Is Ovechkin's 07/08 season among the very best goalscoring campaigns in history?

[Midnight Judges]

this is a very interesting take on things goal scoring and Ovechkin's place, at least when it was written in 2016.

Why Alex Ovechkin Is Not The Best Goal Scorer Ever

You are recommending a system that suggests Johnny Bucyk was a better goal scorer than peak Ovechkin.

That is the dumbest shit I've ever heard.

 

[wetcoast]

There is no rational basis to look at seasons in isolation.

Surrounding seasons provide context - particularly in instances where league wide scoring trends were consistent (as is often the case). Whatever second place does in a given year is highly volatile - an unreliable basis. This is why VsX is garbage for 1 year comparisons, and pretty lame overall. It needlessly eliminates the context of surrounding seasons in favor of arbitrary arguments - which are deployed at the convenience of a poster's agenda.

You can look at Ovie's season, 10 years prior and 10 years after, and that provides plenty of context. In that greater context, Ovie's season stacks up far superior to many of the seasons from the Canadian players mentioned in his thread - who for reasons not being admitted, are being favored.

Might be the right answer to a different thread but since this thread is about how Ovi's 07-08 goal scoring season ranks it's not relevant here.

 

[wetcoast]

You are recommending a system that suggests Johnny Bucyk was a better goal scorer than peak Ovechkin.

That is the dumbest shit I've ever heard.

Funny that you entirely skip over what the author says about that season being an anomaly with 7 bruins being in the top 11 scoring.

If I was subjectively rating these seasons I would likely move Ovechkin well up the list, at least to the mid-teens and maybe even around the edge of the top 10, since he should certainly be ranked ahead of Johnny Bucyk and probably some of the immediate post-war years of guys like Maurice Richard and Gaye Stewart where the top end talent was still fairly weak.

 

[Zuluss]

As I promised, I did the comparison of 1-year peaks for Ovechkin and O6-era players. The leads over #5 and #10 were obviously wider in the Original Six era; in 1944-1967, the average % lead of the goal-scoring title winner over #5 and #10 in goals was 45% and 75%. In 1996-present, the same leads, on average, are 27% and 45%, only 60% of what they used to be.

This difference could be caused by Richard, Howe, and Bobby Hull winning the goal-scoring race with huge margins because they were so good, so I checked the lead of #2 in goals over #5 and #10: 21% and 45% vs. 14% and 30%. The current leads are 66% of what they used to be; if they were 60% of what they used to be, they would be 13% and 27%. So virtually no difference, the difference between the eras is not driven by Hull-Howe-Richard being too good.

With the 60% adjustment, the full career arcs of Ovechkin, Hull, Howe, and Richard look like that

Hull (60% adj): 65-56-55-48-42-38-34-28-19-13-12-9
Howe (60% adj): 87-63-58-50-35-34-31-28-19-18-16-13-11-10-10-5-2-0
Richard (60% adj): 70-60-52-48-46-44-35-24-23-21-10-9-8
Ovechkin: 63-61-52-52-50-44-43-41-30-26-24-15-6

So only Howe has a peak goal-scoring season (1952/53) that is clearly better than Ovechkin's 2007-08; Richard is a bit ahead, but that's his 1944-45 season.

Now, the question is what we should do with Esposito, who peaked post-expansion. Here are his raw % leads over #10 in goals - and Gretzky's leads for comparison

Esposito 111-89-74-53-44-38-30-17
Gretzky: 85-85-59-48-48-17-15-13-9

If you look at the raw numbers, Esposito as a goal-scorer dominates Gretzky's 1-year peak and 3-year peak and actually blows out of the water everyone's stats except for unadjusted stats of O6-era goal-scorers. So maybe that's a hint to adjust his stats - here they are in the adjusted form:

Esposito (60% adj) 67-53-44-32-26-23-18-10

That way Esposito is close to Bobby Hull and Richard in terms of 1-year peak and 3-year peak, and then decays pretty fast. I think this is how many would currently view him.
Adjusted that way, the best season of Esposito (1970-71) is similar to the best season of Ovechkin.

