Scoring pace ("matnor" method)

[Hockey Outsider]

I wanted to revisit an idea that @matnor presented about a decade ago. (He was a great poster and, unfortunately, no longer appears to be active). matnor was trying to find a way to measure the number of games that each player played at a scoring pace that was high to lead the league (or give them a 5th place finish - or any other rank).

It's always been tough to deal with players who scored at a high rate in partial seasons. For example, it feels unfair to give Peter Forsberg credit for leading the league in scoring in 2004. He was by far the league's leader in points per game, but he only played in 39 games. It doesn't feel right to give him credit for an Art Ross trophy (taking it away from Martin St. Louis, who wasn't quite as good, but who played in all 82 games). On the other hand, it also feels misleading to treat Forsberg as finishing tied for 47th in scoring, as if he were no different than Shawn McEachern, Nils Ekman, or Tyler Arnason.

matnor's method (link) says, essentially - let's recognize that Forsberg scored at the highest rate in 2004. But he'll only get credit for doing so for 39 games. (The purpose of the method isn't to crown a new scoring champion each season - it's to look at how many games a player played at a certain pace during the entire career).

There are two important modifications that I've made to the method. The first one is simple - all seasons are adjusted in length to 82 games. Jean Beliveau gets credit for leading the league in PPG for 82 games in 1956 (because it's not his fault the schedule was only 70 games back then). Then in 1959, he gets credit for 64/70*82 = approximately 75 games at this pace. (I treated the 2020 season as being exactly 70 games in length, even though the actual length varied from 68 to 71 games - thanks to COVID).

The second modification is I didn't have any minimum thresholds for games played. If a player played at least half the games, PPG is calculated normally. If a player played in less than half the games, I take his actual point total, and add enough scoreless games to get him to the 50% threshold. (Otherwise, in 2004 as an example, Peter Forsberg wouldn't get credit for anything whatsoever with his 39 games, but Marc Savard's 45 games would qualify - it didn't feel right to disqualify Forsberg entirely when there's only a difference of six games). So Forsberg's adjusted PPG is 55 (actual points) / 41 (39 actual games + 2 scoreless games) = 1.34 PPG. In this case, it's still enough to lead the league (and Forsberg only gets credited for the 39 actual games he played). Sometimes, the order changes. For example, in 1952, Dickie Moore played in 33 of the 70 games, and scored more PPG than Ted Lindsay. However, after adding two scoreless games to get Moore up to the 35 game mark (half the schedule), he fell behind Terrible Ted. So Moore was 2nd in PPG in real life, but he gets knocked down to 3rd in this method (but at least he gets some credit, rather than having the season disqualified outright).

All data has been compiled in good faith. There's a lot of numbers here (more than 1 million cells of data), so let me know if anything jumps out as being inaccurate.

Click to read more...

 

[Hockey Outsider]

Games played at top-1 PPG pace (1927-2022)

Player	1st
Wayne Gretzky	872
Gordie Howe	567
Mario Lemieux	452
Phil Esposito	406
Sidney Crosby	339
Connor McDavid	326
Stan Mikita	324
Bill Cowley	274
Guy Lafleur	234
Alex Ovechkin	233
Jean Beliveau	227
Jaromir Jagr	221
Elmer Lach	164
Sweeney Schriner	164
Bill Cook	164
Max Bentley	159
Bobby Hull	158
Howie Morenz	153
Charlie Conacher	152
Ted Lindsay	149
Peter Forsberg	114

This table shows the 21 players in NHL history (1927 to 2022) who have scored at a league-leading PPG pace for more than one full season.

I was surprised to see Howe finish ahead of Lemieux. In addition to leading the league in PPG during each of the six years he won the Art Ross (playing every single game on the schedule), he also very narrowly led the league in PPG in 1958 (where he gets credit for another 75 adjusted games). However, Lemieux lost out on 225 games thanks to Gretzky. If we give him credit for that, he'd be up to 676 games, which would move him ahead of Howe.

Sidney Crosby looks really good based on this metric (5th place). Note that, after making the adjustments I mentioned above, his 2012 season doesn't qualify.

Connor McDavid looks even better. As of today, it looks virtually certain that McDavid will lead the league in PPG this year (2023). If he plays every game this season, he'll end up with 408 games, which would put him in 4th place. He's still only 26.

