How good of a goal scorer is Gordie Howe?

[Cursed Lemon]

Are you sure?

Because without vetting every single calculation, I see that you have Ovechkin with 760 GP in that table, which is the exact number of games he played in his first ten seasons. And your adjusted goals total of 503 is divided by that 760 in order to achieve the result of 0.66.

That's only correct if you either:

1. Adjusted games played upwards by 34 for the 2012-13 season (you did not)
2. Only adjusted his goals in 2012-13 for scoring level and not schedule length (did you? these are your own calculations and not based on HR so you'll have to tell us)

I normalized all player seasons to a 3 GPG scoring rate individually

Ovechkin is as follows:

Might've typoed something in the original screenshot

 

[authentic]

Because it isn't discredited.

It's just slandered by certain posters because adjusted stats don't work in the favor of their favorite players.

Adjusting for scoring environment is perfectly reasonable, no matter how many times people stomp their feet (without making a coherent point).



If Lemieux were the best goal scorer of all time, he'd at the very least have the highest raw season total or the highest adjusted season total of his own era.

Lemieux has neither.

I don’t think it’s that black and white really. 85 goals in 76 games and 69 in 60 when goalies started to get actually halfway decent, has two playoff runs over a goal per game, only player in the modern era who can say that. 69 in 70 in 1996 to go along with 90+ assists, as a visibly worse version of the player he was in his prime against improved defense and butterfly goalies. 35 goals in 43 games at age 35 after retiring for 3.5 years in the dead puck era when goalies started to become Michelin men. Just because Bobby and Brett Hull’s one best season was slightly more dominant or Ovechkin adjust higher on HR doesn’t change that he’s the best goal scorer that ever lived.

 

[Professor What]

I can't take HR's adjusted stats seriously because they assume equal playing time for everyone. In what universe is the first and the fourth line both getting 15 minutes?

 

[MadLuke]

I don’t think it’s that black and white really

Unlike other debate, there is not a black and white answer for the best goalscorer, if you say it is not Lemieux, who ? Ovechkin, one of the Hull, Gretzky, Richard, no one as a clear edge.

No one has the highest adjusted on HR goal in a season and highest raw goals of its era, which leave absolutely no one

 

[seventieslord]

I normalized all player seasons to a 3 GPG scoring rate individually

Ovechkin is as follows:

View attachment 915205

Might've typoed something in the original screenshot

Okay, you literally did exactly what I'm saying. Look at the 2013 season. You adjusted his goals from 32 to 35, and 35 / 48 equals 0.74. he did

I normalized all player seasons to a 3 GPG scoring rate individually

Ovechkin is as follows:

View attachment 915205

Might've typoed something in the original screenshot

Thank you. I can see you only adjusted his goals for league-wide offense levels and not for schedule length. Your calculations, the way you did them, are mathematically sound.

 

[MadLuke]

The very minor things that I could see missing, is not weighting season length for the 10 years league average, did you use the 48/82 * 2.74 ? this would not move things much if only a single season is of a different lenght and a player play most games all years.

But if Lemieux play 76 games in a very high scoring season in 1989 and only 43 in a very low scoring season 2001, using the average of 1989 and 2001 could make him look better than he was.

The average of the league scored for that player I think should be weighted by the number of game they played those seasons

 

[Midnight Judges]

I don’t think it’s that black and white really. 85 goals in 76 games and 69 in 60 when goalies started to get actually halfway decent, has two playoff runs over a goal per game, only player in the modern era who can say that. 69 in 70 in 1996 to go along with 90+ assists, as a visibly worse version of the player he was in his prime against improved defense and butterfly goalies. 35 goals in 43 games at age 35 after retiring for 3.5 years in the dead puck era when goalies started to become Michelin men. Just because Bobby and Brett Hull’s one best season was slightly more dominant or Ovechkin adjust higher on HR doesn’t change that he’s the best goal scorer that ever lived.

You have to eliminate a key player characteristic (durability) to get Lemieux there. Hockey fans are the only sports fans who discard player availability to this extent.

You have to really really want to put a player with 3 goal scoring titles over a player with 9. Not saying you are doing that but it just doesn’t stand to reason.

 

[authentic]

You have to eliminate a key player characteristic (durability) to get Lemieux there. Hockey fans are the only sports fans who ignore player availability to this extent.

You have to really really want to put a player with 3 goal scoring titles over a player with 9.

