Why would we only use last season?
Why not just the last 82 games? If we’re going for recency.
Or you could use their entire careers—still favours Matthews, but still closer than choosing one players worst career (injury plagued season) and one player’s best.
Your post is the one that missed the context.
So in your opinion Pettersson is close at being top 5 player in the NHL, or in what statement you disagree with me?
I compared most recent seasons to give an picture how he has still a lot to prove to be considered top 5 player in the NHL, because there was a poster who stated ”He is soon a top 5 player”. I gave an example, player like Matthews who is arguably the 5th best player had almost similar gpg to Pettersson ppg last year. This example alone should prove how there is still a lot to be achieved for Pettersson to be considered in this group.
I believe my post was clearly in context.
Why would i use old stats to paint an image of current state of player abilities? Do you consider Brad Marchand a top 5-10 NHL player currently, because he was one when Pettersson had a career year in PPG? Of course we could only use this year production, but the sample size isn’t enough to draw clear conclusions. Even when Matthews isn’t at the top in the goal scoring this year and Horvat is 2nd, i still consider Matthews as a better scorer in the league, because he has the body of work from the previous seasons. Body of work from the previous couple of seasons is exactly how players are usually ranked.
This year he has obviously been really good and if he continues like this, he could crack top 15-20 after this season, but he needs to prove it for couple of seasons and even improve a lot to crack into top 10, let alone top 5. Not impossible, but far from certainty.