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

[Iron Mike Sharpe]

As mentioned by someone else above, the WHA was considered a major league equivalent to the NHL - they signed away NHL players (often for much higher salaries), poached draft picks, and had four franchises folded into the NHL. They were a parallel league, not an amateur or minor professional league, no matter what anybody feels about the quality of play compared to the NHL. I'm not sure why this is so hard for people to grok, especially on this forum. Gretzky played a full season of major league hockey before entering the NHL.

 

[MS]

As mentioned by someone else above, the WHA was considered a major league equivalent to the NHL - they signed away NHL players (often for much higher salaries), poached draft picks, and had four franchises folded into the NHL. They were a parallel league, not an amateur or minor professional league, no matter what anybody feels about the quality of play compared to the NHL. I'm not sure why this is so hard for people to grok, especially on this forum. Gretzky played a full season of major league hockey before entering the NHL.

And again, people need to think about what logically would have happened in most instances.

This was an established league with established stars like Mark Howe, Real Cloutier, Kent Nilsson, Mike Rogers, and so on. Top players who had been playing major league pro hockey in NA for years.

The logical expectation, 99 times out of 100, would be that one of those guys would walk in as the best 'new' NHL player in 1979-80. And if that's the case, then they're kind of unfairly stealing the Calder Trophy away from Ray Bourque. So making them ineligible makes total sense.

What ended up mucking up a perfectly sensible plan was the once-in-a-lifetime Gretzky phenomenon having spent a year in that league at the highly unusual age of 17. Again, in a different world where Gretzky doesn't exist and WHA players are allowed to win the Calder, it probably goes to Mike Rogers. And in hindsight, that would be considered a bit of an outrage.

 

[Sentinel]

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.

Agree to disagree.

 

[quoipourquoi]

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.

I think the issue there is that many counties still had citizenship obligations that prevented players from coming over at the same age that a North American player could simply just start their NHL career. So essentially it would bar certain countries’ players from competing for the Calder.


To me, I can somewhat understand that WHA players wouldn’t be eligible. The merger wasn’t agreed upon until March 1979, right? So while it worked out that Gretzky played in the NHL in what would be his first eligible season to do so, he had signed a contract 2 months prior with a very real possibility that he would not be an NHL player for some time. So I would have more sympathy for a 17-year-old WHA player on a 1-year deal who may have had intentions of joining the NHL when eligible.

 

[FerrisRox]

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.

Huh?

 

[FerrisRox]

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?

Well, goals are goals. How do you break the tie without pretending some kind of goals are better than others?

But when it comes to points, with every goal scored you can get up to to three points, one for the goal and two possible assists.

I think it makes sense, in the context of a point scoring award, to use goals as a tie breaker. For a trophy about most goals, I don't think it makes any sense to say game winning goals or short handed goals or some other arbitrary thing has more value.

 

[vadim sharifijanov]

the sensible thing to do, being that the art ross doesn’t affect playoff seeding or draft order or really anything other than a name on a trophy and a cash bonus or maybe two, is to just let a tie be a tie.

you can just leave it to posterity or, say, randos on an internet message board like us, to endlessly debate whether jagr was the real 95 scoring champ because “goals are more important” or lindros because points/game or jagr because why am i rewarding you formissing games or lindros because he was didn’t have ron francis or jagr because...

imo the first goal of the season tie breaker is so stunningly stupidly arbitrary that, because they employ it as part of the methodology, it should invalidate any other tie breaker they use and the methodology as a whole.

 

[quoipourquoi]

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

Fewest ENGs. Then fewest PPGs.

 

[Hockey Outsider]

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?

I agree that, in general, a goal is more valuable than an assist - but that's not how the Art Ross works. It says that one goal equals one assist. Except when a player is tied for first place. But not for any other ties! In 2017, Crosby and Kane are tied for 2nd in scoring - the NHL doesn't say that Crosby is 2nd, and Kane is 3rd - they're both tied for 2nd. If goals are worth more than assists (even slightly), shouldn't the 2006 Art Ross have gone to Jagr (54 goals, 123 points) over Thornton (29 goals, 125 points)?

