Sidney Crosby can break the record for the most consecutive seasons OVER a PPG (2023 update: 18 consecutive PPG seasons)

[MadLuke]

I've assumed that Crosby would have actually maintained his pace in 2011 through 2013. Who knows if that's true? It's concerning that he spent three years playing at a 130-point pace, but only scored 109 and 104 points in the two full seasons that sandwiched that span. That calls into question if that pace was really sustainable.

A good example of that would be Crosby second rocket trophy season.

26 goals after 31 games, shooting was looked like an unsustainable 24.3%, 18 in 44 the rest of the way with a 12.2% shooting percentage.

What make 2011 hard to tell was is shooting percentage the full 81 games year just before was also looking unsustainable and 12-13 he was unlucky shooting wise, doing it 3 years in a row create an argument that it could have been close to his new normal, his peak, while missing so many game always leave the door open, 3 early 2017 season, unsustainable for a full season on ice shooting percentage that would have someone gone down significantly the 3 times and not just a little bit.

 

[TheMoreYouKnow]

Crosby’s peak seasons, robbed by injuries, do leave a hole in his resume, but these circumstances were out of his control.

What makes a bigger hole in Crosby’s career is losing Art Ross’s in his prime that he had no business losing : 2010 to Henrik Sedin, 2015 to Jamie Ben, 2016 to Patrick Kane and 2017 to sophomore McDavid

Having won these scoring titles when he actually had the opportunity and control, the hole of 2010-13 wouldn’t look as big as it is.

But injuries are just a fact of life and affect evaluations whether we think it's 'fair' or not. If Gretzky had missed huge chunks of that 1981-86 stretch which would have reduced his trophy totals significantly as well as his goals/points career totals, the Lemieux/Gretzky debate would be a totally different one. Same if Mario's career had looked different after 1989. In a world where Lemieux stays healthy and Gretzky doesn't, the whole debate would be a different one.

 

[The Panther]

But injuries are just a fact of life and affect evaluations whether we think it's 'fair' or not. If Gretzky had missed huge chunks of that 1981-86 stretch which would have reduced his trophy totals significantly as well as his goals/points career totals, the Lemieux/Gretzky debate would be a totally different one. Same if Mario's career had looked different after 1989. In a world where Lemieux stays healthy and Gretzky doesn't, the whole debate would be a different one.

Not really, no. From 1984 to 1990, Lemieux didn't miss significant games and he was 100 miles and about 25 trophies behind Gretzky. That distance was never going to be bridged.

Also, Lemieux in his age 24 season (1989-90) had a noticeable scoring decline from the previous season, relative to peers, something that didn't happen to Gretzky until he was 28. Admittedly, based on a very small sample, this decline from Lemieux's peak continued through the 1990-91 season, and arguably even 1991-92. (Of course, you will this attribute this to his injuries.)

In any case, Lemieux in good health was nowhere near Gretzky at any comparable stage during the first six years of his career. And by 1995-96 Lemieux was being outscored at even strength by two teammates, while Gretzky at age 30 was still destroying the rest of the League as an even strength scorer.

There is also a massive gulf between the two players in international hockey contribution and performance.

 

[Hockey Outsider]

but secondary assists

That was always such a bad argument. Crosby currently ranks 13th all-time in primary points, and he's only 23rd in secondary assists. If he truly was "Secondary Sid", he'd look better, not worse, if we look at secondary assists.

Among the top 200 highest-scoring players in NHL history, he's 8th in primary points per game (Gretzky, Lemieux, Bossy, McDavid, Dionne, Esposito, Stastny) - with every player ahead of him either playing in a higher-scoring era and/or having a shorter career.

 

[TheMoreYouKnow]

Not really, no. From 1984 to 1990, Lemieux didn't miss significant games and he was 100 miles and about 25 trophies behind Gretzky. That distance was never going to be bridged.

Also, Lemieux in his age 24 season (1989-90) had a noticeable scoring decline from the previous season, relative to peers, something that didn't happen to Gretzky until he was 28. Admittedly, based on a very small sample, this decline from Lemieux's peak continued through the 1990-91 season, and arguably even 1991-92. (Of course, you will this attribute this to his injuries.)

