Of all the 4 major American sports (baseball, basketball, football and hockey), it is hardest to evaluate a hockey player by just looking at statistics. In baseball, statistics are everything and number guys poor over them in endless fashion with some success. Basketball is a bit harder...there is no stat for hustle and team play, but in the end you can still look at a game and see who scored, passed the ball and grabbed some rebounds. Football is even harder...how do you evaluate a guard? But again, for quarterbacks, halfbacks and receivers the statistics usually can indicate the better players.
Hockey is different. You can't look at a box score and determine the best player on the ice for a given game. There is so much more to the game than just tapping in a goal on a wide open net. They've added some stats in the last few years like "hits" that add more to the puzzle, but in the end you can't evaluate a player without watching the game.
Where am I headed with this? Mikko F. Koivu, my friends. When Avs shill Adrian Dater recently posted his 10 best centers article, there was some outcry that Koivu shouldn't be included on the list, let alone appear at #7. Is Evgeni Malkin twice as good a player than Koivu simply because he scores twice as often? Of course not. Dater was completely in the right putting Koivu on the list, only I would argue he should've been a bit higher.
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