Then you have the fact that the next tiebreaker is who scored earlier in the season. That's completely arbitrary.

Maybe the response is - the NHL doesn't want ties for its trophies. There's a tiebreaker for the Hart (too bad, Jarome Iginla - he lost one due to the tiebreaker). But that doesn't explain it either. The Jennings is another purely statistical trophy - ties are okay there (Crawford and Price split it in 2015, and there are other examples historically).

Trust me, I'm not losing sleep over Gretzky (or Bathgate, or Lindros) losing a trophy. It's just really inconsistent in how it's applied.

 

[Nathaniel Skywalker]

Even if that's true how many were incorrectly awarded to someone else instead of to him over the course of the season?

That’s impossible to know

 

[Dennis Bonvie]

Fewest ENGs. Then fewest PPGs.

Fewest EN goals, I like that.

 

[Dennis Bonvie]

I agree that, in general, a goal is more valuable than an assist - but that's not how the Art Ross works. It says that one goal equals one assist. Except when a player is tied for first place. But not for any other ties! In 2017, Crosby and Kane are tied for 2nd in scoring - the NHL doesn't say that Crosby is 2nd, and Kane is 3rd - they're both tied for 2nd. If goals are worth more than assists (even slightly), shouldn't the 2006 Art Ross have gone to Jagr (54 goals, 123 points) over Thornton (29 goals, 125 points)?

Then you have the fact that the next tiebreaker is who scored earlier in the season. That's completely arbitrary.

Maybe the response is - the NHL doesn't want ties for its trophies. There's a tiebreaker for the Hart (too bad, Jarome Iginla - he lost one due to the tiebreaker). But that doesn't explain it either. The Jennings is another purely statistical trophy - ties are okay there (Crawford and Price split it in 2015, and there are other examples historically).

Trust me, I'm not losing sleep over Gretzky (or Bathgate, or Lindros) losing a trophy. It's just really inconsistent in how it's applied.

Guess they only have one Art Ross Trophy and they don't want to split it.

Honestly, I didn't know there still was a Jennings trophy awarded.

 

[JackSlater]

the sensible thing to do, being that the art ross doesn’t affect playoff seeding or draft order or really anything other than a name on a trophy and a cash bonus or maybe two, is to just let a tie be a tie.

you can just leave it to posterity or, say, randos on an internet message board like us, to endlessly debate whether jagr was the real 95 scoring champ because “goals are more important” or lindros because points/game or jagr because why am i rewarding you formissing games or lindros because he was didn’t have ron francis or jagr because...

imo the first goal of the season tie breaker is so stunningly stupidly arbitrary that, because they employ it as part of the methodology, it should invalidate any other tie breaker they use and the methodology as a whole.

Sadly true. It's just an arbitrary tie breaker, though less laughable than first goal. The trophy is supposed to go to the player who leads the NHL in scoring in the regular season according to its own criteria. If two players tie in scoring and scored more than anyone else then they both led the league in scoring, the player with more goals (or who scored a goal earlier or whatever else) didn't lead the league in scoring more than the other player did. It's so stupid that I wouldn't be surprised to find out that the league was too cheap to give out two trophies in 1962 or something and came up with a random tie breaker as a result.

 

[reckoning]

The NHL put the rule making WHA players ineligible for the Calder in 1978 after Anders Hedberg and Ulf Nilsson signed with the Rangers. There was a very good chance one of them could have won, and it would look ridiculous to have the best rookie award go to a player in his late-twenties who had spent the previous four seasons on a line with Bobby Hull. It seems a little unfair that a teenager who had only been in the WHA for one season was ineligible by the same rule, but the line has to be drawn somewhere. Maybe an age limit would have been a better solution.

