Canadiens1958
Registered User
Without a Center
Dick Irvin Sr. Put all his eggs in one basket - Moore-Beliveau-Geoffrion line;
Maurice Richard played without a viable center once Lach bowed out, but teams had to defend him, likewise Bert Olmstead:
http://www.hockey-reference.com/teams/MTL/1954.html
Especially when it comes to the playoffs, and most especially with players on championship teams or teams that often made deep runs, I would tend to almost dismiss point-totals. Really, who cares?
I mean, of course top scorers are still expected to be top scorers in the playoffs and in most cases they are (cases where they far exceed or disappoint expectations should, of course, be taken into consideration). I'm not really bothered to know how many PPG runs Denis Savard has, for example -- it's not really important. What's important is: How much did the individual player contribute to the team's success each playoff round? There is such a thing as team play, after all. Sometimes a team's strategy is to direct checking attention away from a certain player and onto another; sometimes a team's strategy for 3 games or for 5 games is to shut-down the opposition.
So, Maurice Richard scored 3 goals in 11 games or something one year when Montreal lost in the Final. But the team scored 16 goals in round one (4 games) against Boston and swept. Is there a problem there? How can we penalize a key player/leader when his team swept a one-sided series? (Crosby in last spring's Final comes to mind.) Maybe another line was doing most of the damage, and Richard wasn't needed to strike as much so he did something else...?
Anyway, I'm uncomfortable with the idea of ranking players' playoffs careers when it comes to any players I didn't personally see and follow regularly. It's just hard to know the context of that week or two, in that specific moment in hockey history.
I dunno, it's tough to put much faith in statistics in this context, I think. Still interesting, though...
Dick Irvin Sr. Put all his eggs in one basket - Moore-Beliveau-Geoffrion line;
Maurice Richard played without a viable center once Lach bowed out, but teams had to defend him, likewise Bert Olmstead:
http://www.hockey-reference.com/teams/MTL/1954.html