Reference - VsX comprehensive summary (1927 to 2023)

[Hockey Outsider]

Here's a thread from 2015 where I look at a method called "VsN" - Vs N - new adjusted scoring system

"N" stands for the number of teams in the league. So the benchmark for 2024 would be the average of the 1st through 32nd highest scorer in the league. The benchmark for 1954 would be the average of the 1st through 6th highest scorer.

Conceptually, that approach seems to make sense. It's drawing on a large enough pool of players that the impact of any outliers should be minimal. And the benchmark scales up/down based on the size of the league. The reason it never caught on is because the results felt too punitive towards older players. You can read through the results/commentary.

In terms of how to deal with watered down periods (ie WWII, early 1970s) - there are two broad approaches. We can either keep the system objective (no manual adjustments), but the results are obviously less meaningful (because players like Bill Cowley will have their result artificially inflated). The other option is we make some manual adjustments to the benchmark (which is less objective, but gives us a more meaningful result, because it bakes into the calculation the adjustment that all of us are making in our heads). Generally speaking, I prefer to be approximately right (rather than precisely wrong), so I favour the latter approach.

All that being said - I invested a lot of time in 2017 on automating the spreadsheets that drive the various VsX calculations. Now it's trivial to do the annual updates and/or to adjust the benchmarks. (Speaking frankly - I'm too busy these days to spend hours updating these spreadsheets. All of the updates for the end of the 2024 season took less than thirty minutes. It actually took longer to copy and paste the data into HFBoards-acceptable format, than to do the calculations). If anyone wants to see what the results look like under another set of benchmarks, let me know, as it's trivial for me to run the numbers.

 

[daver]

Here's a thread from 2015 where I look at a method called "VsN" - Vs N - new adjusted scoring system

"N" stands for the number of teams in the league. So the benchmark for 2024 would be the average of the 1st through 32nd highest scorer in the league. The benchmark for 1954 would be the average of the 1st through 6th highest scorer.

Conceptually, that approach seems to make sense. It's drawing on a large enough pool of players that the impact of any outliers should be minimal. And the benchmark scales up/down based on the size of the league. The reason it never caught on is because the results felt too punitive towards older players. You can read through the results/commentary.

In terms of how to deal with watered down periods (ie WWII, early 1970s) - there are two broad approaches. We can either keep the system objective (no manual adjustments), but the results are obviously less meaningful (because players like Bill Cowley will have their result artificially inflated). The other option is we make some manual adjustments to the benchmark (which is less objective, but gives us a more meaningful result, because it bakes into the calculation the adjustment that all of us are making in our heads). Generally speaking, I prefer to be approximately right (rather than precisely wrong), so I favour the latter approach.

All that being said - I invested a lot of time in 2017 on automating the spreadsheets that drive the various VsX calculations. Now it's trivial to do the annual updates and/or to adjust the benchmarks. (Speaking frankly - I'm too busy these days to spend hours updating these spreadsheets. All of the updates for the end of the 2024 season took less than thirty minutes. It actually took longer to copy and paste the data into HFBoards-acceptable format, than to do the calculations). If anyone wants to see what the results look like under another set of benchmarks, let me know, as it's trivial for me to run the numbers.

(1) Not taking league size into consideration is statistically unreasonable. It assumes there hasn't been an increase in the talent pool that generally has coincided, and is reflected, with the expansion of the league.

(2) Taking league size into consideration can become statistically unreasonable if taken at statistical face value i.e. multiplying by the # of teams so Top 5 from the O6 becomes Top 30 in the current era.

(3) Presuming it is "harder" for a GOAT talent to separate themselves from the pack with more teams/talent is unreasonable. Generally speaking, GOAT talent raises the top not because they are necessarily that much more talented than their peers but their competitive level/mental strength is also freakish. We have seen enough recent GOAT talent in many sports to dismiss the "harder to separate yourself" theory due to more talent.

I believe #2 is the point of contention that opens the door to many discussions and possible solutions to find the best method.

Using the VsX theory, I compare the PPG of a player to the average PPG of the #1/#2 scorer (with a correction for outliers). The presumption here is that, excluding outliers, the #1/#2 scorers in any season (from 1947 onwards), are generally going to finish close to those positions in most other seasons. Using a 20 year sample flattens out the strong years and the weak years and moves outlier season corrections to the margins.

Here are two statistical claims that can be made:

On average, the #3 scorer in the period from '47 to '67 finished a similar % behind #1/#2 to the #5 scorer in the period from '00 to '20. On average, the #5 scorer in the period from '47 to '67 finished a similar % behind #1/#2 to the #10 scorer in the period from '00 to '20.

