Goons with spike seasons, and how they happened.

[Johnny Engine]

The Donald Brashear talk in the other thread had me thinking about seasons where guys employed only for their fists scored double digit goals, or in the neighborhood of 30 points all of a sudden. I'm not interested in your Proberts and Simons here - that's a different level of player and we know they got real time with real stars for at least a season. I'm looking at guys whose ability to play NHL hockey at all was sometimes question, guys who would get the "he can play a little" label from their hometown fans and no one else most of the time. Guys like:

Gino Odjick

1993-94: This was obviously Bure. 9 of his 16 goals assisted by Bure, 7 of his 13 assists also involved Bure. And of course it's a well known story that they played together and were good friends. I'm always wary of stories like these when they involve players who should have a massive disparity in their roles - Bure couldn't have been playing all or even a big chunk of his time with Odjick, could he? But in this case it seems more true than usual, at least for a period of time. Odjick is also the most frequent scorer on Bure's assists this year, and Odjick's other frequent collaborators are real hockey players - guys like Ronning and Adams. Lastly almost all of Odjick's scoring is crammed into the first half of the year, which tells me that 1) a decision was made to quit using this arrangement so much and 2) Odjick was on a 30-15-45 pace by January 12th, which he'd absolutely have to be getting real time with skilled linedmates to pull off.

Tie Domi

There are 3 seasons to speak of here, some more interesting than others. You could argue that these 3 seasons make him a bit of a reach for this thread, I don't think he'd have ever made it to the NHL without his fists, and the contributions he made as he improved and learned to use his pretty good wheels to his advantage are gravy, and don't even really show up until his late 20s.

1996-97: The year where they traded everybody, so Domi probably got promoted at some point. Or rather, his scoring logs suggest that the roster was turning over so often that he frequently got to play with some decent players - Sundin, Gilmour and Muller all show up frequently, and there's also lots of Todd Warriner and Darby Hendrickson, who'd have been no worse than third liners for most of this car wreck of a season. His most common collaborator was Wendel Clark, but not to the point where he looks like a full time linemate.

2000-01: most of his collaborators are grinders and he shot 21%. This is nothing. Next.

2002-03: This team is way too deep to expect Tie Domi on a scoring line. This is the one year where the Leafs committed to giving Sundin real star wingers to work with - mostly Mogilny and then Roberts after his surgery - and then there are several lines worth of middling guys, from the last bit of worthwhile hockey we get out of Hoglund and Renberg, to the first worthwhile season of Nik Antropov, and then even Owen Nolan joins the party. But he puts up career highs, has a secondary role on the power play, and does most of it with Robert Reichel. The two of them played on a line together in the 2002 playoffs and were far better defensively than they had any right to be, and it's possible Quinn kept this going because making any other use of Reichel at this juncture had to be challenging. It's easy to see the fit, as Reichel can make plays but was pathologically uninvolved with almost everything happening on the ice , while Domi was all-work-no-brains, and could at very least get to where he needed to be quickly. They collaborated on 13 different goals, which is more than Reichel himself did in the playoffs after age 23. Worth noting that Pat Quinn was also in charge of our first example.

Georges Laraque

2000-01: This is a hard one to figure out. There are two separate periods - mid to late October and then most of December, where Laraque is playing real boy minutes, and about a third of his points come is those two stints. Then he has an absolutely wild March where he's still only playing 7-10 minutes a game, but shooting 38%, and banks 11 more points. Rem Murray is involved with 7 of his points in March, but only two in the rest of the year, and he's not a guy who should be turning plugs into scorers. Doug Weight is involved with 7 of his points, but interspersed throughout the year so there never seems to be a point where Weight is carrying him around.

Any other examples we could dive into? And can any Oilers fan offer a unified explanation of Laraque's big season?

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[tabness]

Joey Kocur 1989-1990, playing on Yzerman's right got him to double his stats and even gave him a bit of confidence himself

 

[mrhockey193195]

Chris Simon scored 29 goals and 49 points in 99-00, and I believe that season he was playing a good amount as LW to Oates & Bondra (but someone please correct me if I'm wrong!)

 

[Crosby2010]

Not that Bob Probert couldn't score on his own, but in 1988 playing with Yzerman (I assume he was on Yzerman's wing) gave him that career high of 29 goals and 62 points. Also got him in the All-Star game. Three other years with at least 40 points, but 1988 was definitely his best year that stood out. Also worth noting that Probert always played in the playoffs when his team was in it. He had 21 playoff points in 1988. Oates must have been centering him that spring since Yzerman missed most of the playoffs. It took Fedorov in 1995 before a Wing eclipsed Proberts franchise record for points in a single playoff.

 

[carjackmalone]

Al Secord 50 goals 300 Pim

 

[Johnny Engine]

Joey Kocur 1989-1990, playing on Yzerman's right got him to double his stats and even gave him a bit of confidence himself

I think the interesting thing about this is that it coincides directly with Probert derailing his career for a while, so another guy with some similar characteristics got to be Bob Probert for a season. I'd question how much this pairing stuck together (is Joey Kocur out there for 16 or 17 even strength minutes all year? I'd be surprised), but unlike Odjick, he scored at a similar pace all year.

 

[tabness]

I think the interesting thing about this is that it coincides directly with Probert derailing his career for a while, so another guy with some similar characteristics got to be Bob Probert for a season. I'd question how much this pairing stuck together (is Joey Kocur out there for 16 or 17 even strength minutes all year? I'd be surprised), but unlike Odjick, he scored at a similar pace all year.

