Pavel Bure 2000-01 season - 59 goals, no other Panther hits 15 or surpasses 37 points.

[Breakfast of Champs]

This season is really underrated, 59 goals while having no teammates above 37 points....that's insanity. Is this the record for most amount of goals ahead of next highest pts for a teammate? (+22). This was in the DPE as well. If he had a true elite Centre we could be looking at 70+

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[vadim sharifijanov]

to be fair, his two centers each only played ~ half the season, so you kind of have to add kozlov and sillinger’s point totals together, then subtract a bit for the overlap

partial statistical fluke aside, the precedent for this is phantom joe malone

 

[Rengorlex]

Part of this is just the player Bure was. He had little concern of making his linemates better.

 

[Dean Char]

Amazing what hanging around neutral zone for some cherry picking will do for the rest of team

 

[MarkusNaslund19]

Yeah this season isn't as impressive as it sounds.

Bure was basically checked out that season in any zone when he didn't have the puck. Beautiful to watch when he did, but he knew the team was hopeless and he played like it. Goal chasing.

Impressive in a way, but in no way indicative of a version of Bure that was helping his team win (though he did that twice in Van with similar numbers as a far superior 200 foot player).

 

[The Panther]

Yes, it's a very impressive individual scoring achievement, given how poor Florida was at scoring.

That said, the team badly sagged from the year prior (22 point drop in the standings), and Bure went from +25 to -2. Also, wasn't this the season he scored the all-time most empty-net goals?

Still impressive, though.

 

[Speedtrials]

Yup, love Bure, but during this time he was only locked in on scoring goals. Playing a system or team game wasn't in the cards.

 

[Nathaniel Skywalker]

He was a pure cherry picker this season

 

[SoundwaveIsCharisma]

As other have stated, he was just stat padding this season. In terms of him doing better with an elite C...I'm not so sure about that, he was so puck dominant during this time that I don't think having an elite C would've changed his production significantly. I do think an elite offensive dman would have just with them consistently getting him the puck in stride on the breakout.

 

[sr edler]

Bure's 2000–01 season isn't any different than any of Ovechkin's 6 latest Rocket Richard seasons, outside of being clearly better than two of them where Ovi barely cracked 20 assists. Ovechkin also won a 1st team all-star selection with 28 assists, lol, on a way better team. Bure this season had 33 assists.

 

[sr edler]

 

[Johnny Engine]

to be fair, his two centers each only played ~ half the season, so you kind of have to add kozlov and sillinger’s point totals together, then subtract a bit for the overlap

partial statistical fluke aside, the precedent for this is phantom joe malone

Felt like checking some of the specifics here:

Sillinger misses 12 games from Nov 10-Dec 4
Traded with 12 games left in the season before March 14
There are 3 other stray games missed I'm not sure of

Kozlov misses 6 games from Oct 27-Nov 8
another 6 games from Nov 17-27
9 games between December 15-30
5 games between March 15-23
misses the last 4 games of the season.
2 games I'm not sure of.

So there was nothing resembling a first line centre in Florida from March 15th onwards - Koslov didn't get a point in the March 28th game where he tried to come back so we can ignore that.

During this period, the Panther's scoring looks like this:

NHL Stats

The official source for NHL Stats including skaters, goalies, teams stats and more.

www.nhl.com

Bure's obviously killing it as a one man show, but Kevyn Adams might be getting some downstream benefit from being the Real NHL Centre on hand. Only 4 of his points are with Bure in this period, but I wouldn't fuss too much if you wanted to say there's some extra unmeasured benefit to being the best centre on a team with Bure.

Before that, it looks like this:

NHL Stats

The official source for NHL Stats including skaters, goalies, teams stats and more.

www.nhl.com

If Koslov was Florida's first preference for Bure's regular linemate, it may be useful looking at Sillinger's output in the two stretches Koslov missed - and in those stretches he had 11 points in 15 games, a 60 point pace. He'd have been on a 47 point pace while Kozlov was in the lineup.

Kozlov was a point per game in the 6 games he managed to play in Sillinger's longest absense, 56 point pace outside of that.

So I would say that Bure had a real centre for about 3 quarters of the season, and the Panthers would look like a plausable if top-heavy team in that state. However, in that other quarter season, Bure was exactly the same player and kept scoring.

 

[ContrarianGoaltender]

I certainly agree that Bure's margin of scoring victory over teammates that season is very overrated by people who just pull up the team's Hockey Reference page. I would add in the firing of Terry Murray and Ray Whitney's back injury as two significant factors in Bure's stats turning out as they did.

After Florida's slow start, Murray was fired after the December 27 game against the Flyers. Up to that point, Bure had 31 points and was leading Whitney by just 9 points, even though Whitney had 7 fewer GP. Whitney was outscoring Bure on the PP, as he also done the season before. At even strength Bure (22) and Whitney (14) stood well out from the rest of the team, which had eight forwards with between 6 and 9 ESP. If Whitney had stayed healthy over the rest of the season, Bure's dominance over his team would probably have looked something like it did in 1999-00 (32% lead over 2nd place).

