Do You Think Ovechkin's Legacy Will Improve over Time

[Troubadour]

Similar peak, but Ovechkin already has better longevity (No, I don’t care about Jagr racking up 50 pts seasons at 40).

Jagr managed to finish top ten in ESP at 44. Last time Ovi unlocked this very special achievement, he was 25.

It's one of the crazy trivia bits I have just learned about Jagr. First time he finished top ten in ESP, he was 21.

That's some wild, wild spread.

 

[WarriorofTime]

Ovechkin, outside of a handful of years, was so abysmal at getting assists

This is hyperbole. Tied-55th in career assists as of now (will be passed by McDavid, MacKinnon, Kucherov, likely other in due course) (I know there's "handful of years" caveat). Top 56 in career goals is almost a 500 career goal scorer and would never be (caveated or not) even if playing in the most goal happy era called "abysmal at scoring goals"

 

[rmartin65]

This is hyperbole. Tied-45th in career assists as of now (will be passed by McDavid, MacKinnon, Kucherov, likely other in due course) (I know there's there "handful of years" caveat). Top 46 in career goals is a 500 career goal scorer and would never be (caveated or not) even if playing in the most goal happy era called "abysmal at scoring goals"

Not really- everything is relative, right? For a player in the discussion for top 10 all time, Ovechkin is an abysmal producer of assists.

Also, where are you seeing T-45th in assists? I'm on NHL.com and I see him at T-55.

As an aside- McDavid is just 5 assists behind Ovechkin... in 779 less games. Holy smokes.

 

[MadLuke]

his is hyperbole. Tied-45th in career assists as of now

There is an ability to play a lot of games in a 82 games season era/1.7 assists per goals that create that and context of top 10 player of all time conversation.


2012-2021 (10 years window) Ovechkin was
#62 in assists
#132 in assists per games, (among 250 games or more played)

That was the equivalent in assists gettings that ~Justin Williams was at goal scorings pretty much, who was not an abyssal goalscorer obviously, very legit nhler that could find spot on a top 6 and second (some first at time) PP unit on good teams, during that time.

But in all-time great, top 10 conversation for a scoring forward ?

 

[WarriorofTime]

Also, where are you seeing T-45th in assists? I'm on NHL.com and I see him at T-55.

Yes my bad had filter set to forwards, T-55 overall

 

[WarriorofTime]

There is an ability to play a lot of games in a 82 games season era, 1.7 assists per goals that create that and context of top 10 player of all time conversation.


2012-2021 Ovechkin was
#62 in assists
#132 in assists per games, (among 250 games or more played)

That was the equivalent in assists gettings that ~Justin Williams was at goal scorings pretty much, who was not an abyssal goalscorer obviously, very legit nhler that could find spot on a top 6 and second (some first at time) PP unit on good teams, during that time.

But in all-time great, top 10 conversation for a scoring forward ?

True but can get away with a lot hyperbole when start putting everything "top 10 player of all time" context when thread topic is about Ovechkin legacy more broadly and top 10 specifically became more of an off-branch on that

Ovechkin first 5 seasons is 6th in assists
Ovechkin next 5 seasons is T-98th in assists
Ovechkin next 5 seasons is 77th in assists
Ovechkin last 4 seasons i T-95th in assists

Ovechkin does not go in the Assists Hall of Fame, obviously but Assisting peak is very good and Assisting longevity holds its own.

 

[MadLuke]

Prime Ovechkin was an Art Ross winner/contender with a healthy assists total for sure, but has you see, he was just a boderline bottom of the pack first liner for a long time to get to a big career total.

And that with a lot of power play time/ice time in general (for someone with that assists rate because he was so good at scoring goals).

Among the 100 games played, at least 7 minutes per games of EV times, stretch

Assists per 60 minutes of EV play, block of 5 seasons (stat on nhl.com start in 2010...)
08-09: #93
10-14: #100
15-19: #174 (exactly like Tom Wilson or Bonino)
20-24: #231

edit: 08-09 from Natural stat tricks.

