Quote:
Originally Posted by Flyer_Frank
As a player, I think the one 20 goal year and 2 cups have gotten Schultz a little overrated in that department. His skating was OK for his day. His size was good and he did finish his checks, played hard, his hands were so-so. There were a lot of tough players in the league then who were much better players and Dave Schultz could only have had a career like Tiger, Cashman, O'Reilly in his dreams. Jack makes a fair point about Schultz getting full of himself and his act did wear thin, but I think he's overrating Schultz' skills. I don't think Schultz was overrated as a fighter though. He was one of the top guys in the league.
Dave "The Hammer" Schultz vs. Norm Macdonald - YouTube |
Schultz averaged 30 points a year over 80 games with 343 penalty minutes over his career. I wrote that I feel he could of been a 40-50 point player and I wrote that for a few reasons:
One is I find it amazing that he could average 30 points a season and remember that average was lowered by his last full year where he only scored 18 points and his 1 point in 13 meaningless games playing for Scotty Bowman in 1979/80!
Schultz from 1973-78 averaged 35 points in 80 games over 5 seasons with 381 penalty minutes!
So I have no issues in writing that Schultz was basically a 35 point player with a ridiculous amount of penalty minutes. If he lowered the penalty minutes to say 200 minutes and stopped with all the misconduct penalties that caused him to sit in the penalty box with wasted minutes and focused more on hockey, I feel very comfortable writing that he could of been a 40-50 point man!
The other thing is that Hound Kelly showed us all what ice time and playing hockey could do for a guy with some hockey skills!
Remember that Fog Shero always said if Hound Kelly was scoring 20 goals then Shero was doing a poor job in using him! In other words don't play Kelly a regular shift but use him to rev up the team and the crowd in the proper moments having him run around banging guys and bouncing off them like a pinball!
In 1980/81, Hound Kelly was 31 years old and was dealt to the Capitals and played a regular shift and guess what he scored?
26 goals, 62 points with a rugged but not crazy 157 penalty minutes!
Schultz was a player like Kelly in terms of skills and with some icetime and focus on hockey playing, Hound Kelly at age 31 scored 26 goals and 62 points!
I think it is reasonable to think that Schultz could of been a 40-50 point man like a Bobby Nystrom was or
Dan Maloney was!