We sports fans love our lists. We love to make them and we love to argue about them. Rankings of teams (“power rankings”), top players in various categories, top players overall, and so on. Even a Hall of Fame can be viewed as a list of the best all-time players, coaches, refs, etc. Power rankings has always seemed like an odd one to me, since the league standings is the most accurate ranking of teams that you can get, particularly in the NLL now that there are no divisions. Maybe early in the season a team could be over- or under-performing and so they might be better or worse than their record would indicate, but by about the mid-way point of the season, most teams are exactly what their record indicates.
IL Indoor has done its list of the top 50 players for many years, and I had a vote in a number of those. This year the NLL itself has published its own top 50 list, gathered from votes from the various coaches and GMs around the league. Not to be outdone, the PLL is in the process of releasing their top 50 list as well, apparently voted on by the players themselves, though I have my doubts. More on that later.
Let’s look at the lists from these various sources. Don’t worry, I’m not going through each of the lists in exhaustive detail, nor am I posting my own list. I’m just looking at a few highlights and things they got wrong we disagree on.
NLL
The NLL broke their list down into five groups: faceoff specialists, defensemen, transition players, goaltenders, and forwards. They didn’t post any kind of “overall” list, which makes things a bit easier. Combining the lists means you have to answer questions like: is Dhane Smith a “better” player than Graeme Hossack? What does “better” mean in this context?
Some of their lists are OK, but some have some pretty glaring mistakes, in my humble opinion.
The faceoff specialist list is OK. I might have put Tim Edwards or Tyrell Hamer-Jackson above Brandon Clelland, but that’s fine.
The defensemen list begins with a rookie, but OK, Boudreau had a pretty good rookie year. But next is… Jacob Ruest? His own team’s web site lists him as a Transition player. This must have been voted on by the same people who named Jeff Shattler Transition Player of the Year in 2011. Latrell Harris is the reigning Defensive Player of the Year but ranks 7th among defenders? How does that make any sense?
The transition player list is not bad but Mike Messenger should definitely be there. I’d put Ryan Terefenko there as well. Since I always complain about people who say “Player X should be on that list” without saying who they’d remove to put him there, I will: I’d put Messenger and Terefenko above Gillies and Armstrong, and likely move Bowering up as well.
#1 in the NLL, top 43 in the PLL
Similarly, the goalie list doesn’t have Nick Rose on it at all. Should Del Bianco and Vinc be in the top 3? Yes, and I’d drop Ward to #4. But Rose had the best GAA in the league, the second best save percentage in the league, and played the second-most minutes in the league on the team that gave up the fewest goals in the league. Meanwhile the description of Doug Jamieson said that he faced a lot of shots and “a few too many got by him”, and Aaron Bold had the 13th-best GAA last year among starters in a 15-team league. I’m not trying to disrespect Jamieson and Bold but given all of that, how do they rank higher than Nick Rose?
The forwards list isn’t as bad as the previous few, with one glaring exception: Mitch Jones is not on the list. Jones scored the sixth-most points in league history last season. He and Joe Resetarits combined for exactly 100 more points last year than Brendan Bomberry and Blaze Riorden combined. Neither Jones nor Resetarits made the list, while Bomberry and Riorden both did. Also no Robert Church? Jesse King? Will Malcom? Wes Berg? I get that there’s more to a player’s ranking than pure numbers, but when 4 of the top 10 scorers from last year aren’t in their top 15 forwards while the list includes #32, #33, #42, and #44, that’s just weird.
IL Indoor
IL Indoor used to combine all the lists into a single list, which as I said was part of what made ranking the players difficult. This year, they didn’t combine the lists other than listing defenders and transition players together. Update: Actually they did publish a combined list, but I missed it.
Honestly, I have a couple of very minor disagreements with the IL Indoor lists (forwards, defense/transition, goalies) here and there but nothing egregious. Interestingly, four of IL Indoor’s top ten (Berg, Jones, Resetarits, Church) aren’t among the NLL’s top fifteen.
PLL
The list is not complete at time of writing but Dhane Smith is ranked at #43. You’re telling me the PLL players think there are 42 players better than Dhane Smith?
Latrell Harris, already disrespected by the NLL (see above), is the reigning SSDM of the Year in the PLL and yet is ranked 41st. The players must not think much of SSDMs if there are 40 players in an eight-team league ranked higher than the best SSDM.
Yes, I know ranking players like this is hard. I’ve done it. Like I said, I was part of the IL Indoor group doing this for several years, and doing the rankings every year was one of the hardest things I had to do as part of IL Indoor. Opinions are going to differ. I remember one year I ranked a player in the top 20 in the league and Stephen Stamp emailed me to ask “Are you sure about that? I’m not sure he’s in my top 40 and I can think of about seven people on his team that I’d rank above him”. Maybe if I were to put together a list entirely by myself, people would look at it and make the same “that makes no sense” comments I made above about the NLL list.
And of course it’s the egregious ones that get the most attention. If you rank a player 9th and I think he’s 7th or 11th, no big deal. But if he’s in your top ten and I have him ranked, say, 43rd, that gets people’s attention.
And yes, I know that’s likely the point of all of these lists – to get people talking. Mission accomplished and I’m happy to play my part.
NLL Chatter 