Revisiting the greatest point and goal scoring races in NHL history; The 1992-93 season.
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BraveCanadian
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95-96 is another * season though, especially for adjusted stats, because it also featured an officiating crackdown that tilts the distribution of scoring in the lineup. Teams averaged like 5 PP per game or something if I remember correctly.
MadLuke
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05-06, 87-88, 92-93, 95-96, 88-89 are the 5 seasons with the most PPO ever are tend to be looked under that prism.
I have an hard time going with 95-96 post first retirement Lemieux over peak Lemieux/Gretzky/Orr for the best offensive season ever, even per game.
In 88-89 Lemieux was the best player on the powerplay (maybe ever) while beating a prime Gretzky and peak Yzerman at even strength scoring, he shot over 27% with over 300 shots.... he was absurd.
Not that he was far from his peak, but he was clearly under his peak imo, he made up with the decline in some ways with experience, feeling better physically in a long time with the long break and the easier schedule, high level/high IQ forward teammates, but he could not do a 89 season or those 91-92 playoff level for a sustained amount of time. The fact that he could still get close is quite exceptional.
The elite competition was excellent that year, it is not just that we are talking about Jagr/Francis-Lindros/Leclair-Sakic/Forsberg-Kariya/Selanne but they were teammates as well, those healthy in their prime playing together are close to has good as it get hard to outscore, Lemieux keeping up with the Nedved/Sandstrom type was really great but it is not like 89 Yzerman-Gretzky were a walk in the park.
It is the artifact of hockey reference adjustment method that do not use scoring distribution at all and will boost top line players result of those 5 seasons versus the seasons with a more generous scoring distribution across the roster.
I have an hard time going with 95-96 post first retirement Lemieux over peak Lemieux/Gretzky/Orr for the best offensive season ever, even per game.
| Player | GP | EvGpG | G | A | PTS | EvPPG |
| Jaromír Jágr | 82 | 0.50 | 62 | 87 | 149 | 1.16 |
| Mario Lemieux* | 70 | 0.43 | 69 | 92 | 161 | 1.04 |
| Eric Lindros* | 73 | 0.44 | 47 | 68 | 115 | 1.03 |
| Petr Nedvěd | 80 | 0.45 | 45 | 54 | 99 | 0.95 |
| Alexander Mogilny | 79 | 0.51 | 55 | 52 | 107 | 0.90 |
| Peter Forsberg* | 82 | 0.24 | 30 | 86 | 116 | 0.85 |
| Sergei Fedorov* | 78 | 0.32 | 39 | 68 | 107 | 0.83 |
| Adam Oates* | 70 | 0.24 | 25 | 67 | 92 | 0.83 |
| Peter Bondra | 67 | 0.55 | 52 | 28 | 80 | 0.79 |
In 88-89 Lemieux was the best player on the powerplay (maybe ever) while beating a prime Gretzky and peak Yzerman at even strength scoring, he shot over 27% with over 300 shots.... he was absurd.
Not that he was far from his peak, but he was clearly under his peak imo, he made up with the decline in some ways with experience, feeling better physically in a long time with the long break and the easier schedule, high level/high IQ forward teammates, but he could not do a 89 season or those 91-92 playoff level for a sustained amount of time. The fact that he could still get close is quite exceptional.
The elite competition was excellent that year, it is not just that we are talking about Jagr/Francis-Lindros/Leclair-Sakic/Forsberg-Kariya/Selanne but they were teammates as well, those healthy in their prime playing together are close to has good as it get hard to outscore, Lemieux keeping up with the Nedved/Sandstrom type was really great but it is not like 89 Yzerman-Gretzky were a walk in the park.
It is the artifact of hockey reference adjustment method that do not use scoring distribution at all and will boost top line players result of those 5 seasons versus the seasons with a more generous scoring distribution across the roster.
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BraveCanadian
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I'd probably go with 88-89 Lemieux as well because, despite all the PP opportunities and points, he put up his only big (full) season at ES at the same time. Mario barely edges out Gretzky and Yzerman which is great competition like you say. Sure, Mario's best ES season is only as good as Gretzky's 9th.. but anyone getting 100 EVP is doing something special.
MadLuke
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Only probably downplaying the accomplishment (not just because Gretzky 9th best season could still be better than any non Gretzky season ever), EV ice time would have been diminished a bit (it goes a bit both ways, big PPO season will pressure down ev performance),
In 88-89 average team scored 2.525 even strength goal per game in 81-82 when Gretzky scored 147 even strength points (!?! lol) it was 2.988 or 18% more. The penguins having both the most power play for and against them (they got close to 1000 power plays that year...), would have been a team with particularly low amount of even strength time that year, Lemieux pts/60 was maybe keeping up with a Gretzky 6-7 best type of seasons. Yzerman wings were second to last in power plays for the other way around (making Yzerman 155pts even more impressive, while keeping up with Mario at ev a bit less impressive)
TheStatican
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Yes but Turgeon and Selanne only hit 130 thanks to that 84 game schedule - they were both at 127 by the 80th game and 129 at game 82. Yzerman was also under 130 at the 80 game mark, meaning only 3 players hit 130 in 80 team games while all of 81-82, 85-86 & 88-89 had 4 players reach 130 within the 80 game schedule.