That’s why Ovechkin is the greatest. I don’t believe he was a better goal scorer than Lemieux in his prime.

 

[MadLuke]

Hockey fans are the only sports fans who discard player availability to this extent.

Lot of others sports have by plate appearance or by games sports, at least nfl-mlb-nba.

Hockey seem to be the most total season sports of them all.

 

[Midnight Judges]

Lot of others sports have by plate appearance or by games sports, at least nfl-mlb-nba.

Hockey seem to be the most total season sports of them all.

MLB doesn’t count a batting average title unless they have 550 plate appearances.

That’s why Ovechkin is the greatest. I don’t believe he was a better goal scorer than Lemieux in his prime.

And yet he separated himself from other goal scorers in his prime to a demonstrably greater extent than Lemieux did.

 

[MadLuke]

MLB doesn’t count a batting average title unless they have 550 plate appearances.

Been a very long time people looked at something like batting average, OBP, SLG, ops+, not that they not look at career-season totals, but it is a by plate, by inning, by games sports quite a bit.

NBA obviously almost everything people mention is by shots and per games and missing game in the regular season, virtually irrelevant if the teams make the playoff.

NFL of often yards by games, per throw, per carry, completion percentage, almost all the stats you hear are by possession/games, very little per season.

I am not sure about the nhl being particularly less about per games than the rest of sports.

 

[authentic]

MLB doesn’t count a batting average title unless they have 550 plate appearances.



And yet he separated himself from other goal scorers in his prime to a demonstrably greater extent than Lemieux did.

That doesn’t make him the best. Was he going to separate himself from peak Gretzky and Brett Hull?

 

[JackSlater]

You have to eliminate a key player characteristic (durability) to get Lemieux there. Hockey fans are the only sports fans who discard player availability to this extent.

You have to really really want to put a player with 3 goal scoring titles over a player with 9. Not saying you are doing that but it just doesn’t stand to reason.

People are talking about quality (how good) rather than how accomplished whoever is as a goal scorer. You don't become a worse goal scorer because you are injured. You end up less accomplished though.

 

[daver]

It is yes a case of clearly above but by how much the season like the examply you give seeming a bit of a same ballpark they both scored 0.67 gpg were quite similar it seem (by the elite competition and league average, beliveau was a 2.53 gpg league, Howe 2.6).

Factor Beliveau out goal scoring him in the playoff and how far he is to have people argue to be in Top 5 all time and Beliveau never coming up in a top 10 conversation ?

Howe's best season came when league gpg was low (2.40), along with another strong season in 53/54, which is reflected in the better metric to measure relative strength, performance vs. his direct goalscoring peers.

For this reason, looking at raw GPG is not quite fair.

Any thoughts that those years are statistical anomalies or that the league simply was lacking elite offensive talent is tempered by Howe's longevity after his peak. From '55 to '63, he keeps pace with a prime Beliveau and Boom Boom.

For this reason, he deserves to be among the six players in the GOAT list (Richard, Howe, Hull, Wayne, Mario and OV).

Yes, Beliveau can be argued as being a better goalscorer than Howe in the playoffs as much as Howe is the better regular season scorer.

But let's put players in the category of generally bringing more to the offensive table than goalscoring like Wayne and Mario (and Jagr, Crosby and McDavid) vs. mainly goalscorers like Richard, Hull and Ovechkin. I.e. they both lose zero ground to the latter group if placed behind them as goalscorers.

 

[VanIslander]

He is ambidextrious.

And legendary with strong stickhandling one handed while shoving away a check with the other hand, and then somehow putting mustard on a one-handed shot, lifting it top corner.

 

[Midnight Judges]

People are talking about quality (how good) rather than how accomplished whoever is as a goal scorer. You don't become a worse goal scorer because you are injured.

Yes you do. You are quite literally worse for the team if you can’t score any goals during a scheduled game. And it’s better for the team if you can.

Player availability is a prerequisite for being good.

The entire purpose of being on a team is to contribute to the team. If the meaningful metric is changed to per games the player plays, then the implication is that the purpose is not to contribute to the team, but rather to, what, dazzle? Build an individual reputation? Prove what you possibly could have done (but didn’t)? That is a perversion of the objective.

It’s the “me” perspective vs the “team” perspective.

The singular purpose of eliminating durability as a consideration in this context is to history revise Lemieux’s massive glaring weaknesses.

 

[JackSlater]

Yes you do. You are quite literally worse for the team if you can’t score any goals during a scheduled game. And it’s better for the team if you can.