In any case, Lemieux in good health was nowhere near Gretzky at any comparable stage during the first six years of his career. And by 1995-96 Lemieux was being outscored at even strength by two teammates, while Gretzky at age 30 was still destroying the rest of the League as an even strength scorer.

There is also a massive gulf between the two players in international hockey contribution and performance.

You're HFBoard's biggest Gretzky partisan and if someone implies anywhere that there could be any doubt about Gretzky being the greatest there must be some kind of bat signal going up in the sky to alert you. If Gretzky had played 15 games he'd be number one for you, so your stance doesn't surprise me one bit.

But the reality of it is that Lemieux played only 231 games between 1989 and 1994 and scored 194 goals and 496 points in that frame. If he had played the possible 420 games and scored 352 goals and 901 points at the same scoring rate...he'd have 848 goals and 2128 points. He'd have 2 more Art Ross trophies to make it 8.

If Gretzky between 1981 and 1986 hadn't played 394 games with 375 goals and 1036 points but instead 231 games with 220 goals and 607 points. His career totals would be 739 goals and 2428 points. He'd have at least 2 fewer Art Ross trophies, so 8 as well. The 200 point seasons everyone always talks about would be gone, the 92 goal season would be gone. Those benchmarks often used to set Gretzky on a different level just wouldn't exist.

So Lemieux would have more goals, same number of Art Ross. And of course this would assume Gretzky wouldn't have suffered after '86 from after effects of injuries and that Lemieux wouldn't have been better after 1994 without those injuries (both of which seem generous assumptions to Gretzky).

It would absolutely affect the debate. Sure, Gretzky would still have his proponents, maybe even a plurality of supporters for GOAT, but the argument would be much much closer. I mean even now Lemieux has his guys, but there'd be a lot more of them in this alternate scenario.

 

[daver]

Crosby’s peak seasons, robbed by injuries, do leave a hole in his resume, but these circumstances were out of his control.

What makes a bigger hole in Crosby’s career is losing Art Ross’s in his prime that he had no business losing : 2010 to Henrik Sedin, 2015 to Jamie Ben, 2016 to Patrick Kane and 2017 to sophomore McDavid

Having won these scoring titles when he actually had the opportunity and control, the hole of 2010-13 wouldn’t look as big as it is.

Cannot stand the namedropping argument.

Prime McDavid/Jagr (sans Mario) maybe lose an Art Ross to Sedin circa 09/10, Sedin had a great year and was a worthy Art Ross winner. Crosby's first 20 games that season were a statistical anomoly easily attributed to a Cup hangover. He was at a 1.50 PPG the rest of the year, and stayed at that level for the next three years.

Crosby was still at that level in 14/15 until he got sidelined by a viral infection. He still lead the league in PPG BTW.

Prime McDavid/Jagr (sans Mario) likely lose to Kane in 2016. Kane had a dominant Art Ross win that year.

In 2017, Crosby missed the first six games of year with a concussion and took his foot off the gas to close out the season because he was more focused on cementing his legacy with a 2nd straight Cup and Conn Smythe. Hardly a year to point as a "hole" in his resume when you add in his World Cup performance too.

The bad luck and timing of Crosby's injuries are almost the most damaging in NHL history. Orr played enough into his peak/prime to put him #1 on many people's all-time lists. Mario played enough at his peak to have two legacy level seasons and Cup runs that rival Wayne's best and cement him in the Big 4.

Unlike those two, Crosby missed out, at the very least, at doubling his Art Ross trophy case by missing 4% of his career games at very key times.

 

[Offtheboard412]

Cannot stand the namedropping argument.

Prime McDavid/Jagr (sans Mario) maybe lose an Art Ross to Sedin circa 09/10, Sedin had a great year and was a worthy Art Ross winner. Crosby's first 20 games that season were a statistical anomoly easily attributed to a Cup hangover. He was at a 1.50 PPG the rest of the year, and stayed at that level for the next three years.

