Did Howie Morenz have the best offensive single season ever?

[MadLuke]

For those who are stat-minded, I’m curious whether VsX could be converted into a “points” format for the sake of intuitive understanding? Like could you create a baseline for what 1 universal-point is worth, then apply that VsX percentage and express the result as an adjusted point?

I think so that what I tried to do here (Adjusted point - using elite Canadians player scoring), it was adjusted so Gretkzy 215 pts in 85-85 stay 215 pts, so when you look at everyone else it give you some idea how close they were to that mark.

 

[tarheelhockey]

I think so that what I tried to do here (Adjusted point - using elite Canadians player scoring), it was adjusted so Gretkzy 215 pts in 85-85 stay 215 pts, so when you look at everyone else it give you some idea how close they were to that mark.

Ah, thank you. This is the sort of thing I had in mind. Surprised it didn’t get more of a reaction back in 2021… maybe it was just a lot of data to digest.

But yes, this is something I think people outside this forum could more easily understand when asking questions like the OP, rather than hitting them with VsX which only really exists in our little niche of the internet.

Edit: so as a response to OP, this data would say that Morenz had more like the 29th best single season, comparable to the very best of Yzerman or Sakic. Truly a great season, but also clearly not in the same tier as peak Gretzky, Lemieux, Howe, Esposito, Jagr, etc.

 

[Mrb1p]

This is a case where the opininion of everyone is 100% statistical, thus cannot be concluded. The NHL needs to be separater in at least two eras when talking about history.

 

[MadLuke]

This is a case where the opininion of everyone is 100% statistical, thus cannot be concluded. The NHL needs to be separater in at least two eras when talking about history.

It is a lot of contemporary testimony (maybe more than stats for that era), some people saw Morentz play and Richard-Beliveau-Howe and compared them

Morenz domination of his era does not show that much stats wise, 27-32 Morenz outscored Bill Cook and Stewart by less than 10% goal wise, 13% and 16% pts wise for Cook/Boucher, only 10 pts in the playoff during that time, significantly below them. While clear, it is not particularly vast, single Rocket, 2 art ross

That not really where his legendary status come from and would be around Stamkos peak-prime wise if we go 100% statistical without adjusting for quality of competition for the eras I feel like (prime Stamkos outscored Canadian in the nhl by 23%, less success pts wise to compensate and also add really unimpressive playoff stats....), it is from his complete play tilting the ice in an era-position where his skating could take over that his legend come from I feel like.

 

[Mrb1p]

It is a lot of contemporary testimony (maybe more than stats for that era), some people saw Morentz play and Richard-Beliveau-Howe and compared them

Morenz domination of his era does not show that much stats wise, 27-32 Morenz outscored Bill Cook and Stewart by less than 10% goal wise, 13% and 16% pts wise for Cook/Boucher, only 10 pts in the playoff during that time, significantly below them. While clear, it is not particularly vast, single Rocket, 2 art ross

That not really where his legendary status come from and would be around Stamkos peak-prime wise if we go 100% statistical without adjusting for quality of competition for the eras I feel like (prime Stamkos outscored Canadian in the nhl by 23%, less success pts wise to compensate and also add really unimpressive playoff stats....)

Thats ultra anecdotal and relies on a lot of assumption. Its a fine discussion but in reality its impossible to have a honest conversation.

 

[MadLuke]

Thats ultra anecdotal and relies on a lot of assumption. Its a fine discussion but in reality its impossible to have a honest conversation.

Imagine Eddie Shore place in hockey now

I also tend to agree, pre say 46-47 season (20s-30s to war years and need time to readjust from the war years' disruption) seem just way too out for me, but fine discussion obviously and it is not like there is any possible consequence to be wrong about any of this, we cannot imagine a conversation with less stake and more just for fun.

If some error or even overrating occur in the process of keeping hockey history alive (or even needed, about no one in the Top 5000 athlete played before 1935 a perfectly possible and realistic take it would make things a bit dull) in a HistoryOfHockey section of a mesage board, so be it.

 

[Staniowski]

It's very unlikely that Morenz's best seasons were anywhere close to even the best-300 seasons ever. He was a top player of his era but he wasn't a dominant scorer. And the hockey world was very small when he was playing. So there would be many players with many better seasons.

