42 replies to this topic

[Beck27]

I wouldnt go this far. In fact, I would say "without any real offensive support" is very much revisionist history.

From his rookie year on (91) he played with guys like Trevor Linden, Courtnall, Momesso, Igor Larionov, Cliff Ronning and Greg Adams
(top ten in scoring as a team). And those are just the guys with 20+ goals. No, not superstars, but absolutely not slouches in the early 90s. His second year, Larionov left, but the rest of those guys still produced and Bure exploded and they were 2nd in scoring as a team. The next was the year (93-94) that the Canucks made the Finals. The next two years he didn't play a whole lot because of injury and they brought in Almo, who was incredible in his own right. When he was healthy, he was a 90 point player though. He had support in Vancouver.

I agree he should be in the hall, but Bure went to as close to a perfect place for him right from the start as you can find. He had LOTS of support then. He just couldn't stay healthy and played for bad teams once he was out of Vancouver.

And once he was out of Vancouver, he still put up numbers at a crazy good pace, playing on bad teams, and in an era when there were some very good defensive teams, and very good goalies in the NHL.

Look at his Florida numbers alone. 98-2002, 223 games played, 251 points...152 goals. 152 goals in 223 games playing for the Florida Panthers. Small sample size yes, but definitely shows just how good of a player he was.

[Triumph]

That Vancouver team isn't that good. You look at most of the HOFers, they played with other HOFers on their team. Besides Larionov, who mostly got in for achievements outside the NHL, what HOFers did Pavel Bure play with? This is going to be the way we look at most HOF players, because it's really hard to concentrate 3 or 4 on a team anymore. The 80s Oilers have 6. The 80s Islanders have 5. The 91 Penguins have 7, and I'm not even counting Bryan Trottier. The year before Bure arrived to Vancouver, they were horrible. Some of their players improved, but still, he played for one division winner, reached the Cup Finals once. And this is going to be a relatively common occurrence in a 30 team NHL with HOF level players - some of them are going to go their whole careers without winning anything, and without ever playing with a top player in his prime. I wouldn't've been surprised had Kovalchuk gone his entire career without making the Cup Finals. Sundin made the Cup Semis twice. Iginla has made one Cup Final and otherwise has not gotten out of the first round.

[lucifer91]

I don't know if this was posted elsewhere, but here is a youtube clip of them making the calls to the new HOF's




ANSWER YOUR PHONE ADAM! Also, nice to hear how excited Pavel's dad was.

Edited by lucifer91, 27 June 2012 - 01:17 PM.