Craziest Numbers You've Ever Seen

[FerrisRox]

George Hainsworth having 22 shutouts (in 44 games) and a 0.92 GAA in 1928-29.

It's also interesting that the season after posting 22 shutouts, Hainsworth had just 4. He also won two less games, and his GAA went from 0.92 to 2.42, and he won two less games ... but won the Stanley Cup.

 

[Michael Farkas]

Wasn't as good as the numbers suggested. Lacked some elements of adaptability. But goalie numbers are, ahem, rough...

 

[kaiser matias]

It's also interesting that the season after posting 22 shutouts, Hainsworth had just 4. He also won two less games, and his GAA went from 0.92 to 2.42, and he won two less games ... but won the Stanley Cup.

There may never have been as big a change in the NHL's history as that from 1928-29 to 1929-30. The difference in scoring brought on by the new off-side rules would have been wild to witness, like a totally different sport, all in one year.

 

[Iron Mike Sharpe]

I'll never miss a chance to dismiss Tony Hand's extremely odd and undeserved mystique haha

BHL all time points/season:
Tim Salmon (1986): 254 pts (35 GP)
Rick Fera (1987): 133 goals/242 pts (34 GP)
Kevin Conway...
Scott Morrison...
Tony Hand (1994): 222 points (44 GP)
Rick Brebant...218 in 36

Tim Salmon was fresh off of a 17 pts in 20 game overage OHL season, followed by a 0+4=4 line in 8 GP in the AHL. Rick Fera was up and down between the OHL and the OJ in his overage year. He was narrowly not a point-per-game OHL player in his career ( at a time when 75 to 80 players per year were point per game or better in the OHL).

Yeah, those British hockey stats were crazy. Around 85 or 86, there was a TV news story about Garry Unger going over there and racking up the points in "the highest scoring league in the world" in his late 30s, beating Gretzky's NHL goals and points records, which piqued my curiosity and led to a fascination with British hockey for a while. In the same news story, or it might've been a different one around the same time, can't recall exactly, they did a spot on Tony Hand. It still utterly boggles my mind how bad the goalies must've been, and it's still a little odd to think that it took British hockey more than two decades to level out. Looking at the stats back then, I wondered if I could've gone over as a rec player and made one of the teams... you had to wonder about how utterly bad the guys were who were putting up single digit point totals on teams where guys were putting up hundreds of points. The spread was incredible. it appeared that any Canadian from any level of hockey could go over there and dominate at the time. A quick look at some of the Canadian players at the time backs up this notion: for instance, randomly picking Rick Simpson of the Cleveland Bombers in 86-87, who was 61-46-107 - has only one other season recorded in IHDB, in which he collected 13 points in 42 games for the Oshawa legionnaires of the MJBHL.

 

[Michael Farkas]

There's some footage out there on YT at various points. It's horrific as far as pro hockey goes haha

 

[FerrisRox]

Yeah, those British hockey stats were crazy. Around 85 or 86, there was a TV news story about Garry Unger going over there and racking up the points in "the highest scoring league in the world" in his late 30s, beating Gretzky's NHL goals and points records\

It's crazy how he absolutely fell off a cliff from one season to the next.

Unger had 95 goals and 238 points in 30 games in '86-'87. The next season, on the same team, he plays 32 games and has ...81 points.

His goals dropped by 58 and his assists dropped by 99.

 

[MS]

It's crazy how he absolutely fell off a cliff from one season to the next.

Unger had 95 goals and 238 points in 30 games in '86-'87. The next season, on the same team, he plays 32 games and has ...81 points.

His goals dropped by 58 and his assists dropped by 99.

It looks like Unger's Peterborough Pirates won the 1st Division (2nd tier) in 86-87 with a 27-2-1 record:

1986-87 British Hockey League [BHL] standings at hockeydb.com

The standings of the teams in the British Hockey League for the 1986-87 season

www.hockeydb.com

And then moved up to the Premier Division playing Tony Hand's Murrayfield Racers etc. for 87-88 and got absolutely destroyed with a 4-28-3 record.

1987-88 British Hockey League [BHL] standings at hockeydb.com

The standings of the teams in the British Hockey League for the 1987-88 season

www.hockeydb.com

 

[Sampe from the 2000s]

Gretzky's records are so insane that I won't even bother with the NHL.

From the ladies' side, HHOFer Riikka Sallinen (née Nieminen, previously Välilä) was quite productive in two different sports around 1993-1994. In the summer of 1993 she first led the top women's national pesäpallo (Finnish baseball) league in runs batted in, runs scored, runs produced, lead runners advanced, and lead runners advanced %. In other words, she led every single offensive category there was. *And* she was also selected as the best defensive player in the league.

Then, after probably the most versatile performance in the history of that sport (since 1920), she switched to hockey. In 1993-94 she scored a record 73 goals, 56 assists, and 129 points in 21 games in the top Finnish women’s hockey league. That's over 50 % more points than anyone else ever per regular season as we speak (though future HHOFer Jenni Hiirikoski broke her assist record with 62 in 28 games back in 2016). In the playoffs she settled for 11 goals and 11 assists in 5 games to win the title, and then finished her season by leading the women's World Championships in points. Her next season was almost as impressive, and between 1993 and 1995 she was probably the best female player in the world in two different sports simultaneously. She also won multiple national league championships in four different sports, and was selected as the Finnish female player of the year multiple times in at least three of them (bandy was her third sport).

That said, Hanna Teerijoki holds the European record for making the national team in six different sports (bandy, ice hockey, field hockey, rink bandy, association football, and golf). In bandy she was so dominant in her prime that HIFK men's top level team once offered her a spot, but the national bandy association instantly responded by banning women from playing against men. Her latest achievement was being selected as the women's top bandy league player of the season in 2020, at the age of 56 (!), albeit she "only" finished fifth in scoring that year.

 

[MadLuke]

Ah one set of numbers in the NHL that could challenge Gretzky madness, Glenn Hall of course.

In some ways, played all hockey game, not just starting, ending all of them from October 6 1955 to november 7 1962, including the playoff, 502 of them in the regular season, 49 of the playoff, a bit over 551 combined

Era play a factor of course, but even Plante played "only" 429 during that stretch, Worsley 412, you just need a single late third period issue to break it...

33,113 minutes of consecutive ice time (60 minutes and 6 seconds a night...), not as impressive on the impressive scale, but on the craziest scale it is up there.