Adjusting Esposito's totals begs the question of when do we stop adjusting. Esposito's last goal-scoring title came in 1974/75 (53% margin over #10), and his last exorbitant margin (89% over #10 in goals) came a season before that. Now take a look at Steve Shutt's goal-scoring title in 1976/77 (67% margin over #10 and 30% margin over #5). What do we do: walk back this margin too or entertain the possibility that Steve Shutt the goal-scorer peaked as high as Pavel Bure (61% over #10 and 38% over #5 in 1999/00)?
If we walk back Steve Shutt's season, do we also walk back Bossy's peak (1978/79)? Or do we just conclude that one-year peak does not tell us much because outliers happen and it is only sustained dominance that counts?

Lastly, I would like to point out two more notable goal-scoring campaigns from the O6 era that are a step behind Ovechkin's 2007/08: Beliveau's 1955/56 (adjusted margins 37% and 58% over #5 and #10, respectively) and Boom-Boom Geoffrion's 1960/61 (adjusted margins 34% and 49%).
And let's also give a honorable mention to Bondra/Selanne joint peak from 1997/98 (16% lead over #5, but 58% lead over #10)
For comparison, Ovechkin's leads from 2007/08 are 51% and 63%.

 

[daver]

I think the

I agree that the top-end goalscoring was more watered down, but that doesn't necessarily make Stamkos' more impressive. It just means that his % leads are inflated due to a lack of good competition.

	Player	Goals	% lead
1st	Ovechkin	65
2nd	Kovalchuk	52	25%
3rd	Iginla	50	30%
4th	Malkin	47	38%
5th	Zetterberg	43	51%
10th	Lecavalier	40	63%
20th	Sundin	32	103%
30th	Hejduk	29	124%
50th	Horton	27	141%
	Player	Goals	% lead
1st	Stamkos	60
2nd	Malkin	50	20%
3rd	Gaborik	41	46%
4th	Neal	40	50%
5th	Ovechkin	38	58%
10th	Moulson	36	67%
20th	Parise	31	94%
30th	Kane	30	100%
50th	Glencross	26	131%

[TBODY] [/TBODY]

Lead over:	Ovechkin	Stamkos
2nd	25%	20%	5%
3rd	30%	46%	-16%
4th	38%	50%	-12%
5th	51%	58%	-7%
10th	63%	67%	-4%
20th	103%	94%	10%
30th	124%	100%	24%
50th	141%	131%	10%

[TBODY] [/TBODY]

So there's a few takeaways here:
1) Ovechkin lead over #2 is better. If you went by goals/gp, Malkin missed 7 GP in Stamko's year, and the result would be Ovi having a 20% goal/gp gap over #2 and Stamkos having a 9% gap over #2
2) Stamkos had a better % lead over 3rd and 4th due to low quality top competition compared to Ovechkin
3) The differences from 5th and 10th are very close and are the difference of Stamko's lower quality competition scoring 1-2 goals less than Ovi's
4) Ovechkin had better leads from 20th place onwards.

I think this is at best a better performance by Ovechkin relative to his peers, and at worst its a draw.

Then when you add in the fact that Ovechkin had a higher actual goal total, a higher adjusted goal total, and the fact that he was doing more with less teammate help, this gets tipped in Ovechkins favour.

The difference is very debatable which highlights the reason for the OP. If OV didn't have the clear best season of his era, then it is more than likely he did not have a season among the very best of all-time.

As for the "higher actual goal total" argument, that is one argument that OV loses significantly against his GOAT peers so not sure why you want to play that card.

I see OV as being the Gordie Howe of goalscorers which, IMO, puts him comfortably in the Top 3 if one had to parse the list down to 3 players (Hull and Wayne being the other two). But I am more comfortable with there being a fairly clear Top 6 (add Richard, Mario and Howe) than a Top 3 ( or clear #1).

IMO, the #1 metric for rating players is their peak regular season.

 

[Voight]

I personally consider Stamkos 60 goals campaign to be more impressive/better from a goalscoring standpoint given the lead be had over his peers.

What propels OV to be the best goalscorer of all time is his goalscoring consistency.

Stamkos also had the fortune of playing with one of the leagues best wingers. Granted. that wasnt one of MSL's best seasons but still.