Under Murray, it looks like both of Florida's offensive stars had a revolving cast of linemates. Up to that point in the season, the two forwards that had combined the most with Bure on even strength goals were Greg Adams and Rob Niedermayer, while for Whitney it was Ivan Novoseltsev and a 22-year old, pre-breakout Olli Jokinen. Bure was also averaging 24:11 per game in ice time, including a crazy 17:32 at even strength, which easily led all forwards (33 seconds above Jagr and 53 seconds ahead of Sakic) and would have been the 3rd highest mark of the entire Dead Puck Era, despite the huge spike in PPs in the first half of 2000-01.

After the coaching change and with Whitney first playing hurt and then missing a bunch of time before being traded at the deadline, Bure took over completely as the #1 option on the power play, scoring 21 PPP to more than double the next best on his team over that stretch (Kozlov/Dan Boyle at 9). At even strength, he started to play consistently with Kozlov and Nilson, while his ice time dropped to 16:08 per game at ES (just 9th among forwards during that stretch) and 22:30 overall, even though PPs dropped in the second half and the ES ice time of all of his teammates except the 4th liners increased.

In other words, Murray seems to have stifled his team's offence while almost certainly overplaying Bure at 5-on-5, but the Russian Rocket didn't really even stand out that much because of Ray Whitney. On the other hand, Duane Sutter gave Bure a more favourable deployment with consistent linemates at ES while also running everything through him on the power play, maximizing Bure's offence while also allowing him to massively outscore the rest of a team that had lost its only real secondary offensive threat.

Finally, as @SoundwaveIsCharisma already mentioned, if you want to accurately rate Bure's support you need to consider what kind of defencemen the team has. Robert Svehla, Dan Boyle, Anders Eriksson and Bret Hedican were actually a pretty strong group in terms of moving the puck. Out of Bure's 35 ES goals, 9 of them were unassisted or only assisted by defencemen and/or goalies, which wasn't unusual at all for him, and he actually combined with Svehla on as many ES goals as he did with Kozlov.

 

[ozzie]

He was actually spotted on his own side of the red line less times than the 59 goals he scored, obviously not including face offs.

 

[NigerianNightmare]

Bure had probably zero defensive responsibilities that season. The Panthers were a weak team, hopeless as someone rightly said. So Bure could focus on his personal stats instead of going for the Cup

 

[sr edler]

No one is "going for the Cup" in the regular season unless you mean players on such stacked teams they don't have to go 100% all the way, thus "going for the Cup" by being allowed to rest themselves for the post-season because teammates can help out by carrying the load. Such as Detroit after 1996 or Tampa after 2019, et cetera.

Insinuating that the 00–01 Panthers would have had a higher chance making the playoffs if Bure tried to turn himself into Jere Lehtinen seems a little odd to me.

Bure's 00–01 is probably his 4th (or 5th) best season at best, but it's still getting unwarranted scorn here by people regurgitating the same old boring main board-ish talking points (or not even talking points, but merely one-liners or one-sentences).

I find it a bit odd that people single out a guy for 33 assists (on a below average team), but then fail to level the same type of criticism towards another high profile guy with 21 or 28 assists (on an above average team) because the other guy is more popular. Or single out a guy for bad defense, but fail to level the same type of criticism towards equally high profile players with arguably worse defense because they're more popular. Bure was never –35 in a season like Ovechkin. Or –27 in a season like Brett Hull where the Blues still made the playoffs with a positive goal-differential. Or –21 in a season like Brett Hull on a team that then not only made the playoffs but the Stanley Cup Finals. Or –11 in a season like Selänne where the Sharks still made the playoffs and all the other regulars were + players.

Brett Hull was –21 on the 99–00 Dallas Stars, who then made the SCFs, but still it's Pavel Bure turned into the big scape...

But alas. I've come to realize Bure will probably always be this polarizing player, with unnecessary hyperbole around him. It just is what it is at this point.

 

[sr edler]

I wonder if there's an overlap between posters thinking Bure's 00–01 was a shameful season for his defensive effort and thinking Patrick Kane on the 21–22 Blackhawks was a player "aging like a fine wine", because there sure wasn't any tangible difference between their respective defensive efforts.

If only Kane this season on the Hawks had tried to emulate peak Magnus Arvedson, his team probably had made the playoffs.

 

[buffalowing88]

Part of this is just the player Bure was. He had little concern of making his linemates better.

I distinctly remember ESPN showing his highlights from a game against Pittsburgh that winter where my teammates were sitting at the rink and watching Matio win against Florida in OT. The goal prior to that, for Florida, was Bure and that man did not come back to even try on defense. He sat at center ice and someone cleared it up to him and he scored. It was honestly pretty gross.

 

[JackSlater]

No one is "going for the Cup" in the regular season unless you mean players on such stacked teams they don't have to go 100% all the way, thus "going for the Cup" by being allowed to rest themselves for the post-season because teammates can help out by carrying the load. Such as Detroit after 1996 or Tampa after 2019, et cetera.

Insinuating that the 00–01 Panthers would have had a higher chance making the playoffs if Bure tried to turn himself into Jere Lehtinen seems a little odd to me.

