he was willing to muck it up in the corners, get in a fight if necessary, and cross-check you in the face to prove a point. But again, these are all things that Howe did while also playing better defence, and for the trade-off of production coupled with their superior two-way abilities, I'll take a Beliveau or Mikita over Messier's "grittiness" any day.
"Six Stanley Cups in the modern era! The guy is the greatest leader in hockey history!"
Yes, the Cups are impressive, and believe me, they're the single greatest contributing factor to my opinion that he's a great player. But Bryan Trottier also has six Stanley Cups and similar peak-numbers. Mess gets the edge over Trottier because of longevity...so how about Henri Richard with his eleven Cups? Well, still I'd give the edge to Mess because of his more consistent productivity, and the fact that half of Richard's eleven Cups were won during the Original Six days, when, CFL-style, the odds were more likely you were going to win a championship.
But as far as all of this "leadership" stuff, well, I recognize that Messier is certainly one of the best captains in hockey history. Still, it cuts both ways. We shouldn't forget that four of Messier's six Cups were won with Gretzky there, as captain, and also, by the way, as the greatest player in the history of the game. And there was Coffey, Kurri, Anderson, Fuhr. Messier's contributions aren't negligible by any means...after all, he was the Conn Smythe winner in the Oilers' first Cup year. And Messier went on to win a Cup "by himself" in 1990 with the Oilers, and in 1994 with the Rangers (funny that for winning them "by himself", he didn't win the Conn Smythe in either year).
But hey, Kevin Lowe and Glenn Anderson were on all six of those teams also...they stayed with the Oilers and followed Messier to the Rangers. Who's to say they weren't instrumental in the "leading" of those teams? I'm being facetious, but the point is leadership is hard to quantify.
And what are we to make of the fact that Messier's teams missed the playoffs for the final seven years of his career! SEVEN! In a league where more than half the teams make the playoffs. Did Messier suddenly forget how to lead? These weren't expansion teams he was captain of...the Rangers in the early 2000s were routinely the highest-spending team and routinely underachieved. They were loaded with talent, but couldn't marshal it in a proper way...almost like they were lacking leadership.
Well, yes, but maybe the talent was too flaky, too unpredictable...hell, I'll just say it, too European for any leader to do anything about it. In that case, though, Yzerman and Lidstrom prove themselves to be leaders on par with Messier...they won multiple Cups with primarily European teams.
I don't really believe all of what I'm saying...the point is that hockey is a team game, and of course leaders are required, and great leaders do emerge, but we shouldn't be willing to elevate someone into the pantheon, or even into a discussion of the absolute greatest players of all-time, based solely on some perception of leadership that can have many holes poked in it.
"But he brought it in the big games. Remember the guarantee?"
Yes, sadly, as a Devils fan, I do remember the fucking guarantee. That one game, Game Six, did more to cement Messier's reputation as higher than it should be than anything else. But I also remember that if a rookie goalie by the name of Martin Brodeur knew how to stop wraparounds at the time, the Rangers wouldn't have won the deciding Game Seven.
So, props to the Moose for the guarantee. But sports guarantees are like Don Cherry opinions: the odd time you get them right, you look like a genius and can point to them over and over again, and the majority of the time when you're wrong, you just stay low-key and hope no one remembers what it was you said. We all remember two legendary sports guarantees: Messier's and Joe Namath's. But I'm also sure there are at least fifteen failed ones, I just can't remember them at all (except for Roy Williams guaranteeing the Detroit Lions would win-out the rest of the season...that's just funny). Messier stepped out with his guarantee, and he delivered with the hat trick. Good for him. I won't even mention that the Rangers were Presidents Trophy winners that year, not exactly massive underdogs...oh wait, I just did. Nevertheless, the Moose made good on his guarantee. But that one moment shouldn't change the fact that, for the other 25 years of his career, Messier, while certainly one of the greats to play the game, wasn't ever at the elite level he's been made out to be.
Or maybe I'm just a bitter Devils fan. If so, here's the case for Messier, and why after much debate, I decided to rank him ahead of Stan Mikita: even if the six Stanley Cup rings may have been a product of the great teams around him, Messier brought it when it mattered most. His postseason PPG of 1.07 is 0.09 higher than his regular-season PPG, a true rarity among superstars (of course, some of this may be explained by the fact that an aging and declining Messier didn't have his postseason numbers sullied because his teams weren't even IN the postseason!). And the even bigger factor: in all six of those Stanley Cup runs, Messier was invaluable to his teams, averaging over an adjusted PPG and never once being a "passenger" on a great team's run to the championship.
Messier's legacy may be somewhat overblown, but he's still one of the greatest to play the game. He brought grit and determination during the postseason when legends are born, and even though his career numbers are inflated from playing during one of the highest-scoring eras the game has seen, as much as it pains me to admit it, The Moose did leave a lasting legacy of success. Just don't start arguing that he's a top-ten player.
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