 

[ChiTownPhilly]

Edit: so as a response to OP, this data would say that Morenz had more like the 29th best single season, comparable to the very best of Yzerman or Sakic. Truly a great season, but also clearly not in the same tier as peak Gretzky, Lemieux, Howe, Esposito, Jagr, etc.

Ehhh... I'll start the bidding with this-

As much as I'll happily defend the burgeoning Leon Draisaitl résumé, any methodology that has two Leon Draisaitl regular-seasons ahead of the Howie Morenz 1927-1928 season just openly invites extreme skepticism.

 

[MadLuke]

that has two Leon Draisaitl regular-seasons ahead of the Howie Morenz 1927-1928 season just openly invites extreme skepticism.

It goes a bit against the grain and need to be a bit open minded, but just at a quick look

2019-2020
Draisaitl : 110

McDavid..: 97
MacKinnon: 93
Marchand.: 87
Huberdeau: 78
...
#10: 61
#20: 58

2020-2021
Draisait: 84

McDavid.: 105
Marchand.: 69
Marner...: 67
MacKinnon: 65
...
#10: 54
#20: 44

27-28
Morenz.: 51
Joliat.: 39 (30.7%)
Boucher: 35 (45.7%)
Hay....: 35 (45.7%)
Stewart: 34 (50%)

Draisaitl
in 2020, outscore the 4th best Canadian in the league by 41%, 10th best by 80%, 20th best by 90%
in 2021, outscore the 4th best Canadian in the league by 29%, 10th best by 56%, 20th best by 91%

Morenz in 27-28 outscore the second best Canadian in the league by 41%, 5th best by 50%. 10th best by 112%

The "claim" here that we express extreme skepticism that finishing 10th among Canadian scorer in 2021 is not an worst offensive season purely number wise than being 5th in 1927-1928, Canadian-born hockey age male population was around a third than now.

I think the gut reaction to seeing that is in part due to having seen giant adjusted numbers from hockey reference for the 20s and how quiet (probably McDavid effect) Draisaitl giant numbers he did put have been, other part being covid tainted season **, but considering the short season length of the 20s for that direct comp it does not necessarily apply.

Putting 84 pts when there is a clear elite pack doing 65 to 69, is statistically extremely impressive, just get lost because of McDavid putting a prime Gretzky-Lemieux statistical season at the same time.

 

[tarheelhockey]

It goes a bit against the grain and need to be a bit open minded, but just at a quick look

2019-2020
Draisaitl : 110

McDavid..: 97
MacKinnon: 93
Marchand.: 87
Huberdeau: 78
...
#10: 61
#20: 58

2020-2021
Draisait: 84

McDavid.: 105
Marchand.: 69
Marner...: 67
MacKinnon: 65
...
#10: 54
#20: 44

27-28
Morenz.: 51
Joliat.: 39 (30.7%)
Boucher: 35 (45.7%)
Hay....: 35 (45.7%)
Stewart: 34 (50%)

Draisaitl
in 2020, outscore the 4th best Canadian in the league by 41%, 10th best by 80%, 20th best by 90%
in 2021, outscore the 4th best Canadian in the league by 29%, 10th best by 56%, 20th best by 91%

Morenz in 27-28 outscore the second best Canadian in the league by 41%, 5th best by 50%

The "claim" here that we express extreme skepticism that finishing 10th among Canadian scorer in 2021 is not an worst offensive season purely number wise than being 5th in 1927-1928, Canadian-born hockey age male population was around a third than now.

I think the gut reaction to seeing that is in part due to having seen giant adjusted numbers from hockey reference for the 20s and how quiet (probably McDavid effect) Draisaitl giant numbers he did put have been, other part being covid tainted season **, but considering the season length of the 20s for that direct comp it does not necessarily apply.

Putting 84 pts when there is a clear elite pack doing 65 to 69, is statistically extremely impressive, just get lost because of McDavid putting a prime Gretzky-Lemieux statistical season.

It’s a bit hard to stomach, but it’s also hard to argue against this. Morenz was a legend, of course, but he was also competing in a tiny pool compared to the modern day. There has to be some adjustment for circumstances.