Conclusion:

Generally speaking, it is more impressive to finish in the Top 3/5/10 in the current era than it is in the O6. Of course this does not apply blindly to every single season by every player. In ranking players from the '47 to '67 period vs. those from the '00 to the '20, it is not surprising that more O6 had Top 3/Top 5 and Top 10 finishes on their resumes (e.g. about 80 O6 players had a Top 10 finish vs. about 60 current players). There were more opportunities for the "pack" of elite scorers in the O6 to finish in the Top 10.

Crosby has raw similar career point and PPG finishes to Hull and Beliveau but was significantly closer to #1/#2 than they were. He is closer to Howe in PPG finishes than he was to Hull and Beliveau (as are McDavid and Jagr).

Does this move Crosby up a level from Hull and Beliveau? No, I do not think you can move players up and down levels using this method but I think it is reasonable to give Crosby an edge in this regard. It is also reasonable to not give him an edge as noted in the final sentence.

Broadly speaking, Howe was clearly the best offensive player from pre-expansion and Hull and Beliveau are somewhat clear #2/#3 among forwards (according to HOH).

Wayne and Mario hit heights that we can comfortably say were not hit before or since.

Jagr, Crosby and McDavid, through varying degrees of performances, have hit offensive levels that are closer to peak/prime Howe level than they are to any other #5 forward candidate.

So pre-expansion:

Howe
Hull/Beliveau

Post expansion:

Wayne/Mario/Orr
Jagr/Crosby/McDavid


From a strict statistical perspective,

Wayne/Mario/Orr
Howe/Jagr/Crosby/McDavid
Hull/Beliveau

I am hesitant to automatically move Hull/Beliveau down a tier as we simply cannot assume anything if they had happened to play in any other era. They were #2 in the era they played in; there is no real reason (at least statistically) to believe they perform any lower (or higher) in another era.

At some point, we have to accept that a GOAT talent from any era is a GOAT talent all-time.

 

[daver]

According to Vilica from the other thread: Historical relevance of Kucherov and MacKinnon's 2024 season?

here are how the last two years are rated using VsX:

McDavid 22/23 - 135

Kucherov 23/24 - 120 (13% behind)

MacKinnon 23/24 - 117 (15% behind)


In raw numbers,

McDavid 22/23 - 153

Kucherov 23/24 - 144 (6% behind)

MacKinnon 23/24 - 140 (9% behind)


That doesn't pass the smell test given league GPG was slightly lower this past season and the PPGs of the #10/#25/#50 scorers were almost identical from 22/23 to 23/24.

Is there something I am missing here that VsX captures?

I am assuming that the baseline of the #2? scorer is skewing the numbers.

 

[AlfiesHair]

Johnny Gaudreau's tragic death has brought me back to his VsX score, and I think it is inaccurate.

His yearly point scores are this, calculated to one decimal:
100.0, 87.6, 85.3, 82.4, 74.4, 71.0, 68.5, 65.5, 69.8, 50.0, 1.1

7yr = 81.4, 10yr = 74.5

This page has it listed as 76.1 for his 7yr, nothing for 10yr. Sure it was just a mistake (although apologies if I am the one mistaken).

Fantastic player, his all time achievements stand tall. Sounds like he was a pretty amazing guy too. RIP Johnny Hockey.

 

[AlfiesHair]

Also think Pastrnak's 7yr points should be around an 83.8 not a 79.0 and his 10yr should be a 71.7 not a 61.4.

100.0, 97.9, 91.7, 78.7, 78.4, 70.0, 69.8, 69.6, 31.4, 29.2.

As you can see I've nerded this page out a lot. Great work and fascinating stuff.

 

[Hockey Outsider]

Also think Pastrnak's 7yr points should be around an 83.8 not a 79.0 and his 10yr should be a 71.7 not a 61.4.

100.0, 97.9, 91.7, 78.7, 78.4, 70.0, 69.8, 69.6, 31.4, 29.2.

As you can see I've nerded this page out a lot. Great work and fascinating stuff.

Glad you enjoyed! And great catch with Pastrnak. In my spreadsheet, his last name is spelled Pastrňák (with the accents) just for 2023, so it wasn't captured when I aggregated the results. I agree, his seven and ten results should be 83.7 and his ten year result would be 71.4 (both are off by a fraction due to rounding).

Same thing with Gaudreau. A few of his seasons are under "John" rather than "Johnny", so that distorts the final results.