Notable players who didn't make this list - Bobby Orr, Maurice Richard, Bobby Clarke, Bryan Trottier, Mike Bossy, Eric Lindros, Joe Sakic, Steve Yzerman, Andy Bathgate, Marcel Dionne, Evgeni Malkin, Patrick Kane, etc.

 

[Hockey Outsider]

Games played at top-3 PPG pace (1927-2022)

Player	3rd
Wayne Gretzky	1,103
Gordie Howe	950
Mario Lemieux	743
Stan Mikita	703
Jean Beliveau	693
Jaromir Jagr	680
Phil Esposito	649
Maurice Richard	555
Sidney Crosby	544
Connor McDavid	524
Guy Lafleur	474
Bobby Orr	470
Bobby Hull	469
Evgeni Malkin	439
Ted Lindsay	395
Charlie Conacher	371
Bernie Geoffrion	358
Marcel Dionne	328
Andy Bathgate	322
Busher Jackson	301
Doug Bentley	294
Sweeney Schriner	289
Syl Apps Sr	278
Bill Cowley	274
Dickie Moore	269
Eric Lindros	267
Martin St. Louis	246
Joe Thornton	240
Max Bentley	236
Alex Ovechkin	233
Howie Morenz	231
Joe Sakic	215

This table shows the 32 players in NHL history (1927 to 2022) who have scored at a top-three PPG pace for more than 200 games.

Jaromir Jagr looks much better based on this metric. In addition to finishing 2nd to Lemieux twice (1996 and 2001), he also finished 2nd to Lindros (1995), 2nd to Thornton (2006), and 3rd to Lemieux and Lindros (1997). Taking league dynamics into account (ie a 3rd place finish in a 20-30 team league is more impressive than a 3rd place finish in a six-team league), his result is more impressive than Mikita and Beliveau's.

By the time this season's over, McDavid will be in 8th place on this list (passing Richard and Crosby).

Notable players who didn't make this list - Mark Messier, Steve Yzerman, Peter Forsberg, Bryan Trottier, Mike Bossy, Teemu Selanne, Patrick Kane, etc.

 

[Hockey Outsider]

Games played at top-5 PPG pace (1927-2022)

Player	5th
Gordie Howe	1,587
Wayne Gretzky	1,103
Maurice Richard	849
Sidney Crosby	784
Stan Mikita	783
Bobby Hull	775
Mario Lemieux	743
Jean Beliveau	693
Jaromir Jagr	680
Phil Esposito	649
Syl Apps Sr	607
Andy Bathgate	569
Connor McDavid	524
Evgeni Malkin	496
Marcel Dionne	492
Ted Lindsay	477
Bernie Geoffrion	477
Guy Lafleur	474
Bobby Orr	470
Doug Bentley	455
Bill Cowley	437
Elmer Lach	399
Alex Ovechkin	396
Howie Morenz	395
Mike Bossy	392
Patrick Kane	386
Busher Jackson	379
Joe Sakic	377
Charlie Conacher	371
Eric Lindros	338
Peter Forsberg	337
Marty Barry	326
Max Bentley	315
Steve Yzerman	311
Bryan Trottier	309
Jari Kurri	301

This table shows the 36 players in NHL history (1927 to 2022) who have scored at a top-five PPG pace for more than 300 games.

As mentioned before, this doesn't take into account the size of the league. Still, after making any reasonable adjustments, Howe playing nearly 1,600 games at a top-five PPG pace is absurd. In all of NHL history, only 12 other players have played that many games.

Syl Apps wasn't on either of the past two tables, but he rises to 11th here. Same disclaimer - it was a smaller league back then, and 5th place then might be more like 10th place today. But 600 games at that pace is still really impressive.

Notable players who didn't make this list - Mark Messier, Bobby Clarke, Joe Thornton, Teem Selanne, Milt Schmidt, etc.