I'm quite high on Ovechkin's 2008 season, though I often don't think of seasons specifically in terms of goal scoring or passing. In terms of goals he smoked some solid if not all time strong competition, and as I'm not particularly high on Backstrom (2008 or later) I give credit for having done it without a noteworthy amount of help. I like that he was able to do it as the player unquestionably carrying the offensive load on his line, which wasn't the case in Stamkos' season for example. There's a group of seasons that are in contention for most impressive in terms of goals and Ovechkin's best belongs right there with them.

Backstrom was also a rookie that year and was getting adjusted to NA style.

 

[daver]

I'm sure Daver thinks Crosby has an argument for being a top five or six player all-time (and to be fair, he probably does or will by the time his career is over). Is his peak season even top 20 all-time? Top 30? It doesn't exactly hold him back because he's been consistently elite for ages.

Even if Ovechkin's best goal scoring season is "only" top ten all-time (not that I necessarily agree), that shouldn't disqualify him from having a good argument for being the greatest goal scorer ever.

Did I say OV has no argument for #1? No.

No reason to make this post based on that.

 

[TheMoreYouKnow]

You are recommending a system that suggests Johnny Bucyk was a better goal scorer than peak Ovechkin.

That is the dumbest shit I've ever heard.

And yet there's no actual way to prove Ovechkin is better than Bucyk was.

 

[Regal]

I think the


The difference is very debatable which highlights the reason for the OP. If OV didn't have the clear best season of his era, then it is more than likely he did not have a season among the very best of all-time.

As for the "higher actual goal total" argument, that is one argument that OV loses significantly against his GOAT peers so not sure why you want to play that card.

I see OV as being the Gordie Howe of goalscorers which, IMO, puts him comfortably in the Top 3 if one had to parse the list down to 3 players (Hull and Wayne being the other two). But I am more comfortable with there being a fairly clear Top 6 (add Richard, Mario and Howe) than a Top 3 ( or clear #1).

IMO, the #1 metric for rating players is their peak regular season.

Wouldn't this same logic completely downgrade Gretzky and Lemieux's accomplishments because they just happened to play in the same era? Howe and Richard, same thing. Hell, Brett Hull's 86 goals were only 2 seasons after Lemieux's 85. Perhaps the issue is underrating Stamkos' season as a goalscorer and not wanting to put it up with the others, but those two aren't just the best of a handful of seasons, those are the best two goalscoring seasons of the past 20 years at least. Matthews wasn't far off this year but it was a partial season. You'd have to go back to Bure on the Panthers to have any full season competition, and I don't think his are better either. So then you're going back to Lemieux in '96, depending on how you want to considered missed games.

 

[Regal]

Stamkos also had the fortune of playing with one of the leagues best wingers. Granted. that wasnt one of MSL's best seasons but still.

As mentioned earlier, not only was it not one of St.Louis' best, he only assisted on 20 of Stamkos' goals. Backstrom assisted on 22 of Ovechkin's. I don't think either were particularly influential those years. Also, Stamkos played 832:04 with St.Louis at ES that year and scored 28 goals, and 522:01 away from him, and scored 20 goals. So he actually had a better G/60 away from St.Louis at 2.30 G/60 compared to 2.02 G/60 with him. Obviously St.Louis was on the ice for most of Stamkos' PP goals (11 of 12), but he also only had the primary assist on 4 of them. I think Stamkos suffers from some of the same ideas that plague post-peak Ovechkin, about being a guy who only shoots from one spot, but that year he was all over the ice creating goals for himself.

 

[BigBadBruins7708]

As I promised, I did the comparison of 1-year peaks for Ovechkin and O6-era players. The leads over #5 and #10 were obviously wider in the Original Six era; in 1944-1967, the average % lead of the goal-scoring title winner over #5 and #10 in goals was 45% and 75%. In 1996-present, the same leads, on average, are 27% and 45%, only 60% of what they used to be.

This difference could be caused by Richard, Howe, and Bobby Hull winning the goal-scoring race with huge margins because they were so good, so I checked the lead of #2 in goals over #5 and #10: 21% and 45% vs. 14% and 30%. The current leads are 66% of what they used to be; if they were 60% of what they used to be, they would be 13% and 27%. So virtually no difference, the difference between the eras is not driven by Hull-Howe-Richard being too good.

