What are the details around Gretzky not being classified a rookie in 1979? And why hasn't it been righted?

[VanIslander]

This thread is about relatively minor things.

 

[BraveCanadian]

Yes, the ruling by the NHL made no sense and was amazingly stupid, but the league was run by nonsensical fossils who were amazingly stupid, so what should we expect?

That said, I'm not into retroactively changing awards, or whatever. That's a slippery slope. It is what it is.

What do you mean was run by nonsensical fossils?

 

[McGuillicuddy]

This thread is about relatively minor things.

Yes. And?

This whole discussion forum is about relatively minor things. That's the whole point, and in fact the beauty of it! It's a diversion from real life.

 

[vadim sharifijanov]

Agree with Gretzky to an extent, but I think PPG should be the first tie breaker. If it’s still the same, both players should win the award.

i don’t like pts/game as a tiebreaker. why reward the player who played fewer games?

and as a thought experiment, imagine it’s the last day of the season. two guys go into the day tied for first, both have played 81 games. one guy has an afternoon game and goes scoreless. the second guy is a late pacific game and decides, hey i want the trophy, i have a $250,000 bonus riding on it. i think i’ll sit out game 82.

 

[MadLuke]

i don’t like pts/game as a tiebreaker. why reward the player who played fewer games?

The only case that work in my mind would be a player that because of a trade got the chance to play more games than the other and it is such a rare affair (Joe Thornton level player traded during a season) about a rare affair (Art Ross tie).

Otherwise the Art Ross is an accumulative/compiling award, I agree that it does not need to be complicated.

Maybe it is for practical reason like how the name engraving space would not fit on the trophy design (which look possible considering they have the player name and team as well), if so you need a tie-breaker and that fine.

 

[sr edler]

Yes. And?

This whole discussion forum is about relatively minor things. That's the whole point, and in fact the beauty of it! It's a diversion from real life.

I think his point is that it wouldn't have changed anything. Gretzky's season (or any season by anyone) is what it is with or without an award.

 

[sr edler]

Cottage cheese is still cottage cheese even if you give it an award.

 

[oilexport]

Except it's not like that at all, because he didn't play for the Edmonton Oil Kings, he played for the Edmonton Oilers. The league they were in was absorbed by the NHL and then Wayne Gretzky ... continued to play for the Edmonton Oilers.

I don't know why you want to pretend it was a "new team" that Gretzky "joined."

The 1978-78 Edmonton Oilers had Wayne Gretzky, Blair MacDonald, Brett Callighen, Ron Chipperfield and Bill Flett as their top five scorers.

All five players, coincidentally, were also on the "new team" in 1979-80. Dave Semenko and Dave Hunter also remained on the team, as did Al Hamilton, Peter Driscoll and Risto Siltanen, too.

The goaltenders, for the '78-'79 team were Dave Dryden and Ed Mio, but in 1979-80 Gretzky had to adapt to... Dave Dryden and Ed Mio.

Could it be... that the Edmonton Oilers are, in fact, the same team as ... the Edmonton Oilers?

Dont forget the great Dave Lumley or Lee Fogolin.

 

[The Panther]

Let me just add that scoring total awards (Art Ross and Richard) should never be awarded to anyone based on points per game. That is a terrible idea.

Scoring total awards are about scoring totals -- who scored the most raw points / goals. Period. They are not about per-game levels.

Imagine one guy scoring 150 points and another guy scoring 120 points while playing 59 games or something, and the guy with 30 fewer points win the Art Ross. It's wonky as hell because you're rewarding the guy who missed (a) a quarter of the season and (b) scored 30 fewer points. In this wonky situation, the obvious question becomes: How many games played is enough? I wouldn't want to be the one to decide that.

The only point to change about the award is that, for the Art Ross, if players tie in total points, BOTH should be awarded the trophy. This isn't rocket science.

(Eric Lindros also lost an Art Ross in 1995, btw. Like Gretzky, he played fewer games than his rival... scored as many points... and didn't win the award.)

Only the NHL would be a League stupid enough to have no tie-break for the Rocket Trophy (allowing multiple players to win it) and to have a seemingly arbitrary tie-break for the Art Ross (allowing only one player to win it).

 

[FerrisRox]

Dont forget the great Dave Lumley or Lee Fogolin.

Neither of Lumley or Fogolin ever played in the WHA.

Only the NHL would be a League stupid enough to have no tie-break for the Rocket Trophy (allowing multiple players to win it) and to have a seemingly arbitrary tie-break for the Art Ross (allowing only one player to win it).