I mean if at some point in the current season we see a guy leading the league with 51 points while the next non-linemate has 35, nobody is going to be saying that guy is having a Howie Morenz 1928 type of season, right? It’s just a guy who’s established an impressive lead after a fraction of the season, which we see pretty routinely. But… that’s exactly what Morenz’s 1928 actually was, an impressive lead after 44 games. Impressive numbers but not stupifying, not video game numbers. It’s a season to aspire to, but not on such a high pedestal that it can’t be touched by the second-best guy in the modern league.

 

[Victorias]

It’s a bit hard to stomach, but it’s also hard to argue against this. Morenz was a legend, of course, but he was also competing in a tiny pool compared to the modern day. There has to be some adjustment for circumstances.

I mean if at some point in the current season we see a guy leading the league with 51 points while the next non-linemate has 35, nobody is going to be saying that guy is having a Howie Morenz 1928 type of season, right? It’s just a guy who’s established an impressive lead after a fraction of the season, which we see pretty routinely. But… that’s exactly what Morenz’s 1928 actually was, an impressive lead after 44 games. Impressive numbers but not stupifying, not video game numbers. It’s a season to aspire to, but not on such a high pedestal that it can’t be touched by the second-best guy in the modern league.

Well if it’s Sidney Crosby and he gets hurt and misses the rest of the year, you’ll hear about that season the rest of your life haha

In all seriousness, Howie’s ice time was probably like 2x what guys play today, wasn’t it? So that’s “equivalent” to a modern season minutes wise.

Regardless, it seems pointless (no pun intended) to compare a pre-forward passing season with a post. It was really a completely different game and so are the stats; an assist when you can’t pass forward is definitely not an assist like we have today.

I do think Morenz is the only player to lead in points in both pre and post forward pass eras, so he has that going for him. Maybe it was the best season of the pre-fp era? I’d be interested to read what people said at the time.

 

[tarheelhockey]

Well if it’s Sidney Crosby and he gets hurt and misses the rest of the year, you’ll hear about that season the rest of your life haha

In all seriousness, Howie’s ice time was probably like 2x what guys play today, wasn’t it? So that’s “equivalent” to a modern season minutes wise.

Regardless, it seems pointless (no pun intended) to compare a pre-forward passing season with a post. It was really a completely different game and so are the stats; an assist when you can’t pass forward is definitely not an assist like we have today.

I do think Morenz is the only player to lead in points in both pre and post forward pass eras, so he has that going for him. Maybe it was the best season of the pre-fp era? I’d be interested to read what people said at the time.

Thinking this through, I think part of the reason I’m a little iffy on holding Morenz too high is that the raw numbers are so low.

To illustrate, let’s say a 40% scoring lead is the cutoff for a “mother of god, he’s broken the game” type of season. That’s fair enough, intuitively. But a 40% lead looks quite differently when you start adding larger samples. The following are all 40% leads:

200 points when the next guy has 143
100 points when the next guy has 71
50 points when the next guy has 36
20 points when the next guy has 14
10 points when the next guy has 7

But intuitively, we recognize that these are definitely not identical accomplishments. A 10-7 lead is nothing remarkable at all. A 200-143 lead is one of the greatest seasons of all time.

Morenz’s 51-35 is somewhere in the middle — it’s significant and nothing to trifle with, but it doesn’t carry quite the same gravity as keeping that same lead in a data set 4x larger. That is to say, if Johnny Clapper led the league 102-70, he might have an identical Vs2 to Morenz’s 1928, but I think you have to grant Johnny the edge for having sustained that same Vs2 margin for far longer.

And then throw in the competition argument. I love 1920s hockey but there’s no good case that it was on the same competitive level as the present day. An adjustment has to be made there.

On the other hand I don’t want to talk Morenz too far down the ladder. We’re still talking about the peak of a player who was roundly regarded at the time as a genuine phenom, and who proved he wasn’t some flash in the pan. It was a genuinely great season. It’s just more on the level of a very good Yzerman season, which in turn is not automatically better than a very good Draisaitl season. It just feels weird to say Draisaitl = Morenz, because there’s such a massive gap in every other aspect of how we would measure those players against each other.