 

[Hockey Outsider]

Games played at top-10 PPG pace (1927-2022)

Player	10th
Gordie Howe	1,669
Wayne Gretzky	1,267
Jean Beliveau	1,088
Maurice Richard	1,013
Bobby Hull	933
Sidney Crosby	865
Mario Lemieux	818
Stan Mikita	783
Ted Lindsay	774
Andy Bathgate	733
Phil Esposito	729
Marcel Dionne	722
Nels Stewart	700
Evgeni Malkin	696
Joe Sakic	693
Mark Messier	692
Syl Apps Sr	681
Jaromir Jagr	680
Bill Cowley	645
Elmer Lach	634
Alex Ovechkin	634
Mike Bossy	629
Alex Delvecchio	621
Bernie Geoffrion	603
Frank Boucher	570
John Bucyk	551
Patrick Kane	550
Peter Forsberg	544
Teemu Selanne	539
Doug Bentley	530
Steve Yzerman	530
Henri Richard	529
Eric Lindros	528
Paul Coffey	528
Guy Lafleur	526
Connor McDavid	524
Denis Savard	519

This table shows the 37 players in NHL history (1927 to 2022) who have scored at a top-ten PPG pace for more than 500 games. (This will be the last table for now).

League dynamics become more prominent here. It probably isn't a coincidence that four of the top five players peaked during the Original Six era (though Howe's margin over everyone else is comical).

Under this method, it's better to have lots of pretty good seasons, rather than an all-time great peak. Thus Alex Delvecchio and Johnny Bucyk rank ahead of Guy Lafleur.

Several people have noted that Pierre Turgeon had the misfortune of being injured in many of his best seasons (so he was only a top ten scorer twice). He looks pretty good by this metric (with 342 games). Other notable players in the 300-400 game range (from expansion onwards) include Jari Kurri, Brett Hull, Gilbert Perreault, Jarome Iginla, Steven Stamkos, Michel Goulet, Ryan Getzlaf, Ilya Kovalchuk, and Dany Heatley.

Notable players who didn't make this list - Bobby Clarke (close call), Howie Morenz (keep in mind his pre-1927 career is ignored), Bobby Orr, Bryan Trottier, Milt Schmidt, Ted Kennedy, etc.

 

[MadLuke]

League dynamics become more prominent here. It probably isn't a coincidence that four of the top five players peaked during the Original Six era (though Howe's margin over everyone else is comical).

This, with an era or about only forward will make the Top 10 and some season from only 3 teams of players on the same line, 10 would be getting almost all the forward of best power play first unit of the league and if you are good enough to stay on it when you have that chance, you will stay on that top 10.

Part of Sakic prime was under arguably significantly lower talent level than Yzerman offensive prime, but still he look good under that versus his most natural nemesis and seem to go into the mode that we can easily overdo the if only Gretzky-Lemieux was not that good but just Jagr good what his career would have looked like.

 

[jigglysquishy]

Very interesting method in general. For being created to give context to Forsberg, he doesn't look great.

Howe comes across very very strongly here.

Suprised how strongly Richard looks in the top 3 top 5 lists.

Jagr looks good in top 3, but nothing else.

Hull looks surprisingly poor.

 

[MadLuke]

The how well understood H. Richards historically story continue to me.

Would it not be of BraveCanadian here, I would be completely underestimating him, that ranking is with little power play production.

During his "prime" of 58 to 70 H.Richard was 4th in even strengh points scoring at the same rate than Hull-Howe, only 20th in ppp.

Has for Forsberg maybe if our brain adjust for the era, because Forsberg > Yzerman offensive peak wise, more longevity prime has well, once you consider all around game matchin his offensive peak and what he did in the playoff at the same time

 

[Hockey Outsider]

Very interesting method in general. For being created to give context to Forsberg, he doesn't look great.

Howe comes across very very strongly here.

Suprised how strongly Richard looks in the top 3 top 5 lists.

Jagr looks good in top 3, but nothing else.

Hull looks surprisingly poor.

Jagr also looks really good looking at top 2 pace:

Player	2nd
Wayne Gretzky	1,103
Mario Lemieux	743
Gordie Howe	704
Jaromir Jagr	548
Jean Beliveau	531
Phil Esposito	488
Connor McDavid	479
Sidney Crosby	467
Stan Mikita	400
Bobby Hull	397

McDavid, incredibly, could end up in 4th place by the end of the season.

For Forsberg - the most favourable way to show his results would be to look at 6th place finishes (since he had one year where he finished 5th in PPG, and two more where he finished 6th). He ranks 19th all-time under that approach - below Malkin, Bossy and Sakic, but above Lafleur(!) and Lindros. Of course, there lots of players where we could play around with the parameters to find their optimal presentation.

 

[BraveCanadian]

Would it not be of BraveCanadian here, I would be completely underestimating him, that ranking is with little power play production.

What am I in trouble for doing or not doing now?

 

[MadLuke]

What am I in trouble for doing or not doing now?