Crosby was still at that level in 14/15 until he got sidelined by a viral infection. He still lead the league in PPG BTW.

Prime McDavid/Jagr (sans Mario) likely lose to Kane in 2016. Kane had a dominant Art Ross win that year.

In 2017, Crosby missed the first six games of year with a concussion and took his foot off the gas to close out the season because he was more focused on cementing his legacy with a 2nd straight Cup and Conn Smythe. Hardly a year to point as a "hole" in his resume when you add in his World Cup performance too.

The bad luck and timing of Crosby's injuries are almost the most damaging in NHL history. Orr played enough into his peak/prime to put him #1 on many people's all-time lists. Mario played enough at his peak to have two legacy level seasons and Cup runs that rival Wayne's best and cement him in the Big 4.

Unlike those two, Crosby missed out, at the very least, at doubling his Art Ross trophy case by missing 4% of his career games at very key times.

Depends on what you mean by "prime" McDavid. I could definitely see a way for McDavid to lose to Sedin in 17/18. McDavid was at 1.32 ppg with MacKinnon right behind him at 1.31 ppg. Although if Ovechkin doesn't miss 10 games in 09/10 it's a moot point as he was easily the most productive offensive player that year with 109 pts 72 gp (124 pt pace) and would have handily beat both 09/10 Crosby and 17/18 McDavid imo. Also I don't buy the cup hangover excuse for Crosby, the problem for him was he was trying to integrate a shoot first mentality into his game which led to a really rough start for him that season. If he could have managed to avoid going on a career worst 5 game pointless streak during the early season west coast trip he probably could have won the Art Ross that year.

 

[daver]

Depends on what you mean by "prime" McDavid. I could definitely see a way for McDavid to lose to Sedin in 17/18. McDavid was at 1.32 ppg with MacKinnon right behind him at 1.31 ppg. Although if Ovechkin doesn't miss 10 games in 09/10 it's a moot point as he was easily the most productive offensive player that year with 109 pts 72 gp (124 pt pace) and would have handily beat both 09/10 Crosby and 17/18 McDavid imo.

If we ranked the strength of Art Ross wins by % over 3rd, 5th, 10th, 20th etc.... Multiple McDavid seasons could lose to Sedin, and OV circa 09/10 beats most of McDavid's seasons.

The "X player wouldn't lose Y player" is simply a weak arguing tactic altogether anyway.

 

[Offtheboard412]

A good example of that would be Crosby second rocket trophy season.

26 goals after 31 games, shooting was looked like an unsustainable 24.3%, 18 in 44 the rest of the way with a 12.2% shooting percentage.

What make 2011 hard to tell was is shooting percentage the full 81 games year just before was also looking unsustainable and 12-13 he was unlucky shooting wise, doing it 3 years in a row create an argument that it could have been close to his new normal, his peak, while missing so many game always leave the door open, 3 early 2017 season, unsustainable for a full season on ice shooting percentage that would have someone gone down significantly the 3 times and not just a little bit.

I have very little doubt in my mind that his 10/11 season would have seen him end up at about 115-125 points. Whether he would have scored 60+ goals I'm not so sure of as he could have very realistically ended up with 50-55 goals. His 5 on 5 on ice shooting percentage in 09/10 was 11.4% and his 10/11 5 on 5 shooting was 11.6% so he had maintained around an ~11.5% shooting percent for a season and a half makes me feel it was pretty sustainable for him. 11/12 and 12/13 are harder to say as he was shooting a lot less and his 5 on 5 one ice shooting percentage was crazy high. But it's not always a guaranteed to drop as much as people predict for example Gaudreau maintained a 13.4% 5 on 5 shooting percent for all 82 games last year and Auston Matthews has 4 separate seasons of over a 12% on ice 5 on 5 shooting percentage with little correlation in regards to his actual production. Also consider that Ovechkin's 3 year peak is a sandwiched between a 92 point seasons and an 85 point season. Ultimately there's just no way to tell and it's.a.damn shame we lost out on what may have been Crosby's best years.