As far as phantom points go, most games from the 70s or 80s will have at least one error in the official scoring summary that doesn't match what actually happened on the replay. You'd have to watch every single goal the team scored in the season to determine if a player received any phantom assists, or were robbed of any assists that should have be given. Barring that, the official stats are what happened.

 

[The Panther]

The NHL put the rule making WHA players ineligible for the Calder in 1978 after Anders Hedberg and Ulf Nilsson signed with the Rangers. There was a very good chance one of them could have won, and it would look ridiculous to have the best rookie award go to a player in his late-twenties who had spent the previous four seasons on a line with Bobby Hull. It seems a little unfair that a teenager who had only been in the WHA for one season was ineligible by the same rule, but the line has to be drawn somewhere. Maybe an age limit would have been a better solution.

I don't think the NHL was that advanced in its thinking in 1979, since, 11 years later, they had no issue with giving the Calder to a 31-year old who'd spent a dozen years on maybe the best team in the world playing on the 1st line with a bunch of the world's best players.

There is an age limit now.

 

[Dennis Bonvie]

I don't think the NHL was that advanced in its thinking in 1979, since, 11 years later, they had no issue with giving the Calder to a 31-year old who'd spent a dozen years on maybe the best team in the world playing on the 1st line with a bunch of the world's best players.

There is an age limit now.

The NHL at that time was not going to do anything positive for anyone associated with the WHA.

 

[Hoser]

I agree that, in general, a goal is more valuable than an assist - but that's not how the Art Ross works. It says that one goal equals one assist. Except when a player is tied for first place. But not for any other ties! In 2017, Crosby and Kane are tied for 2nd in scoring - the NHL doesn't say that Crosby is 2nd, and Kane is 3rd - they're both tied for 2nd.

You don't know WTF you're talking about. Crosby is 2nd, Kane 3rd.

 

[Hockey Outsider]

You don't know WTF you're talking about. Crosby is 2nd, Kane 3rd.

Thanks for the condescending comment. See 5th/6th place in your screenshot - are 39 goals greater than 40 goals? Must be the new math.

EDIT - see also the April 10, 2017 NHL.com article announcing McDavid winning the Art Ross. The article clearly states that Crosby and Kane tied for 2nd in points (despite Crosby having more goals). That's consistent with what I said - the "goals as tiebreaker" isn't used for any other position in the scoring race. Link - Connor McDavid of Oilers wins Art Ross Trophy

 

[Hoser]

How is this news to people? Am I living in some bizzaro world where only a handful of us were aware that when two players have an equal number of total points the one with more goals is ranked higher?

I've dug out the oldest media guide I have, the 1951-52 "Press and Radio Guide", and every single player who played in '50-'51 is listed, in order of points, under "individual scoring & penalty records" beginning on page 18 of the booklet, in this order:

Player	GP	G	A	P
Gordie Howe	70	43	43	86
Maurice Richard	65	42	24	66
Max Bentley	67	21	41	62
Sid Abel	69	23	38	61
Milt Schmidt	61	22	39	61
Ted Kennedy	63	18	43	61
Tod Sloan	70	31	25	56
Red Kelly	70	17	37	54
Sid Smith	70	30	21	51
Cal Gardner	66	23	28	51
Roy Conacher	70	26	24	50
Elmer Lach	65	21	24	45
Woody Dumart	70	20	21	41
Bert Olmstead	54	18	23	41
Reg Sinclair	70	18	21	39
Don Raleigh	64	15	24	39
Johnny Peirson	70	19	19	38
Jim Peters	68	17	21	38
Metro Prystai	62	20	17	37
Harry Watson	68	18	19	37
Pete Babando	70	18	19	37
George Gee	70	17	20	37
Jim Conacher	52	10	27	37
Bill Mosienko	65	21	15	36
Buddy O'Connor	66	16	20	36
Jim Thomson	69	3	33	36
Nick Mickoski	64	20	15	35
Bill Ezinicki	53	16	19	35
Danny Lewicki	61	16	18	34
Bep Guidolin	69	12	22	34

