Sturminator
Love is a duel
I've done a little bit more research into Soviet league scoring during the 1970's, specifically at the world championships. Using the following resources:
http://eurohockey.com/stats/league/...rder=7&dir=2&type=1&season=1974&list_number=&
http://forums.internationalhockey.net/showthread.php?3420-1975-IHWC-Düsseldorf-Munich
http://forums.internationalhockey.net/showthread.php?10478-1977-IHWC-Austria
http://forums.internationalhockey.net/showthread.php?10298-1978-IHWC-Czechoslovakia
http://forums.internationalhockey.net/showthread.php?4012-1979-IHWC-Moscow-USSR
...plus the 1976 stats from the Czech Wikipedia page. It is painstaking work, but in order to get reliable stats, one must really go through the box scores, as many sites seem to have missing information of some kind or other. Anyway, here are the Soviet scoring leaders over the 1974-1979 period:
Player|Goals|Assists|Points|Games|Points-per-game
Boris Mikhailov|47|40|87|57|1.53
Valeri Kharlamov|39|40|79|57|1.39
Vladimir Petrov|27|42|69|46|1.5
Sergei Kapustin|44|18|62|53|1.17
Aleksandr Maltsev|23|30|53|43|1.23
Aleksandr Yakushev|31|17|48|40|1.2
Helmut Balderis|24|21|45|37|1.22
Vladimir Shadrin|19|21|40|39|1.03
Viktor Zhluktov|17|19|36|37|0.97
This covers Sergei Kapustin's career skating alongside the 1970's Soviet stars. I choose to omit the 1981-83 data so as not to mix in KLM line players, and keep apples and oranges separate, if you will. Kapustin was still very good in the early 80's (two of his three IIHF all-star selections are from this period), but I think the 70's data is good enough to show generally where he falls in terms of relative scoring performance at the international level. A few comments, in general:
- it is interesting how close Kapustin, Yakushev, Maltsev and Balderis end up being in terms of points-per-game over this period. This may be slightly misleading, as Maltsev and Balderis have considerably more impressive domestic league records than the other two, and indeed, pure goalscorers Yakushev and Kapustin were both set up to get good service at the national team level when one looks at line composition. Yakushev skated with Shadrin and Maltsev most of the time, and Kapustin with Zhluktov and Balderis (starting in 1976, at least). I would be very interested to see a deeper study of Yakushev's (and Vikulov's) domestic league performance, but my understanding at this point is that it was not on the Maltsev/Balderis level.
- for whatever reason, scoring was way up in the 1973 WEC-A IIHF pool. I didn't really intend on going back to the period before Kapustin's career, anyway, but the numbers from that year are just wacky. The KPM line guys all scored close to 3 PPG in that tournament. Scoring before the mid-70's was generally a tick higher, but the 1973 tournament was some kind of freakish outlier. I would be curious to know what was going on.
http://eurohockey.com/stats/league/...rder=7&dir=2&type=1&season=1974&list_number=&
http://forums.internationalhockey.net/showthread.php?3420-1975-IHWC-Düsseldorf-Munich
http://forums.internationalhockey.net/showthread.php?10478-1977-IHWC-Austria
http://forums.internationalhockey.net/showthread.php?10298-1978-IHWC-Czechoslovakia
http://forums.internationalhockey.net/showthread.php?4012-1979-IHWC-Moscow-USSR
...plus the 1976 stats from the Czech Wikipedia page. It is painstaking work, but in order to get reliable stats, one must really go through the box scores, as many sites seem to have missing information of some kind or other. Anyway, here are the Soviet scoring leaders over the 1974-1979 period:
Boris Mikhailov|47|40|87|57|1.53
Valeri Kharlamov|39|40|79|57|1.39
Vladimir Petrov|27|42|69|46|1.5
Sergei Kapustin|44|18|62|53|1.17
Aleksandr Maltsev|23|30|53|43|1.23
Aleksandr Yakushev|31|17|48|40|1.2
Helmut Balderis|24|21|45|37|1.22
Vladimir Shadrin|19|21|40|39|1.03
Viktor Zhluktov|17|19|36|37|0.97
This covers Sergei Kapustin's career skating alongside the 1970's Soviet stars. I choose to omit the 1981-83 data so as not to mix in KLM line players, and keep apples and oranges separate, if you will. Kapustin was still very good in the early 80's (two of his three IIHF all-star selections are from this period), but I think the 70's data is good enough to show generally where he falls in terms of relative scoring performance at the international level. A few comments, in general:
- it is interesting how close Kapustin, Yakushev, Maltsev and Balderis end up being in terms of points-per-game over this period. This may be slightly misleading, as Maltsev and Balderis have considerably more impressive domestic league records than the other two, and indeed, pure goalscorers Yakushev and Kapustin were both set up to get good service at the national team level when one looks at line composition. Yakushev skated with Shadrin and Maltsev most of the time, and Kapustin with Zhluktov and Balderis (starting in 1976, at least). I would be very interested to see a deeper study of Yakushev's (and Vikulov's) domestic league performance, but my understanding at this point is that it was not on the Maltsev/Balderis level.
- for whatever reason, scoring was way up in the 1973 WEC-A IIHF pool. I didn't really intend on going back to the period before Kapustin's career, anyway, but the numbers from that year are just wacky. The KPM line guys all scored close to 3 PPG in that tournament. Scoring before the mid-70's was generally a tick higher, but the 1973 tournament was some kind of freakish outlier. I would be curious to know what was going on.