 

[Voight]

That's encouraging, I had been beginning to wonder if I'm missing big here.

I guess my own thoughts are better phrased this way: For those who think of Sid as Number 5, is his resume good enough to mean that the Big 4 should become the Big 5?

All I've been trying to say is, if that's to happen in Crosby's case one has to include non traditional measures. For me, a guy averaging over 1 point a game and playoff entry for like the 13th through 16th or 17th time in a row - when he's 32-25! - as well as being seen as most complete out of 700 by his peers for four straight years over the same advanced age, seems quite fitting for a generational talent.

But does this generational talent belong in the same conversation as Howe, Orr, Gretz and Mario?

Maybe the better approach in my case is to ask if it legitimate to ask this question in Crosby's case, since it is so rarely even plausible. My direct experience really only applies to Orr, Gretz and Mario - not Howe. Given those three guys and everyone else that's been around since, I'd say that the question is warranted in Sid's case.

McDavid is the only current player capable of making it a big 5 IMO.

PPG every single year of an 18-year career is nothing to sneeze at. I think its pretty remarkable.

It's hard to compare generation to generation, but Crosby's direct comparable is Ovechkin and he never did that.

I can't say who is number five, but I think Crosby belongs somewhere in the top-ten all time. Just where in that group is a matter of opinion.

IMO it would be a lot more impressive if it included full (or close to full) seasons. Its not overly impressive when it includes seasons where he played 50% of the games and one where he played 25%.

 

[TeeTee]

McDavid is the only current player capable of making it a big 5 IMO.



IMO it would be a lot more impressive if it included full (or close to full) seasons. Its not overly impressive when it includes seasons where he played 50% of the games and one where he played 25%.

I think this take would be valid if his partial seasons were at the tail end of his career. They weren't. They were in the very prime.

 

[MadLuke]

It goes a bit both ways, if you are to play only 25 games, to have say 85% chance of ending up over 1.0ppg you need to be the type of players that score at a 1.2ppg rate versus 1.05 if you play 100 games or something of the sorts.

It add noise, it make it way more likely for a .7ppg player to end up with a ppg season a low amount of game but the other way around for a 1.5ppg.

Think of prime Gretzky, the only way for him to end up under a ppg would be to play a very short amount of games in a low scoring era. In fact give him a chance to play more than 48 games in 1995 and likely that he finish over the 1ppg game and stay ahead of Crosby in that trivia. Shooting only 7.7% and under 20 goals for 82 games was probably not sustainable for a whole season.

For an extreme example, if you are always a ppg or more in playoff series, the fact you are able to do it all the time for short amount of game outside extreme luck would mean that you are a 2ppg type of players and could be more impressive in some sense than a player that retired after 800 games and scored 802 pts.

We would never find a prime Gretzky under 1 ppg over a season but maybe we could find an example of a short playoff series where it happened (I do not know, but it is probably 10-100 time more likely to happen).

 

[bobbyking]

the other fake record is Crosby making the playoffs every year since sophomore. why does he get credit for helping his team make the playoffs playing 41 games and 22 games?

 

[TheStatican]

Question for the more experienced fans, and admittedly online discourse is relatively new, but did anyone ever consider PPG in hockey discourse before Mario?

Feels like it is a factor in discussions of Penguins at a level disproportionate with all other teams. Or was PPG routinely brought up in Howe/Beliveau/Richard/Hull discussions? Orr? Clarke? Trottier and Bossy? Wayne? When did hockey fans get blessed with the focus on this stat?

I made a poll asking which season was the highest peak season of all time and guess which Gretzky season got the most votes? It wasn't the year he set the goal scoring record and it wasn't the year he set the point record - it was the season where he had the highest PPG. I don't know about the past but clearly points per game is a metric given a lot of value by more than just Penguins fans today.

the other fake record is Crosby making the playoffs every year since sophomore. why does he get credit for helping his team make the playoffs playing 41 games and 22 games?

