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

[Michael Farkas]

"Mundane plays" ...got it. You're looking for more exciting positional defense and backchecking I take it? Players chasing hits out of position or diving all over the ice perhaps?

Then again, we're dealing from this hand, categorically...

Ovechkin absolutely was more rounded in these playoffs.

Ovechkin has been playing far better defense than Crosby.

Crosby flat out did not play defense against the Caps. For all the crazy points he and Guentzal put up, Crosby was on the ice for just as many goals against 5v5. Crosby's offense was fantastic, and Crosby's defense was commensurately putrid.

(2018)

I think I've finally pinpointed this whole *gestures broadly* thing here...even the goal posts are eroding at this point haha

 

[BigBadBruins7708]

based on how other super elite, fairly 1 dimensional goal scorers have been treated with the passage of time, its more likely his legacy diminishes.

Look at how the perception of Bobby Hull and Rocket Richard goes down the further we get from their careers.

 

[Midnight Judges]

"Mundane plays" ...got it. You're looking for more exciting positional defense and backchecking I take it? Players chasing hits out of position or diving all over the ice perhaps?

Your need to try and trivialize or confuse people is pretty evident here.

When I say defense, I'm talking about preventing goals, as in, having opponents not score very many goals when you are on the ice - which, not coincidentally - is something the best defensive players do, while Sidney Crosby does not.

This requires evidence, and there is no shortage of it at our disposal.

 

[Midnight Judges]

based on how other super elite, fairly 1 dimensional goal scorers have been treated with the passage of time, its more likely his legacy diminishes.

Look at how the perception of Bobby Hull and Rocket Richard goes down the further we get from their careers.

There is no context where Ovechkin can be accurately described as "one dimensional."

He's always been quite physical and very good at passing in addition to being the greatest goal scorer of all time. He'll easily end his career top 5 all-time in adjusted points.

 

[Michael Farkas]

Your need to try and trivialize or confuse people is pretty evident here.

When I say defense, I'm talking about preventing goals, as in, having opponents not score very many goals when you are on the ice - which, not coincidentally - is something the best defensive players do, while Sidney Crosby does not.

I can try and confuse people all I like, but I'm not equipped for that...

Ok, this is basically what I was hinting at. If a player bachecking his bag off has a player's stick completely tied up off the ice and has inside leverage, but the puck rolls through the goalie's legs...it's a goal against and that's the result.

We're not gonna evaluate this, we're not interested in the actual process, or the game play...

"Just give me the box score"
Player scored goal? He is great.
Player passed it to make a goal? He is almost as great. (Player outlets puck to future passer, he is noise.)
Goalie makes saves while player is on the ice? Player must be good at defense.

It's binary result, binary result, binary result...and it's not at all interesting or informative (it's a "mundane play")...but I'd admire the consistency if you carried it to the playoffs.

If playoff Crosby is bad at defense because sometimes (most times? Every time? Whatever) goals go in on Marc-Andre Fleury and glove-less Matt Murray...then surely Ovechkin continuing to amass playoff losses and huge upsets at almost a statistically unlikely level means he must not be so great of a playoff player or at least that great of an asset, right?

The best playoff players and best players and best assets to the game...they advance beyond the second round more than once in almost 20 years (including, what, every international event of note, right? 2004 World Cup, 2006, 2010, 2014 Olympics, 2016 World Cup, never got past the second round)...Ovechkin does not.

 

[Midnight Judges]

I can try and confuse people all I like, but I'm not equipped for that...

Ok, this is basically what I was hinting at. If a player bachecking his bag off has a player's stick completely tied up off the ice and has inside leverage, but the puck rolls through the goalie's legs...it's a goal against and that's the result.

We're not gonna evaluate this, we're not interested in the actual process, or the game play...

"Just give me the box score"
Player scored goal? He is great.
Player passed it to make a goal? He is almost as great. (Player outlets puck to future passer, he is noise.)
Goalie makes saves while player is on the ice? Player must be good at defense.

It's binary result, binary result, binary result...and it's not at all interesting or informative (it's a "mundane play")...but I'd admire the consistency if you carried it to the playoffs.

If playoff Crosby is bad at defense because sometimes (most times? Every time? Whatever) goals go in on Marc-Andre Fleury and glove-less Matt Murray...then surely Ovechkin continuing to amass playoff losses and huge upsets at almost a statistically unlikely level means he must not be so great of a playoff player or at least that great of an asset, right?

