Auston Matthews 69 goals in 81 games, most goals scored since Lemieux in 1995-96

[Strangle]

Am I reading this wrong? This looks like Matthews is almost lapping the competition

 

[Zybalto]

Am I reading this wrong? This looks like Matthews is almost lapping the competition

As an overall player he is but just going by his defensive rating, he's 4th.

The other guys on the Selke list don't match the extent of his offensive contribution which is why his net rating is so much higher.

Overall rating pretty much has Mac/McDavid/Matthews and then everyone else as the regular season is coming to a close.

 

[TheKrebsCycle]

In those two categories, yes. Very reminiscent of 2013 Toews where he seems to be a PPG shutdown center.

Alright but how bout all categories ? Why is it being limited ? Again I’m not someone pumping his tires hoping he wins ; but genuinely curious what separates the top contenders and Matthews .

 

[tapi]

Matthews is the best goal scorer of all time (since Gretzky and Mario, that is) AND he is one of the most complete players in the league as well. We are not even talking about a generational talent but more like one in 3-4 decades type of a player.

 

[WTFMAN99]

I think most hockey fans want to see 70, it transcends rivalry etc just because you love seeing rare accomplishments.

 

[Strangle]

As an overall player he is but just going by his defensive rating, he's 4th.

The other guys on the Selke list don't match the extent of his offensive contribution which is why his net rating is so much higher.

Overall rating pretty much has Mac/McDavid/Matthews and then everyone else as the regular season is coming to a close.

Yup sounds about right to me

 

[HolyHagelin]

Ovechkin goals are worth 1.0 goals, because the history of the league revolves around the worst era in NHL hockey history.

Everyone else’s goals have to be scored at 0.99 Ovechkin goals or less (sometimes much less), because HFboards believes in equity of talent.

Instead of proclaiming “goals are up!” We should be saying they are still way down. They just hit rock bottom when Ovechkin played. Didn’t seem to stop him from scoring 65, though … weird how that works, I guess?

The league still has a ways to go to reach peak awesome NHL standards, but it’s much better than it was in the dark ages of 2003

I suspect a lot of hfboards posters were born between 1993 and 2003-ish and their only frame of reference is the terrible Crosby and Ovechkin era

This shit is blowing their minds like Gretzky blew ours and they’re scrambling to make sense of it all and they can’t

What they refuse to do is admit that Matthews is a better goal scorer than Ovechkin was through the same amount of games played to this point of their careers. Although that is the blatant and objective truth. They deny reality

You say stuff like this a lot. Forward talent != all talent. Worse defenseman and goalies with similar skilled forwards is the exact same thing as the forward skill increasing while defense and goalies stay the same.

Your argument, over and over again, amounts to “circular reasoning works because circular reasoning works.”

The place where you really shoot yourself in the dick, rhetorically, is where you ignore the results of overlapping careers.

You get a lot of reacts and interactions though so i gues just keep loudly insisting in your asinine takes.

Mack
Kuch
Matthews
Mcdavid
Crosby

Would be my hart ballot at the moment

You would put out-of-the-playoffs Crosby over Panarin, who is the best player on the best team and has a team scoring lead similar to Kucherov’s over the TB roster?

 

[filinski77]

Matthews is the best goal scorer of all time (since Gretzky and Mario, that is) AND he is one of the most complete players in the league as well. We are not even talking about a generational talent but more like one in 3-4 decades type of a player.

FYI to all the Leafs fans that complain about other fanbases trying to knock Matthews down a peg. 95% of the time it's only knocking him down a peg because there's a decent size of your fanbase that tries to prematurely knock him up 5 pegs.

That being said - Matthews is the best goalscorer in the league, and on-track to be one of the best of all-time. But he is not the best goal scorer of all-time right now at all lol.

 

[Strangle]

You say stuff like this a lot. Forward talent != all talent. Worse defenseman and goalies with similar skilled forwards is the exact same thing as the forward skill increasing while defense and goalies stay the same.

Your argument, over and over again, amounts to “circular reasoning works because circular reasoning works.”

The place where you really shoot yourself in the dick, rhetorically, is where you ignore the results of overlapping careers.

You get a lot of reacts and interactions though so i gues just keep loudly insisting in your asinine takes.


You would put out-of-the-playoffs Crosby over Panarin, who is the best player on the best team and has a team scoring lead similar to Kucherov’s over the TB roster?

