What would it take for a player of today to challenge for a spot in the big 4?

[TheDevilMadeMe]

I agree that you have to look at lead over #5 and #10 not just #2. But you also have to look at overall competition in a given season, and realize that some years competition isn't as strong, for whatever reason. So you have to look at the seasons surrounding it to compare.

The year Howe scored 95 points no one else scored more than 71. That seems huge. And it is of course, a really big season. But is it at huge as the gap 95-71 indicates? 3 years later Beliveau scored 88 points. 95-88 isn't all that huge a gap anymore.

If you look at Brett Hull in 1991. He scored 86 goals and 2nd place scored 51 goals. Crazy margin. But just 2 years prior - Lemieux scored 85 goals. Is Hull's season any better than Lemieux, simply because 2nd place scored less that year? I don't think so.

Anyhow my point was - some people go all gaga over margin of victory, and think it's the end all be all. I think Howe may have the 4th largest peak ever. But his peak is closer to 95-88 over Beliveau than it is 95-71. It just so happens that the years he hit 95 and 2nd place hit 71, the competition wasn't as strong. And - continuing that line of thought - his offensive peak is still quite a ways behind Lemieux and Gretzky.

It's been explained here many times before that overall league scoring increased substantially over the course of the 1950s, and it isn't only because Montreal got so good.

 

[daver]

It's been explained here many times before that overall league scoring increased substantially over the course of the 1950s, and it isn't only because Montreal got so good.

Agree with this.

Scoring took a noticeable dip in 52/53 which explains why his somewhat unimpressive total of 95 points, relative to his other point totals and Belliveau's, was so far ahead of everyone. It really should be clearly the 4th best peak season (3rd among forwards). That he didn't repeat this season again like Wayne and Mario, and his other two best seasons are on par with Hull and Belliveau is a better argument that he wasn't as close to Wayne and Mario as some believe he was. His offensive ceiling fits nicely between the Wayne/Mario tier and the Hull, Belliveau, Jagr, Crosby, Richard tier.

 

[Canadiens1958]

Agree with this.

Scoring took a noticeable dip in 52/53 which explains why his somewhat unimpressive total of 95 points, relative to his other point totals and Belliveau's, was so far ahead of everyone. It really should be clearly the 4th best peak season (3rd among forwards). That he didn't repeat this season again like Wayne and Mario, and his other two best seasons are on par with Hull and Belliveau is a better argument that he wasn't as close to Wayne and Mario as some believe he was. His offensive ceiling fits nicely between the Wayne/Mario tier and the Hull, Belliveau, Jagr, Crosby, Richard tier.

Actually in 1952-53 Detroit's team GF of 222 was their highest until 1964-65.

1956-57 Howe winning the Ross with 89 pts on a team with 189 Gf.

Likewise 1962-63 winning the Ross with 86 points on a team with 200 GF.

Finally as a show of respect, spell Beliveau correctly. You mispell the name regularly.

 

[Midnight Judges]

The notion that Lemieux lacked longevity is wrong. Removing Gretzky Lemeiux led the league in points per game every year he played but one from 1986 to 2002 (span of 16 years).

Gee that sure is a fancy way of saying he led the NHL in points 6 times (PPG 7 times).

Tell you what, if I ever have a pig I'm handing the lipstick to you.

Lemieux lacked longevity. Big time. He played a total of 915 regular season games. That is not a lot. This is not debatable. Gretzky played 1487 games (62% more games than Lemieux). Howe played 1687 (84% more games than Lemieux).

 

[steve141]

Lemieux lacked longevity. Big time. He played a total of 915 regular season games. That is not a lot. This is not debatable. Gretzky played 1487. Howe played 1687.

No, Lemieux missed a lot of games. That doesn't mean he wasn't an elite player for a longer time than almost any other forward.

If you want to say that you'd rather have Howe or Jagr or Messier or someone else who played more games, that's perfectly reasonable. But none of them were the clearcut best offensive player in the world for as long as Lemieux.

In fact, I'd argue that Lemieux aged better than Gretzky. Gretzky had a better start to his career than Lemieux, but Lemieux finished better.

 

[daver]

Actually in 1952-53 Detroit's team GF of 222 was their highest until 1964-65.

1956-57 Howe winning the Ross with 89 pts on a team with 189 Gf.

Likewise 1962-63 winning the Ross with 86 points on a team with 200 GF.

Finally as a show of respect, spell Beliveau correctly. You mispell the name regularly.

As a show of respect, why don't you argue honestly instead of deflecting regularly.

 

[TheAngryHank]

The Mt Rushmore is etched in stone.

 

[Midnight Judges]

The Mt Rushmore is etched in stone.

yeah but Teddy Roosevelt has no business being there.