(This is getting off topic, but I'm not sure what can be said about Gaudreau's death. What a tragedy. Many of us here, myself included, tend to think of these players as hockey-playing machines. We try to objectively evaluate their strengths and weaknesses on the ice. But each of them is a person, with their own friends, families and (presumably) non hockey related interests. I don't know how much we should delve into players' personal lives. But it's impossible not to feel sad about this situation, especially on the eve of his sister's wedding).

 

[VanIslander]

Please no accents here - for searching purposes, please post the ENGLISH version!

Pastrnak.

I have been an English language teacher for nearly a quarter century and affirming BOTH in DIFFERENT contexts is key. Yeah, that stick is "hot dog-eh" in Korean but in English it is corn dog.

It does NOT denigrate a language to show it's difference in another language.

Heck, even in the supposed same language: soccer, football.

The important thing is to be understood and to get along.

 

[AlfiesHair]

Glad you enjoyed! And great catch with Pastrnak. In my spreadsheet, his last name is spelled Pastrňák (with the accents) just for 2023, so it wasn't captured when I aggregated the results. I agree, his seven and ten results should be 83.7 and his ten year result would be 71.4 (both are off by a fraction due to rounding).

Same thing with Gaudreau. A few of his seasons are under "John" rather than "Johnny", so that distorts the final results.

(This is getting off topic, but I'm not sure what can be said about Gaudreau's death. What a tragedy. Many of us here, myself included, tend to think of these players as hockey-playing machines. We try to objectively evaluate their strengths and weaknesses on the ice. But each of them is a person, with their own friends, families and (presumably) non hockey related interests. I don't know how much we should delve into players' personal lives. But it's impossible not to feel sad about this situation, especially on the eve of his sister's wedding).

Well said. All of these guys are much more than stats on a scoresheet, despite how deep in the numbers we can get. Hearing stories about both the Gaudreaus in a non-hockey context really puts that point into perspective. Can't imagine having to go through that as a spouse, sibling, or friend. Truly terrible.

 

[Hockey Outsider]

Here's a table showing VsX, based on points per game, over a player's best seven seasons (1927 to 2024):

Player	Vsx PPG
Wayne Gretzky	1.93
Mario Lemieux	1.76
Phil Esposito	1.61
Bobby Orr	1.56
Gordie Howe	1.55
Jaromir Jagr	1.49
Connor McDavid	1.47
Sidney Crosby	1.45
Guy Lafleur	1.37
Charlie Conacher	1.37
Stan Mikita	1.36
Jean Beliveau	1.36
Bobby Hull	1.35
Bill Cowley	1.32
Ted Lindsay	1.32
Bernie Geoffrion	1.30
Maurice Richard	1.30
Peter Forsberg	1.30
Syl Apps Sr	1.29
Evgeni Malkin	1.29
Howie Morenz	1.29
Nikita Kucherov	1.28
Marcel Dionne	1.27
Joe Sakic	1.27
Eric Lindros	1.26
Nathan MacKinnon	1.26
Leon Draisaitl	1.24
Andy Bathgate	1.24
Alex Ovechkin	1.24
Patrick Kane	1.23
Mike Bossy	1.21
Joe Thornton	1.20
Teemu Selanne	1.20
Bryan Trottier	1.20
Steve Yzerman	1.19
Milt Schmidt	1.18
Bill Cook	1.18
Max Bentley	1.18
Adam Oates	1.17
Frank Boucher	1.17
Sweeney Schriner	1.16
Busher Jackson	1.16
Elmer Lach	1.16
Paul Kariya	1.15
Dickie Moore	1.15
Gordie Drillon	1.15
Mark Messier	1.15
Steven Stamkos	1.15
Jean Ratelle	1.14

Some general comments:

• The general idea is this might show who's a "better" offensive talent. The regular version of VsX is based on how a player performs over the span of full seasons, so the results are partly dependent upon a player's health. (For the record, I generally prefer that method, but I'm posting this because I often get requests).
• I've arbitrarily decided that seasons under 20 games get excluded outright (after adjusting to an 82 game schedule). One can debate whether this is too low of a threshold. (For example this means we're including Lemieux's 2001 campaign, Crosby's 2012, Forsberg's 2003, etc).
• These results can swing widely depending on how many seasons are included. I've set it to seven, but that's arbitrary. (For example, Guy Lafleur has exactly six all-time great seasons. This method includes one somewhat weaker season (1981) but he still looks really good. If I showed the results for best ten seasons, he would rank quite a bit lower).
• The results are weighted based on adjusted games played. (For example, when the seven year result is calculated, Crosby's 2014 campaign counts for roughly twice as much as 2011 - 80 vs 41 games).
• I think this is obvious, but to pre-empt any discussions that go down this road - this is based on regular season offense only. It doesn't consider playoff performances. It doesn't consider defensive or physical play. It doesn't consider if a player got an unusual amount of help in generating their stats. It doesn't look at anything beyond seven years. This isn't intended as a comprehensive ranking of players.

