I wanted to see how Sidney Crosby stacked up against the greatest player to ever come out of the QMJHL. Crosby is being hyped as the best player since Lemieux so I wanted to take a statistical look at their draft seasons.
Mario Lemieux 1.90 GPG 2.13 APG 4.03 PPG
Sidney Crosby 1.06 GPG 1.65 APG 2.71 PPG
Clearly, there is a difference, but the QMJHL was averaging 5.01 goals per team in 1984 compared to 3.19 this season. Therefore, lets convert Lemieux's stats, as if the average goals per team was the same as 2005.
Mario Lemieux 1.21 GPG 1.35 APG 2.56 PPG
Sidney Crosby 1.06 GPG 1.65 APG 2.71 PPG
Therefore, Crosby actually ends up with a higher PPG than Lemieux. Lemieux seems to be the better goal scorer, while Crosby racks up more assists.
The next item I wanted to look at was the goals per game of their individual team versus the league average. The number is the ratio of this.
Rimouski 2005 1.49
Laval 1984 1.50
Therefore, you could argue that both teams were about even in scoring in relation to the rest of the league.
The next item of interest is their production in relation to their team.
Mario Lemieux Goals: 25 % Assists: 17 % Points: 20 %
Sidney Crosby Goals: 20 % Assists: 18 % Points: 19 %
They both accounted for about the same amount of their team's production. Lemieux accounted for more of his teams scoring than Crosby. This along with the higher GPG seems to show, as expected, that Lemieux is a more natural goal scorer than Crosby.
The last item, I wanted to look at was how much better they were in PPG in relation to the next highest scorer on the team.
Mario Lemieux 1.47
Sidney Crosby 1.61
Crosby has a slight lead in this department but nothing significant.
So looking purely on stats, Crosby's 2005 season seems to be very similar to that of Lemieux's 1984 season. They match up almost in every category. If anything, this proves that Crosby does have the potential to be mentioned in the same breath as other greats such as Gretzky or Lemieux. Whether, he does or does not is yet to be seen.
For those people interested this is how other high draft picks from the QMJHL match up using the converted PPG:
Pat LaFontaine 1.97
Alexandre Daigle 1.87
Dale Hawerchuk 1.72
Vincent Lecavalier 1.70
Pierre Turgeon 1.64
Denis Savard 1.57