Rick Vaive vs. Auston Matthews

[Toby91ca]

Matthews is better but Vaive was a very good power forward who had 9 consecutive 30 goal seasons, over 1400 PIMs and was tough as hell.

Agreed, Vaive was a great player and great goal scorer, but not a Matthews level scorer.

He finished top 10 in goals 3 times in his career, no higher than 5th. In those years:

1982 - 5th place finish....was 38 goals back of the leader (if you want to remove Gretzky, he was 10 goals back....remove Bossy if you want as well....he's still behind Maruk and Ciccarelli).
1983 - 7th place, 20 goals back (again, remove Gretzky, still 15 back of Lanny McDonald, then Bossy, Goulet, Dionne and Secord.
1984 - 6th place, 35 goals back (remove Gretzky and he's only 4 back, but behind Goulet, Andersen, Kerr and Kurri.

Vaive has never scored close the level Matthews has.

 

[Toby91ca]

Right, but there’s no record of Shanahan even taking a penalty against Vaive’s team during the timeframe that this would have happened.

And it’s not like it could have gone under the radar during a line brawl… he says it took multiple officials to cram him in the box, so he definitely would have registered a penalty.

Right....I've heard this story as well, but now, trying to fact check it....bizarre. Firstly, Shanahan was 20 years old by the time Vaive played for Buffalo. I think they only played against each other once before that though when Vaive was with Chicago. The 18 year old thing I could let slide as exaggeration I guess. But no penalties for Shanahan in that Chicago game and no penalties in any game when they played Buffalo either. There are only 2 or 3 games really. I checked both the games in NJ and the games in BUF even though the quote suggests in Buffalo.

The only possibility I can think of is pre-season. NJ and BUF played a game on September 16, 1989 (again, Shanahan would have been 20), the game wasn't in BUF though, it was in Rochester.....I can't find the box score.

 

[tarheelhockey]

Right....I've heard this story as well, but now, trying to fact check it....bizarre. Firstly, Shanahan was 20 years old by the time Vaive played for Buffalo. I think they only played against each other once before that though when Vaive was with Chicago. The 18 year old thing I could let slide as exaggeration I guess. But no penalties for Shanahan in that Chicago game and no penalties in any game when they played Buffalo either. There are only 2 or 3 games really. I checked both the games in NJ and the games in BUF even though the quote suggests in Buffalo.

The only possibility I can think of is pre-season. NJ and BUF played a game on September 16, 1989 (again, Shanahan would have been 20), the game wasn't in BUF though, it was in Rochester.....I can't find the box score.

Good point about preseason, that’s probably the most likely time for it to happen. Especially with the detail about a “meaningless” faceoff.

 

[Moose Head]

Valve was a very good player. That said, he might well be the worst player who ever scored 50 goals 3 times. Maybe even 2 or more times.

Matthew’s is a star, and will probably go down as one of the greatest goal scorers of all time.

 

[tarheelhockey]

Right....I've heard this story as well, but now, trying to fact check it....bizarre. Firstly, Shanahan was 20 years old by the time Vaive played for Buffalo. I think they only played against each other once before that though when Vaive was with Chicago. The 18 year old thing I could let slide as exaggeration I guess. But no penalties for Shanahan in that Chicago game and no penalties in any game when they played Buffalo either. There are only 2 or 3 games really. I checked both the games in NJ and the games in BUF even though the quote suggests in Buffalo.

The only possibility I can think of is pre-season. NJ and BUF played a game on September 16, 1989 (again, Shanahan would have been 20), the game wasn't in BUF though, it was in Rochester.....I can't find the box score.

Sadly I was able to find no evidence of Shanahan doing anything meaningful in that game. He was in the lineup, but Vaive was not.

Since we’re already here, more trivia about that game: it was the first NHL coaching appearance for Rick Dudley, and the fans were likely disappointed to miss a historic novelty when both Buffalo and New Jersey chose not to dress newly acquired Alex Mogilny and Slava Fetisov, respectively.

 

[Hockey Outsider]

Valve was a very good player. That said, he might well be the worst player who ever scored 50 goals 3 times. Maybe even 2 or more times.

