Amazing player no doubt.
However, neither did he have elite scoring ability, nor amazing PPG. Of course he's 7th overall in PPG. He was a very consistent scorer. In order to call him an amazing PPG player he would have had to crack 1,5PPg at least one, imo. He was a very consistent scorer but he never really stood out that much.
As for goal scoring, he simply cannot be called elite.
Topped out at 30 goals twice. His best GPG is 0.46, average 0.35 Sorry that's not good enough to call him an elite goal scorer.
Don't get me wrong waht an amazing player he was. But imo he gets a little overrated in terms of offensive production.
Interesting timing to see this right after I made a post about a study I've done with a new approach for ranking who are the best point producers of all time.
Your argument about Forsberg's scoring ability is in part based on cumulative numbers, as in him topping 30 goals only twice.
The original poster praised his
ability, however. Forsberg was an extreme case of a player with pass first mentality. He didn't choose to primarily go for goal scoring. Unless he was pissed off or played in clutch/big games situations. It's hard to find a completely objective definition of clutch situation and compare players' G/G in those situations of course, but the playoffs are certainly something approaching that.
Forsberg's career playoff G/G is 0.424. 43rd all time. Compare to his generation and that career playoff G/G is higher than for example Jagr's and Selanne's. Comparing him to the all time field we should note he played during some high scoring years, but definitely during some low scoring years as well.
As for him "never scoring 1.5 PG" that has more to do with the era he played under. He did score 1.41 P/G in 02/03, which resulted in a win margin of 20.41% over the 2nd highest P/G that season.
That's the 23rd highest P/G win margin all time. Among the win margins topping Forsberg's best one 11 are by Gretzky or Lemieux, so looking past them he's definitely up there with heavy weight names.
Forsberg was number one in P/G two times (three times if you count a season he only played 9 games but I think we agree that shouldn't be counted).
He was top 10 in 8 out of the 11 seasons in which he played 30% or more of the regular season games. That top 10 percentage, 73, is 8th all time (that particular view point punishes those who played into their late 30's and early 40's, however. It's not among the main aspects I've looked at in my study).
In short: His P/G is certainly amazing. He's really up there (around 20th place) all time at out producing his own competition.
His scoring ability was awesome too, altough his acumulate goal totals in the regular seasons more reflect those of a pass first, two way center.
If you're curious about this study I've made I just posted about it.
http://hfboards.mandatory.com/showthread.php?t=2216843