Feel like I do not have the good name here

I wanted to say the older poster that passed away a couple of years ago that had seen live play those older guys a lot.

 

[BraveCanadian]

Feel like I do not have the good name here

I wanted to say the older poster that passed away a couple of years ago that had seen live play those older guys a lot.

Oh that was Canadiens1958 I think.. but yes Henri did not get as much powerplay time and that certainly impacts his numbers.. however if I recall correctly there is also some indication that maybe he wasn't as good in a set format on the PP in comparison to free-wheeling it a bit off the rush.

Or maybe he was just so good at ES and Montreal had the depth they could specialize him. Tough to say for sure!

 

[Yozhik v tumane]

Jagr looks good in top 3, but nothing else.

Depends on expectations I think? I noticed that he had the same amount of games at top 3, top 5 and top 10 pace. That’s 8.5 full seasons of top 3 finishes. Sure, I suppose it also means he dropped considerably by his ninth season, whereas Messier, Sakic, Malkin, Esposito, Dionne added more games at specifically top 10/not top 5 pace, among players with significant parts of their careers in the expansion era.

 

[Sturminator]

I wanted to revisit an idea that @matnor presented about a decade ago. (He was a great poster and, unfortunately, no longer appears to be active). matnor was trying to find a way to measure the number of games that each player played at a scoring pace that was high to lead the league (or give them a 5th place finish - or any other rank).

It's always been tough to deal with players who scored at a high rate in partial seasons. For example, it feels unfair to give Peter Forsberg credit for leading the league in scoring in 2004. He was by far the league's leader in points per game, but he only played in 39 games. It doesn't feel right to give him credit for an Art Ross trophy (taking it away from Martin St. Louis, who wasn't quite as good, but who played in all 82 games). On the other hand, it also feels misleading to treat Forsberg as finishing tied for 47th in scoring, as if he were no different than Shawn McEachern, Nils Ekman, or Tyler Arnason.

matnor's method (link) says, essentially - let's recognize that Forsberg scored at the highest rate in 2004. But he'll only get credit for doing so for 39 games. (The purpose of the method isn't to crown a new scoring champion each season - it's to look at how many games a player played at a certain pace during the entire career).

There are two important modifications that I've made to the method. The first one is simple - all seasons are adjusted in length to 82 games. Jean Beliveau gets credit for leading the league in PPG for 82 games in 1956 (because it's not his fault the schedule was only 70 games back then). Then in 1959, he gets credit for 64/70*82 = approximately 75 games at this pace. (I treated the 2020 season as being exactly 70 games in length, even though the actual length varied from 68 to 71 games - thanks to COVID).

The second modification is I didn't have any minimum thresholds for games played. If a player played at least half the games, PPG is calculated normally. If a player played in less than half the games, I take his actual point total, and add enough scoreless games to get him to the 50% threshold. (Otherwise, in 2004 as an example, Peter Forsberg wouldn't get credit for anything whatsoever with his 39 games, but Marc Savard's 45 games would qualify - it didn't feel right to disqualify Forsberg entirely when there's only a difference of six games). So Forsberg's adjusted PPG is 55 (actual points) / 41 (39 actual games + 2 scoreless games) = 1.34 PPG. In this case, it's still enough to lead the league (and Forsberg only gets credited for the 39 actual games he played). Sometimes, the order changes. For example, in 1952, Dickie Moore played in 33 of the 70 games, and scored more PPG than Ted Lindsay. However, after adding two scoreless games to get Moore up to the 35 game mark (half the schedule), he fell behind Terrible Ted. So Moore was 2nd in PPG in real life, but he gets knocked down to 3rd in this method (but at least he gets some credit, rather than having the season disqualified outright).

All data has been compiled in good faith. There's a lot of numbers here (more than 1 million cells of data), so let me know if anything jumps out as being inaccurate.

Fantastic work, as usual, HO.

I think this is an important lens through which to view scoring. No single method will ever provide a holistic picture, so we need as many rational ways of framing the question as possible.

This is like a strange mirror of VsX in that it focuses solely on scoring pace rather than season totals. Hopefully this gets picked up and used by the forum as a whole because I think it's really valuable.

 

[Staniowski]

These types of lists are always problematic because it's a very simplistic view of hockey history that treats every season/every era as equal. Given the huge differences in the quantity of quality hockey players over different eras, the result is an extremely inaccurate picture of the best scorers over time.

