What Might Moose Watson's Stats Have Looked Like If He Was In the NHL?
Moose Watson isn't impossible to compare to NHL players - there are plenty of players of known value, who played between 16 and 61 games as forwards in the SOHA. I basically made a rather simplistic formula that you should all be able to follow, in order to come to a reasonable conclusion about his NHL-level offensive capabilities. Basically, the more games a player played in the SOHA, the more valuable their data becomes and the more it weighs into the final result.
First, Harry Watson scored 84 points in 46 SOHA games for 1.82 PPG. He had 47 in 27 playoff games (including Allan Cup) for 1.74 PPG.
Here are some comparables:
Bert McCaffrey
McCaffrey joined the NHL rather late, and by the time he left, he was among the NHL's oldest players. He was decent enough that he was taken in AAA10. He had a pedestrian 73 points in 260 games, but this was at the ages of 31 to 37, and through the NHL's inagural dead puck era. During the range of his career, Cook and Denneny badly outscored him past age 31, and he tied Frank Fredrickson. His PPG average at the same ages in the same period was similar to Punch Broadbent and Ty Arbour, a very good western player who came over post-merger and didn't have quite the success that Art Gagne did. McCaffrey also had 3 points in 8 playoff games. In the SOHA, McCaffrey played 61 regular season games and 23 playoff games, averaging 1.31 and 1.08 PPG. Conclusion: Watson outscored McCaffrey by 39% and 61% in the OHA, and likely would have done the same in the NHL had he played at those ages.
Shorty Green
Green was not an excellent player, but he had flashes of greatness, particularly in 1925. He has likely found his niche as a 4th line MLD player. In the SOHA he played 16 and 14 games, averaging 2.00 and 2.07 PPG from age 27 to 30. Conclusion: Watson scored at 91% and 84% of Green's rate in the SOHA. Green is, however, the smallest sample size here.
Ernie Parkes
Parkes was an average PCHA player who put up 30 points in 83 games over 3 seasons, and 0 in 17 games at age 27 in the NHL. In the SOHA he had 2.09 and 0.92 PPG in 53 and 12 games. Conclusion: Watson scored at 87% and 189% of Parkes' rate in the SOHA.
Carson Cooper
Carson Cooper's value is well-known. He's an MLD first line winger who was 2nd and 3rd in the NHL in goals. He averaged 2.33 and 1.50 PPG in the SOHA. Conclusion: Watson scored at 78% and 116% of Cooper's rate in the SOHA.
Billy Burch
Burch is a 2nd-4th-line ATD player who won a Hart trophy. He scored 1.95 and 1.50 PPG in the SOHA over 19 and 2 games. Conclusion: Watson scored at 93% and 116% of Burch's rates in the SOHA.
Hap Day
Day is in the ATD because of his time as a defenseman. But he was a very good NHL forward for a few years, too. He had 54 points in 106 games from age 23-25 and 0 points in 2 playoff games. I assume he was a forward in his SOHA days, because he scored 1.45 and 0.87 PPG in 22 and 8 games in the SOHA. Conclusion: Watson scored at 126% and 198% of Day's rate in the SOHA.
Normie Himes
Himes is an average to good 2nd line MLD center. He was a one-man show for the NY Americans from age 23-31 in the NHL, scoring 219 points in 402 games. He scored 0.92 and 1.00 PPG in the SOHA. Conclusion: Watson scored at 198% and 174% of Himes' rates in the SOHA.
Bill Carson
Carson was a very good NHL player for a very short time. In 4 seasons, three of them very low-scoring, he had 78 points in 159 games. He was top-10 in goals twice and then top-10 in assists another year. He had 1.69 and 2.06 PPG in 70 and 16 SOHA games. Conclusion: Watson scored at 108% and 84% of Cooper's rate in the SOHA.
Watson played from age 18 through 27 in the SOHA. (he played very sporadically for 7 more years) We have no comparables from ages 18-21 but we have a minimum of three at each age from 23 through 32, so let's go with those as his ten-year period.
I made a chart with each of these 8 comparables, and the number of adjusted points they scored at each age according to hockey-reference.com. I then multiplied these numbers by Watson's factor (1.16 if he scored at 116% of that player's rate, for example). Then I multiplied those numbers by the total number of SOHA games of that player, so that a guy who played 55 SOHA games would be much more "certain" than a guy who played 16. here are the adjusted point totals I came up with for Watson after shifting by just one year so that his whole career can be stated in NHL terms:
age 23 (19) - 1918: 54
age 24 (20) - 1919: 62
age 25 (21) - 1920: 34
age 26 (22) - 1921: 101
age 27 (23) - 1922: 71
age 28 (24) - 1923: 85
age 29 (25) - 1924: 77
age 30 (26) - 1925: 98
age 31 (27) - 1926: 76
age 32 (28) - 1927: 61
This translates into point totals of about 32, 16, 19, 45, 32, 32, 17, 41, 20, and 14.
Based on these totals it is plausible that perhaps he could have led the NHL in points once and been the top-5 as many as five times; however, due to the timeshifting I did, this is far from certain.
After the NHL's first ten seasons, Watson may have had 268 points in about 263 games. (I used 263 games as this is the most anyone played during that time, and this period represents his ten-year prime and only some of other players' primes)
263 points would have seen him 2nd all-time behind Cy Denneny's 327 points by the end of the 1927 season. His 1.02 PPG average would have been well behind what Malone, Lalonde, and Denneny put up, a bit behind Dye and defenseman Harry Cameron, and slightly ahead of Jack Darragh (weaker HHOFer), Frank Nighbor (very valuable player who was aging and fading offensively), Corb Denneny (strong Odie Cleghorn-like non-HHOF offensive player), and Reg Noble (although this includes three seasons as a defenseman; Noble performed at a Babe Dye clip when he was a forward) - Each one of those players comes with a bit of a disclaimer, but it is still very good company to be in.
A few more caveats:
1. I made the assumption that a 23-32-year old Watson was about as good as an 18-27-year old Watson. Maybe he wasn't.
2. Watson missed a year for the war. This was not accounted for.
3. We know much more about how all those other guys played and this ncreases their value relative to Watson, of whom we know very little. (I bet a google news search would help this)
4. This was complete conjecture based on statistics but based on solid logic. However, Watson never played against the best, and these guys did, so anyone who did close to what he may have done without a "what if" attached, should be valued higher than Watson.
Conclusion: Harry Watson appears to have the talent to play a top line role in the MLD. His playoff numbers were very close to his regular season numbers, and maintained over a large period of time as well. Without more information as to how he played, it would be tough selling him as a 3rd/4th line ATD player, but if he was a tough player or defensive star, I see no reason why he couldn't play in the bottom six there. After all, the guy was named a HHOFer, and unlike some earlier amateurs, his pro contemporaries were of outstanding stature. It is fair to speculate that he was directly compared to them when the HHOF was voting on him just 30 years after he last played.