Do you think Ovechkin's legacy will improve over time?

[Beau Knows]

For me Ovechkin is already the best goal scorer of all-time. Him breaking the record vs missing it by 1 goal or something wouldn't change anything, other than it just being neat.

It's not like the period of time he played is going to be lost to time and all that will remain is the number of goals he scored. There will be mountains of videos of him playing and articles that illustrate his standing in the hockey world during his era.

Likewise, if this higher scoring era we've been in for the last few years continues or even opens up further, and someone comes along and surpassed whatever goal totals Ovechkin ends up with, while not being as dominant against his peers as Ovechkin was. I think people will understand that and take into account that Ovechkin did it in a tougher scoring environment and that he would still be the best goal scorer ever.

 

[The Panther]

Peak and prime seasons are definitely the most important when it comes to ranking players in general and ranking goal scorers, but I think some knowledgeable fans can be become too dismissive of career milestones (just as casual fans and media types tend to make too big a deal of such things).

Does adding 25-35 goal seasons at the end of his career make Ovechkin a better or greater goal scorer than guys like Gretzky, Lemieux, Hull, Richard etc? No, because such seasons pale in comparison to what those players did in their best seasons and over their primes as far as goal scoring is concerned. But that doesn't mean the value of 25-35 goal seasons late in a player's career is zero, either (even if we are talking about a guy who's led the League in goals nine times). Hockey is a grind. Players age and lose their abilities. It can be a challenge and a testament to a player's goal scoring smarts and devotion to achieving a goal to bang in those last 70 or so goals and get the record.

I don't disagree with anything you wrote, and I was not dismissing productive longevity. I am saying that hitting a certain , specific number of (whatever) doesn't overnight lead to a higher ranking.

 

[DitchMarner]

I don't disagree with anything you wrote, and I was not dismissing productive longevity. I am saying that hitting a certain , specific number of (whatever) doesn't overnight lead to a higher ranking.

I agree with that.

I think there's some value in breaking the goal record (some may think there really isn't), but it's not the sort of thing that should decide if he's the greatest goal scorer ever, nor should a few dozen additional goals late in his career move him up the all-time list substantially.

 

[Crosby2010]

If secondary assists were just as good as goals you might have a point.

So a point is a point. I never get the idea that a secondary assist isn't important or crucial to the play. We are talking about Crosby here. This is a guy who for his whole career has been the one that has driven the play and been the guy who has carried every line he's been on. Or are we thinking here that Chris Kunitz really was a world class sniper on his own? When you watch both play especially today, you still realize that Crosby is the one who runs the show and makes the plays. Ovechkin doesn't do this anymore and it shows in their stats. This doesn't mean Ovechkin hasn't had a great career, as he is 39 years old now, but it just means Crosby is easily the better player now and he has been the better player since 2010 while they both were more or less 1a) 1b) from 2005-'10

 

[Midnight Judges]

So a point is a point. I never get the idea that a secondary assist isn't important or crucial to the play. We are talking about Crosby here. This is a guy who for his whole career has been the one that has driven the play and been the guy who has carried every line he's been on. Or are we thinking here that Chris Kunitz really was a world class sniper on his own? When you watch both play especially today, you still realize that Crosby is the one who runs the show and makes the plays. Ovechkin doesn't do this anymore and it shows in their stats. This doesn't mean Ovechkin hasn't had a great career, as he is 39 years old now, but it just means Crosby is easily the better player now and he has been the better player since 2010 while they both were more or less 1a) 1b) from 2005-'10

It's pretty obvious that the guy who passed to the guy who passed to the goal scorer is less likely to be germane to the play than the guy who passed to the goal scorer or the goal scorer. The eye test should show this for any reasonable hockey fan. The secondary pass is simply less likely to be defensed than the primary pass or the goal.

There are statistical ways of showing this as well. Secondary assists are a volatile and unreliable statistic - far more volatile than primary assists or goals. That's because they are more arbitrary, less indicative, and more dependent on teammates.

Take Crosby's secondary assist totals vs his primary assists totals for example. Let's look at 5 consecutive healthy seasons from 2014 to 2018 (age 26 to 30). This is basically the same player consistently doing the same things. Penguins fans at the time bragged incessantly about how consistent Crosby was.

Primary assists:
34
31
28
28
33

^^^Very consistent. These numbers make sense in that they are roughly aligned with the general value of Sidney Crosby in those seasons - totally in line with what you would expect from an elite player in their prime playing very consistent hockey.

Secondary Assists:
34
25
21
21
17
27

Huh. It's all over the place. Sidney Crosby was...wildly inconsistent? Did Sidney Crosby mysteriously forget how to secondary assist in 2017? Was he half as effective at it relative to 2014? There doesn't appear to be some sort of injury reason for this, and if there was, it somehow didn't impact his primary assists. His EV and PP TOI appear to be pretty stable in those seasons, and his zone starts are generally geared towards offense - as one would expect.

So what's really going on here? It seems to be statistical noise.

 

[Letsdothis]

Career 5vs5 a2/60 leaders

1 H. Sedin
2. D. Toews
3. N. Kucherov
4. C. Makar
5. C. McDavid
6. J.Benn
7. M. St.Louis
8. R. Getzlaf
9. A. Panarin
10. J. Thornton


Powerplay:

1. N. Bäckström
2. C. McDavid
3. M. Rielly
4. R-N. Hopkins
5. M. Marner
6. C. Giroux
7. N. Kucherov
8. V. Hedman
9. A. Panarin
10. S. Ghostisbhere

While more prone to yearly variation, I don't think lists like that would form for a stat that is merellä statistical variance. On the flip side, the bottom 10 is all no-talent goons.

 

[VanIslander]

The answer to the op's question is: no.

 

[Michael Farkas]

Man, if some variance in a stat means that the stat is just noise and not indicative of play, I have some joyous news to spread about save pct. haha

It's almost worth the trade off to agree with that not-well-thought-out rubbish if it means dealing a critical blow to save pct.