Ok... but there is literally a 0 percent chance the Penguin's - who were already the 4th best team in the league both years, don't make the playoffs if they had him for an additional 41 and 60 games of those seasons.

 

[Staniowski]

I made a poll asking which season was the highest peak season of all time and guess which Gretzky season got the most votes? It wasn't the year he set the goal scoring record and it wasn't the year he set the point record - it was the season where he had the highest PPG. I don't know about the past but clearly points per game is a metric given a lot of value by more than just Penguins fans.

Question for the more experienced fans, and admittedly online discourse is relatively new, but did anyone ever consider PPG in hockey discourse before Mario?

Feels like it is a factor in discussions of Penguins at a level disproportionate with all other teams. Or was PPG routinely brought up in Howe/Beliveau/Richard/Hull discussions? Orr? Clarke? Trottier and Bossy? Wayne? When did hockey fans get blessed with the focus on this stat?

Points-per-game has always been my favourite hockey stat among those that are easy to find and use. And I'm not a Pittsburgh fan, nor a fan of Lemieux or Crosby.

It's better than points for obvious reasons - as long as there is a reasonable number of games played, points-per-game does a better job than points in telling you who the best scorers are.

And points-per-game is a natural and logical stat to use even if it's not explicitly stated - e.g. a player with 80 points in 54 games is obviously a better scorer than a player with 90 points in 80 games.

So, this is how people used points-per-game. It wasn't really in the context of debating which player was better between two players. It was just the most natural way of identifying the best scorers. It has always been, even if it wasn't called "points-per-game".
----------------------------
As far as the endless debates and comparisons of players, certainly the realities of Lemieux's career have greatly increased the use of the stat. This, also, is natural, because points-per-game does a good job of telling you how good a scorer Lemieux was.

 

[bobbyking]

I made a poll asking which season was the highest peak season of all time and guess which Gretzky season got the most votes? It wasn't the year he set the goal scoring record and it wasn't the year he set the point record - it was the season where he had the highest PPG. I don't know about the past but clearly points per game is a metric given a lot of value by more than just Penguins fans today.


Ok... but there is literally a 0 percent chance the Penguin's - who were already the 4th best team in the league both years, don't make the playoffs if they had him for an additional 41 and 60 games of those seasons.

what about Ovechkins 48 or 49 goal seasons are theynow 50 goal seasons

 

[BigBadBruins7708]

It goes a bit both ways, if you are to play only 25 games, to have say 85% chance of ending up over 1.0ppg you need to be the type of players that score at a 1.2ppg rate versus 1.05 if you play 100 games or something of the sorts.

It add noise, it make it way more likely for a .7ppg player to end up with a ppg season a low amount of game but the other way around for a 1.5ppg.

Think of prime Gretzky, the only way for him to end up under a ppg would be to play a very short amount of games in a low scoring era. In fact give him a chance to play more than 48 games in 1995 and likely that he finish over the 1ppg game and stay ahead of Crosby in that trivia. Shooting only 7.7% and under 20 goals for 82 games was probably not sustainable for a whole season.

For an extreme example, if you are always a ppg or more in playoff series, the fact you are able to do it all the time for short amount of game outside extreme luck would mean that you are a 2ppg type of players and could be more impressive in some sense than a player that retired after 800 games and scored 802 pts.

We would never find a prime Gretzky under 1 ppg over a season but maybe we could find an example of a short playoff series where it happened (I do not know, but it is probably 10-100 time more likely to happen).

Agreed.

I'm not a fan of when people project his partial year PPGs out to 82 and say that's what he would've scored. Nearly every season ever (minus some Gretzky years) has a slow section to it. Hell, how many times has McDavid been over 2 ppg through the first 20 games before cooling off to "just" 1.50 to 1.70 ppg.

Even Crosby had them. Like his highest scoring season in 07, he had 1.67 PPG through his first 59 games then 1.09 in his last 20

 

[The Panther]

I made a poll asking which season was the highest peak season of all time and guess which Gretzky season got the most votes? It wasn't the year he set the goal scoring record and it wasn't the year he set the point record - it was the season where he had the highest PPG. I don't know about the past but clearly points per game is a metric given a lot of value by more than just Penguins fans today.