Also we can now add McDavid '23 and Draisaitl '23 to that list with no asterisk, near miss pace wise for McKinnon as well.
I agree it's not the best all time or his best. Though it rates as the highest all time per game wise by Hockey Reference as he was definitely no longer at his physical peak by this, his age 30 season.
Those EV numbers get often quoted but they really need more context. For starters 1995-96 is almost universally considered the high water mark in term of NHL talent so it's understandable that there are lot of players bunched more closely together at the top. Secondly the player(s) ahead of and directly behind Lemieux had the advantage of playing on far better lines. The Legion of doom speaks for itself, easily being the most physically dominating line in the league over a several year span while being near the top offensively and in terms of overall of the play. Jagr meanwhile got to play on what was undisputably the best offensive line in the league:
@tabness posted the "point-mates" of each here;
Was Lemieux still in his peak in 1995-96?
Other than for a few odd shifts, 100% Mario and Jags ran on different lines that year. As for defensive matchups it's not exactly something I thought much about back then but I distinctly remember he seemed to often be matched up against players like Stevens and Hamrlik. I don't believe anyone...
Lemieux played with Tomas Sandstorm and Markus Näslund, who in their defense were not bad players and they performed well for the first half of the season at least. But Naslund being a young and still developing player unfortunately hit a wall around New Years that got him demoted from the line and then traded all together... in what was arguably THE. WORST. trade in team history
Then Sandstrom of course suffered his inevitable injury, two thirds of the way through the season. The team chose to not break up the second line trio of Jagr-Francis-Nedved surmising that Lemieux could continue to produce at even strength even while playing with lesser offensive players like Kevin Miller and Dave McLlwain(ick). Furthermore the Penguins best offensive and overall, defensemen Sergei Zubov, also played behind the Jagr-Francis-Nedved line. Lemieux had Dmitri Mironov along with either Norm Maciver or Chris Tamer.Naturally Jagr was the straw that stirred his line's drink but Francis is a HOF and selke-level center talent - take Francis away from Jagr and put him on with Lemieux to take all the draws and defensive responsibility and there's little doubt it would have been Lemieux who be at '1.16' EvPPG and Jagr at 1.04 But not making that move was absolutely the best decision for the team. Jagr was great offensively but taking away the defensive heart of that line would have left them incredibly vulnerable to the counter attack.
Jagr was also probably playing in more minutes than Lemieux, at least at even strength. Lemieux was 30, Jagr was 23 and coming off a Ross win and well known to have impressive stamina and endurance but more evidence is given by Lemieux's higher special team on ice for goal totals.
And that's where the most substantial evidence exists to show Lemieux was clearly still quite far ahead of everyone else Jagr included, offensively. Lemieux had 79 powerplay points in 70 games(1.13ppg) while Jagr had 51 in 82(0.60ppg) Just how is it that Lemieux outscored Jagr by such a huge margin on the same powerplay? Lemieux's powerplay usage was a little higher than Jagr's - he was on the ice for 102 PP GF while Jagr was on the ice for 90. Which in itself is strange - why would you not play the universally recognized 2nd or 3rd best offensive player in the world on just about every given powerplay? Unless he was playing so much time at even strength that he just couldn't play in every powerplay. Or it was his line that was drawing a lot of the teams powerplays and after being on the ice for a long shift he wasn't ready to go out again for the start of every powerplay - probably a combination of the two. But that only accounts for a small amount of the difference in their powerplay totals - Lemieux was involved in 79 of those 102(77.5%) powerplay goals he was on the ice for while Jagr was only involved in 51 of 90(56.5%). Furthermore the team was absolutely horrible on the powerplay with Jagr leading the way in the games Lemieux missed:
| 1995-96 | Games | Goals | PPO | PP % | PP G's/gm |
| With Lemieux | 70 | 102 | 359 | 28.4% | 1.46 |
| Without Lemieux | 12 | 7 | 61 | 11.5% | 0.58 |
| Penguins Overall | 82 | 109 | 420 | 25.95% | 1.33 |
Lemieux's 1995-96 powerplay stats and figures
This thread is an addendum to this post; https://forums.hfboards.com/threads/was-lemieux-still-in-his-peak-in-1995-96.2906900/post-187317395 Using his TOI stats from 00-01 will help to figure out Lemieux's 95-96 powerplay TOI. Here's an analysis of the Penguins powerplay for each season. I...