With the 60% adjustment, the full career arcs of Ovechkin, Hull, Howe, and Richard look like that

Hull (60% adj): 65-56-55-48-42-38-34-28-19-13-12-9
Howe (60% adj): 87-63-58-50-35-34-31-28-19-18-16-13-11-10-10-5-2-0
Richard (60% adj): 70-60-52-48-46-44-35-24-23-21-10-9-8
Ovechkin: 63-61-52-52-50-44-43-41-30-26-24-15-6

So only Howe has a peak goal-scoring season (1952/53) that is clearly better than Ovechkin's 2007-08; Richard is a bit ahead, but that's his 1944-45 season.

Now, the question is what we should do with Esposito, who peaked post-expansion. Here are his raw % leads over #10 in goals - and Gretzky's leads for comparison

Esposito 111-89-74-53-44-38-30-17
Gretzky: 85-85-59-48-48-17-15-13-9

If you look at the raw numbers, Esposito as a goal-scorer dominates Gretzky's 1-year peak and 3-year peak and actually blows out of the water everyone's stats except for unadjusted stats of O6-era goal-scorers. So maybe that's a hint to adjust his stats - here they are in the adjusted form:

Esposito (60% adj) 67-53-44-32-26-23-18-10

That way Esposito is close to Bobby Hull and Richard in terms of 1-year peak and 3-year peak, and then decays pretty fast. I think this is how many would currently view him.
Adjusted that way, the best season of Esposito (1970-71) is similar to the best season of Ovechkin.

Adjusting Esposito's totals begs the question of when do we stop adjusting. Esposito's last goal-scoring title came in 1974/75 (53% margin over #10), and his last exorbitant margin (89% over #10 in goals) came a season before that. Now take a look at Steve Shutt's goal-scoring title in 1976/77 (67% margin over #10 and 30% margin over #5). What do we do: walk back this margin too or entertain the possibility that Steve Shutt the goal-scorer peaked as high as Pavel Bure (61% over #10 and 38% over #5 in 1999/00)?
If we walk back Steve Shutt's season, do we also walk back Bossy's peak (1978/79)? Or do we just conclude that one-year peak does not tell us much because outliers happen and it is only sustained dominance that counts?

Lastly, I would like to point out two more notable goal-scoring campaigns from the O6 era that are a step behind Ovechkin's 2007/08: Beliveau's 1955/56 (adjusted margins 37% and 58% over #5 and #10, respectively) and Boom-Boom Geoffrion's 1960/61 (adjusted margins 34% and 49%).
And let's also give a honorable mention to Bondra/Selanne joint peak from 1997/98 (16% lead over #5, but 58% lead over #10)
For comparison, Ovechkin's leads from 2007/08 are 51% and 63%.

Your premise for the 60% adjustment is disingenuous. You are intentionally taking margin of victory away from 1 set just to make them look like the other set.

The margin of victories were what they were. It's not because #10 was some 4th liner scrub, its because #1 was that good. Period. You cant try to adjust them like you would raw totals for era adjusting.

The point of using % margins is to negate the differences in scoring eras

 

[MadLuke]

The margin of victories were what they were. It's not because #10 was some 4th liner scrub, its because #1 was that good. Period. You cant try to adjust them like you would raw totals for era adjusting.

I feel I am not reading you or the post your responding correctly, because it seem that it is stated that clearly no it is not because #1 was that good, if the difference between #2 and #10 also display that larger difference. It would require #1 and 2 to have been that good, no ?

I feel like certainly when going has far has number 10, 06 league size could be a factor, there is only 6 top guy of their team playing on the league, there is 2 set of first liner playing on the best team, etc...

 

[Zuluss]

So, the upshot of two long posts with a lot of numbers
Is Ovechkin's 07/08 season among the very best goalscoring campaigns in history?
Is Ovechkin's 07/08 season among the very best goalscoring campaigns in history?

There are five goal-scoring seasons in the whole history that are clearly better than Ovechkin's 2007-08 (to the tune of "what if Ovechkin scored 75 goals")
Howe 1952/53, Gretzky 1981/82, Gretzky 1983/84, Lemieux 1988/89, Brett Hull 1990/91

Then there is a second group of seasons where Ovechkin's 2007/08 lands: Richard 1944/45, Howe 1950/51, Howe 1951/52, Bobby Hull 1965/66, Bobby Hull 1966/67, Esposito 1970/71, Bossy 1978/79, Brett Hull 1991/92, Bure 1999/2000, Stamkos 2011/12 - and actually Ovechkin 2014/15. So that's 12 seasons in total, and surely one can make an argument that Ovechkin's 2007/08 is the best of the dozen (Ovechkin was on a bubble team, his center was old Fedorov or rookie Backstrom, Ovechkin dragged his team into the playoffs and his goals came when the team needed it the most and when the opposition was most motivated - or we can start dissecting the numbers, as many posts in this thread are doing).