 

[MadLuke]

A lot of Morenz legend come from his strong skating-all around play in a position that covered and dictated a lot of the game has well I think, not just points on the board (look at his playoff total, hard to believe statue building come from the numbers)

To your pts the low number introduce a lot of noise, value to luck and I do not imagine they were counting assist that cleanly back in the day.

Morenz score just 2 less pts, Joliat just 2 more, that big 30% Art Ross win become 19.5% (i.e exact .Crosby Ross against Getzlaf in 2014 or McDavid last year)
The other way around and it becomes a 43.2% Gretzkyiesque win, using something like single season margin with second place, is giving a lot of weight to some bounces and recording of who scored.

Just 2 pts swings, and you double the advance from one scenario to the other, using the average of elite player instead of second place remove the denominator noise quite a bit but not the numerator. With large numbers seasons, couple of bounce one way and in other tend to average out over time and at least 2-3 one way or an other just move the percentage by a couple of points

Goals/points are just a proxy of quality of play, they become a serious representation of them over a large enough sample, we all saw people having bad 2 pts game and good 0 pts games all the time (or even make 2 goals happen in a game without registering a pts vs getting pts on standard basic plays).

When you consider the season just after or before of Morenz, 32-51-27, that show how noisy it could be.

30 to 32 (53-51-49) feel much cleaner, those seasons are #7, #9, #12 of a stretch, combined he did lead the league by 5 pts, tie for most goals, which seem to give some credence of the 1928 season being a "hot" one and/or before the Cook-Conacher level of competition appear.

 

[Victorias]

Thinking this through, I think part of the reason I’m a little iffy on holding Morenz too high is that the raw numbers are so low.

To illustrate, let’s say a 40% scoring lead is the cutoff for a “mother of god, he’s broken the game” type of season. That’s fair enough, intuitively. But a 40% lead looks quite differently when you start adding larger samples. The following are all 40% leads:

200 points when the next guy has 143
100 points when the next guy has 71
50 points when the next guy has 36
20 points when the next guy has 14
10 points when the next guy has 7

But intuitively, we recognize that these are definitely not identical accomplishments. A 10-7 lead is nothing remarkable at all. A 200-143 lead is one of the greatest seasons of all time.

Morenz’s 51-35 is somewhere in the middle — it’s significant and nothing to trifle with, but it doesn’t carry quite the same gravity as keeping that same lead in a data set 4x larger. That is to say, if Johnny Clapper led the league 102-70, he might have an identical Vs2 to Morenz’s 1928, but I think you have to grant Johnny the edge for having sustained that same Vs2 margin for far longer.

And then throw in the competition argument. I love 1920s hockey but there’s no good case that it was on the same competitive level as the present day. An adjustment has to be made there.

On the other hand I don’t want to talk Morenz too far down the ladder. We’re still talking about the peak of a player who was roundly regarded at the time as a genuine phenom, and who proved he wasn’t some flash in the pan. It was a genuinely great season. It’s just more on the level of a very good Yzerman season, which in turn is not automatically better than a very good Draisaitl season. It just feels weird to say Draisaitl = Morenz, because there’s such a massive gap in every other aspect of how we would measure those players against each other.

Well, the absolute point margins have a lot to do with the scoring level and how assists are awarded. The largest absolute point margins in history (eg Gretzky Oiler seasons) occur partly because the assist distribution is much wider than the goal distribution. Wider distribution = greater margins.

In Morenz’s day, the top scorers all had more goals than assist, while for Gretzky’s day, they mostly all had more assists (and Gretzky had waayyyy more assists than goals). It was also obviously much lower scoring in the 20’s.

Morenz played a full season as it was at the time (and again, maybe the same number of minutes). So that’s not really a sample size issue. The comparison fails because of how the game changed and how assists became much more common.

A 51 pt season may not seem impressive, but it was the record for the pre forward pass era.

 

[tarheelhockey]

Well, the absolute point margins have a lot to do with the scoring level and how assists are awarded. The largest absolute point margins in history (eg Gretzky Oiler seasons) occur partly because the assist distribution is much wider than the goal distribution. Wider distribution = greater margins.

