Yes, the ruling by the NHL made no sense and was amazingly stupid, but the league was run by nonsensical fossils who were amazingly stupid, so what should we expect?
That said, I'm not into retroactively changing awards, or whatever. That's a slippery slope. It is what it is.
Yes. And?This thread is about relatively minor things.
Agree with Gretzky to an extent, but I think PPG should be the first tie breaker. If it’s still the same, both players should win the award.
The only case that work in my mind would be a player that because of a trade got the chance to play more games than the other and it is such a rare affair (Joe Thornton level player traded during a season) about a rare affair (Art Ross tie).i don’t like pts/game as a tiebreaker. why reward the player who played fewer games?
Yes. And?
This whole discussion forum is about relatively minor things. That's the whole point, and in fact the beauty of it! It's a diversion from real life.
Dont forget the great Dave Lumley or Lee Fogolin.Except it's not like that at all, because he didn't play for the Edmonton Oil Kings, he played for the Edmonton Oilers. The league they were in was absorbed by the NHL and then Wayne Gretzky ... continued to play for the Edmonton Oilers.
I don't know why you want to pretend it was a "new team" that Gretzky "joined."
The 1978-78 Edmonton Oilers had Wayne Gretzky, Blair MacDonald, Brett Callighen, Ron Chipperfield and Bill Flett as their top five scorers.
All five players, coincidentally, were also on the "new team" in 1979-80. Dave Semenko and Dave Hunter also remained on the team, as did Al Hamilton, Peter Driscoll and Risto Siltanen, too.
The goaltenders, for the '78-'79 team were Dave Dryden and Ed Mio, but in 1979-80 Gretzky had to adapt to... Dave Dryden and Ed Mio.
Could it be... that the Edmonton Oilers are, in fact, the same team as ... the Edmonton Oilers?
Dont forget the great Dave Lumley or Lee Fogolin.
Only the NHL would be a League stupid enough to have no tie-break for the Rocket Trophy (allowing multiple players to win it) and to have a seemingly arbitrary tie-break for the Art Ross (allowing only one player to win it).
Wrong. Wayne Gretzky didn't change league: the Edmonton Oilers Hockey Club did.That's like saying "he played for the Edmonton Oil-Kings and a year later he played for the Edmonton Oilers, so he never left anything."
It was a new team in a different league with different players.
The NHL allowed the 4 ex-WHA clubs only four protected players (only three, in Edmonton's case) to bring into the NHL. The rest of their line-ups were cast-offs who weren't good enough for the 1978-79 NHL.
The Oilers actually entered the NHL with only 3 protected players, which means about 90% of their WHA roster was purged. Sather managed to get several players back by trade or expansion-draft or whatever, but there was a cost to all of them.
Ask the average basketball or soccer fan and they'd tell you hockey is the only sport stupid enough to count assists as "points"—and any such semblance of an equivalence between assists and goals—in the first place.Only the NHL would be a League stupid enough to have no tie-break for the Rocket Trophy (allowing multiple players to win it) and to have a seemingly arbitrary tie-break for the Art Ross (allowing only one player to win it).
You know they're different sports right? Just because something is important in one sport doesn't mean it's important in another.Ask the average basketball or soccer fan and they'd tell you hockey is the only sport stupid enough to count assists as "points"—and any such semblance of an equivalence between assists and goals—in the first place.
Considering you can win the art Ross to have scored has many points in less game why could it not work the same for the goals award ? How would that be different regarding the game played aspect of tie-breaking ?Of course there is no tie-break for the trophy awarded to the player who scores the most goals. How would that work? Why would they decide one 54-goal season is somehow better than the other?
Art Ross is different, you can actually say this point is different that one.
I have to assume you're being deliberately obtuse here.Of course there is no tie-break for the trophy awarded to the player who scores the most goals. How would that work? Why would they decide one 54-goal season is somehow better than the other?
Art Ross is different, you can actually say this point is different that one.
But if I score 54 goals I shouldn't lose a goal scoring title to a guy who scored ...54 goals.
The average basketball or soccer fan (certainly outside of Canada, anyway) has never watched a hockey game and doesn't understand the rules.Ask the average basketball or soccer fan and they'd tell you hockey is the only sport stupid enough to count assists as "points"—and any such semblance of an equivalence between assists and goals—in the first place.
Most of the details you're explaining here are correct, but you're sort of slanting it into disingenuous territory. The important part of what I said, above (the part that's relevant to the thread), is: It was a new League with new players. But perhaps I should ratify that statement to: It was a new League with new players on the four former WHA clubs.Wrong. Wayne Gretzky didn't change league: the Edmonton Oilers Hockey Club did.
They had a contract with Wayne Gretzky such that he would play hockey exclusively with the Edmonton Oilers Hockey Club (more precisely a personal services contract to play professional hockey for the club owned by Peter Pocklington, i.e. the Edmonton Oilers...), and Gretzky simply continued to honour that contract.
Wrong again. The NHL clubs could reassert preexisting contractual rights to any players on the ex-WHA clubs (save one player in particular: Gordie Howe, whose rights were unequivocally retained by the Whalers as a condition of the merger agreement between the two leagues); the ex-WHA clubs could each void up to four such "reclaims".
Any player whose former NHL team didn't "reclaim" him remained with his ex-WHA club. This is for instance how Al Hamilton and B.J. MacDonald remained with the Oilers, J.C. Tremblay and Marc Tardif stayed with the Nordiques, and Andre Lacroix, Dave Keon, Blaine Stoughton and Mike Rogers stayed with the Whalers.
The idea that the WHA clubs' lineups were full of "cast-offs not good enough to play in the NHL" is ludicrous: the fifth, eighth and tenth highest scorers in the '79-'80 season were such "cast-offs" (Rogers, Stoughton and MacDonald).
The Oilers' cupboard happened to be raided especially badly by NHL "reclaims"—almost half the total in fact (18/43; the Jets lost 11 players, and the Nordiques and Whalers lost seven apiece). Still, they kept the aforementioned MacDonald and fourth-leading-scorer Brett Callighen for "nothing".
Cottage cheese is still cottage cheese even if you give it an award.
i don’t like pts/game as a tiebreaker. why reward the player who played fewer games?
and as a thought experiment, imagine it’s the last day of the season. two guys go into the day tied for first, both have played 81 games. one guy has an afternoon game and goes scoreless. the second guy is a late pacific game and decides, hey i want the trophy, i have a $250,000 bonus riding on it. i think i’ll sit out game 82.
I think his point is that it wouldn't have changed anything. Gretzky's season (or any season by anyone) is what it is with or without an award.