You’re right, I do repeat myself a lot, but that is only because hfboards is a broken record of the same flawed baseless arguments about Ovechkin and Crosby over and over and over again.

Are you asking if the gap between lidstrom and Ovechkin needs to be quantified against the gap between Brian leetch and Bure?

I’ve read your post 3x and I can’t really grasp what exactly you’re getting at.

If it’s that talent disparities exist in the NHL over eras at all positions, well yes. That’s exactly what I’m saying

 

[filinski77]

You would put out-of-the-playoffs Crosby over Panarin, who is the best player on the best team and has a team scoring lead similar to Kucherov’s over the TB roster?

He's one of the biggest Crosby stans on this site. Pastrnak also is playing at a significantly higher level than Crosby, while also being more important to the Bruins than Crosby is to the Pens.

 

[HolyHagelin]

You’re right, I do repeat myself a lot, but that is only because hfboards is a broken record of the same flawed baseless arguments about Ovechkin and Crosby over and over and over again.

Are you asking if the gap between lidstrom and Ovechkin needs to be quantified against the gap between Brian leetch and Bure?

I’ve read your post 3x and I can’t really grasp what exactly you’re getting at.

If it’s that talent disparities exist in the NHL over eras at all positions, well yes. That’s exactly what I’m saying

I have read your takes a lot, and what you keep saying js that scoring is up because talent is up and everyone is better.

If goalies were better scoring would be down, ergo your argument is self defeating.

Scoring is up do to a variety of factors and i have read people break it down to you to pretty granular levels on the differences, i am not going to get into all of it again. But the people whose tires you are constantly pumping have lost goal and point races to the people you are constantly devaluing, at ages when it should have been embarrassing to matthews et al to lose to such scrubs, that the new generation is so obviously better than.

Also you actually told me the goalie pad changes didnt matter last week when i posted that pic of Garth Snow, not sure if that was trolling.

The fact that you cannot understand plain written English does not even mildly surprise me.

 

[filinski77]

If it’s that talent disparities exist in the NHL over eras at all positions, well yes. That’s exactly what I’m saying

Then why is it that Ovechkin/Crosby/Kane/Stamkos/Malkin etc (all the top guys from 10 years ago) suddenly started scoring more (despite getting into their 30's) as soon as goalie equipment got smaller, expansions happened, and league-wide scoring increased??

Were 30-36 year old versions of these guys all just more talented than they were in the 4 years prior??

 

[MacMacandBarbie]

Then why is it that Ovechkin/Crosby/Kane/Stamkos/Malkin etc (all the top guys from 10 years ago) suddenly started scoring more (despite getting into their 30's) as soon as goalie equipment got smaller, expansions happened, and league-wide scoring increased??

Were 30-36 year old versions of these guys all just more talented than they were in the 4 years prior??

I have brought this up a ton in reflection to people taking in scoring environment into account with Jagr. There doesn't seem to be a logical comeback to Jagr scoring significantly more in 96' then his Hart winning season in 99'

 

[X66]

I remember during the Matthews Laine debate I said on this website that Matthews might be a better goal scorer than Laine.

Not because of the shot arsenal, because Laine has an all-time arsenal, but just how many different ways Matthews can score.

Never thought 70 would be possible though...

 

[Strangle]

I have read your takes a lot, and what you keep saying js that scoring is up because talent is up and everyone is better.

If goalies were better scoring would be down, ergo your argument is self defeating.

Scoring is up do to a variety of factors and i have read people break it down to you to pretty granular levels on the differences, i am not going to get into all of it again. But the people whose tires you are constantly pumping have lost goal and point races to the people you are constantly devaluing, at ages when it should have been embarrassing to matthews et al to lose to such scrubs, that the new generation is so obviously better than.

Also you actually told me the goalie pad changes didnt matter last week when i posted that pic of Garth Snow, not sure if that was trolling.

The fact that you cannot understand plain written English does not even mildly surprise me.

Goalie pads matter, but not as much as talent disparity or even the amount of goals added to the league average due to 3 on 3 and shootout goals

None of those should count, only regulation goals should count towards league averages through the eras if we are actually being serious about comparing. I can’t find anything saying that 3 on 3 and shootout goals aren’t doing anything but forcing 1 extra goal per game that goes past regulation that wouldn’t have been scored 30 years ago.

I have a granular disagreement with the entire philosophy of how stats are adjusted, it doesn’t matter how much someone tries to explain that running the formula proves anything (it doesn’t).