In short, Ovechkin peaked as a goal-scorer behind the Big4 and Brett Hull, but on par with (or slightly better than) Bobby Hull, Richard, Esposito, Bossy, Bure, Stamkos.
Ovechkin's 2007/08 is not the top5 goal-scoring season ever, but can well be top10 ever.

What makes Ovechkin the best goalscorer ever is not his peak, but his ability to stay close to the peak level for more than a decade. Ovechkin peaked at 63% lead over #10 in goals, but he also has 8 seasons with 40%+ lead over #10 in goals, which, adjusting for the era, is at least 2 seasons more than anyone else in history. How does a lead of 40%+ over #10 look? Well, recall Ovechkin's 2008/09 or 2009/10, or recall Lemieux' 69-goal season. That's how this lead looks.

 

[TheDevilMadeMe]

So, the upshot of two long posts with a lot of numbers
Is Ovechkin's 07/08 season among the very best goalscoring campaigns in history?
Is Ovechkin's 07/08 season among the very best goalscoring campaigns in history?

There are five goal-scoring seasons in the whole history that are clearly better than Ovechkin's 2007-08 (to the tune of "what if Ovechkin scored 75 goals")
Howe 1952/53, Gretzky 1981/82, Gretzky 1983/84, Lemieux 1988/89, Brett Hull 1990/91

Then there is a second group of seasons where Ovechkin's 2007/08 lands: Richard 1944/45, Howe 1950/51, Howe 1951/52, Bobby Hull 1965/66, Bobby Hull 1966/67, Esposito 1970/71, Bossy 1978/79, Brett Hull 1991/92, Bure 1999/2000, Stamkos 2011/12 - and actually Ovechkin 2014/15. So that's 12 seasons in total, and surely one can make an argument that Ovechkin's 2007/08 is the best of the dozen (Ovechkin was on a bubble team, his center was old Fedorov or rookie Backstrom, Ovechkin dragged his team into the playoffs and his goals came when the team needed it the most and when the opposition was most motivated - or we can start dissecting the numbers, as many posts in this thread are doing).

In short, Ovechkin peaked as a goal-scorer behind the Big4 and Brett Hull, but on par with (or slightly better than) Bobby Hull, Richard, Esposito, Bossy, Bure, Stamkos.
Ovechkin's 2007/08 is not the top5 goal-scoring season ever, but can well be top10 ever.

What makes Ovechkin the best goalscorer ever is not his peak, but his ability to stay close to the peak level for more than a decade. Ovechkin peaked at 63% lead over #10 in goals, but he also has 8 seasons with 40%+ lead over #10 in goals, which, adjusting for the era, is at least 2 seasons more than anyone else in history. How does a lead of 40%+ over #10 look? Well, recall Ovechkin's 2008/09 or 2009/10, or recall Lemieux' 69-goal season. That's how this lead looks.

Appreciate the work, but I would argue that Bobby Hull has 3 massive goal scoring seasons on that level:

61-62:
Goals

1.	Bobby Hull* • CBH	50
2.	Gordie Howe* • DET	33
	Frank Mahovlich* • TOR	33
	Claude Provost • MTL	33
5.	Gilles Tremblay • MTL	32

[TBODY] [/TBODY]

65-66

.	Bobby Hull* • CBH	54
2.	Frank Mahovlich* • TOR	32
3.	Alex Delvecchio* • DET	31
	Norm Ullman* • DET	31
5.	Stan Mikita* • CBH	30
	Bobby Rousseau • MTL	30

[TBODY] [/TBODY]

66-67
Goals

1.	Bobby Hull* • CBH	52
2.	Stan Mikita* • CBH	35
3.	Kenny Wharram • CBH	31
4.	Rod Gilbert* • NYR	28
	Bruce MacGregor • DET	28

[TBODY] [/TBODY]

______

I also wouldn't include Richard's 44-45, as the competition was so terrible. IMO, it wasn't even Richard's best season as a goalscorer.