Comments on specific players:

• The biggest surprise? I never would have expected Charlie Conacher would rank so high.
• Note that McDavid and Crosby are nearly even. This suggests that, in terms of their actual ability, there's not much separating them. Obviously McDavid was much healthier, and he deserves credit for that. But I think the gap between their inherent talent is often exaggerated. The gap in their raw stats comes down to health and scoring environment.
• Intuitively it feels right that Forsberg, Malkin and Lindros all end up close to each other (players who were excellent during their peaks, but missed a lot of time to injuries, and therefore have resumes that are much "thinner" than they could have been).
• A few Original Six stars rank higher than expected (Cowley, Lindsay, Geoffrion). Is this method biased in favour of older players? (Maybe - but five of the top eight players are from 1980 onwards, and three of the top eight have been active in the past decade - hardly what we would expect if the model favoured older players).
• According to this method, Kucherov, MacKinnon and Draisaitl all have had regular season primes roughly on par with Dionne and Sakic.
• Morenz looks somewhat worse than expected, but keep in mind anything prior to 1927 is excluded outright. Making a rough ballpark calculation of how those pre-consolidation seasons might have counted, he would have ended up around 1.35 (roughly on par with Beliveau and Hull - not at all surprising given his reputation).
• Some near misses include Hull, Stastny, Kurri, Clarke, Turgeon and Bure.
• When we compare the 7 year results for PPG VsX to the standard version (based on full season totals), there are lots of players who move up. Generally these are often-injured players (because their rankings in the year-by-year scoring races don't necessarily show how "good" they are). Forsberg, Schmidt, and Geoffrion (plus a few others) moved up 20+ spots. Kariya, Turgeon, and Spezza moved up 30+ spots. LaFontaine, Lindros, Mogilny and Palffy moved up 50+ spots. The late Pavol Demitra jumped 65 spots! (His top seven seasons includes years with 71, 68, 58 and 44 games).
• The top defensemen under this method are Orr (1.56), Coffey (1.12 - what a massive gap), Karlsson (1.01), Potvin (0.98), Bourque (0.97), Kelly (0.96), MacInnis (0.92), Letang (0.91 - definitely a surprise), Leetch (0.91), and Park (0.90). Makar is at 0.94 through five seasons. I had to scan for defensemen manually, but I'm pretty sure this is everyone over the (arbitrary) 0.90.
• Here are some notable HOF forwards with low scores (excluding players who peaked pre-WWII, outside of North America, and defensive specialists - I also scanned this manually): Dick Duff (0.75), Clark Gillies (0.76), Edgar Laprade (0.79), George Armstrong (0.81), Mike Gartner (0.86), Dave Andreychuk (0.87), Bill Barber (0.88), Steve Shutt (0.89), Buddy O'Connor (0.90), Joe Mullen (0.90).

 

[The Panther]

Great as always by @Hockey Outsider . A few opinions I have:

-- The top 5 or 6 "feels" about right, and those guys are always going to be at/near the top. (Esposito is always going to look amazing in these kinds of lists.)

-- I realize there are natural limitations to VsX regarding benchmarks and so on, and it's never going to be "accurate", but even so it seems to me that Gretzky (and Lemieux, to a lesser extent) has his 7-seasons' stats pulled down a bit too much, while Orr's are a bit too high. I know the math is accurate; I'm just saying that Gretzky's value of 1.93 puts him at 154 points per 80 games, while his raw number was at least 200. That's a massive drop-off of, like, 25%. Meanwhile, Orr's value of 1.56 puts him at 125 points per 80 games, which is basically what he actually scored in raw totals. So, this just feels "off" to me (esp. when Boston was sometimes literally doubling other expansion teams in scoring, but, again, this is just a limitation of VsX, I know).

-- Crosby's value here "feels" a little too high compared to Connor McDavid's. The main issue here is probably your decision to include partial seasons (I'll come back to this, below), but even so I have a feeling the benchmark system is going to somewhat overly reward top players in low-scoring seasons.

