No, you're arguing that counting goals is "objective" and counting assists is "subjective." It's ahistorical and nonsensical.
I think before you dismiss someone's point as "ahistorical" and "nonsensical" you should make an effort to understand them. But right away you're just throwing these words at me and writing a long post which illustrates that you don't get me at all.
What you've been arguing is that there is a subjective level of contribution to a goal that someone with an assist makes. Sure. Related, you're arguing that someone who scores makes an objectively greater contribution to the scoring of the goal. That's easily disproven. Here's how:
I think almost everything to the valuation of a player's offensive value is subjective. And by subjective I mean that's it's conceptual and therefore open to a great deal of debate.
Assists are a totally good metric and I'm glad we have them. However not all of them are equal and not all of them are counted. There's no tertiary assist for example and the only reason we don't have one is because it would muddy the way we've become accustomed to look at production. It would muddy everything.
This doesn't change the fact that tertiary assists exist. But our attitudes and counting of them makes the whole thing subjective.
Why is Tim Kerr not in the Hall of Fame? He was a goal-scoring beast: four straight seasons with north of 50 goals and another with 48. Those are objective facts, right? Why aren't we mentioning him in the same breath as Ovechkin?
Because 1) He got hurt and had a relatively short career and 2) Because he played in the 80s and his numbers are inflated. There might be some other reasons too, but these come to mind right away.
Because how goals are scored matters. Kerr was a garbage man. He parked in front of the net and cleaned up a lot of rebounds, got a lot of tip-ins and deflections. The fact that we're not mentioning Tim Kerr in the same breath as Ovechkin is because Ovechkin scores goals with a good shot, not because he has the ability to withstand abuse and clean up the trash.
Oh lol. These are definitely not the reasons we don't equate Tim Kerr with Ovechkin. Please tell me you're not serious. I am seriously chuckling here. But okay, I'll keep reading.
So we can pore over details of every goal and start assigning weight to how much each player in a scoring play contributes to a goal. Will the goal-scorer always be the one who contributes the most to the play? No. Guys get credit for goals when they were facing away from the net and the puck has literally bounced off their ass. So should we start counting deflected/tipped goals or goals score off rebounds as less?
I don't remember ever saying that the goal scorer always contributes the most to a play. Not sure where you're getting this from. Are you sure you have read and understood my posts?
Even with Ovechkin's specialty: the one-timer. It's a result of Ovechkin's shot for sure. But it also doesn't happen if A) the player passing doesn't lay out a perfect pass and B) other players don't adequately work the puck around so that Ovechkin is in the clear.
Um, no argument from me.
Hockey's a team game. Goals almost never happen just because of one player. It's a key reason why it's one of the few sports in which multiple assists are awarded on goals. Want to argue that the NHL hands out assists too easily? I will agree with that. However, claiming that goals are "objective" and assists are "subjective" is foolish and completely misunderstands how the game is played and how games are ultimately won.
You've clearly decimated a strawman here, but not my argument.
I think one aspect to the misunderstanding is that you're assuming that I believe that we should only value "objective" things and not speak of "subjective" things. But I believe quite the opposite: the subjective things are the most interesting part and is what we should be most focused upon.
What I object to is the view of stats that sees them as objective, particularly points. Even the goal as a stat is highly variable, because the value of a goal changes depending on the goal-scoring context. You might know that I am a big believer in adjusted stats.
As I've said, the only thing I see as objective to offensive production is the act of scoring a goal. That's objective. You last touch the puck and it goes in, it's your goal.
What I don't believe is in the idea that "points" is the divine metric by which we should measure all production. People keep using it that way and I keep saying that "it's subjective," which is another way of saying that it doesn't tell the whole story. Likewise when people dismiss Ovechkin's offensive dominance by saying "he only won one Art Ross," this doesn't tell the whole story. There's much more ground to cover there.
I'm having some trouble with HF formatting so the below quote is in error. Apologies.