The issue isn't the number of teams; rather its the depth of quality players.

The Original 6 stars, for example, are vastly overrated on some of these lists, in comparison to players from parts of the '80s and '90s when the NHL talent pool was far bigger, and there were substantially more elite players, and therefore a lot more competition among the best scorers.

 

[seventieslord]

^^^ really really fun at parties

 

[Staniowski]

^^^ really really fun at parties

Everything I've said is accurate, which is why you're not challenging it. You just don't like that I'm telling the truth.

 

[MadLuke]

Everything I've said is accurate, which is why you're not challenging it. You just don't like that I'm telling the truth.

Yes but will be true at every list of every statistics ever, no ?

Not a single stats (would it points, art ross, stanley cup, Top 10 in points, etc..) will not be highly dependant of the era and the strength of teammate-competition players will be.

It is a description of the very challenge-nature of comparing Athlete over different time.

 

[Staniowski]

Yes but will be true at every list of every statistics ever, no ?

Not a single stats (would it points, art ross, stanley cup, Top 10 in points, etc..) will not be highly dependant of the era and the strength of teammate-competition players will be.

It is a description of the very challenge-nature of comparing Athlete over different time.

Yes, there are huge differences in player quality in different eras, and it's not reflected, at all, in this kind of data.

It's like if you compared the yearly 5-best 17-year-old hockey players from each of Ontario, Manitoba, and PEI, and just assumed the competition is equal for each.

 

[MadLuke]

and it's not reflected, at all, in this kind of data.

In what data take into account player quality in different eras ?

Not goals scored, not points, not scoring finish, not winning, and even less so the eye test has it will be vastly relative to how much you look good versus what the best hockey player can and usually do.

Not a single one, right ? And we can be confident that everyone reading this thread will known that, or do you feel it is more true for this kind of data than any others ?

 

[Staniowski]

In what data take into account player quality in different eras ?

Not goals scored, not points, not scoring finish, not winning, and even less so the eye test has it will be vastly relative to how much you look good versus what the best hockey player can and usually do.

Not a single one, right ? And we can be confident that everyone reading this thread will known that, or do you feel it is more true for this kind of data than any others ?

I don't understand what your point is. It sounds like whataboutism.

You agree with what I'm saying, but you don't want me to say it.

 

[MadLuke]

You agree with what I'm saying, but you don't want me to say it.

What you said was already mentionned in thread, I even myself responding to someone that was making it said a couple of message above:
This, with an era or about only forward will make the Top 10 and some season from only 3 teams of players on the same line, 10 would be getting almost all the forward of best power play first unit of the league and if you are good enough to stay on it when you have that chance, you will stay on that top 10.

The way you said it, made it sound has if anyone was thinking that being in the top 10 in ppg in 1922 was the same than 1992 or made it sound like if this was more true of this stats than say how many goal a player scored or winning the art ross or the stanley cup in any way that feel a bit like your insulting people intelligence.

Maybe you mean that metric is more biased for the era they played in than how many goals they scored, if so, how so ?

 

[Staniowski]

What you said was already mentionned in thread, I even myself responding to someone that was making it said a couple of message above:
This, with an era or about only forward will make the Top 10 and some season from only 3 teams of players on the same line, 10 would be getting almost all the forward of best power play first unit of the league and if you are good enough to stay on it when you have that chance, you will stay on that top 10.

The way you said it, made it sound has if anyone was thinking that being in the top 10 in ppg in 1922 was the same than 1992 or made it sound like if this was more true of this stats than say how many goal a player scored or winning the art ross or the stanley cup in any way that feel a bit like your insulting people intelligence.

Maybe you mean that metric is more biased for the era they played in than how many goals they scored, if so, how so ?

No, it's nothing to do with points-per-game (ppg). Goals, assists, points, ppg, they're all the same issue. They would all be the same problem if presented this way.

 

[MadLuke]

No, it's nothing to do with points-per-game (ppg). Goals, assists, points, ppg, they're all the same issue. They would all be the same problem if presented this way.

Or presented in any way, right ? Or what would you propose has a way to present any stats that would take account quality of the league ?

Again you make it sound has if this current post was special in any way in this regard, when it come with any possible presentation of any possible thing.

 

[BraveCanadian]

How could you possibly collect data in any league that would allow you to compare between eras or age groups or leagues? That makes no sense.

Obviously you have to make your own determinations on what is a reasonable way to do that.