-- Interesting that Rocket Richard, who is often thought not to be an elite "point" producer, matches Peter Forsberg and comes out ahead of Malkin and Kucherov (so far). But his coming out clearly ahead of Marcel Dionne, again, "feels" a bit wrong. I realize if we switched this, maybe, to top-4 seasons, Dionne would probably be ahead, but this seems a case where the benchmark system is inaccurate. Again, the lower-scoring season "winners" seem to rank a bit high.

-- I actually thought Lindros would rank higher than he does here. Neverthless, I would like everyone who didn't think Lindros was a top-100 player to note that he ranks here above Ovechkin, Thornton, Selanne, Trottier, Bossy, and Yzerman. And then think about all the intangibles he brought on top of scoring...

-- As noted, the only issue I have with your own selected way to do this is the season games-played thing. For me, point-per-game only works with full seasons or near-full seasons, especially when we're dealing with smaller samples like 7 or less seasons. If we're going to count 30 games played as a "season" for comparative purposes, then we're kind of losing the plot a bit. There are two ways to "fix" this in my opinion:

1) Set a strict minimum percentage of games played. For me, this would be something like 70%-75% of games played. The only issue with this is that it might overly punish players who suffered multiple injuries during their prime years (Crosby is a good example). The only way to "fix" this minor issue would be...

2) Use a consecutive games-played raw number for comparative purposes. That is, 7 NHL seasons is roughly 565 games or whatever, so just compare each player's best 565 consecutive games played, regardless of how long it took to play those games (some guys do it in 7 seasons, some in 11). The only issue with this -- besides that it might be damn hard to calculate -- is that it will start to "punish" the pre-expansion guys who played 50 to 70-game seasons. They'll need more years to make the 565 games limit, which might be a bit unfair, but, then again, they had shorter seasons in their primes, so...

_____________________

Anyway, awesome stuff, and it would be fun to see this list done for best 3 or 4 years and for best 10 years.

 

[DitchMarner]

I agree with HockeyOutsider that some overrate McDavid's offensive superiority to Crosby in terms of raw ability (this may be largely due to looking at raw point totals and/or Art Ross wins and not accounting for changes to scoring environment).

But I also think McDavid is definitely the superior offensive player and attempts to say they're more or less equal depend too heavily on what Crosby could have done in seasons where he missed a large chunk of games. I think it's been discussed numerous times what Crosby might have done at his peak if healthy. He definitely would have had dominant Art Ross wins, but considering how high his on-ice percentages were in 2011 and the fact that an injury ended the season at a point when a 25 game hot streak really boosted his PPG average relative to those of other players in the Art Ross race, I don't think you can say he was McDavid at his peak. I guess we'll never know how close he would have been, though.

 

[Hockey Outsider]

I fully agree on Lindros. I was actually going to write something about him (but I forgot). My general comment was - it's amazing how his reputation is (seemingly) so much lower than Forsberg and Malkin, both of whom have roughly the same level of offensive production (per game), and who also have "thin" resumes based on full-season accomplishments. (Granted, Lindros has a weaker playoff resume than either of them, but I don't think that adequately explains such a wide gap).

Agreed that it's tough to evaluate Crosby's partial seasons. I've been critical of him for never maintaining that level of dominance across a full year. If we discard 2011, 2012 and 2013 entirely, he ends up at 1.31. I'm tempted to at least include 2013 (yes, he missed a quarter of the season, but it was really only twelve games during a lockout-shortened year). That gets him up to 1.36 (on par with Mikita, Beliveau and Hull - which sounds like it's in the right ballpark even if we're being conservative in evaluating his injury-shortened seasons).

Best three years doesn't look that much different. Morenz pushes Conacher out of the top ten. Cowley jumps up to 8th(!) place, which tells me we haven't sufficiently discounted his WWII totals. Trottier and Draisaitl are in the top 20. Markus Naslund jumps up to 62nd (he's 106th on the seven year list).

The ten year list shows the value of steady franchise players like Sundin. The Leafs centre is only 178th based on three year peaks. He jumps up to 107th on the seven year list (right behind Naslund). He's 88th on the ten year list (right in line with Modano and Delvecchio).

Messier might be a better example. (Remember, this is just talking about regular season production - not his playoff performances, not his physicality, not his underrated defensive play). He's "only" 73rd based on three year peak. He's 47th based on seven year peak (better, but still somewhat underwhelming for a player who retired 2nd all-time in scoring). He's 37th based on looking ten years out.

In a neat coincidence, after ten years, Sakic and Forsberg have the identical result (1.22).