And no one has adjusted Matthews goals up to compare to lemieux’s 85 goal season to see how close he is.

That’s the thing here, era adjusting is only used to adjust Crosby and Ovechkin and their peers UP and everyone else DOWN

You don’t normalize talent, it’s ridiculous. No one can show me which goals that didn’t go in for Ovechkin that did for Matthews, and no one can tell me which goals Matthews has scored that he couldn’t have in 2003.

The space over the goalies shoulder has always been wide open, since the butterfly. Players are just putting the puck there now.

Ovechkin blasted slippers and Matthews is surgically picking open spots, knowing exactly where the goalie isn’t going to be.

It’s true that goalies suck now, they are too formulaic and shooters have them figured out, but Matthews really showed the league that. Tons of players are copying him.

Ovechkin had the same opportunity to do this, but he didn’t. That’s the mic drop argument. He couldn’t do what Matthews is doing.

And there is no argument on this earth that can say Matthews couldn’t have scored 69 back in 2003.

It wasn’t likely he would do it this year and it wouldn’t be likely he would do it then either. But that’s what great players do, they achieve what’s unlikely.

If I can put it another way, what are some of the era adjusting arguments to explain Gretzky and his multiple 200 point seasons and his record setting points and his 92 goal season?

What goalie equipment changes explains that massive leap? You have to be consistent, it can’t just be one era with an explaination. Why did Gretzky do so much better than his predecessors? Why did everyone? Fitness and nutrition? Stick technology? Goalie masks really did affect goalies seeing the puck?

 

[Strangle]

Then why is it that Ovechkin/Crosby/Kane/Stamkos/Malkin etc (all the top guys from 10 years ago) suddenly started scoring more (despite getting into their 30's) as soon as goalie equipment got smaller, expansions happened, and league-wide scoring increased??

Were 30-36 year old versions of these guys all just more talented than they were in the 4 years prior??

Which ones are scoring more than they did? I don’t think any of those guys had career years in the last 4 season, have they?

They certainly haven’t been outperforming the best players in the league the last 4 years

 

[Oscar The Grouch]

Do you believe the things you say? Just curious

100%, because it's the truth. You need to step outside your Leafs bubble.

 

[Lt Dan]

Just in case this joke hasn't been made yet

 

[Zybalto]

Yup sounds about right to me

 

[Arthur Morgan]

Yeah top 3-5 is in consideration. Like he’s not in the top 3 for Hart, but I’d say he is firmly an honorable mention and will get some votes.

With the Selke he isn’t going to be too 5. He won’t get significant votes, and I haven’t even heard his name brought up as an honorable mention. I do see him tops in defensive metrics, and his defensive game has been brought up a lot this year. Just his name has not come up at all in consideration for the Selke.

he won the Hart and Lindsey when he scored just 60. and that year and he was 17 points behind the points leader, this year he might be 35 points or something behind but he scored 9 more goals.
if he hits 70 he's for sure in the top 3 voting.

 

[Arthur Morgan]

"In the world of era adjusments" -

Mario better player.

dont even need to adjust to know Mario was the better player too

 

[SmoggyTwinkles]

With nothing on the line for the Leafs in these next 2 games. No chance at home ice advantage and no chance of being caught from behind, it's either Boston or Florida now in round 1.

Do they risk a potential Matthews injury so he can chase 70? Back to back games on the road, against two physical teams then two days rest before 1st round action, which could potentially be in Boston, and both of those teams might be resting their stars and giving icetime to some guys who might be out there looking to prove something to their management and coaches as to how they can be useful going forward.

Tough position to be in. On one hand fans will hate it if they don't let Matthews chase 70, on the other hand fans will absolutely bag on management and coaching for letting him play in nothing games and getting injured before playoffs.

Boston is still possible?

Why you gotta ruin my day?

Bruins got me PTSD, for real.

 

[NoName]

Fingers crossed he gets a goal in these last two games, it would be really cool to see!

 

[SmoggyTwinkles]

This will end up costing the team.

What a statement.

Can you elaborate?

Cost them............what? Feel free to dip your foot in there.

 

[NoName]

View attachment 852861

Kucherov is not an awesome defensive player, but to be fair it does tend to be more difficult for a winger to move the needle on defense anywhere as much as a center just by nature of the defensive responsibilities of the position. Nice to see Matthews crushing it on that end though; pretty impressive he is such a monster both scoring goals and preventing them.