In Morenz’s day, the top scorers all had more goals than assist, while for Gretzky’s day, they mostly all had more assists (and Gretzky had waayyyy more assists than goals). It was also obviously much lower scoring in the 20’s.

Morenz played a full season as it was at the time (and again, maybe the same number of minutes). So that’s not really a sample size issue. The comparison fails because of how the game changed and how assists became much more common.

A 51 pt season may not seem impressive, but it was the record for the pre forward pass era.

But everyone was operating by the same rules. The gap between Morenz and #X should be a more-or-less faithful comparison to the gap between Gretzky and #X.

I recognize that there are some specific players who could really be hurt by the G:A dynamic, like Frank Nighbor for example. Clearly a high-assist guy, played with one of the great pure goal-scorers of the era, and we have a pretty good sense that Nighbor was tasked with making defensive stops and then turning plays up-ice (which would not necessarily be counted as an assist under those rules). Under Gretzky’s rules, Nighbor almost certainly leads the 1920s in assists and likely balloons his point totals so as to pass some lesser playmakers… and who knows, perhaps that makes him a little more famous in 2023.

Morenz? Certainly he’d have had more raw points, but so would everyone else. Relative to the rest of the league, I’m not sure a more liberal assist standard would actually help him as a solo-rushing goal scorer.

In regard to playing a similar number of minutes as a modern player, I don’t see the relevance with respect to the gap between Morenz and the rest of the league. Everyone in that era was playing under the same conditions, and we see how Morenz performed relative to the pack. That’s all we need to know for the purpose of a cross-era comparison. The nuances are important for understanding what the numbers say, but they don’t change the number.

 

[BraveCanadian]

These discussions often devolve into point comparisons but Morenz adds the other side of the puck in relation to Draisaitl at the very least. Howe is another that is often compared on points alone which excludes a lot of what made him a unique player.

 

[Victorias]

But everyone was operating by the same rules. The gap between Morenz and #X should be a more-or-less faithful comparison to the gap between Gretzky and #X.

I recognize that there are some specific players who could really be hurt by the G:A dynamic, like Frank Nighbor for example. Clearly a high-assist guy, played with one of the great pure goal-scorers of the era, and we have a pretty good sense that Nighbor was tasked with making defensive stops and then turning plays up-ice (which would not necessarily be counted as an assist under those rules). Under Gretzky’s rules, Nighbor almost certainly leads the 1920s in assists and likely balloons his point totals so as to pass some lesser playmakers… and who knows, perhaps that makes him a little more famous in 2023.

Morenz? Certainly he’d have had more raw points, but so would everyone else. Relative to the rest of the league, I’m not sure a more liberal assist standard would actually help him as a solo-rushing goal scorer.

In regard to playing a similar number of minutes as a modern player, I don’t see the relevance with respect to the gap between Morenz and the rest of the league. Everyone in that era was playing under the same conditions, and we see how Morenz performed relative to the pack. That’s all we need to know for the purpose of a cross-era comparison. The nuances are important for understanding what the numbers say, but they don’t change the number.

So, I’m not sure we understand each other.

It seemed to me that you were less impressed with Morenz because the absolute margin of his victories was smaller (eg 10-7 vs 100-70). So, I tried to explain that the absolute margin is not informative (though it has a bit of a cognitive effect) because it’s just a function of the scoring environment and assist ratio. In a lower scoring sport like soccer (in which assists are also not awarded as often), a player might dominate with only a few more goal contributions (G+A). If we doubled the scoring rate or season length, maybe the gap would increase, but that wouldn’t make the leader any more dominant.

I agree that Morenz wouldn’t have necessarily been a beneficiary of a greater assist ratio. In fact, maybe Joliat or someone else ends up with more points. That’s part of the point - comparing 1920’s and modern points is illogical to me in a way that cannot and should not be adjusted for. Same with comparing margins because if assists are awarded in a greater ratio, a great playmaker will be able to win the scoring title by a greater margin.

To recap, I don’t think it makes sense to say - even if we completely disregard the competition level - that winning a scoring race by 40% in 1928 is equivalent to winning a scoring race by 40% today. The variance in the number of goals hasn’t changed that much but the variance in number of assists has changed dramatically. And the greater the variance, the greater the opportunity there is for an outlier to win by a larger amount.