 

[wetcoast]

My Top 10 is, of course,

99
9
4
66
Hasek
Esposito
Ovechkin
Crosby
Hull
Jagr

11-20: McDavid, Shore, Beliveau, Makarov, Lafleur, Lidstrom, Harvey, Roy, Bourque, Messier

Dude having a guy who was riding shotgun with Bobby Hull for 2 seasons and a less than Marcel Dionne line of 25-4-4-8 in the playoffs keeps you out of the top 10 all by itself along with lots of other reasons.

In fact there is a reasonable argument that Big Phil isn't even a top 10 center of all time.

 

[rmartin65]

True but can get away with a lot hyperbole when start putting everything "top 10 player of all time" context when thread topic is about Ovechkin legacy more broadly and top 10 specifically became more of an off-branch on that

But it's not hyperbole, it's context.

Any NHL player is an all-time great hockey player, by sheer virtue of making it to the NHL when hundreds of thousands of others never make it to that level. But we contextualize it with the understanding that they are competing against their peers.

Ovechkin's peers here in this discussion aren't the average NHLers, they are the best of the best (of the best of the best of the best, etc). And relative to those guys, his lack of assists stands out.

Ovechkin first 5 seasons is 6th in assists

Pretty decent peak. I'd wager that just about every other forward in the discussion for top 10 all time is top 5-6 in both goals and assists over the 5 year peak. Maurice Richard is probably the only other guy who doesn't hit that bar.

Ovechkin next 5 seasons is T-98th in assists
Ovechkin next 5 seasons is 77th in assists
Ovechkin last 4 seasons i T-95th in assists

This isn't good for a top-10 all time candidate.

Ovechkin does not go in the Assists Hall of Fame, obviously but Assisting peak is very good and Assisting longevity holds its own.

Again, not relative to the competition for top 10.

 

[WarriorofTime]

Ovechkin's peers here in this discussion aren't the average NHLers, they are the best of the best (of the best of the best of the best, etc). And relative to those guys, his lack of assists stands out.

Yes obviously, which is why it's balanced out by being a Top 1 Goalscorer or there's no discussion to be had.

 

[rmartin65]

Yes obviously, which is why it's balanced out by being a Top 1 Goalscorer or there's no discussion to be had.

I'm confused by what you are arguing against, then.

 

[WarriorofTime]

I'm confused by what you are arguing against, then.

What’s there to be confused about? Yes Ovechkin obviously does not have as good assists as Jagr and others. No that doesn’t DQ him from any list because his goal scoring is so strong, that doesn’t mean others are “abysmal” at goal scoring relative to Ovechkin, which I suppose one could claim if that were their one peer for such discussion.

 

[Fantomas]

Prime Ovechkin was an Art Ross winner/contender with a healthy assists total for sure, but has you see, he was just a boderline bottom of the pack first liner for a long time to get to a big career total.

Insane of you to say this. This is not even true of Ovechkin at 39 years old.

 

[Hockey Outsider]

And for what it is worth, I'm not just down on Ovechkin for his (relative) lack of offensive variety- I am lower on Maurice Richard, Pavel Bure, and I'm sure other goal-heavy wingers than I imagine most of the rest of the community is.

This is an important point, and it addresses the all-too-common "bias" accusation.

Different people will value different things in hockey players. Do you prefer an all-around scoring threat (ie Beliveau) vs someone who's more focused on goals (ie Hull)? How important is defensive play? How much should we weight playoffs vs the regular season? Do you prioritize a short peak (best 3 years), a medium-length prime (best 7-10 years), or longevity (who's still going strong 15 years out)?

These are all subjective questions. There's no right answer. Two observers, who are equally knowledgeable, and are being as objective as a person can be, might end up with very different rankings simply because they value different attributes.

