Here is Bobby Clarke's complete regular season top-20 scoring resume, with top-10 finishes bolded:
Points: 10th (71-72), 2nd (72-73), 5th (73-74), 6th (74-75), 2nd (75-76), 8th (76-77), 8th (77-78)
Goals: 13th (71-72), 16th (72-73), 12th (73-74)
Assists: 17th (71-72), 3rd (72-73), 10th (73-74), 1st (74-75), 1st (75-76), 6th (76-77), 4th (77-78), 9th (78-79), 8th (79-80), 5th (82-83)
...and now for Frank Nighbor, I'll be as uncharitable to his scoring finishes as possible, and simply multiply his actual placement by two for every season in which he finished in the top-10 in any category (completely ignoring finishes outside of the top-10). This means that in the cases in which Nighbor finished first, he'll have a 2nd place finish recorded on the following list. Here it is:
Points: 8th (12-13), 6th (14-15), 14th (15-16), 2nd (16-17), 18th (17-18), 4th (18-19), 6th (19-20), 10th (20-21), 16th (23-24), 16th (25-26)
Goals: 8th (12-13), 6th (14-15), 14th (15-16), 2nd (16-17), 6th (18-19), 6th (19-20), 10th (20-21), 20th (23-24)
Assists: 12th (14-15), 12th (17-18), 4th (18-19), 2nd (19-20), 4th (20-21), 16th (21-22), 6th (23-24), 2nd (25-26)
*the reader should note that no assist totals are available (to me, at least; I am not an SIHR member) other than PCHA totals (one season for Nighbor - 14-15) before the inaugural NHL season in 1917-18. Nighbor's "scoring" finishes before that time reflect only his goal-scoring. No adjustment has been made to reflect where he would have placed in a modern-style scoring table given that he was clearly the second greatest playmaker of his era behind Taylor.*
They come out quite nearly even. Clarke has one more top-10 scoring season, but Nighbor 4 more in the top-20, and this is using only goal-scoring to calculate Nighbor's points for the better part of his prime years. Nighbor kills Clarke in goals, and probably after correction for the missing data comes fairly close though short of Clarke in assists. This is using very stringent criteria for Nighbor - multiplying all of his finishes by 2 and not adjusting for how badly he was hurt in the points race by the lack of assist totals - and he still comes out with nearly identical offensive value to that of Bobby Clarke.
Now to address questions of competitive quality. The top peak forwards against whom Nighbor competed were:
Lalonde, Malone, Taylor, Foyston, MacKay, Broadbent, Denneny, Pitre, Noble, Darragh, Dye, Cleghorn and Hyland - leaving out the Joliat/Morenz generation against whom Nighbor competed towards the end of his career (including his last assists crown in 25-26). Now, not all of these players were active during every season of Nighbor's career, but most of them were active and at their peaks during Nighbor's prime scoring years. As we've discussed before through the course of ATD#11 (a discussion to which Spit was not a party, though he could have joined in), this is quite a big generation of talent - on an entirely different level from the pre-NHA generation. When discussing top-10 placements, this is in no way a thin universe of scoringline forwards, and I see no reason to devalue scoring achievements from this era once the two-league effect is accounted for (which I do quite brutally for Nighbor by multiplying his scoring finishes by two).
It's not like Bobby Clarke's era was so much stronger. The mid-70's were a lowpoint for the NHL between the O6 and 80's eras, and Bobby Clarke, himself, got outscored during his prime by names like Pete Mahovlich, Tim Young, Terry O'Reilly, Ken Hodge, Wayne Cashman, Vic Hadfield, etc. Does it make Bobby Clarke any less an offensive force because he sometimes fell short of guys who weren't all time greats? No, just like it doesn't make Nighbor any less a scorer because he occasionally got outscored by the Corb Dennenys of hockey. If these guys had been able to do it for as long as Nighbor and Clarke, they'd be all-time greats, as well.
Look at the top-end competition in Nighbor and Clarke's respective eras. Was Lafleur better than Lalonde? The biggest difference in their careers seems to be Lafleur's playoff performances, not his regular season numbers. Esposito vs. Taylor? I'd probably give it to Espo, but it's debatable. Perreault vs. Malone. Again, highly debatable, and I think Malone probably wins this one. Broadbent vs. Lemaire; Foyston vs. Martin; MacKay vs. Ratelle; Dye vs. Shutt; Denneny vs. Barber, etc. Compare the forward talent between the eras, and it doesn't look particularly different unless you're the kind of person who doesn't realize how great a scorer Mickey MacKay was. The high-end forward talent was probably a bit thicker in the 70's than it was in the teens and Bobby Orr was playing, but a non-biased comparison of eras does not show huge differences in the competitive level among the top scorers. There were a lot more players in the 70's, but the top layer of talent doesn't appear to have been particularly superior.
Only an extremely biased and unfair appraisal of Nighbor's scoring credentials can place him much below Clarke in this area, and there is certainly an argument that Nighbor was actually the better scorer (value of goal-scoring vs. playmaking, etc.). Clarke's goal-scoring credentials are quite weak. How would pure playmaker Bobby Clarke have looked in NHA scoring tables that only counted goals? Offensively, Nighbor and Clarke are on the same level, and defensively, they exist in their own special class, which includes only Bobby Clarke and Frank Nighbor. There simply are no other scoring forwards in hockey history whose defensive games approach this level of dominance.
(quote omitted)
And here we come to your problem. None of these players, including Milt Schmidt, have a defensive value even close to that of Bobby Clarke. Frank Nighbor does. Your unwillingness to even address the topic of Nighbor's defensive value is telling, because you know he's arguably the best of all time. The biggest thing holding Nighbor back from more recognition in the ATD was not his defensive value, on which there is virtually unanimous agreement. The biggest thing keeping Nighbor off of ATD 1st lines and out of the HOH top-50 was a lack of perspective on his scoring feats, due mostly to limited information on NHA scoring and postseason contests during the era. That blind spot has been corrected, and now we know why so many of Nighbor's contemporaries considered him the best player in hockey. Now it makes sense. Now we understand why he got more votes than Lalonde in the "Player of the Half-Century" poll, why he won the 1st Hart trophy in a season in which he placed 8th in points. Frank Nighbor was one of the titans of his era - qualitatively different, but on the same level as Taylor and Lalonde.