[TBODY]
[/TBODY]

Abel, Schmidt and Kennedy each had 61 points but Abel had more goals than Schmidt who had more than Kennedy so they finished 4-5-6 in scoring. Further down the list there are five players with 37 points, but they are (definitively) ordered Prystai, Watson, Babando, Gee, Conacher: Prystai had 20 goals, Watson and Babando each had 18 goals but Watson played two fewer games, Gee had 17 goals and Conacher had 10.

Like... this is not in question, this is how it has been done for decades and decades.

 

[Hockey Outsider]

You deleted the screenshot you posted showing that your statement was incorrect.

NHL.com has an article that said Gordie Howe "finished in the top five in NHL scoring for 20 consecutive seasons, from 1949-50 until 1968-69". Link - Numbers say Howe was the best ever

In 1960, Howe was tied for 5th in scoring with Henri Richard (both had 73 points). Richard scored more goals (30 vs 28). If goals were always used as a tie-breaker, Howe would have finished 6th in scoring that year, which would have ended his streak of 20 seasons as a top five scorer. If the NHL acknowledges that Howe was, in fact, in the top five in scoring that year, that means they recognized that Howe was tied for 5th in scoring, and the "more goals are the tie-breaker" rule doesn't count.

 

[Hoser]

Thanks for the condescending comment.

You're welcome.

Here's a photo of the scoring leaders from the 2010-11 season, from the newest (2012) paper copy I have of the NHL Official Guide and Record Book:

Notice that Selanne is higher up the list than Zetterberg.

 

[Oheao]

As mentioned by someone else above, the WHA was considered a major league equivalent to the NHL - they signed away NHL players (often for much higher salaries), poached draft picks, and had four franchises folded into the NHL. They were a parallel league, not an amateur or minor professional league, no matter what anybody feels about the quality of play compared to the NHL. I'm not sure why this is so hard for people to grok, especially on this forum. Gretzky played a full season of major league hockey before entering the NHL.

It's hard to grasp because when they merged they refused to recognize WHA's statistics, implying they were not a parallel league.

 

[vadim sharifijanov]

You're welcome.

Here's a photo of the scoring leaders from the 2010-11 season, from the newest (2012) paper copy I have of the NHL Official Guide and Record Book:

Notice that Selanne is higher up the list than Zetterberg.

notice that there are no numbers to the left of those names

notice that s comes before z in the alphabet

 

[Hoser]

NHL.com has an article that said Gordie Howe "finished in the top five in NHL scoring for 20 consecutive seasons, from 1949-50 until 1968-69". Link - Numbers say Howe was the best ever

In 1960, Howe was tied for 5th in scoring with Henri Richard (both had 73 points). Richard scored more goals (30 vs 28). If goals were always used as a tie-breaker, Howe would have finished 6th in scoring that year, which would have ended his streak of 20 seasons as a top five scorer. If the NHL acknowledges that Howe was, in fact, in the top five in scoring that year, that means they recognized that Howe was tied for 5th in scoring, and the "more goals are the tie-breaker" rule doesn't count.

Well, according to the 1960-61 Press and Radio Guide, which I actually have a copy of...

Hull
Horvath
Beliveau
Bathgate
Richard
Howe

 

[JackSlater]

I find this "debate" regarding scoring placements bizarre. If two players finish with the same point total then they tied in scoring. The NHL can list those players sorted by goals, assists, alphabetical order, chronology, height, astrological sign, or whatever else but the NHL doesn't have any authority over how numbers relate to each other. The NHL can create and award a trophy and create whatever tie breaker it wants for that trophy but it has no power to re-order point finishes outside of awarding points to players in any given game. Not that the NHL even does this by anything I've seen, but it also wouldn't matter if it tried to.