 

[TheDevilMadeMe]

As I promised, I did the comparison of 1-year peaks for Ovechkin and O6-era players. The leads over #5 and #10 were obviously wider in the Original Six era; in 1944-1967, the average % lead of the goal-scoring title winner over #5 and #10 in goals was 45% and 75%. In 1996-present, the same leads, on average, are 27% and 45%, only 60% of what they used to be.

This difference could be caused by Richard, Howe, and Bobby Hull winning the goal-scoring race with huge margins because they were so good, so I checked the lead of #2 in goals over #5 and #10: 21% and 45% vs. 14% and 30%. The current leads are 66% of what they used to be; if they were 60% of what they used to be, they would be 13% and 27%. So virtually no difference, the difference between the eras is not driven by Hull-Howe-Richard being too good.

With the 60% adjustment, the full career arcs of Ovechkin, Hull, Howe, and Richard look like that

Hull (60% adj): 65-56-55-48-42-38-34-28-19-13-12-9
Howe (60% adj): 87-63-58-50-35-34-31-28-19-18-16-13-11-10-10-5-2-0
Richard (60% adj): 70-60-52-48-46-44-35-24-23-21-10-9-8
Ovechkin: 63-61-52-52-50-44-43-41-30-26-24-15-6

So only Howe has a peak goal-scoring season (1952/53) that is clearly better than Ovechkin's 2007-08; Richard is a bit ahead, but that's his

I'm not saying you are doing anything wrong. Maybe this is the right way to look at it. The main reason VsX is not based on the #5 or #10 scorer is for the exact reason that doing so would tend to inflate scores of the very top pre-expansion players as compared to post-expansion ones.

However, I think that if you are going to do a massive adjustment - adjusting every player from a certain era downwards by such a large amount - that you should show your work more than this.

Also, why not do an adjustment for every era? The Original 6 vs post-1996. What about when Gretzky and Lemieux played?

 

[daver]

I'm not saying you are doing anything wrong. Maybe this is the right way to look at it. The main reason VsX is not based on the #5 or #10 scorer is for the exact reason that doing so would tend to inflate scores of the very top pre-expansion players as compared to post-expansion ones.

However, I think that if you are going to do a massive adjustment - adjusting every player from a certain era downwards by such a large amount - that you should show your work more than this.

Also, why not do an adjustment for every era? The Original 6 vs post-1996. What about when Gretzky and Lemieux played?

Here is what I determined with point totals when comparing 1946/47 to 66/67 to 1999/00 to 2019/20:

A Top 3 finish in points in the O6 was, on average, closer to a Top 5 finish in the current era. A Top 5 finish in the O6 was, on average, closer to a Top 10 finish in the current.

This is no surprise as in a strictly statistical sense, finishing in a superior percentile of your peers, should reflect a superior season in terms of proximity to the #1/2 scorers, on average.

 

[daver]

Bure's 99/00 season is also right there with OV and Stamkos when one considers he missed a few games that year.

NHL Stats

So there are two seasons post Mario/Hull/Wayne that are arguably right there with OV's peak.

Bossy's 78/79 season is also right there statistically when looking at #2, #5, #10 and GPG.

NHL Stats

 

[daver]

I also wouldn't include Richard's 44-45, as the competition was so terrible. IMO, it wasn't even Richard's best season as a goalscorer.

It reasonable to think that there may have been one or two players that could have scored more goals than the #2 scorer did that season. There were players in the 44/45 season that had Top 5/10 goal finishes prior to and after the seasons clearly affected by the war (42/43, 43/44 and 44/45) but could not get any closer to Ricard than Cain did. The incorrect assumption, IMO, is that every player who were not in the league that could be argued to have scored more than 32 goals would have put up a peak/close to peak season.

To dismiss that season is unreasonable unless we want to start questioning the late '40s and even Howe's competition in the early '50s.

 

[Zuluss]

Your premise for the 60% adjustment is disingenuous. You are intentionally taking margin of victory away from 1 set just to make them look like the other set.

The margin of victories were what they were. It's not because #10 was some 4th liner scrub, its because #1 was that good. Period. You cant try to adjust them like you would raw totals for era adjusting.