Now, regarding the season length, my point is that 40 games if you are playing 40 mins/night is the same minutes wise as 80 games playing 20 mins/night. Those numbers are obviously out of thin air, but capture the gist. In other words, there wasn’t really any less hockey played by Morenz in a way that would make his pace not sustainable.

 

[Hockey Outsider]

Semi off topic, but I was looking at Morenz's 1929 season. In 1928, he led the league in both goals and assists. He was leading scorer by a 30% margin over his own linemate (Aurel Joliat), and by 45% over the closest non-teammate. That's a peak Gordie Howe level of performance.

He had a very good (for the era) start to 1929 (11 points in his first 12 game). Then he had a horrendous cold streak (just 1 G and 1 A over the next 15 games). Then he rebounded and scored 14 points in 15 games to end the season.

Even with that cold spell, he still finished 3rd in PPG (with 0.64 PPG) - it was a really low scoring year, and assists were awarded much less frequently than they are today. Outside of the cold streak, he averaged 0.93 PPG, which means he would have blown away the competition again (Ace Bailey had the 2nd highest PPG at 0.73, so Morenz was about 27% ahead).

Morenz missed two games in 1929. Was he playing through a bad injury? Low scoring era or not, 2 points in 15 games is surely one of the worst cold stretches for a reigning Art Ross winning in all of NHL history. (How differently would we look at his legacy if he was benched for that streak, and he had followed up his dominant scoring title with a year where he decisively led the NHL in PPG?)

(EDIT - I think this is especially true since the season after that, 1930, was a strange fluke where certain teams took advantage of poorly-designed rule changes. Imagine how much stronger Morenz's resume would look if, in three consecutive "regular" years, he decisively led the league in scoring (1928), he decisively led the league in PPG but missed one-third of the season with injuries (1929), and then he won another scoring title albeit by a smaller margin (1931). Then add in three Hart trophies over three consecutive healthy/normal seasons (1928, 1931, 1932). I'm doing some cherry-picking here (obviously), but maybe this bridges the gap somewhat between his reputation among those who watched him play, and what his stats look like 90 years later?)

 

[tarheelhockey]

Morenz missed two games in 1929. Was he playing through a bad injury?

Yes, a leg injury that hobbled him through much of the season.

He was also utilized on the second line for a long stretch, as was the fashion of the moment with stars (an early concept of line-matching).

 

[The Panther]

Semi off topic, but I was looking at Morenz's 1929 season. . . .

He had a very good (for the era) start to 1929 (11 points in his first 12 game). Then he had a horrendous cold streak (just 1 G and 1 A over the next 15 games). Then he rebounded and scored 14 points in 15 games to end the season.

That's really odd. Was there a thing back then that players would pretend not to be sick and play with the Flu or something? (Maybe afraid of losing their $2.50 / hour roster spot?) I dunno...

 

[ChiTownPhilly]

Explorations Part I

We'll begin with a premise that we can agree upon- and one that doesn't require rigorous statistical analysis to hold...

The Howie Morenz 1927-1928 hockey season was the top offensive season yet seen, and would not be exceeded until the advent of Howe.

Next, we'll touch briefly on the "measuring sticks" of VsX as opposed to ML's adjusted points computations. VsX generally uses the 2nd place scorer as the weight/measure, and the ML system uses the concept of "elite Canadian scorer" as the plumb-bob. Fortunately, both systems published the benchmarks. [Although the latter seems to have contained at least one typo, which I'm presently working through.] Happily, this should allow us to attach names to the gauges- and we'll examine this in a later post.

The VsX system famously contains three "fudges," of which two are immediately relevant to our discussion- the "outlier fudge" and the "Bobby Orr fudge." The quick-and-dirty on the outlier fudge is that when first and second place crest third place by a bunch, we shouldn't be using second place as the weight. The flash-take on the Bobby Orr fudge is that we have to let »some« air out of prime Phil Esposito numbers, or else VsX will say that Esposito exceeds Gretzky for all-time peak offensive greatness, which just feels wrong.