Of course there is no tie-break for the trophy awarded to the player who scores the most goals. How would that work? Why would they decide one 54-goal season is somehow better than the other?

Art Ross is different, you can actually say this point is different that one.

But if I score 54 goals I shouldn't lose a goal scoring title to a guy who scored ...54 goals.

 

[Hoser]

That's like saying "he played for the Edmonton Oil-Kings and a year later he played for the Edmonton Oilers, so he never left anything."

It was a new team in a different league with different players.

Wrong. Wayne Gretzky didn't change league: the Edmonton Oilers Hockey Club did.

They had a contract with Wayne Gretzky such that he would play hockey exclusively with the Edmonton Oilers Hockey Club (more precisely a personal services contract to play professional hockey for the club owned by Peter Pocklington, i.e. the Edmonton Oilers...), and Gretzky simply continued to honour that contract.

The NHL allowed the 4 ex-WHA clubs only four protected players (only three, in Edmonton's case) to bring into the NHL. The rest of their line-ups were cast-offs who weren't good enough for the 1978-79 NHL.

Wrong again. The NHL clubs could reassert preexisting contractual rights to any players on the ex-WHA clubs (save one player in particular: Gordie Howe, whose rights were unequivocally retained by the Whalers as a condition of the merger agreement between the two leagues); the ex-WHA clubs could each void up to four such "reclaims".

Any player whose former NHL team didn't "reclaim" him remained with his ex-WHA club. This is for instance how Al Hamilton and B.J. MacDonald remained with the Oilers, J.C. Tremblay and Marc Tardif stayed with the Nordiques, and Andre Lacroix, Dave Keon, Blaine Stoughton and Mike Rogers stayed with the Whalers.

The idea that the WHA clubs' lineups were full of "cast-offs not good enough to play in the NHL" is ludicrous: the fifth, eighth and tenth highest scorers in the '79-'80 season were such "cast-offs" (Rogers, Stoughton and MacDonald).

The Oilers actually entered the NHL with only 3 protected players, which means about 90% of their WHA roster was purged. Sather managed to get several players back by trade or expansion-draft or whatever, but there was a cost to all of them.

The Oilers' cupboard happened to be raided especially badly by NHL "reclaims"—almost half the total in fact (18/43; the Jets lost 11 players, and the Nordiques and Whalers lost seven apiece). Still, they kept the aforementioned MacDonald and fourth-leading-scorer Brett Callighen for "nothing".

 

[Hoser]

Only the NHL would be a League stupid enough to have no tie-break for the Rocket Trophy (allowing multiple players to win it) and to have a seemingly arbitrary tie-break for the Art Ross (allowing only one player to win it).

Ask the average basketball or soccer fan and they'd tell you hockey is the only sport stupid enough to count assists as "points"—and any such semblance of an equivalence between assists and goals—in the first place.

 

[jigglysquishy]

Ask the average basketball or soccer fan and they'd tell you hockey is the only sport stupid enough to count assists as "points"—and any such semblance of an equivalence between assists and goals—in the first place.

You know they're different sports right? Just because something is important in one sport doesn't mean it's important in another.

 

[MadLuke]

Of course there is no tie-break for the trophy awarded to the player who scores the most goals. How would that work? Why would they decide one 54-goal season is somehow better than the other?

Art Ross is different, you can actually say this point is different that one.

Considering you can win the art Ross to have scored has many points in less game why could it not work the same for the goals award ? How would that be different regarding the game played aspect of tie-breaking ?

Would not surprise me if it is simply due to the size and shape it take to put the name-team for players on the relative trophy being different.

 

[The Panther]

Of course there is no tie-break for the trophy awarded to the player who scores the most goals. How would that work? Why would they decide one 54-goal season is somehow better than the other?

Art Ross is different, you can actually say this point is different that one.

But if I score 54 goals I shouldn't lose a goal scoring title to a guy who scored ...54 goals.

I have to assume you're being deliberately obtuse here.

 

[The Panther]

Ask the average basketball or soccer fan and they'd tell you hockey is the only sport stupid enough to count assists as "points"—and any such semblance of an equivalence between assists and goals—in the first place.

The average basketball or soccer fan (certainly outside of Canada, anyway) has never watched a hockey game and doesn't understand the rules.

What would be ludicrously stupid in hockey would be not counting assists as points.

 

[The Panther]

Wrong. Wayne Gretzky didn't change league: the Edmonton Oilers Hockey Club did.

