Top 10 Defencemen: Schilling vs. Pnep

This is my next post on sabermetrics and hockey. I have already compared the top 10 forwards of all time according to Daryl Shilling's hockey player rating system and Pnep's hall of fame monitor.

By Daryl Shilling's method, the top 10 defenders of all time are:

1. Bobby Orr 1358 points
2. Paul Coffey 1169
3. Ray Bourque 1102
4. Didier Pitre 998 *Pitre was a forward why is he on this list?*
5. Al Macinnis 935
6. Eddie Shore 910
7. Brian Leetch 872
8. Denis Potvin 857
9. Lester Patrick 850
10. Red Kelly 810

Pnep's top 10 defencemen of all time are:

1. Ray Bourque 4664.82
2. Bobby Orr 4037.97
3. Doug Harvey 3467.36
4. Paul Coffey 2958.37
5. Red Kelly 2925.27
6. Denis Potvin 2618.40
7. Al MacInnis 2491.13
8. Nicklas Lidstrom 2473.00
9. Pierre Pilotte 2411.71
10. Chris Chelios 2331.12

Numerical values are not comparable between the two systems, but relative differences are.

These two systems are quite different. The differences occur at the beginning, Shilling rates Bobby Orr as number one all time, Pnep picks Ray Bourque. Orr is clearly the best defender of all time, any rating system that does not show this is flawed.

At number two, Shilling picks Paul Coffey, Pnep picks Bobby Orr. I think this is two early for Paul Coffey, but it shows the problems of apply sabermetrics to hockey, Coffey is the best example of an offensive defenceman with poor defensive ability. Its hard to rate his defensive ability, so if we stick to offence for the majority of our rating system, players such as this will be overrated.

At number three, Shilling picks Ray Bourque, Pnep picks Doug Harvey. Harvey is somewhat the opposite of Coffey, a very good defensive player who did not score as often as many of the other top defenders.

At number four, Shilling picks Didier Pitre (a forward from the early days of the NHL). Pnep picks Paul Coffey.

At number five, Shilling picks Al MacInnis. Pnep picks Red Kelly.

At number six, Shilling picks Eddie Shore. He was a very good defender that Pnep missed out altogether and shilling underrates. Pnep picks Denis Potvin.

At number seven, Shilling picks Brian Leetch. Pnep picks Al MacInnis.

At number eight, Shilling picks Denis Potvin. Pnep picks Nicklas Lidstrom.

At number nine, Shilling picks Lester Patrick (an early player he overrates, who was a great builder of the early professional hockey systems). Pnep picks Pierre Pilotte, a good defender from the 60's that Shilling misses.

At number ten, Shilling picks Red Kelly. Pnep picks Chris Chelios.

These lists are very dissimilar. This is because Shilling tends to rate offensive value highly. In contrast, when he rates defenders, Pnep tries to rate +/-, games played and all star appearances in place of offense. Shilling is also more open to players from the earliest days of pro hockey. He ranks players who played ouside the NHL and credits them for undocumented points in their careers, adjusting for games played along the way (this is a significant adjustment, the earliest players often played less than 20 games in a season). This will leave me a good number of future posts to explain the specific differences between the rating of these different defenders.