The Panther
Registered User
It was mentioned in another thread that for several years pre-1967, the playoff consisted of two rounds only. It was also mentioned by a poster than everyone's scoring stats decrease in the final two rounds.
I'm wondering, then, how did elite players do if we look at ONLY rounds three and four in the modern era, and only the final two rounds of all previous eras (which was the entirely of the playoff in, say, the 1950s).
I'm not suggesting that this is a better way to 'rank' playoff performers (necessarily), and it's obviously disingenuous to players whose teams didn't advance very far -- for example, Dale Hawerchuk's entire playoff contribution is now reduced to 1 assist (!). Nevertheless, it seems it would be interesting, and also to see how much (of if) players' stats do indeed decrease, as I suspect they generally do.
By the way, on a similar thread I tried a couple of years ago, quoipourquo generously offered this stat, which is the playoff record of goaltenders after round two:
50-21 Ken Dryden
49-33 Patrick Roy
40-18 Billy Smith
40-28 Martin Brodeur
29-12 Grant Fuhr
25-15 Chris Osgood
25-17 Mike Vernon
21-24 Ed Belfour
17-17 Dominik Hasek
16-8 Jean-Sebastien Giguere
15-18 Andy Moog
10-13 Henrik Lundqvist
Not surprisingly, the Dynasty goalies (Dryden, Fuhr, Smith) appear to have the best records, although Jean-Sebastien Giguere's looks pretty good, too!
Since I have Gretzky's stats easily to hand, I can give his post round-two stats as follows, for comparison to rounds one and two.
Here's how he did in rounds three and four ONLY:
Edmonton:
101 points in 50 games
L.A. & New York:
26 points in 17 games
OVERALL:
127 points in 67 games
Then, here's how he did in rounds one and two ONLY (obviously a larger sample):
Edmonton:
151 points in 70 games
L.A. & New York:
104 points in 71 games
OVERALL:
255 points in 141 games
For per-game comparison then, Gretzky scored at the pace of 1.90 PPG in rounds three and four, and he scored at the pace of 1.81 PPG in rounds one and two. That's according to my fast calculation, but I think it is correct. It seems very surprising at first, but, thinking about it, Gretzky had more first- and second-round playoffs after leaving Edmonton and sort-of passing his prime than he did IN Edmonton, so in a way maybe it isn't so surprising. Nevertheless, it's sort-of amazing and disproves the notion that Gretzky racked up his playoff points largely by beating up on weaker teams in the first two rounds.
So, then, I'd be curious if anyone has the stats to hand for other great playoff performers (probably on Dynasty teams, in order to really have a large enough sample size) to get an idea of how these players' scoring stats increase or decrease when isolating only the latter two rounds.
I'm wondering, then, how did elite players do if we look at ONLY rounds three and four in the modern era, and only the final two rounds of all previous eras (which was the entirely of the playoff in, say, the 1950s).
I'm not suggesting that this is a better way to 'rank' playoff performers (necessarily), and it's obviously disingenuous to players whose teams didn't advance very far -- for example, Dale Hawerchuk's entire playoff contribution is now reduced to 1 assist (!). Nevertheless, it seems it would be interesting, and also to see how much (of if) players' stats do indeed decrease, as I suspect they generally do.
By the way, on a similar thread I tried a couple of years ago, quoipourquo generously offered this stat, which is the playoff record of goaltenders after round two:
50-21 Ken Dryden
49-33 Patrick Roy
40-18 Billy Smith
40-28 Martin Brodeur
29-12 Grant Fuhr
25-15 Chris Osgood
25-17 Mike Vernon
21-24 Ed Belfour
17-17 Dominik Hasek
16-8 Jean-Sebastien Giguere
15-18 Andy Moog
10-13 Henrik Lundqvist
Not surprisingly, the Dynasty goalies (Dryden, Fuhr, Smith) appear to have the best records, although Jean-Sebastien Giguere's looks pretty good, too!
Since I have Gretzky's stats easily to hand, I can give his post round-two stats as follows, for comparison to rounds one and two.
Here's how he did in rounds three and four ONLY:
Edmonton:
101 points in 50 games
L.A. & New York:
26 points in 17 games
OVERALL:
127 points in 67 games
Then, here's how he did in rounds one and two ONLY (obviously a larger sample):
Edmonton:
151 points in 70 games
L.A. & New York:
104 points in 71 games
OVERALL:
255 points in 141 games
For per-game comparison then, Gretzky scored at the pace of 1.90 PPG in rounds three and four, and he scored at the pace of 1.81 PPG in rounds one and two. That's according to my fast calculation, but I think it is correct. It seems very surprising at first, but, thinking about it, Gretzky had more first- and second-round playoffs after leaving Edmonton and sort-of passing his prime than he did IN Edmonton, so in a way maybe it isn't so surprising. Nevertheless, it's sort-of amazing and disproves the notion that Gretzky racked up his playoff points largely by beating up on weaker teams in the first two rounds.
So, then, I'd be curious if anyone has the stats to hand for other great playoff performers (probably on Dynasty teams, in order to really have a large enough sample size) to get an idea of how these players' scoring stats increase or decrease when isolating only the latter two rounds.