Well technically Probie had his issues begin the year before but the Wings had Paul MacLean at the time to replace.

Kocur did play a lot that year but of course no other Wings forward played as much as Yzerman or even Gallant, so while he was pretty consistently on their right throughout the year, so was Dave Barr for parts of the games.

 

[The Panther]

Keep in mind that Tie Domi was (by today's standard) a first round draft choice.

 

[Minnesota Knudsens]

I don’t know if you’d count Marty McSorely, but in ‘92/‘93, 15 goals and 41 points while racking up almost 400 PIMs in 81 games is pretty impressive for a defender. He managed 15 goal seasons a few times and might have been more consistent but missed a lot of games per season.

 

[Hockey Outsider]

Chris Simon scored 29 goals and 49 points in 99-00, and I believe that season he was playing a good amount as LW to Oates & Bondra (but someone please correct me if I'm wrong!)

Chris Simon missed three weeks from late November to mid December 1999. As far as I can tell, he only started playing regularly with Adam Oates upon his return.

From December 15th until the end of the regular season, Simon scored 25 goals in 53 games (a pace of 39 goals over a full season). Oates assisted on 15 of those 25 goals. During that span, incredibly, Simon was tied for 7th in the league in goals (he was tied with or ahead of some big names - Robitaille, LeClair, Sakic, Jagr, Selanne, Fedorov, Sundin, etc).

 

[markymarc1215]

Chris Nilan had 21 goals and 358 penalty minutes in the 84-85 season.

 

[MadArcand]

Nick Kypreos in 92-93 with Hartford, scored 17 goals and 27 points alongside 325 penalty minutes. Seems to have played on 3rd line with Mark Janssens for the most part, but there's a hot streak around mid season where he collaborates a lot with Terry Yake (who had a very good year).

 

[Johnny Engine]

Keep in mind that Tie Domi was (by today's standard) a first round draft choice.

I both agree and disagree with some of the things you're implying here.

I don't really agree with looking at draft picks this way - the purpose of a draft pick is to fill a job, not to rank junior players, and league size is going to affect not only how many jobs are available, what jobs a team is looking to fill, and the risk factor involved when one goes bust. The very same draft is where the quote comes from "we drafted Mike to protect our franchise...Link to protect Mike...should have drafted a lawyer to protect Link". And while I can't say Domi was drafted "to protect Scott Pearson", or whatever, there's an underlying logic at work where the future fortunes of the team ride on whether Pearson is any good (sigh), and then you hope to backfill the necessary jobs left on Pearson's team with guys like Domi. This remains true whether the first team gets to draft their first Domi/Link at #22, #33 or whenever.

I do agree that Domi was a good enough prospect to be given a fair shot as an NHL player from day one. His offensive production in junior isn't so special that it'd be surprising he turned into a role player, but he was playing hockey. I don't know how to quantify this, but I think it's not until a bit later in history when the talent streams for hockey players and goons really diverged. I remember Jay Rosehill showing up in Leafs camp having never heard of him before, and now he's on the team all of a sudden - his existence no more connected to new guys like Kadri, Schenn, Kulemin, Tlusty than he would be if they hired him as a designer for the marketing team. The other thing about Domi is that you might look at his wheels and think you could develop a better player than he already was. Arguably the Leafs accomplished this.

As an Edmonton guy, you have anything more on Laraque's 13-16-29 season that I didn't catch?

 

[Johnny Engine]

Nick Kypreos in 92-93 with Hartford, scored 17 goals and 27 points alongside 325 penalty minutes. Seems to have played on 3rd line with Mark Janssens for the most part, but there's a hot streak around mid season where he collaborates a lot with Terry Yake (who had a very good year).

Janssens himself is a decent answer for this thread for the same season - lots of PIMs, never hit double digit goals and only barely hit double digit assists ever again. Looks like that pairing really worked for whatever reason, and you can't really say, "oh, it was 1993" because they only got a couple of points against the Sharks and Senators, and even more curiously the new TV timeout rule should have deemphasized the on-ice role of players like Kypreos and Janssens.

 

[MadArcand]

Janssens himself is a decent answer for this thread for the same season - lots of PIMs, never hit double digit goals and only barely hit double digit assists ever again. Looks like that pairing really worked for whatever reason, and you can't really say, "oh, it was 1993" because they only got a couple of points against the Sharks and Senators, and even more curiously the new TV timeout rule should have deemphasized the on-ice role of players like Kypreos and Janssens.

Yeah, though Janssens doesn't qualify as goon. He was the prototypical 4th line center, all face-offs, defense and grit. Not any offense to speak of, but legit player.

 

[Johnny Engine]

Yeah, though Janssens doesn't qualify as goon. He was the prototypical 4th line center, all face-offs, defense and grit. Not any offense to speak of, but legit player.

Yeah, that's on me for deviating from the definition of goon I used in the original post (because if you don't define it, it just becomes "tough guy who you don't like"). Still interesting that both he and Kypreos scored an uncharacteristically large amount that season (while getting in at least a dozen fights, along with the other things he usually did).

 

[MadArcand]

Yeah, that's on me for deviating from the definition of goon I used in the original post (because if you don't define it, it just becomes "tough guy who you don't like"). Still interesting that both he and Kypreos scored an uncharacteristically large amount that season (while getting in at least a dozen fights, along with the other things he usually did).

I think it's because they really played 3rd line minutes, with Yake or Nylander on RW.