Hockey Outsider
Registered User
- Jan 16, 2005
- 9,144
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That's not necessarily true. "Voting points" are useful for comparing similar placements (assuming no snubs happen, which is hardly ever true) - e.g., if you have two players with 2, 4, 5 and 2, 5, 7, you can attempt comparing that, i.e., whether the 2s were similarly strong.
Other than that, "voting points" are very skewed and one win or even a nomination can trump a whole career with a number of relatively high finishes. Yzerman is probably not a very good example due to his competition, he is just the first one to come to mind, but his "voting points" do not surpass Corey Perry's "voting points", for example. Same is true about Selanne.
I agree it's possible for one big year to skew the results. But that's not the case here. Both players have almost the identical vote share in their best season (2008 for Ovechkin, 2014 for Crosby). Both players got 98% of the maximum number of votes in their best season.
The same is true if you look at their best three seasons (2008 + 2009 + 2010 vs 2014 + 2007 + 2017). In fact, Ovechkin is slightly ahead 255-250 (so if we exclude their three best seasons, that actually helps Crosby).
If you look at their best five years (add in 2013 + 2015 vs 2013 + 2010), Ovechkin remains slightly ahead 373-364.
Crosby is ahead by 21% in his career not because the results are skewed by a few big seasons, but because he was more consistent from year to year.
For anyone arguing "3>2", would you also agree that Mark Messier has a better Hart trophy record than Jaromir Jagr, because 2>1 (even though Jagr earned almost twice as many votes over the span of their careers)?