I have read your takes a lot, and what you keep saying js that scoring is up because talent is up and everyone is better.
If goalies were better scoring would be down, ergo your argument is self defeating.
Scoring is up do to a variety of factors and i have read people break it down to you to pretty granular levels on the differences, i am not going to get into all of it again. But the people whose tires you are constantly pumping have lost goal and point races to the people you are constantly devaluing, at ages when it should have been embarrassing to matthews et al to lose to such scrubs, that the new generation is so obviously better than.
Also you actually told me the goalie pad changes didnt matter last week when i posted that pic of Garth Snow, not sure if that was trolling.
The fact that you cannot understand plain written English does not even mildly surprise me.
Goalie pads matter, but not as much as talent disparity or even the amount of goals added to the league average due to 3 on 3 and shootout goals
None of those should count, only regulation goals should count towards league averages through the eras if we are actually being serious about comparing. I can’t find anything saying that 3 on 3 and shootout goals aren’t doing anything but forcing 1 extra goal per game that goes past regulation that wouldn’t have been scored 30 years ago.
I have a granular disagreement with the entire philosophy of how stats are adjusted, it doesn’t matter how much someone tries to explain that running the formula proves anything (it doesn’t).
And no one has adjusted Matthews goals up to compare to lemieux’s 85 goal season to see how close he is.
That’s the thing here, era adjusting is only used to adjust Crosby and Ovechkin and their peers UP and everyone else DOWN
You don’t normalize talent, it’s ridiculous. No one can show me which goals that didn’t go in for Ovechkin that did for Matthews, and no one can tell me which goals Matthews has scored that he couldn’t have in 2003.
The space over the goalies shoulder has always been wide open, since the butterfly. Players are just putting the puck there now.
Ovechkin blasted slippers and Matthews is surgically picking open spots, knowing exactly where the goalie isn’t going to be.
It’s true that goalies suck now, they are too formulaic and shooters have them figured out, but Matthews really showed the league that. Tons of players are copying him.
Ovechkin had the same opportunity to do this, but he didn’t. That’s the mic drop argument. He couldn’t do what Matthews is doing.
And there is no argument on this earth that can say Matthews couldn’t have scored 69 back in 2003.
It wasn’t likely he would do it this year and it wouldn’t be likely he would do it then either. But that’s what great players do, they achieve what’s unlikely.
If I can put it another way, what are some of the era adjusting arguments to explain Gretzky and his multiple 200 point seasons and his record setting points and his 92 goal season?
What goalie equipment changes explains that massive leap? You have to be consistent, it can’t just be one era with an explaination. Why did Gretzky do so much better than his predecessors? Why did everyone? Fitness and nutrition? Stick technology? Goalie masks really did affect goalies seeing the puck?
