bathdog
Registered User
- Oct 27, 2016
- 920
- 157
The general consensus is that Fedorov was no longer in his prime years after his contract dispute in the 98 season. And during both the 96/97 regular season and playoffs, he spent a good chunk of time playing as a defenceman, which makes it hard to compare his 97 stats to other forwards. He did lead Team Russia in scoring at the World Cup that year, for what it's worth.
But the problem with these comparisons is that you're comparing a prime Forsberg to mostly a past-prime (34yo in that last season) Fedorov.
93-97 would be Fedorovs peak as a forward, though for parts of 95/96 and 96/97 he played on defence. This makes his 95/96 year (Selke, top 10 points, 5th place Hart voting) a very impressive year in my view. Often underrated compared to his 94 year.
That's fair, but on the other hand Fedorov got to start in his prime whereas Forsberg's rookie and early years are included.
If we'd use that span for comparison, it's also a bit inconvinient that those years saw significantly higher scoring than Forsberg's remaining years.
If we look at how they fared during 93/94-95/96 (more than 100GP, and Lemieux removed as an outlier):
Fedorov finished with 1.37 ppg good for 3rd.
Forsberg finished with 1.29 ppg good for 7th.
Unaccounted for their injuries in contribution %...
Fedorov missed 12 games, or played 94.4% of all possible games.
Forsberg missed 1 game, or played 99.2% of all possible games.
Fedorov was in on 36.4% of his teams goals.
Forsberg was in on 32.5% of his teams goals.
This range is extremely beneficial to Fedorov in this comparison. Fedorov does outproduce him, but we're comparing peak Fedorov to rookie Forsberg, while Forsberg did not having the benefit of playing in the highest scoring season at all.
Now if we look at Forsberg peak stretch in a relative manner (no need to include Fedorov's numbers from here), and that's a bit tricky given injuries. If we claim it's 00/01-03/04 (it's also 3 seasons since Forsberg nursed injury 2001/2002 and that season is entirely excluded from the data below).
Forsberg finished with 1.34 ppg good for 1st (more than 100GP, and Lemieux removed as an outlier).
Unaccounted for his injuries in contribution %...
Forsberg missed 59 game, or played 76.0% of all possible games.
Forsberg was in on 33.0% of his teams goals.
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Forsberg has nearly as high raw ppg while playing in a significantly lower scoring period, he obliterates his competition pace wise while Fedorov finished 3rd (Lemieux excluded), though admittedly his competition was weaker. He missed 18.4 percentage points more of his teams games, yet Fedorov was only in on 3.4 percentage points more of his teams total goals.
I don't really have a horse in this race, but... you don't need to ignore era context to come to that conclusion. Absolute numbers are one thing, but scoring finishes are another. Here are Trottier's best finishes in regular season goal scoring: 5th, 5th, 9th, 17th, 20th. Here are Forsberg's: 26th, 32th, 39th, 40th, 41th.
Am I missing something?
I've always struggled a bit when people use the 'never scored 30' to dismiss Forsberg's offensive upside. I realize I'm in a minority not giving goals a significantly larger weight than assists, but I've never considered them to be so much more valuable among elite offensive players.
Since the 95-lockout, in Shooting%, Forsberg ranks T-8th (w/ Crosby/Selanne) in the RS (>400GP), and 1st in the PO (>50GP). I'm not saying lets give him credit for things he didn't do, but I'm not sure it's an inability thing.
Forsberg's playoff GPG is 0.43, if we cut off Trottier's career at 30 due to Forsberg's shortened career, his GPG is 0.38.
To attempt to put the playoff GPG difference quickly into context since Trottier played during the highest scoring period in history, I picked 73/74-93/94 for Trottier, and 94/95-present for Forsberg, both 21 seasons. If that's beneficial to anyone it's probably Trottier since he played during most of the highest scoring runs of his period whereas Forsberg payed during most of the lowest scoring runs of his period, but lets call them similar.
73/74-93/94 0.38 GPG is good for T-44th (>50GP).
94/95-15/16 0.43 GPG is good for T-5th (>50GP).
I'm not saying that's proof Trottier isn't a better goal scorer though.