Only 21 players have scored 50 goals 3+ times. 18 of them are in the Hall, or definitely will be (ie Ovechkin, Jagr, Draisaitl). John LeClair is borderline. The only two who aren't even in the conversation are Rick Vaive and Tim Kerr. I think Kerr peaked higher, even though Vaive had a somewhat longer career.

47 players have scored 50 goals 2+ times. Some of the weaker names include Danny Gare, Dennis Maruk, Charlie Simmer, Kevin Stevens, Mickey Redmond, Pierre Larouche, Blaine Stoughton, Stephane Richer, and Reggie Leach. Vaive is better than several of these players (though many of them had their careers shortened by injuries). Trivia - Redmond and Stoughton both have two 50 goal seasons, and under 500 career points.

 

[Moose Head]

Only 21 players have scored 50 goals 3+ times. 18 of them are in the Hall, or definitely will be (ie Ovechkin, Jagr, Draisaitl). John LeClair is borderline. The only two who aren't even in the conversation are Rick Vaive and Tim Kerr. I think Kerr peaked higher, even though Vaive had a somewhat longer career.

47 players have scored 50 goals 2+ times. Some of the weaker names include Danny Gare, Dennis Maruk, Charlie Simmer, Kevin Stevens, Mickey Redmond, Pierre Larouche, Blaine Stoughton, Stephane Richer, and Reggie Leach. Vaive is better than several of these players (though many of them had their careers shortened by injuries). Trivia - Redmond and Stoughton both have two 50 goal seasons, and under 500 career points.

I forgot about Redmond and Stoughton. Yeah, they are the two worst.

 

[WarriorofTime]

Yeah, checking over box scores I can’t see where any game fits that description. Shanahan and Vaive only played about a dozen games against each other so it’s pretty easy to verify.

What an odd thing to make up. Maybe it was an inside joke between the two of them or something.

People used to lie a lot back before everything was easily verifiable. There used to be claims that the nhl would tack on extra phantom assists for Gretzky at the end of the week. Never happened of course but when people aren’t able to be immediately fact checked on their BS they’ll say whatever.

 

[tfwnogf]

3 50 goal seasons is nice and all, but it was in the 80s and Matthews has Selke level defending, leader intangibles, good faceoff man and 69 goal scorer. No contest.

 

[OgeeOgelthorpe]

Only 21 players have scored 50 goals 3+ times. 18 of them are in the Hall, or definitely will be (ie Ovechkin, Jagr, Draisaitl). John LeClair is borderline. The only two who aren't even in the conversation are Rick Vaive and Tim Kerr. I think Kerr peaked higher, even though Vaive had a somewhat longer career.

47 players have scored 50 goals 2+ times. Some of the weaker names include Danny Gare, Dennis Maruk, Charlie Simmer, Kevin Stevens, Mickey Redmond, Pierre Larouche, Blaine Stoughton, Stephane Richer, and Reggie Leach. Vaive is better than several of these players (though many of them had their careers shortened by injuries). Trivia - Redmond and Stoughton both have two 50 goal seasons, and under 500 career points.

Redmond destroyed his back. He was a terrific player and much better than Vaive. He was probably along the lines of a better Steve Shutt and was one of maybe 3 good players on the Dead Things in the 70s. If it weren’t for the back injury he’s retiring at or close to 500 goals.

 

[Hockey Outsider]

People used to lie a lot back before everything was easily verifiable. There used to be claims that the nhl would tack on extra phantom assists for Gretzky at the end of the week. Never happened of course but when people aren’t able to be immediately fact checked on their BS they’ll say whatever.

When I joined HFBoards (20 years ago), there was a notorious anti-Gretzky poster on the History forum. I remember he claimed that Gretzky's 92 goal season deserved an asterisk because he scored a ton of empty net goals. Even as recently as 2015 I started a thread to see if we could verify this. (Now it takes 15 seconds to look it up on NHL.com - he scored 4 EN goals, which is not even the most from that season).

This goes far beyond hockey, of course. It's easy for people to make things up, but it takes time and effort to fact-check them.