Yeah... Not quite the same situation.

During his (arguably) peak years of 1981-82 to 1986-87, Gretzky appeared in 98.5% of his team's RS games. His missing six games in 1983-84 isn't even worth nothing, as far as missed games go.

During Crosby's 2007-08 to 2012-13, he appeared in only 67.7% of his team's games, including seasons of 65%, 50%, 27%, and 75% of the total RS games.

 

[The Panther]

And points-per-game is a natural and logical stat to use even if it's not explicitly stated - e.g. a player with 80 points in 54 games is obviously a better scorer than a player with 90 points in 80 games.

I don't disagree with your overall point, which is certainly logical, but to this example I would not necessarily say the first player is "obviously" a better scorer than the other, in the overall sense.

If the sample size were considerably larger, and the same statistical results appeared, then I would concur that the first player is clearly a better scorer than the second. But just taken in isolation, with only a 54-game sample for the first player, I would not assume anything.

I mean, I don't have to point out one-off or "fluke" seasons where a very talented but limited player suddenly puts together a hot streak for a half season (or even a full season -- see: Jacques Richard), and then immediately after falls down to earth.

None of this one-off stuff applies to Crosby for obvious reasons, but when we're talking about a massive spike in a Hall of Fame player's scoring that lasted for 50% of one season, there's considerable reason to doubt it was sustainable.

 

[TheStatican]

Yeah... Not quite the same situation.

During his (arguably) peak years of 1981-82 to 1986-87, Gretzky appeared in 98.5% of his team's RS games. His missing six games in 1983-84 isn't even worth nothing, as far as missed games go.

During Crosby's 2007-08 to 2012-13, he appeared in only 67.7% of his team's games, including seasons of 65%, 50%, 27%, and 75% of the total RS games.

Well I wasn't saying that we should extrapolate Crosby's 22 and 41 game seasons to full seasons. My only point was that it's not just 'Pens fans' who place value on Per Game numbers. If points per game didn't matter much then it would make more sense for people to vote for Gretzky's known peaks of 92 or 215 rather than his hypothetical peak as technically its not guaranteed that Gretzky would have surpassed those totals in 83-84. But clearly most people fell like that's little doubt that he would have.

I fully agree that there is a minimum number of games that a player needs to surpassed in order for a season to be considered a valid approximation of what one is capable of over the course of a full season. In Crosby's case while he pacing for a season of 60+ goals and 130+ PT's I think most people understand that we can't take 22 or 41 game sample sizes as sufficient proof that he was capable of scoring at such levels over the course of an entire season and thus his known peak will unfortunately always be limited to what he did accomplish that being the 50 goal/120 point range. Which for it's era is still impressive but not in the same threshold as the peaks of the big four.

On the other hand we can do so for players like McDavid and Lemieux for their 56 and 60 game seasons because not only are they larger sample sizes but these players have proven that they could indeed score at those paces over the course of entire seasons(either subsequently or previously). I fully admit to being one of those who viewed McDavid's 2020-21 with suspicion, though more so due to the unusual circumstances of that season rather than the season length. That plus the drop in his production the following season in an overall higher scoring year. However now that he's performed at essentially the same pace over the course of a full season I view his 20-21 season as being much more legitimate and as significantly contributing to his overall legacy.

 

[Habsfan18]

91 points on the season now for 35-year old Sid.

 

[BenchBrawl]

Strange thing about Crosby is he never scored 90-99 pts in a season before. It was either 80-89 or 100+ pts.

 

[Nathaniel Skywalker]

91 points on the season now for 35-year old Sid.

Without the slump he just went through would be 100. But crosby has always been like that. He will just miss out on stuff like that

 

[MadLuke]

tying Gretzky 19 ppg season in a row now official I think ? (37 goals- 45 assists)

 

[Michael Farkas]

It is official, for whatever it's worth...this is one of those things that I might consider more trivia than a "record"...but still, it's an impressive level of consistency...