The point of using % margins is to negate the differences in scoring eras

If you are referring to the adjustment to Esposito's margin then yes, I do not know what to do with those, just like anyone else does not.

Here are Esposito's unadjusted % leads over #10 in goals vs. Gretzky's
Esposito 111-89-74-53-44-38-30-17
Gretzky: 85-85-59-48-48-17-15-13-9

So what do we conclude: Esposito was a better goal-scorer than Gretzky? Hardly anyone is going to be with you on that. People will mention Bobby Orr, watered down league, 12 teams vs. 24 teams, etc. I am just trying to put a number on that.

If you are talking about the adjustments to O6-era numbers, then the margins have obviously changed since then, and there is a good story for that: back in the day, with six teams, a much smaller number of players saw enough ice time and PP time to put up any competition to the leaders. These days, with 30-32 teams, almost a hundred of first-liners could post a career season. Maybe each one of them has a small chance, but all of them combined have a large chance to post some strong numbers and form a strong top10.

Going back to the numbers, I took 1944-1967 period and tossed all seasons by Howe, Richard, and Bobby Hull to see how an ordinary goal-scoring title winner looked. The average lead of this average winner over #10 in goals was 62%. In the past 30 years, since Brett Hull's last goal-scoring title, only two players posted a bit wider margin over #10: Stamkos and Ovechkin, once each. Selanne, Bure, and Ovechkin again came close (58% to 61%).

Do you really believe that an average goal-scoring title winner from the O6 era (Hull/Richard/Howe all excluded) was so good that only peak Ovechkin or peak Bure can compare? I personally cannot believe that.

 

[Zuluss]

I'm not saying you are doing anything wrong. Maybe this is the right way to look at it. The main reason VsX is not based on the #5 or #10 scorer is for the exact reason that doing so would tend to inflate scores of the very top pre-expansion players as compared to post-expansion ones.

However, I think that if you are going to do a massive adjustment - adjusting every player from a certain era downwards by such a large amount - that you should show your work more than this.

Also, why not do an adjustment for every era? The Original 6 vs post-1996. What about when Gretzky and Lemieux played?

I am not doing any complicated estimations, I am just pointing out the fact that the ratio of all sorts of leads (#1 over #5 in goals, #1 over #10 in goals, #2 over #5 in goals, #1 over #10 in goals) between the current scoring environment (1996-present) and the O6-era all fall very close to 0.6. Current leads are 60% of O6-era leads, no matter how you cut it (the same is true about point leads, by the way). I also think this difference arises naturally as you go from six teams to 30 teams (18 first-liners vs. 90 first-liners).

What do we do with the years in between? I don't know. Goal-scoring margins (#2 vs. #5 or #10) in 1980-95 and 1996-onwards look similar. Margins of the goal-scoring title winner are wider, but maybe Gretzky and then Lemieux and then Brett Hull just were that good. On the other hand, Steve Shutt won his only goal-scoring title with the same margin peak Bure or peak Ovechkin did. Do I believe that peak Shutt was as much of a goal-scoring threat as peak Bure or peak Ovechkin? No.

Most probably, the adjustment factor was changing gradually - it is not like someone flipped a switch in late 1960s and the goal-scoring margins instantly went to the state they are in now. Maybe leads from early seventies should get 0.7 multiple, leads from late 70s and early 80s should get 0.8 multiple and so forth - but we have too few data points and too much variance in the leads to figure out things like that with any precision. Besides, most probably the change was not gradual: the leads likely shifted after WHA ceased to exist, for example.

So I use no adjustment for Gretzky and Lemieux and Brett Hull - though I may rethink that in 10-20 years if no one beats Ovechkin/Stamkos margins. At a certain point, if half a century passes after Brett Hull and nobody comes close to his peak margins, one will have to conclude that it is the game that changed rather than Brett Hull is better than anyone in 50 years of subsequent hockey history. But I have not reached this tipping point yet, let's see what Matthews and Draisaitl and Michkov will do.

P.S. Bobby Hull's 1961/62 seems to be a step behind his 1965/66 and 1966/67. Here are the respective leads over #10 (unadjusted): 92%, 93%, 108% - and the respective leads over #5: 56%, 80%, 86%. The leads over the best non-teammate also tell the same story - 17, 22, 21.