 

[Midnight Judges]

No, Lemieux missed a lot of games. That doesn't mean he wasn't an elite player for a longer time than almost any other forward.

I really don't see how Lemieux missing entire seasons is somehow better than Howe playing extremely well in between hart seasons. But the way you are painting it, a person could get that impression.

Longevity can refer to time, but it can also refer to length of service. In terms of time, yes, Lemieux had great seasons over a decade apart ('88 and '97). In terms of length of service (915 games) not so much.

 

[Midnight Judges]

yeah but Teddy Roosevelt has no business being there.

BTW I don't mean that in a political way, I mean that as a metaphor for what is being discussed in this thread.

At some point in American history they made a monument and TR apparently seemed like a top 4 American icon. With a little more time, he clearly isn't.

 

[Canadiens1958]

So far in this thread we have learned that games played matter for forwards but not for defencemen and goalies. then only in certain eras.

That PPG is a legit metric but that GAA is not.

 

[Canadiens1958]

As a show of respect, why don't you argue honestly instead of deflecting regularly.

Oh you mean give you a free pass. Obviously if you cannot stand scrutiny then do not post until you have checked all possible counter-points and interpretations.

 

[Sentinel]

BTW I don't mean that in a political way, I mean that as a metaphor for what is being discussed in this thread.

At some point in American history they made a monument and TR apparently seemed like a top 4 American icon. With a little more time, he clearly isn't.

Teddy Roosevelt is still very much an American icon. One of them.

 

[Black Gold Extractor]

I agree that you have to look at lead over #5 and #10 not just #2. But you also have to look at overall competition in a given season, and realize that some years competition isn't as strong, for whatever reason. So you have to look at the seasons surrounding it to compare.

This just gets into dangerous territory. What if my gut feeling tells me that 2013-14 to 2016-17 was a weak stretch for top talent in the league? With Sidney Crosby being a standard of consistency, after 2017-18 I could retroactively argue that ~89 points would be ~10th place annually in a stronger period. There's absolutely no basis for that gut feeling aside from "Jamie Benn doesn't sound like the name of a hockey legend" and "the 90's were better", but you know.

The year Howe scored 95 points no one else scored more than 71. That seems huge. And it is of course, a really big season. But is it at huge as the gap 95-71 indicates? 3 years later Beliveau scored 88 points. 95-88 isn't all that huge a gap anymore.

Only two players scored more than 71 points in 1955-56: Beliveau (88) and Howe (79). There's no point in comparing two outliers, just like 199 isn't compared with 168 in 1988-89 (the VsX benchmark for that season is 139, if you're wondering).

Also of note is the fact that league-average scoring was 4.79 goals-per-game in 52-53 while it was 5.07 in 55-56. In fact, since the O6-era, the only two seasons where the goals-per-game average dipped below 5 goals-per-game were 52-53 and 53-54, two of Howe's Art Ross years.

Even using just the league averages to adjust numbers (a method that tends to underestimate O6-era players), that 95 points in 70 games in 52-53 is roughly 182 points in 80 games in 81-82. Even taking that at face value, there's only two players who ever scored more. (For what it's worth, Beliveau's simple adjusted number is 159 points in 80 games in 81-82.)

 

[The Panther]

In fact, I'd argue that Lemieux aged better than Gretzky. Gretzky had a better start to his career than Lemieux, but Lemieux finished better.

I'm not sure about that. Lemieux walked away in 1997, aged 31, after a solid 122-point season (scoring title) on a not-bad team. Mario had the best PPG in the NHL that year -- no small feat -- but he was only 0.09 PPG (i.e., 7 points over a full season) better than Eric Lindros (and 0.10 over Jagr), and I think we'd all agree he was (at prime) a much higher scorer than Lindros. This season also represented a 40-point drop-off from season prior.

In both of these, Lemieux's results were remarkably similar to Gretzky's at (almost) exactly the same ages. Aged 30, Gretzky put up 164 points and won the scoring title by 32 points, outscoring his next teammate by 72 points -- 1990-91 was actually one of the best of his career. But then he, too, tumbled the next season (for both on and off-ice reasons) to 121 points, 2nd to Mario in PPG but only 0.01 higher than Pat Lafontaine, and again we'd all agree Gretzky at prime was way beyond Lafontaine's production ability.

The difference after this is that while Lemieux walked away for 3.5 years, Gretzky soldiered on, on a team that was in decline, then was traded twice, and continued soldiering on to the finish line. Full marks to Mario for his incredible half-season in 2000-01... but it's a half-season. Outside of that, I can't see that he accomplished anything Gretzky didn't after the age of 31.