They had a contract with Wayne Gretzky such that he would play hockey exclusively with the Edmonton Oilers Hockey Club (more precisely a personal services contract to play professional hockey for the club owned by Peter Pocklington, i.e. the Edmonton Oilers...), and Gretzky simply continued to honour that contract.

Wrong again. The NHL clubs could reassert preexisting contractual rights to any players on the ex-WHA clubs (save one player in particular: Gordie Howe, whose rights were unequivocally retained by the Whalers as a condition of the merger agreement between the two leagues); the ex-WHA clubs could each void up to four such "reclaims".

Any player whose former NHL team didn't "reclaim" him remained with his ex-WHA club. This is for instance how Al Hamilton and B.J. MacDonald remained with the Oilers, J.C. Tremblay and Marc Tardif stayed with the Nordiques, and Andre Lacroix, Dave Keon, Blaine Stoughton and Mike Rogers stayed with the Whalers.

The idea that the WHA clubs' lineups were full of "cast-offs not good enough to play in the NHL" is ludicrous: the fifth, eighth and tenth highest scorers in the '79-'80 season were such "cast-offs" (Rogers, Stoughton and MacDonald).

The Oilers' cupboard happened to be raided especially badly by NHL "reclaims"—almost half the total in fact (18/43; the Jets lost 11 players, and the Nordiques and Whalers lost seven apiece). Still, they kept the aforementioned MacDonald and fourth-leading-scorer Brett Callighen for "nothing".

Most of the details you're explaining here are correct, but you're sort of slanting it into disingenuous territory. The important part of what I said, above (the part that's relevant to the thread), is: It was a new League with new players. But perhaps I should ratify that statement to: It was a new League with new players on the four former WHA clubs.

I didn't know, until this thread, that the point of Gretzky playing in a different League in 1979-80 as compared to 1978-79 was even up for debate.

As to the details, yes, you're right, if an existing NHL club didn't have the "rights" to an already-active WHA player, then the now ex-WHA club could maintain that player on its roster. But most of the better players who'd been drafted by NHL clubs were reclaimed by those NHL clubs.

The NHL was adamant that the 1979 thing was an "expansion" and not a merger. And, as I said, of non-NHL drafted players, the four new NHL clubs could protect only two skaters and two goaltenders.

But those are just secondary details. My only point is: It was a new and different League for those four clubs. And if you don't believe me, ask the NHL.

 

[Hoser]

It was an "expansion" in name only, chiefly because there was a clause in the then-current NHL-NHLPA CBA that would have automatically nullified said CBA in the event of an NHL-WHA merger. The NHL got the NHLPA's blessing to call it an "expansion" and not have to reopen CBA negotiations in exchange for very modestly improved pension contributions (and because Alan Eagleson was a spineless slimeball with a conflict of interest who didn't push for more concessions, of course).

Anyway, you're still not quite understanding what the process entailed, and I don't really care to drag you through the nuances kicking and screaming. You closed your last comment with "ask the NHL", and I'll throw it right back at you: go ask the NHL why Gretzky "didn't have a rookie season".

It's because they counted his 1978-79 WHA season as a "rookie". Do they count his WHA points totals in his NHL records? No. Why the incongruity then? Because they don't care that there's an incongruity. They made up the rules, and them's the rules. Don't like it? Tough titty.

[/thread]

 

[daver]

Cottage cheese is still cottage cheese even if you give it an award.

Interesting choice of cheese. I would have chosen smoked mozzarella but to each his own.

 

[Moose Head]

i don’t like pts/game as a tiebreaker. why reward the player who played fewer games?

and as a thought experiment, imagine it’s the last day of the season. two guys go into the day tied for first, both have played 81 games. one guy has an afternoon game and goes scoreless. the second guy is a late pacific game and decides, hey i want the trophy, i have a $250,000 bonus riding on it. i think i’ll sit out game 82.

More of a case if there has to be a tie breaker, it’s preferable to goals imo. Personally, I think it should be given out like the Rocket, most goals wins, except in this case, most points, and if it’s tied, so be it.

 

[McGuillicuddy]

I think his point is that it wouldn't have changed anything. Gretzky's season (or any season by anyone) is what it is with or without an award.

As I have been clear about above, I would never suggest we revisit the Calder trophy. However the NHL recordbook is incorrect in all but name when it lists Selanne as the holder of the rookie record for most points, and Stastny/Juneau as the rookie record holders for most assists. I am really just about recognizing the records in a way that reflects reality. In what bizarro world does it make logical sense that an 18-year-old not rookie-eligible in the NHL? (spoiler alert: this one in 1979).