Playmaking Wingers

kruezer

Registered User
Apr 21, 2002
6,717
274
North Bay
One of the things the uptick in scoring this season has brought about is the chance that the single season assist records for both left and right wingers look like they may potentially be beaten.

Currently the records are...

RW - 87 - Jaromir Jagr
LW - 70 - Joe Juneau

Rantanen and Wheeler are both on pace to catch Jagr and Gaudreau and Huberdeau are on pace to catch Juneau.

Traditionally of course the centres make the plays and the wingers score the goals. However it feels to me like these four guys (and others like Marner, etc) are part of an era where wingers are taking on a much larger playmaking role.

Does anyone agree? And if so, have any opinions on why this might be becoming more common?
 

vadim sharifijanov

Registered User
Oct 10, 2007
28,585
15,948
i made a thread about this a million years ago, i think during the wingers project?

during the O6, lots of wingers led the league in assists: howe, lindsay, bert olmstead, dickie moore, and andy bathgate. but bobby rousseau was the last one for a long while.

post-gretzky, there was jagr and MSL, and a one-off year with recchi. but last year with both giroux and wheeler still felt unprecedented.
 

kruezer

Registered User
Apr 21, 2002
6,717
274
North Bay
That’s very interesting.

So I have a few hypotheses on why the change could have happened...

1. Wingers were simply more talented in the O6 since there were fewer center spots available more talented players got shifted to the wing upon reaching the NHL. The flip side of this is would be that currently due to the relative lack of expansion until last season there have been more guys who played center coming up getting switched to the wing.

2. Bobby Orr. Orr changed the role off defensemen when it came to carrying the puck and as more defensemen carried the puck more frequently wingers started carrying it less. The flip side would be that defensemen today are carrying the puck less, I don’t feel like this really makes sense, but could probably be looked into statistically.

3. The power play. Has there been a switch in common power play practice back to systems more similar to the O6? I am not sure but could probably be reviewed as well.

Any thoughts?
 

Neutrinos

Registered User
Sep 23, 2016
8,587
3,597
Playmaking is not exclusive to passing

A playmaker is just someone who makes plays - whether that be as a set-up man or as a scorer
 

vadim sharifijanov

Registered User
Oct 10, 2007
28,585
15,948
That’s very interesting.

So I have a few hypotheses on why the change could have happened...

1. Wingers were simply more talented in the O6 since there were fewer center spots available more talented players got shifted to the wing upon reaching the NHL.

a really interesting hypothesis. do we have any evidence for this?

i’ve read that hull was a converted center. but were howe, rocket, bathgate, etc?
 

sr edler

gold is not reality
Mar 20, 2010
11,845
6,290
Two young playmaking Finns that have been moved from C to W in the NHL are FBJ and Double T.



(Mikael Granlund and Teuvo Teräväinen)
 
Last edited:

kruezer

Registered User
Apr 21, 2002
6,717
274
North Bay
a really interesting hypothesis. do we have any evidence for this?

i’ve read that hull was a converted center. but were howe, rocket, bathgate, etc?

I forgot about this thread until I realized Kucherov might break the RW record in the next two weeks, if he gets lucky he could even be the first 100 assist winger. Stunning season considering he wasn’t really on the radar when I first posted this.

Gaudreau still has an outside chance at Juneau’s record too, but less likely.

As for centres that got when they hit the bigs, Bathgate certainly fits the bill which is no surprise when considering his skill set. Not sure about others though.
 

Troubadour

Registered User
Feb 23, 2018
1,157
842
Kucherov needs only 11 in the last 15 games. And it wouldn't surprise me if he got 22 in the end. Breaking AlMo's Russian point record would be even cooler.
 

vadim sharifijanov

Registered User
Oct 10, 2007
28,585
15,948
maybe, looking back, the era of the franchise center was the aberration, not the phenomenon of playmaking wingers.

the O6 was full of playmaking wingers. there were great centers too, of course-- lach, abel and sometimes delvecchio, beliveau, h richard, mikita, ullman, and lots of others, but centers didn't have a monopoly on playmaking, as amply evidenced by the success of howe, lindsay, and sometimes delvecchio, olmstead and moore, bathgate, etc.

but that changed by the 70s. espo, clarke, perreault, ratelle, dionne, sittler when he had the winger support, and eventually trottier. the only significant team with a winger-led offense was montreal and that was a very special player.

and then the 80s/90s generation: gretzky, messier, stastny, savard, hawerchuk, pederson until his body fell apart, federko, then francis, yzerman, lafontaine, mario, then oates, sakic, turgeon, doug weight, fedorov, lindros, forsberg, and so on. and you still have elite non-playmaking centers like modano, roenick, sundin, etc etc.

it might just be that we saw three decades where the best players disproportionately played center, for whatever reason. jagr would be the exception the same way lafleur was. and then starting in the late 90s that started to change. of thornton's generation, who were the other truly elite offensive centers? after datsyuk, there really weren't any. but you had iginla, naslund, bertuzzi, alfredsson, hossa, and MSL. and post-lockout there is crosby and malkin and henrik sedin, but there's also ovechkin and kane and daniel sedin. getzlaf, backstrom, spezza, marc savard, etc are balanced out by the children of bure/jagr/selanne: kovalchuk, gaborik, kessel, and other kinds of wingers like heatley, nash, parise. and obviously it's only shifted further since, mcjesus notwithstanding.

we're about to have our third (different) winger MVP in four years, and ovechkin was 2nd to carey price in 2015. it feels unprecedented but maybe it's not, really, when you take a longer view of history. if i had to guess, maybe if there was a time where every player wanted to be beliveau, and that carried on to every player wanting to be gretzky/mario, maybe not as many people wanted to be sakic/yzerman as we once thought. maybe just as much of that generation wanted to be jagr/bure.
 

kruezer

Registered User
Apr 21, 2002
6,717
274
North Bay
So in the end Kucherov tied Jagr’s record (and caught Mogilny too), insane season. Picked up the goal scoring at the end but his assists were slower over the last stretch of the season.

Your points are well made Vadim. Crazy to see this many winger MVPs in such quick succession. @Hockey Outsider if you have the time would you have the distribution of Hart votes for wingers over the years?
 

Ad

Upcoming events

Ad

Ad

-->