Gretzky not receiving the Calder, nor the Art Ross in 1979/80...

[Jumptheshark]

The Calder one is a good debate since a European player who played pro in Europe won it later

 

[Staniowski]

Dionne and Gretzky both should've won the scoring title. They tied. There is no good reason to break the tie.

 

[Hockey Outsider]

I never understood why there was a tie-breaker for the Art Ross, but not the Rocket Richard. Both are statistical trophies - why is there a tiebreaker for one, but not the other?

 

[quoipourquoi]

imo points/game being the first tie breaker would be an even bigger farce. imagine player a scores 125 points in the full 82 games. player b has also scored 125 points but has one game left. let’s also say he knows he would lose whatever the second tie breaker is. are we really going to give him a trophy for sitting on his butt and eating popcorn in the press box instead of trying to get #126?

That’s why save percentage races can be really dumb sometimes. Goaltenders lose races to injured players or sometimes because they’re rested in games when no one would rest an Art Ross contender.

Not that anyone followed save percentage at the time (as it wasn’t even an officially counted statistic), but Johnny Bower lost what would have been his 7th save percentage title because Bruce Gamble got the final start of the season for Toronto. By stopping 45 of 46 shots that night (because 41/42 wouldn’t have been enough), Gamble finished marginally ahead.

Ideally, you want to minimize the math required on these things.

 

[Staniowski]

The Calder one is a good debate since a European player who played pro in Europe won it later

That actually happened the very next season - '80 - '81 - Peter Stastny, who had played many years in the top Czechoslovakian league.

The only difference with Makarov is that when he was an NHL rookie he was 7 years older than Stastny had been, and Makarov had played even several more years in a similar league than Stastny.

 

[tazzy19]

One can make the same argument about teams that are tied in points in the regular season, and can argue two OT losses should equal a win, since both count in the standings as two points. However, the NHL considers the team with more regulation/OT wins superior to a team with as many points, but less regulation/OT wins. An argument can be made that goals are more important than assists, considering two assists can be awarded on every goal.

Personally, I like the fact that the player with the most goals wins the Art Ross, if a tie-breaker should be required. If goals and assists are truly equal, why is more emphasis placed on goal scoring? Players like Bossy, Hull, Richard, Ovechkin, and Laine have stood out due to their ability to excel as snipers. In general, snipers like Ovi sell the game better than play-makers.

Gretzky actually talks about this subject (of goals vs assists and "losing" the Art Ross to Dionne) in his autobiography. Gretzky says this type of rule sends the wrong message to kids that a goal is more valuable than an assist, as the players he always admired the most growing up were team players, not selfish players. He goes on to say that if there was one thing he would be proud of is if he was able to make the pass "cool", the way Magic Johnson and Larry Bird made the pass "cool". And this is what he wanted to instill in the psyche and imagination of kids. And I must say, it certainly worked on me when I was a kid. I wanted to pass on a 2 on 1 and set up my teammates. It felt cool to get an assist, to be the playmaker. No one likes a hotdog who's just in it to score himself.

As for 2 assists vs 1 goal, maybe that says the opposite? That most goals (resulting from teamwork, as it is a team sport) require a lot of help. Many of Ovechkin's goals, for example, are one timers and would never even happen without a beauty set up or a great play.

Using goals to determine a tie breaker for an award that is based on two components (assists and goals) where each component has equal value (regardless whether you think they do or not they DO have equal value mathematically and empirically), seems quite bogus.

 

[Midnight Judges]

..I mean the NHL and WHA were leagues of similar strength(NHL obviously stronger but they were both tier 1 leagues)...

Wait. What!?!

 

[Midnight Judges]

As for 2 assists vs 1 goal, maybe that says the opposite? That most goals (resulting from teamwork, as it is a team sport) require a lot of help. Many of Ovechkin's goals, for example, are one timers and would never even happen without a beauty set up or a great play.

You are exactly wrong. Ovechkin scores goals unscreened and farther out than any other high volume goal scorer ever. We have data on shot distance for modern players. Nobody else comes close. Mundane perimeter passes turn into game winning goals because of his ability. The quality of his shot requires far less beautiful playmaking than any other player in the history of hockey.

 

[tazzy19]

The Calder thing was BS and just sour grapes over the WHA.

The Art Ross Ross thing was legit - using goals as a tiebreak makes perfect sense, and was used in seasons both before and after 1980.

Again, just because it was used before doesn't mean it made perfect sense. That's why they change rules all the time. There have been hundreds of rule changes in every level of society for that reason. And you still haven't provided any empirical reason why it make sense to use goals as a tie breaker if goals and assists are equally worth 1 point each? (Your reason is simply, "Well, it was done in the past and therefore is is obviously correct"?? Really?)

 

[tazzy19]

You are exactly wrong. Ovechkin scores goals unscreened and farther out than any other high volume goal scorer ever. We have data on shot distance for modern players. Nobody else comes close. Mundane perimeter passes turn into game winning goals because of his ability. The quality of his shot requires far less beautiful playmaking than any other player in the history of hockey.

Again, even if what you are saying is true, a goal is worth one point and so is an assist. This is the part some people have a difficult time grasping.

 

[tazzy19]

This is the weirdest attempt at creating an analogy that I’ve ever seen.