The best playoff players and best players and best assets to the game...they advance beyond the second round more than once in almost 20 years (including, what, every international event of note, right? 2004 World Cup, 2006, 2010, 2014 Olympics, 2016 World Cup, never got past the second round)...Ovechkin does not.

There is an awful lot of happenstance in hockey. There is a huge randomness factor. Pucks bounce off skates, etc.

So yeah, absolutely I agree with your point - especially if we're going down to tiny samples of 1 game or 1 playoff series of even a whole playoffs. Anything can happen, and that makes hockey fun.

However, we have 1450 games of Crosby to create a general defensive rating for him. It's not some mystery. He's nowhere near Datsyuk or Bergeron, etc., stats-wise, as much as Canada desired to pretend otherwise (not coincidentally) starting precisely when Crosby was no longer an Art Ross contender.

On the other hand we can look at 10+ years worth of games where his defensive results are nearly identical to Alex Ovechkin's.

And I think your blaming his future hall of fame goal tender rings a bit false.

 

[Midnight Judges]

The best playoff players and best players and best assets to the game...they advance beyond the second round more than once in almost 20 years (including, what, every international event of note, right? 2004 World Cup, 2006, 2010, 2014 Olympics, 2016 World Cup, never got past the second round)...Ovechkin does not.

Now for this statement, you really ought to know better.

Winning a cup requires much more than any 1 player can provide.

Mario Lemieux (I gather you are a fan) never took his team anywhere without other top 50 players of all time. Any time he made it past the second round, he had Coffey (48th) or Jagr (16th), if not a gaggle of hall of famers.

Has Ovechkin ever had anyone in the top 200? You know, aside from 38 year old Fedorov?

There was a poll recently by a poster who was deeply concerned that Ovechkin would get credit for something associated with the fact that Ovie has never really had much of a running mate. Don't get me wrong, Backstrom is a nice player but...

Gretzky had Messier/Kurri/Coffey

Lemieux had Jagr/Francis/Coffey

Orr had Esposito

Howe had Kelly and Lindsay

Hull had Mikita

Beliveau had Richard/Harvey/etc.

Crosby had Malkin

Those are the types of players that make a significant team difference.

 

[Michael Farkas]

Of course he's nowhere near Datsyuk or Bergeron. And I'll be the first to say, for the vast majority of his regular season career, he deserves zero Selke votes. Last year especially, he should have gotten some support for it, for instance...but overall, no. But in the playoffs, yes.

And as much as he isn't close to Zetterberg (who was better at defense that Datsyuk, but less flashy...perhaps, mundane) or Bergeron...he's also not close to Ovechkin either.

I'm not "blaming" anyone, per se. I'm just trying to frame the situation a little bit more clearly so that we can make more informed decisions with a more informed process for rendering decisions. If we wanted to, that is...

Now for this statement, you really ought to know better.

Winning a cup requires much more than any 1 player can provide.

Mario Lemieux (I gather you are a fan) never took his team anywhere without other top 100 players of all time. Any time he made it past the second round, he had Coffey (48th) or Jagr (16th), if not a gaggle of hall of famers.

I see. It seems I have a lot to learn about results and the singular impact of players. And also how impactful a rookie third liner counts in these equations haha

Better get back in the film room read the newspaper...?

Just to reply to the Fedorov edit...it's almost too perfect that 38 year old Fedorov is sort of dismissed, but 18 year old Jagr is used as a prop. 18 year old Jagr scored at basically the same rate as Fedorov as a Cap. One gets top 15 player ever cred, the other one is like, "who?" haha

This is all very, very good.

 

[Bear of Bad News]

Can I just say how excited I am that we're finally having a heated Ovechkin/Crosby discussion in a thread that's actually related to one of the players?

 

[norrisnick]

Five years ago, I did a deep dive into secondary assists. Here's the link if anyone is interested. At a high level - secondary assists have lower correlations year over year than goals or primary assists. But they clearly have some value, because prediction models work better when secondary assists are included.

The predictive model worked best when it was set to (approximately) 1 goal = 1 primary assist = 2/3rds of a secondary assist. The NHL's approach (treating everything as equal) therefore somewhat overrates secondary assists. But we shouldn't exaggerate it either. Since this argument usually comes back to Crosby and Ovechkin - Crosby has recorded 112 more secondary assists than Ovechkin over the course of his career. By my calculation, that means his point total has been inflated by about 37 points. Over the span of 19 seasons, we're talking about of a different of just under 2 points per year. There are several meaningful advantages both players have over each other in different categories - let's focus on those. Does anybody think either player's legacy would be materially impacted if (on average) Crosby got 2 fewer points per year?