More numbers without context - Of the players with 100 ES points in a season Lemieux did it while playing in the least amount of even strength ice time relative to his total ice time, not to mention 88-89 lower ES scoring rates than all but one of those seasons:
| | PP G on ice for | SH G on ice for | Special team totals | ES scoring rate |
Lafleur | 76-77 | 47 | 0 | 47 | 2.57 |
Gretzky | 79-80 | 41 | 18 | 59 | 2.68 |
Gretzky | 80-81 | 67 | 17 | 84 | 2.76 |
Gretzky | 81-82 | 76 | 13 | 89 | 2.98 |
Bossy | 81-82 | 58 | 3 | 61 | 2.98 |
Gretzky | 82-83 | 77 | 35 | 112 | 2.86 |
Gretzky | 83-84 | 69 | 30 | 99 | 2.88 |
Gretzky | 84-85 | 61 | 37 | 98 | 2.86 |
Kurri | 84-85 | 38 | 22 | 60 | 2.86 |
Gretzky | 85-86 | 69 | 42 | 111 | 2.81 |
Gretzky | 86-87 | 64 | 27 | 91 | 2.64 |
Lemieux | 88-89 | 110 | 60 | 170 | 2.53 |
Yzerman | 88-89 | 65 | 45 | 110 | 2.53 |
Gretzky | 88-89 | 72 | 43 | 115 | 2.53 |
Gretzky | 90-91 | 70 | 10 | 80 | 2.43 |
If you want to argue that Lemieux 'benefited' overall from having more special teams ice time, please go ahead and make that argument. However, do not fail to acknowledge that it would have in turn reduced his even-strength point totals.
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What does it matter if the points came from the PP vs at ES? Does this make them any less valuable?
Mario won the Ross in 92/93 by dominating in ES scoring as the Pens' PPOs were middle of the pack that year. Does this make his 92/93 season that more impressive or does it relegate the "PP scoring vs. ES scoring in 88/89" comment to irrelevancy?
MadLuke
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You misread, despite playing so much on the powerplay (so less time at even strength and usually less time playing on it when the team was in need to score mode because they did score on the PP) he still scored over 100 EVpts.
There is a bit 2 different subject, when the nhl season expended to 70 games and that people continued to look at the first 50 games mark scoring they did not mean that the goal scored between game 51 to 70 were less valuable, just that if you add 20 games it become easier to score more during a season.
If you add PPO, players that play on them will get more points that 100% agnostic regarding their value, like the length of a season, think someone pointing out 92-93 had 84 pts or a lot of game against expansion team versus a season with 80 games, tv ads time out and less games against expansion team, that just pointing about goal for first liner to be easier to get, not talking about their value, same goes for the high PPO amount or 3v3 overtime, that not only add goals but it shifts the distribution of them toward the first line.
Has for them being less or more valuable, it is not easy, and it depends on a little bit but
1) Points have 0 value (or any player stats), team goal scored are, they are just a proxy
2) What are particularly good are goal scored by is team because of a player (regardless of how, does not mean they score a point on the play) instead of an easy enough to get replacement level player.
3) Regarding #2, it will be more common for a Bure-Mario pk goal than for an ES goal to be a goal that your regular top 6 forward would not have scored and it will be more common for an ES points than for their PP points to be a point your regular top 6 forward would not have scored.
At least that the theory, if you look the penguins with mario vs without mario scoring at EV and on the PP it tends to go on that direction:
The Penguins in 91-92 and 92-93 combined together a rare example of a superstar missing (40) but also playing (124) a lot of games.
With Lemieux they scored 4.64 goals a games, without Lemieux they scored 3.38 goal a game
Lemieux scored 2.36 points a game to add a giant 1.26 goals a game to a team, more than half a goal by points, given credence to the notion that superstar points have way more value than regular player points in average and that the average assists by goals correction maybe does not cleanly apply to them).
The Penguins added .23 power play goal a game and 1.03 non power play goals a game.
Lemieux had .82 powerplay point a game versus 1.52 non power play point game.
It seem grossly that a Lemieux PP point added .28 goals to is team, a non power play point added .677 goals to is team, more than twice.
To put an irrealistic ridiculous a bit example that could make it clear:
- A team sign a player that score yearly 80 pts while killing penalty, they just added almost 80 goals scored for them
- A team sign a player that score yearly 80pts on the PP, you have a way less clear idea how many goals scored for more than last year they will score, 30 would be a lot.
Does that make one more valuable than the other, I would say yes, but my very limited brain make it hard to be confident.
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