Fantastic. That was my goal -- weirdest attempt at creating an analogy that you'd ever seen. I didn't want to throw out a normal analogy for you. You've seen thousands of those.

 

[Sentinel]

As for 2 assists vs 1 goal, maybe that says the opposite? That most goals (resulting from teamwork, as it is a team sport) require a lot of help. Many of Ovechkin's goals, for example, are one timers and would never even happen without a beauty set up or a great play.

And every single one of those assists would not happen without Ovechkin hammering the puck into the net.

Goals ARE more important than assists.

 

[Dennis Bonvie]

I never understood why there was a tie-breaker for the Art Ross, but not the Rocket Richard. Both are statistical trophies - why is there a tiebreaker for one, but not the other?

Goals are a component of the point total. Back when the award originated, goals being seen as more important was most likely a consensus.

What could be a logical tie breaker for the Rocket trophy?

 

[Dennis Bonvie]

It's not true if he's speaking of the game against Toronto near the end of the season at Maple Leaf Gardens. I only counted one phantom assist (and even that one, he might have touched the puck in his own end).

Good argument for why goals are more important than assists.

 

[vadim sharifijanov]

That actually happened the very next season - '80 - '81 - Peter Stastny, who had played many years in the top Czechoslovakian league.

The only difference with Makarov is that when he was an NHL rookie he was 7 years older than Stastny had been, and Makarov had played even several more years in a similar league than Stastny.

ironically, not giving that calder to gretzky was really a concession by the NHL that the WHA was on its level, which i think is the opposite of what it had been saying all the years leading up to the merger.

i think virtually every european calder winner played at least two years in a top senior league: stastny, makarov, bure, selanne, forsberg, samsonov, nabokov, ovechkin, malkin, panarin, pettersson, all but landeskog, who played major junior.

and i don’t know how the official rulebook words it, if at all, but samsonov also played an IHL season and how many guys did a year or a few in the north american minors? belfour and larmer, off the top of my head.

 

[Minar]

And every single one of those assists would not happen without Ovechkin hammering the puck into the net.

Goals ARE more important than assists.

Definitely not. It takes a whole team to play the game of hockey. Hockey is not tennis. Yes the object of the game is to score a goal but without the efforts of the whole team (many things that go unnoticed) those goals dont happen. Assists are just as important as goals.

 

[Minar]

Plus passing is difficult! Watch a bunch of atom kids play. Plenty of scoring but not much passing. Learning to see the ice well and passing is really hard.

 

[Uncle Rotter]

What would have happened if Gretzky and Dionne had tied in goals? The next tiebreaker would have been who had scored the first goal of the season.

 

[MS]

The Art Ross has always been awarded the same way. Lindros lost the 1995 Art Ross to Jagr in exactly the same fashion. In the same way that a win and a loss is considered better than two ties in the standings, a goal has always been considered a more valuable contribution to a scoring play than an assist, even if they're counted the same.

The Calder is a weird one, because there's no real right answer.

Yeah, Stastny won after playing in a major European league the following year. But pretty much every Euro plays in a major Euro league before being drafted, so if you make those leagues ineligible it's basically making all Euros ineligible for the Calder.

And yeah, in hindsight the way things turned out it seems silly that Gretzky didn't win. But in a world where Gretzky didn't exist, it would have seemed even more silly if a 26 y/o veteran North American pro like Mike Rogers beat out a teenaged Ray Bourque for the Calder, so you can see why they did things the way they did.

 

[Dr Pepper]

The Art Ross tiebreaker has been in place for quite some time....and it's what made Jamie Benn's win a few years back, that much sweeter.

Although he was tied with Tavares in points late in the 3rd period, everyone knew JT would get the nod due to having more goals. And there was no whining or anything, no "why don't they just share it", because that was the rule. Goals were, and are, the tiebreaker.

 

[Dennis Bonvie]

Definitely not. It takes a whole team to play the game of hockey. Hockey is not tennis. Yes the object of the game is to score a goal but without the efforts of the whole team (many things that go unnoticed) those goals dont happen. Assists are just as important as goals.

Sounds like you are making a case for the plus/minus stat.

 

[kaiser matias]

Regarding the Calder, I can at least see the argument for giving it to Makarov and Stastny. Both played in Communist states, and were technically amateur. While that was obviously a farce, on paper it was accurate, so there is at least a basis to give them the award.

However for the other European players, it is interesting that the NHL doesn't consider them professional leagues, despite them literally being so. But what is the NHL without massive inconsistencies in how it does things.

 

[Oheao]

I don't understand the Calder thing either, "they're not equal to us so their stats don't count but oh playing a season there is equivalent to playing in the NHL so Gretzky's not really a rookie!!"

 

[GMR]

The Art Ross goals tie-break had already been used in 1962 so it's not like the NHL set some kind of precedent with Gretzky.

I think Gretzky will be ok. The dude can always look at his like 40 other NHL trophies if for some reason he starts to feel down about this.

Are you sure about that? He may be losing sleep knowing that Barrett Jackman won a trophy that he never did.

 

[K Fleur]

Are you sure about that? He may be losing sleep knowing that Barrett Jackman won a trophy that he never did.

I'm forever gonna imagine Jackman sitting around in retirement telling all of his friends he has a trophy Gretzky doesn't.

I bet if you asked Gretzky he'd tell you Jackman was a better player than he could have ever hoped to be anyways.