03 Lemieux vs 07 Crosby vs 14 Crosby

[Reindl87]

The 02/03 season is a tale of two seasons for Lemieux.
In the first third of the season Lemieux was absolutely relectric, putting up absurd numbers at the height of the dead puck era at age 37. He was runnings circles around everyone in the scoring race.
However, Lemieux then lost Kovalev and Morozov and his magig was totally gone. His scoring totally fell off.
Mario was still an absolute elite player when sourrunded with top palyers. He couldn`t carry average players anymore, though.
This was also evident in 05/06.

 

[BlueSeal]

Mario is living in someone's head rent-free, it seems.

 

[Hockey Outsider]

Lemieux’s first 40ish games were crazy, but he completely fell off the back 20 to the point he wasn't really a first line player anymore.

I took another look at the splits, and you're right. I remembered Lemieux slowing down, but not nearly this dramatically:

First 28 games: 16 goals, 39 assists, 55 points
Next 24 games: 9 goals, 19 assists, 28 points
Final 15 games: 3 goals, 5 assists, 8 points

Yes, I cherry-picked those games to illustrate the point, but it shows how much Lemieux declined. (He went from 1.96 to 1.17 to 0.53 PPG - or a pace of 161, 96 and 44 points per 82 games). For context, with 161 points he would have easily won the Art Ross, with 96 he would have been a top ten scorer, and the 44 points is just ugly.

 

[Albatros]

They traded Kovalev back to the Rangers at that point, so it's not just that Lemieux wasn't a first-line caliber player but the whole first line went to shit. Lemieux (0+4) and Kovalev (2+2) shared all four points in their last game together.

 

[Mrb1p]

Not sure why we are comparing Crosby's best full seasons to a partial season for Lemieux. Personally, I think 2010-11 was Crosby at his best....but only half a season. He still led his team in scoring by 16pts even though he missed half the year.

Yes, 2011 is clearly sids best season.

 

[Video Nasty]

They traded Kovalev back to the Rangers at that point, so it's not just that Lemieux wasn't a first-line caliber player but the whole first line went to shit. Lemieux (0+4) and Kovalev (2+2) shared all four points in their last game together.

To add on to this, Lemieux missed 15 games and still factored in on 48% of Pittsburgh’s production.

Through 28 games, he had 55 points…on 83 Pittsburgh goals—a staggering 66%.

Kovalev was the only player on the team who reached 20 goals—Straka and Hrdina were the only others who crossed 10. Any good players they had were also injured, or got shipped out. Lemieux’s line was literally their only production. It took Lemieux all the way to the beginning of the second half to start missing time and once that started, and teammates endured injuries as well, that contributed to Kovalev and Straka getting shipped out, and then his steep decline for the remainder of a fractured second half when he did manage to play.

That’s an insane ask for a 37 year old player to do all season long. I’ve long felt this is some of his finest work, when taking context into account. It’s generally forgotten about considering the second half plunge happened to coincide with Forsberg’s furious second half that culminated in swiping the Hart and Art Ross from Naslund, who was in the drivers seat once Lemieux’s first bout of missed time happened.

 

[authentic]

I took another look at the splits, and you're right. I remembered Lemieux slowing down, but not nearly this dramatically:

First 28 games: 16 goals, 39 assists, 55 points
Next 24 games: 9 goals, 19 assists, 28 points
Final 15 games: 3 goals, 5 assists, 8 points

Yes, I cherry-picked those games to illustrate the point, but it shows how much Lemieux declined. (He went from 1.96 to 1.17 to 0.53 PPG - or a pace of 161, 96 and 44 points per 82 games). For context, with 161 points he would have easily won the Art Ross, with 96 he would have been a top ten scorer, and the 44 points is just ugly.

Still seems too good to be true that a player aged 37 could score at the pace of the best stretches by McDavid today or even better than what MacKinnon is currently doing even before adjusting for era. Sure he was more powerplay reliant and could only pull it off for shorter stretches but he also didn’t play a single hockey game from early 97 until his comeback in 2001, and played less than 70 games in the two previous seasons combined. It goes to show really that one is outscoring a healthy prime Lemieux in the NHL today, not even McDavid.

 

[authentic]

They traded Kovalev back to the Rangers at that point, so it's not just that Lemieux wasn't a first-line caliber player but the whole first line went to shit. Lemieux (0+4) and Kovalev (2+2) shared all four points in their last game together.

Off topic but sort of defeats the whole narrative of Kovalev not being a very smart player when he was able to work so well with Lemieux. Lemieux has even said himself that Kovalev was the most talented player he ever played with and that’s saying something when there was also that Jagr guy.

 

[Hockey Outsider]

I've posted this a few times, but here's a day-by-day summary of the 2003 scoring race (top eight players only):

Lemieux (the salmon coloured line) was running away with the Art Ross trophy until his slowdown. Yes, the ending is rough, but I think what he did in the first half of the 2003 season was the single most underrated accomplishment of his entire career.

 

[daver]

Hard to get a sense of Mario's worth after his comeback since he couldn't play a full season.

He was still the best in the league after his last full season in 96/97 but not by a significant amount over Jagr and Lindros.