So without further ado, here is the top VsX season for the top eight players on this hit-parade-

1) Gretzky 1986-87: 169.4(repeats). edges Wayne's 1983-84 by about 2 hundredths.
2) Esposito 1970-71: 168.9. Maybe the Bobby Orr fudge doesn't fudge enough.
3) Howe 1952-53: 155.7
4) Orr 1970-71: 154.4
5) McDavid 2020-21: 152.2
6) Morenz 1927-28: 145.7
7) Lemieux 1988-89: 143.2
8) Mikita 1966-67: 138.6

 

[Midnight Judges]

Morenz’s 51-35 is somewhere in the middle — it’s significant and nothing to trifle with, but it doesn’t carry quite the same gravity as keeping that same lead in a data set 4x larger. That is to say, if Johnny Clapper led the league 102-70, he might have an identical Vs2 to Morenz’s 1928, but I think you have to grant Johnny the edge for having sustained that same Vs2 margin for far longer.

That's more than an edge IMO. It's a clear distinction.

 

[Black Gold Extractor]

Over the three season period from 1926-27 to 1928-29, Morenz still managed to maintain a huge lead over his competition:

Player​	GP​	G​	A​	P​
Howie Morenz​	129​	75​	35​	110​
Frank Boucher​	132​	46​	43​	89​
Bill Cook​	130​	66​	18​	84​
Nels Stewart​	128​	65​	19​	84​
George Hay​	118​	47​	31​	78​
Aurel Joliat​	131​	54​	20​	74​
Ace Bailey​	129​	46​	25​	71​
Fred Cook​	131​	41​	30​	71​
Bill Carson​	115​	47​	23​	70​
Harry Oliver​	129​	48​	17​	65​

He had a 14% lead in goals over 2nd-place Bill Cook and 24% lead in points over 2nd-place Frank Boucher. That's not some trifling thing.

 

[MadLuke]

Yes, it is quite good but we are speaking Drai like level of separation and without doing any adjustment for talent pool or anything.

When he scored 110 pts the 4th Canadian with the most points in the league had 78, 10th best scored 61. Not 1999 Jagr scoring 127 when the 5th best Canadian had 76, 10th best 65

 

[Victorias]

Over the three season period from 1926-27 to 1928-29, Morenz still managed to maintain a huge lead over his competition:

Player​	GP​	G​	A​	P​
Howie Morenz​	129​	75​	35​	110​
Frank Boucher​	132​	46​	43​	89​
Bill Cook​	130​	66​	18​	84​
Nels Stewart​	128​	65​	19​	84​
George Hay​	118​	47​	31​	78​
Aurel Joliat​	131​	54​	20​	74​
Ace Bailey​	129​	46​	25​	71​
Fred Cook​	131​	41​	30​	71​
Bill Carson​	115​	47​	23​	70​
Harry Oliver​	129​	48​	17​	65​

He had a 14% lead in goals over 2nd-place Bill Cook and 24% lead in points over 2nd-place Frank Boucher. That's not some trifling thing.

Yes, it is quite good but we are speaking Drai like level of separation and without doing any adjustment for talent pool or anything.

When he scored 110 pts the 4th Canadian with the most points in the league had 78, 10th best scored 61. Not 1999 Jagr scoring 127 when the 5th best Canadian had 76, 10th best 65

Guys, look how few assists were awarded in this table. For the Canadiens in 28-29 there were only 0.56 assists given per goal. For the Oilers the year Drai won the Art Ross, there were 1.71 assists per goal. That’s 3x as many assists.

Yes, Morenz and his peers were all playing by the same rules, but look what happens when you multiply assists by 3:

Morenz: 33+18*3=87
Joliat (2nd) 28+11*3=61

Originally the margin was 30.7% while it is now 42.6%. In other words, increasing the assist ratio affects both the absolute point totals and percent margins of victory.

Does it make sense to simply multiply assists by 3 for everyone? No, of course not. Maybe defensemen were really the ones who were getting shortchanged and a puck rusher like Morenz wouldn’t have been affected as much. But it’s clearly silly to compare scoring margins when the way the statistics were measured is not comparable.

I don’t think Morenz’s season was the most dominant, but it has nothing to do with the scoring margin.