If someone genuinely prefers well-rounded scoring threat, and criticizes Ovechkin for not recording more assists, there's no bias and no inconsistency. But if they use that argument against Ovechkin, Bure and Kovalchuk, and not against Richard, Hull, Iginla and Gartner, then yes, that's probably a sign of bias against Russian players. And they should be called out for that.

It's unfortunate that people cry "bias" all the time on HFBoards. To be clear, bias exists, but far too many people jump to that conclusion. Most of the time, the allegation actually means that the accuser is confronted with a position that they dislike, and instead of engaging with it (and understanding the merits and weaknesses of the argument), they want to dismiss it by disparaging the character and motivations of the other side.

 

[Fantomas]

This devalues assists too much.

Assists should be devalued. They're assists.

Hockey has to be the only sport where assists are considered equivalent to goals. Absolute sillysauce.

 

[rmartin65]

What’s there to be confused about? Yes Ovechkin obviously does not have as good assists as Jagr and others. No that doesn’t DQ him from any list because his goal scoring is so strong, that doesn’t mean others are “abysmal” at goal scoring relative to Ovechkin, which I suppose one could claim if that were their one peer for such discussion.

Off the top of my head, here are the candidates for forward candidates for the top 10 players of all time-

Name	Top 5 Goals	Top 5 Assists	Top 5 Points
Wayne Gretzky	8	17	16
Mario Lemieux	6	9	9
Gordie Howe	14	17	20
Jean Beliveau	7	7	8
Bobby Hull	12	2	8
Sidney Crosby	2	5	9
Alex Ovechkin	15	0	6
Maurice Richard	12	0	9
Connor McDavid	2	9	8
Jaromir Jagr	6	7	8

Despite being the most prolific goal-scorer, he has the fewest top 5 in points finishes- and the only way to make that make sense is to realize that he didn't produce assists well in comparison to this tier of players.

The weakest goal scorers of the bunch are Sidney Crosby* and Connor McDavid- but they are both clearly better goalscorers than Ovechkin is a set-up man, since they have more top 5 finishes despite not dominating one of the categories. It's hard to say that either of those two are abysmal goalscorers, even at this level, because they each won a goalscoring title (while Ovechkin, as shown, never finished top 5).

*Crosby's variability is actually pretty amazing- he is the only player on this list who has more top 5 Points finishes than combined top 5 Goals and Assists finishes.

No one is saying that Ovechkin is disqualified from any list- now that is hyperbole. But it is very easy to see that his Ovechkin's record as an assist generator is downright bad among this group, with really only Richard (who I don't think is a top 10 player all time) in the same boat.

 

[WarriorofTime]

Off the top of my head, here are the candidates for forward candidates for the top 10 players of all time

Yeah ok so boil it down, if you really like the balance of the Jagr and Beliveau that’s fine, if you value the sheer dominance in the more regarded important category (and here we’re talking top 1s not just consistent top 5) then you probably go Ovechkin. Said you could go either way on either of those vs Ovechkin very many posts ago

 

[jigglysquishy]

Off the top of my head, here are the candidates for forward candidates for the top 10 players of all time-

Name	Top 5 Goals	Top 5 Assists	Top 5 Points
Kucherov	0	4	5
MacKinnon	1	3	5
Draisaitl	6	3	6

The three other big modern names in this styling

They're not top 10. But they're sprinting there.

 

[Hockey Outsider]

That correlation (in wins G% rises and A% drops) also works with such guys like:
View attachment 1020794

Now that I've had time to review the data, I can say that this argument is false. It looks like you carefully selected a few players to "prove" your desired outcome. (What made me suspicious was the inexplicable exclusion of Lemieux).

I looked at the breakdown for the 100 highest scoring players in NHL history (coincidentally, these are exactly 100 players who have scored 1,000 points). I used the same method - games were classified into either "wins" or "everything else" (which includes regulation losses, overtime losses, shootout losses, and ties). I then calculated the split between goals and assists for each player.

