Most consistent players

[Professor What]

I've been looking at some of the top players in history and trying to decide what I think is their peak season. Then, I just got to Doug Harvey. It strikes me as extremely difficult to pick just one season and say it's his best. Once the man hit his stride, he was just extremely consistent, and you pretty much knew what you were going to get out of him. It's got me wondering who some of the other players who fit that bill might be. Who do you guys propose?

 

[MadLuke]

The boring answer could be simply Gretzky here, junior, rookie, international, playoff, regular seasons....

92-93-95 are virtually the only ? his whole career at a quick look, after the summer 1991 injury.

Leading 4 Canada cup in scoring in a row, 5 playoff in 6 years (only hole is the round 1 exit), league in ppg 9 years in a row, kept a 200 points by 82 games pace 5 consecutive year.

At a year by year, game stretch by game stretch, period to period insides games, shorthanded, 5v5, powerplay, at any "scope" it seem to always have quite the consistency.

year	PPG def	Ratio of his average
19791980	1.83	82%
19801981	1.97	89%
19811982	2.39	108%
19821983	2.30	103%
19831984	2.49	112%
19841985	2.40	108%
19851986	2.43	109%
19861987	2.31	104%
19871988	2.22	100%
19881989	2.16	97%
19891990	1.97	89%
19901991	2.20	99%
Avg	2.22

Bourque-Lidstrom-Brodeur-Crosby-Ovechkin-Sundin are some others.

 

[Hockey Outsider]

An attempt to quantify this:

For each player, I looked at every possible segment of ten consecutive seasons. I calculated the average number of points per season, along with the standard deviation (a common measure of variance). The output is simply the standard deviation divided by the average. (The "season" is the first season in the ten year segment). The table summarizes the most consistent segment for each player.

This is based on actual (unadjusted) points only. The results could be affected by changes in the length of the schedule and/or changes in the leaguewide scoring average.

Other big names just outside the top twenty include Bucyk, Toews, Hawerchuk, Sittler, Bergeron, Ovechkin, Gretzky, Cournoyer, and Carbonneau.

 

[GlitchMarner]

They've already been mentioned, but the names of Sundin, Crosby and Gretzky came to mind.

When it comes to goal scoring, Ovechkin has to be at the top in terms of consistent excellence.

 

[jigglysquishy]

If I had to pick a best Harvey season it's in the 1955-1956 through 1957-58 time period. Those are the three years he has it all offensively and defensively.

He slips a bit afterwards, but his height is so high that he is still the best in the world.

For my money, he's the most important player in that 5 year dynasty.