In my experience, most people pick and choose when to downplay secondary assists. Remember when Ovechkin had that tremendous start to the 2022 season? As of mid December, he was leading the NHL in points. Many people (Washington fans and otherwise) were talking about how, at age 36, he was a contender for the Hart trophy. Guess what? He had a huge number of secondary assists. (As of December 15th, he was 4th in the league in that category - for context, he had never placed in the top ten in any season, any he was only in the top 20 twice, the last time being a decade earlier). Looking at it another way - he averaged 13 secondary assists per 82 games from 2012 to 2021, then he suddenly recorded 13 secondary assists before New Years. I didn't hear anyone (Capitals fan or otherwise) say that we need to scale back his case for the Hart and Art Ross, because he was recording secondary assists at 2.5x his normal rate.

I'm just asking for some consistency here. Many of the people who spent a decade attacking Crosby for his secondary assists turned a blind eye when Ovechkin suddenly became a Hart and Art Ross contender during 2021-22, due to an unusually high number of secondary assists. Even if it's true that secondary assists are overrated, the optics of how the argument is made so selectively doesn't look good.

Anyone ever do any digging to see how many goal scorers would have gotten the secondary if they were eligible to do so? Imagine that takes watching every goal every scored, so doubtful....

 

[Midnight Judges]

Of course he's nowhere near Datsyuk or Bergeron. And I'll be the first to say, for the vast majority of his regular season career, he deserves zero Selke votes. Last year especially, he should have gotten some support for it, for instance...but overall, no. But in the playoffs, yes.

And as much as he isn't close to Zetterberg (who was better at defense that Datsyuk, but less flashy...perhaps, mundane) or Bergeron...he's also not close to Ovechkin either.

I'm not "blaming" anyone, per se. I'm just trying to frame the situation a little bit more clearly so that we can make more informed decisions with a more informed process for rendering decisions. If we wanted to, that is...


I see. It seems I have a lot to learn about results and the singular impact of players. And also how impactful a rookie third liner counts in these equations haha

Better get back in the film room read the newspaper...?

Just to reply to the Fedorov edit...it's almost too perfect that 38 year old Fedorov is sort of dismissed, but 18 year old Jagr is used as a prop. 18 year old Jagr scored at basically the same rate as Fedorov as a Cap. One gets top 15 player ever cred, the other one is like, "who?" haha

This is all very, very good.

You are going out of your way to avoid the point:

When Jagr was 18, Mario Lemieux had 29 year old Coffey, 29 year old Larry Murphy, 22 year old Mark Recchi, and 27 year old Ron Francis - all hall of famers in their primes. That was the first time in Lemieux's career he was on a team that got past the 2nd round.

Any other time, he had a similar cast or else peak Jagr, who was among the best players (top 3) in the NHL.

Anyone ever do any digging to see how many goal scorers would have gotten the secondary if they were eligible to do so? Imagine that takes watching every goal every scored, so doubtful....

Not worth it either. It's going to be a very small number.

 

[Michael Farkas]

You are going out of your way to avoid the point:

When Jagr was 18, Mario Lemieux had 29 year old Coffey, 29 year old Larry Murphy, 22 year old Mark Recchi, and 27 year old Ron Francis - all hall of famers in their primes. That was the first time in Lemieux's career he was on a team that got past the 2nd round.

So, the point is...

Lemieux advancing beyond the 2nd round in 4 of his 7 career playoff experiences, and 3 of 3 (?) best on best international tournaments (winning Gold in all of them) is equivalent or near equivalent to Ovechkin's 1 in 15 and 0 for 5 internationally?

That's where you went with that: "if defense is all result-based, then surely, the playoffs must be somewhere around that too...therefore Ovechkin must be..." situation. You brought famous winner and extremely-efficient-at-advancing-to-win stuff Mario Lemieux into the mix...?

 

[MadLuke]

HHOF counting to judge if a team was good enough to go over the second round or not is a bit strange, we are talking about president trophy squad here.

Take Joe Thornton lack of playoff success, if he turn out the only HHOF on the 2006-2007 sharks teams what would that mean and having old Blake-Roenick in 2009 was not better than Boyle-Marleau, ..... Thornton had great team even if none turn out to be hall of famer, while Heatley-Kovalchuck-Savard Trasher were not a great team, even if they would all ended up in the hall.