Example - Daniel Sedin won 670 games, in which he scored 268 goals and 441 assists (37.8% of his points were goals). He played in 636 games with any other outcome, in which he scored 125 goals and 207 assists (for essentially the same breakdown - 37.7%).

Looking at the top 100 players together, the result is very similar. In wins, goals comprise 39.5% of these players' points, and all other outcomes, goals comprise 38.8% of their points. (In practice, this means that if a player scored 100 points over the course of the season, and his team won and lost 40 games each, we would expect the player to have something like a 20 goal / 30 assist split in wins versus a 19 goal / 31 assist split in losses).

All the names you presented rank very high on the list in terms of skewing towards goals in wins. (I don't dispute that some players follow this pattern - but many of them don't, and you didn't acknowledge that reality). There are a lot of big names that have very similar splits (call it +/-2% in either direction - including Lemieux, Crosby, and Jagr). There are several players who do the opposite, and skew heavily towards assists in wins (Bourque, Clarke, Esposito, Sakic, Yzerman, Bossy, etc).

We all enjoy reading about new ideas here, but you need to make sure you're giving an honest summary of the data, and not just cherry-picking the examples that support your argument.

 

[Nadal On Clay]

Ah, so it’s mostly a matter of playing style preference. I see.

 

[rmartin65]

Yeah ok so boil it down, if you really like the balance of the Jagr and Beliveau that’s fine, if you value the sheer dominance in the more regarded important category (and here we’re talking top 1s not just consistent top 5) then you probably go Ovechkin. Said you could go either way on either of those vs Ovechkin very many posts ago

Top 1s only makes Ovechkin look worse as an assist producer- all those top 1 goal finishes, only 1 top 1 points finish.

My argument was never that Ovechkin didn't belong in this discussion; it is that Ovechkin is an abysmal assist producer among this group of players. Nothing that has been presented here disputes that.

The three other big modern names in this styling

They're not top 10. But they're sprinting there.

Man, I have a hard time seeing those guys as top 10 candidates... but they don't look terribly out of place, do they. Especially considering that they are fighting among each other (and McDavid) for these spots.

And then we also have Makar, who I think is a potential top 20 candidate. We are either dramatically overrating contemporary players, or we are living in a great era for talent. Probably a little of column A, a little of column B.

 

[Overrated]

Assists should be devalued. They're assists.

Hockey has to be the only sport where assists are considered equivalent to goals. Absolute sillysauce.

Well at least in soccer these have to be non rebounded direct assists. In hockey even secondary and rebounded assists are considered equal to goals.

I do like the point system but goals will always trump assists.

 

[wetcoast]

In the absence of film, the written records of those who (ostensibly) watched the players play are really all we have to evaluate those players. And the more sources (papers, articles over time, interviews, etc) we get, the more likely it is that the cream of the crop rise to the top. It certainly doesn't mean we are ever going to get a 100% understanding, but it's better than just throwing up our hands and going "welp..."

Sure using accounts from the day is useful but we should always have the same critical analysis filter for every player and era and sometimes that comes up a little short.

 

[WarriorofTime]

Top 1s only makes Ovechkin look worse as an assist producer- all those top 1 goal finishes, only 1 top 1 points finish.

I’ve explained the 1.7 multiplier. Points tend to correlate higher with the big assist guys accordingly. Iginla, Ovechkin, McDavid. That’s the list of players that won both the Rocket Richard and Art Ross trophy in the same season since the rocket became an award. Add in Lemieux retro rocket in ‘96 and that’s the fourth and other time it happened in the globalized league (35 years).

 

[WarriorofTime]

Man, I have a hard time seeing those guys as top 10 candidates... but they don't look terribly out of place, do they. Especially considering that they are fighting among each other (and McDavid) for these spots.

And then we also have Makar, who I think is a potential top 20 candidate. We are either dramatically overrating contemporary players, or we are living in a great era for talent. Probably a little of column A, a little of column B.

Maybe just let the guys in their prime play it out a bit more before capping anyone.