In fact, after that age, Gretzky had two remarkable playoffs runs; Lemieux had one okay playoff run in '01, which was below his standard production. Gretzky won the scoring title aged 33; Lemieux never won one after 31.

Anyway, that's just arbitrary stat-checking. The larger point is: At Lemieux's "retirement" in 1997, he was not aging better than Gretzky had to the same age. And everything he did after that is partial seasons with large periods of rest, a luxury Gretzky didn't subscribe to. I am pretty confident that Lemieux would not have been able to put up 76 points in a 43-game run if he had been hard-grinding every game from 1997 to 2001, with no time off. By 2000 or so, he probably would have been burned out and ready to quit.

Of course, it's also a testament to Lemieux's freak-of-nature physicality that he could sit out 3.5 years and then come back and do what he did, even for short periods. But I tend not to give "aging benefit of the doubt" to the guy who quit pro-hockey at 31 because the game was too rough for him.

 

[Varan]

why isn't Ovechkin mentioned in the OP? He is a LEGENDARY goal-scorer

 

[alko]

The candidate must be well know also for marginal ice-hockey followers. Something like my wife (love you). She knows, who is and was Wayne Gretzky. Bit if i say her McDavid, she .
Yes, people from Canada maybe wonder, but it is so.

 

[daver]

Oh you mean give you a free pass. Obviously if you cannot stand scrutiny then do not post until you have checked all possible counter-points and interpretations.

You were the one that made the initial claim that Crosby has been regressing since Age 24 therefore it is you who is being scrutinized.

I believe I did my due diligence as I checked that Crosby was 30 last year and saw that there was no way possible to interpret one season, let his 30 year old season, let alone a season that was a clear statistical anomaly in comparison to his previous eleven seasons, as representing a clear decline since age 24.

You used league GPG to compare point totals from different seasons to try to back up your claim then threw in a red herring of TOI when challenged. I checked that in no way possible can you incorporate individual players' TOI into the calculation of league GPG.

You also used Crosby's 19 year old season vs. his 30 year old season. I did my due diligence and can state with 100% confidence that you cannot conclude anything about Crosby at age 24 from that data.

 

[daver]

Actually in 1952-53 Detroit's team GF of 222 was their highest until 1964-65.

1956-57 Howe winning the Ross with 89 pts on a team with 189 Gf.

Likewise 1962-63 winning the Ross with 86 points on a team with 200 GF.

This has nothing to do with the scoring environment for the league unless you are arguing that Howe's point totals were influenced by the quality of his team.

 

[grentthealien]

Ok just testing the waters here, but what if a forward in this era accomplished these milestones. Would that be enough? These are roughly milestones I put together using Jagr, Sakic, Crosby and Ovechkin’s accomplishments as a base. I feel like this would exceed them. The rockets depend on whether the player is a goal scorer or not and the Ted Lindsay’s stop at 5 because that is how many Gretzky won.

1600-1700 points
A 130 pont season
12 top 5 scoring finishes
15 top 10 scoring finishes
5-6 Art Ross Trophies
4-6 Hart Trophies
3-5 Ted Lindsay awards
1-4 Rockets
7-8 1st team all stars
5 2nd team all stars
3-4 Stanley cups
2-3 Conn Smythe Trophies
1-2 Olympic gold medals

 

[blogofmike]

Hard to tell, but...
We'll know it when we'll see it.

As far as the checklists go, I think this is it.

 

[vadim sharifijanov]

A 130 pont season

i think if we’re talking about a forward bumping mario, who in a six season peak (spread out over nine years) averaged two points/game in his off years, i’d need to see him scoring 130 every year.

 

[grentthealien]

i think if we’re talking about a forward bumping mario, who in a six season peak (spread out over nine years) averaged two points/game in his off years, i’d need to see him scoring 130 every year.

I’d probably meet somewhere in between and say a semi consistent 130 point player would be special.I threw that in there because I do think 130 points would be a special accomplishment in this era of course if scoring increases significantly in the coming years that would diminish that accomplishment, but I honestly think we’ve nearly reached a plateau when it comes to scoring.

I guess the 130 point thing comes down to the longevity vs peak debate. If someone is to get in there on longevity it probably isn’t as important, but if they are to get in there based on a long peak alone like Mario then I agree consistent 130 point seasons are important.

 

[grentthealien]

As far as the checklists go, I think this is it.

I agree, but making these checklists are fun nonetheless lol

 

[bobholly39]

How about this for a checklist to break into the big 4:

5-6 smythes.

Nothing else spectacular. Maybe a Joe Sakic type career (so a few trophies in regular season, maybe 1-2 ross/harts - but nowhere near 5-10 like Gretzky/Howe).

Just playoff excellence.

i think that would get the conversation started.