And can become circular, who Patrick Roy had in 1993 ? He had hall of famer Carbonneau (does he make it in the hall without that cup run....), a great winning cups would create HHOF from his teammate (3 cup backstrom is an easy HHOF, would Letang be an HHOF without them ? any talk of Fleury without them ?).

if defense is all result-based,

When sample size is big enough to remove-iron out all the bad luck, that a more possible narrative, big issue of making the conversation bizarre in hockey, is a lot of goal preventing (results) will come from puck control

 

[wetcoast]

That is false. A previous poster cited point and PPG totals as their primary argument, which inherently assume secondary assists are equal in value to goals.

So basically you are claiming that if a poster smuggles in an assumption as foundational to their main argument, then that assumption is not fair game to be addressed.

That is fundamentally misguided.

That poster was arguing and presenting in good faith.

Fundamentally misguided seems like projection to me.

 

[Vilica]

Mike and I went over the secondary/goal scorer thing a couple years ago and the preliminary conclusion is that its about 5-10%, across everybody, and subject to a ton of variance. It obviously affects someone who scores 40 goals more than someone who scores 20 goals, but the percentage of goals it affects is in the same ballpark.

[I went searching for the post and found it here: Top-200 Hockey Players of All-Time - Preliminary Discussion Thread. I thought there was another follow-up from Mike where he broke down his video assessment of some goals but couldn't find it.]

As someone who in the end is mostly 'Points Uber Alles' in regards to forward impacts, I still understand that there's a shit ton of randomness involving points scored. In the end, it all sort of washes out, the positive and negative variance, and true talent mostly shines through over a larger sample.

There is however one points-related Ovechkin stat that I do want to point out that does affect him more than others. Nobody would disagree that Ovechkin is one of the most impactful players on the Power Play in NHL history, and yet when you look at his IPP (individual points percentage) compared to a whole host of other players, his total is substantially lower than just about everybody else. Thus, even though he's been on for almost 175 more power play goals than Crosby, he only has around 40 more power play points [in the 07-08 to 23-24 period]. If you look at the averages of a whole bunch of players, the superstars are around 70%, the stars are around 65%, and Ovechkin's at 60%. The forwards around him (or lower) include Pavelski, Marchand, Benn, Toews, E. Staal, Perry, Duchene, and Voracek, mostly secondary stars. [Even the players known more for their one-timers/shooting are still much higher - Stamkos 68.6, Pastrnak 69.9, Matthews 66.1. I went through 57 forwards and 28 defensemen, the highest scorers since 07-08 and summed their PPP and oiGF according to hockey-reference's extra stats.]

If you assume Ovechkin's power play impact is equivalent to the superstar players that are his normal peers, that would mean boosting his IPP to that 70% range, which would lead to an extra 84 points, or about 5 points per season (84/17, since we're missing the data from 05-06 and 06-07).

But again, I refer you back to my initial statement that there's a ton of randomness involved in points, and positive and negative variance wash out, and true talent shines through in a larger sample. We certainly have a large enough sample to state that Ovechkin's true talent on the power play is a 60% IPP. Whether that's an accurate measure of his power play talent is more subjective.

 

[MadLuke]

Mike and I went over the secondary/goal scorer thing a couple years ago and the preliminary conclusion is that its about 5-10%, across everybody, and subject to a ton of variance. It obviously affects someone who scores 40 goals more than someone who scores 20 goals, but the percentage of goals it affects is in the same ballpark.

I am not sure what does this mean here, if we look at the ratio of A2 / total assists, Jamie Been is the forward with the most A2 assists among the Top scorer post 2005, Pominville-Marleau are the next one, those 3 were good goalscorer, Ovechkin is low exactly like Crosby, Kucherov-Spezza-Krejci-Thornton middle of the pack.

Is it just it affect people with more assists than goals in general ? Would it be 20 goals-30 assists or 40 goals and 60 assists does not matter.

The power play point share versus his impact (Capitals changed a lot over the year, but Ovechkin PP was always good), is a perfect way to look it.

A lot of Ovechkin goal scored on the PP are the type of goal few in the NHL would have scored taken that shot, specially over a large part of their career and not just 2-3 peak years, few would have opened others by his mere presence, maybe not unique outside longevity, but at a is there 10 players would have scored with that pass from that spot... ? not uncommon, which is quite different from make a pass every top 6 player in the nhl can easily do to Markov at the blue line, that will pass it to someone else that will score.