Bure's 00–01 is probably his 4th (or 5th) best season at best, but it's still getting unwarranted scorn here by people regurgitating the same old boring main board-ish talking points (or not even talking points, but merely one-liners or one-sentences).

I find it a bit odd that people single out a guy for 33 assists (on a below average team), but then fail to level the same type of criticism towards another high profile guy with 21 or 28 assists (on an above average team) because the other guy is more popular. Or single out a guy for bad defense, but fail to level the same type of criticism towards equally high profile players with arguably worse defense because they're more popular. Bure was never –35 in a season like Ovechkin. Or –27 in a season like Brett Hull where the Blues still made the playoffs with a positive goal-differential. Or –21 in a season like Brett Hull on a team that then not only made the playoffs but the Stanley Cup Finals. Or –11 in a season like Selänne where the Sharks still made the playoffs and all the other regulars were + players.

Brett Hull was –21 on the 99–00 Dallas Stars, who then made the SCFs, but still it's Pavel Bure turned into the big scape...

But alas. I've come to realize Bure will probably always be this polarizing player, with unnecessary hyperbole around him. It just is what it is at this point.

I wonder if there's an overlap between posters thinking Bure's 00–01 was a shameful season for his defensive effort and thinking Patrick Kane on the 21–22 Blackhawks was a player "aging like a fine wine", because there sure wasn't any tangible difference between their respective defensive efforts.

If only Kane this season on the Hawks had tried to emulate peak Magnus Arvedson, his team probably had made the playoffs.

I'm open to crapping on all of Florida Bure, 2010s Ovechkin, Brett Hull most of the time, and Kane for fairly shamelessly chasing goals/points. Let's throw in post-1972 Esposito as well. Can hear the same old cries that basically amount to "look at the pointsss!"

With Bure, one of my favorite players ever to watch, I didn't even consider what was going on that season a hockey decision. Florida, crappy team in a crappy market, needed something exciting to sell some tickets and Bure could look good for his next contract. The team wasn't going to make the playoffs even if it played in a competent style so why not sell people on seeing a star player score a goal more often than not. The team could have been (marginally) better using Bure in a different manner, but it's still impressive that he was able to play that way and pull it off.

 

[Big Phil]

The problem is it was on such a bad team that year. And Florida was good the year before too. Bure was not interested in defense, and probably got more of a leash than any player in recent memory to do this. The comparisons to current Ovechkin are different in the way that Bure was able to score goals more on his own rather than waiting for someone to set him up. Yes, he cherry picked, but he also had the speed and stickhandling to still score by himself. The past few years Ovechkin has famously just sort of parked himself on the left side waiting for a one-timer to slap. Yes, he is good at it for sure, but even 2001 Bure didn't need teammates to score for him. He may have needed them to play defense for him, but once he had the puck.................

 

[ShelbyZ]

It was also helped by the fact that he averaged more ice time than most top pairing defensemen that season... A quick look at Hockey-Reference for that season and Bure ranks #5 in average ice time with just under 27 minutes trailing only Leetch, Lidstrom, Blake and Pronger. The next forward doesn't appear until #24 and it's Mario Lemieux with just over 2.5 minutes less of avg TOI.

As a Wings fan, I remember watching Red Wings vs. Panthers games during Bure's time in Florida and it always seemed like he was noticeably playing more than Lidstrom...

 

[MadLuke]

I think the fact Bure did something similar the year before while pushing a bad time into the playoff (with a team leading +25), make the critisism a bit mute.

In 2001, -2 for the amount of minutes on that teams is not particularly good but far from bad (no one with lot of minutes was better than +2).

The asterix is OK with me, but Bure scored 60 goals in the high open 90s on a cup chasing team, did it when turning a team around on the dpe and did it on an abyssal team the year after.

It is a strange case of a well maybe he do not score 59 on that team playing in a different way but that does not mean that he does not score at a very similar rate if the panthers keep a playoff bound team around either. And it does not mean that he score more if he get to play with Adam Oates and Brian Leetch

 

[ShelbyZ]

I had forgotten that was the year the Panthers signed an almost 40YO Igor Larionov to be their top line center alongside Bure.

IIRC, it blew up with coaching wanting Larionov to play a different style, then a long term injury before they pretty much just gave him back to the Red Wings.

 

[sr edler]

As a Wings fan, I remember watching Red Wings vs. Panthers games during Bure's time in Florida and it always seemed like he was noticeably playing more than Lidstrom...

Honestly playing that much that particular season most likely shortened his career, his knees were already bummed out, imagine playing that much as a forward then and having to do most of the work yourself because your best forward teammate for half of the season is Marcus Nilson.

 

[shadow1]

It's a crazy stat, but as others pointed out, it's a bit skewed.

Mike Sillinger (34 points in 55GP) and Ray Whitney (31 points in 41GP) were both putting up top-6 numbers before getting traded. Vinny Prospal was acquired in the Sillinger deal and scored 16 points in 34 games. Not great production but add Sillinger + Prospal together...

Lots of moving pieces for the Panthers that season. Crazy season by Bure none-the-less.