Greatest Goal Scorers Of All-Time: #5

[filinski77]

Agreed. If we drop Bossy a few spots due to a lack of total career games played, I feel like this list is great.

Ovechkin
Lemieux
Richard
Bobby
Brett

As the top 5 goalscorers of all time.

With Esposito, Bossy, Howe and Gretzky rounding out the top 10.

What's your reasoning for Richard and Brett Hull > Howe and Gretzky?

	Howe	Gretzky	Richard	Hull Jr.
(Retro) Rockets	5	5	5	3
Top-10 finishes	1-1-1-1-1-2-2-2-2-2-3-3-5-5-6-6-7-7-8	1-1-1-1-1-4-4-5-6	1-1-1-1-1-2-2-2-3-4-4-5-6	1-1-1-2-6-8-9-10
Career Goals	801	895	544	741
Career adj. Goals	925	758	653	738

[TBODY] [/TBODY]

Howe vs Hull: 2 extra goal-leads, and a absolutely demolishes him in career goal finishes, as well as a healthy lead in goals and adjusted goals. Hull peaked higher imo, but that's not enough to make up for Howe having 66% more rockets and having been elite for way longer.

How vs Richard: Shouldn't even be close imo. Same overall peak with 5 rockets each, but How did it for 50% longer, and put up 50% more goals in the same era.

Gretzky vs Hull: Same deal as Howe with 2 more rockets, significantly more goals (same adj. though). Even if your argument is that Hull had a slightly higher peak, Gretzky was RIGHT behind him, and still won 2 more rockets.

Gretzky vs Richard: This one gets hard since they both won 5 rockets, but Gretzky simply compiled significantly more goals and a lot more adjusted goals. I would bring in the argument that getting top finishes in Gretzky's era would have been harder than Richard's era (due to the league starting to expand and get more international - but this might not be as prominent as it would be comparing the 90's onwards). Either way, when the rockets are equal, and Gretzky has that huge of a lead in raw/adj. goals, I have a hard time saying that Richards few extra top-10 finishes makes up for it.

 

[Midnight Judges]

My big question marks with Bossy are how much he might have been held back by Arbour playing more defensive than most teams in the day and their deep lineup potentially limiting his ice time in comparison to most others.

Those Islanders teams were excellent defensively. Maybe that takes away from offense. Hard to say.

OTOH I have a hard time imagining that Bossy was held back by playing for an all-time great dynasty. The Islanders were 2nd in goals for per game played during Bossy's career:

NHL Stats

At 4.15 for his team, clearly they weren't stifled.

Bossy's placement is also due in significant part to his playoff goalscoring success - which was made possible by the great team around him.

 

[SillyRabbit]

What's your reasoning for Richard and Brett Hull > Howe and Gretzky?

	Howe	Gretzky	Richard	Hull Jr.
(Retro) Rockets	5	5	5	3
Top-10 finishes	1-1-1-1-1-2-2-2-2-2-3-3-5-5-6-6-7-7-8	1-1-1-1-1-4-4-5-6	1-1-1-1-1-2-2-2-3-4-4-5-6	1-1-1-2-6-8-9-10
Career Goals	801	895	544	741
Career adj. Goals	925	758	653	738

[TBODY] [/TBODY]

Howe vs Hull: 2 extra goal-leads, and a absolutely demolishes him in career goal finishes, as well as a healthy lead in goals and adjusted goals. Hull peaked higher imo, but that's not enough to make up for Howe having 66% more rockets and having been elite for way longer.

How vs Richard: Shouldn't even be close imo. Same overall peak with 5 rockets each, but How did it for 50% longer, and put up 50% more goals in the same era.

Gretzky vs Hull: Same deal as Howe with 2 more rockets, significantly more goals (same adj. though). Even if your argument is that Hull had a slightly higher peak, Gretzky was RIGHT behind him, and still won 2 more rockets.

Gretzky vs Richard: This one gets hard since they both won 5 rockets, but Gretzky simply compiled significantly more goals and a lot more adjusted goals. I would bring in the argument that getting top finishes in Gretzky's era would have been harder than Richard's era (due to the league starting to expand and get more international - but this might not be as prominent as it would be comparing the 90's onwards). Either way, when the rockets are equal, and Gretzky has that huge of a lead in raw/adj. goals, I have a hard time saying that Richards few extra top-10 finishes makes up for it.

That list was based purely on adjusted goals per game and those were the top 5.

If we are talking purely about ability, I think that’s as good of a metric to use than any.

Especially since both the Hull’s and Richard do have very strong bodies of work. They’d be in anyone’s top 10 regardless.

Gretzky seems to have benefited from playing in a higher scoring era than them and Howe clearly benefitted from playing more games.

Adjusted goals per game accounts for both of those factors.

 

[filinski77]

That list was based purely on adjusted goals per game and those were the top 5.

If we are talking purely about ability, I think that’s as good of a metric to use than any.

Especially since both the Hull’s and Richard do have very strong bodies of work. They’d be in anyone’s top 10 regardless.

Gretzky seems to have benefited from playing in a higher scoring era than them and Howe clearly benefitted from playing more games.

Adjusted goals per game accounts for both of those factors.

Here’s the thing though, there’s a very big difference between deciding who’s “greater all time” and who’s “better at any point in time”.

Greatness should look at many different things, accomplishments, career totals, number of elite seasons etc.

Using adjusted goal/gp doesn’t even necessarily capture the “best” either. If Gretzky only played 7 seasons his adjusted goal/gp would be way higher. Him falling off doesn’t impact how good he was when he was at his best.

Looking at /gp as a factor inherently screws players who played different proportions of GP at different ages (ie. someone who didn’t play much in their 30s will most likely have better /gp rates than if they played a full career). It’s just so flawed.

For example, when talking about greatness, let’s imagine player A and player B played 7 seasons at the same time and posted the exact same goal total and goal per game over that period. They would have tied each other for the Rocket lead 7 years straight and had the exact same “adjusted goal per game” stat.

Then, Player A ends his career for whatever reason, and then Player B plays 10 more seasons and gets 2 more Rockets, but has lower goal totals overall. Your stat of using adjusted goal/gp will say that Player A was “greater”, even though Player B clearly was the greater player, since he was just as good as Player A, but then went on to do MORE.

I 100% agree that using some level of “peak play” is important when comparing players on an all time greatness ranking, and that using adjusted goals is a good way of doing that (ie. 50 goals in todays era is obviously a better goal scorer than 50 goals in the 80s), but that’s only one of many metrics that should be considered. Total rockets, total top-10 finishes, total career raw and adjusted totals etc.