BraveCanadian
Registered User
- Jun 30, 2010
- 14,837
- 3,793
Doesn't matter if you disagree, it's a fact, simple supply and demand.
You're entitled to your simplistic approach, but I think a nuanced one would be much more correct.
Even if scoring is down 20% as in your example, and supposedly a goal is therefore 20% more valuable (correct mathematically but kind of shaky on an actual situational basis).. that still doesn't mean that if you are comparing 1970 to 1990 that the average scoring level determines how difficult or how easy it was for a particular player to score in relation to his peers or in the comparison.
It also still doesn't mean that the average scoring level for the league determines how valuable or difficult a goal scored by a player of the 84 Devils is equal to one scored by a player on the 84 Oilers for example.
Or a more specific example:
Are you really going to try and tell me that it was as easy for Mike Bullard to hit 50 goals on the 84 Penguins who scored 254 goals (and had 16 wins on the season) as it was for Glenn Anderson to score 50 goals on the Oilers who scored 446? Are you really going to say that each of their goals was of the same average difficulty and value to their respective teams?
The point being that there is some wild variation between teams in some years and I don't think that the league average describes the conditions for all players as well as you may think.