Player availability is a prerequisite for being good.

The entire purpose of being on a team is to contribute to the team. If the meaningful metric is changed to per games the player plays, then the implication is that the purpose is not to contribute to the team, but rather to, what, dazzle? Build an individual reputation? Prove what you could have done (but didn’t)? That is a perversion of the objective.

It’s the “me” perspective vs the “team” perspective.

The singular purpose of eliminating durability as a consideration in this context is to history revise Lemieux’s massive glaring weaknesses.

Wrong. You are very fixated on career value - fine, you've established it. It is not the same as a measure of quality. Players are not resumes, despite that increasingly being the (boring) focus here. This may shocked you, though it won't shock many people - there are people who consider Lemieux to be the best goal scorer ever. Lemieux being consistently injured or retiring early doesn't make him any better or worse as a goal scorer. It makes his career generally worse.

I know your stance already. If you are solely interested in comparing career value and resumes then by all means do so in threads where that is relevant. There are threads about career value and resumes rather than actual players. But if people are interested in comparing the quality of a player, as is the purpose of this thread, there is no need to piss and moan every single time about career value and resumes when it is not the point of the thread. This thread explicitly asks how good Howe was as a goal scorer, not how accomplished or valuable Howe was as a goal scorer. Along the same line people may want to discuss how good, as in a measure of quality, other goal scorers were.

 

[VanIslander]

Player availability is a prerequisite for being good.

Hence neither of Pittsburgh's greatest are on the same tier as 9 & 99.

 

[Midnight Judges]

That doesn’t make him the best. Was he going to separate himself from peak Gretzky and Brett

Ovechkin vs those 1980s goal tenders probably would have been hilariously lopsided.

We will never know. All we know is Ovie crushed the hand he was dealt to a degree that there is no argument for any other player as the greatest goal scorer of all time.

 

[Midnight Judges]

Wrong. You are very fixated on career value - fine, you've established it. It is not the same as a measure of quality. Players are not resumes, despite that increasingly being the (boring) focus here. This may shocked you, though it won't shock many people - there are people who consider Lemieux to be the best goal scorer ever. Lemieux being consistently injured or retiring early doesn't make him any better or worse as a goal scorer. It makes his career generally worse.

I know your stance already. If you are solely interested in comparing career value and resumes then by all means do so in threads where that is relevant. There are threads about career value and resumes rather than actual players. But if people are interested in comparing the quality of a player, as is the purpose of this thread, there is no need to piss and moan every single time about career value and resumes when it is not the point of the thread. This thread explicitly asks how good Howe was as a goal scorer, not how accomplished or valuable Howe was as a goal scorer. Along the same line people may want to discuss how good, as in a measure of quality, other goal scorers were.

I don’t think the OP has the context of the Lemieux crowd always trying to smuggle in arguments that assume durability amounts to precisely nothing.

 

[VanIslander]

OV is a top-5 goal scorer.
He has a machine gun of a shot.

But the sniper Bossy was something breathtaking:

 

[Bear of Bad News]

I don’t think the OP has the context of the Lemieux crowd always trying to smuggle in arguments that assume durability amounts to precisely nothing.

I mean, there's also an "Ovechkin crowd" doing similar things.

People who live in glass houses shouldn't undress.

 

[Michael Farkas]

I think I just had deja vu reading that...

 

[Michael Farkas]

Wrong. You are very fixated on career value - fine, you've established it. It is not the same as a measure of quality. Players are not resumes, despite that increasingly being the (boring) focus here.

In 1998, I was telling everyone..."Dionne and Esposito are just a few goals ahead of him and they played in the wide open 70's. Mike Gartner IS without a DOUBT the 3rd best goal scorer in NHL history."

Then I said "Whoop, there it is", as was the style at the time.

 

[JackSlater]

I don’t think the OP has the context of the Lemieux crowd always trying to smuggle in arguments that assume durability amounts to precisely nothing.

It is not a thread about durability. How good of a goal scorer is Gordie Howe. How good of a goal scorer is Lemieux/Ovechkin/Hull/ whoever else, sure. We can already get a good guess at how good Matthews is as a goal scorer, and if he gets hit by a bus tomorrow his ability doesn't go down. Would be a hell of a problem for his career though. If Howe hung around and the league figured him out that would be a problem I guess, but that is pretty rare among the actual elite goal scorers ever.