Three stars selections (playoffs, 1992-2022)

[tabness]

That's a good point. As I mentioned in the first post, around 3% of the data appears to be missing. I think @pnep got his data from NHL.com, so if it's missing there, presumably Lemieux has been short-changed here. (My guess, just by quickly looking at the boxscore, is Lemieux, Francis and Barrasso would have been the three stars).

The other thing that hurts Lemieux is the Penguins didn't play very many games in 19992 (16-5 record), and he missed six of those. Six "three star" selections in 15 games doesn't look quite as bad.

The data is from the JSON stats API, they were posted before by someone other than @pnep either here or in By the Numbers a while back (at least regular season results), but the search functionality of the site right now isn't being helpful lol

For whatever reason these APIs have a small amount of games missing game/live data (which includes the star selections). I actually pulled the (regular season) games with missing data a while back covering up to 2017-2018 (attached as a text file if anyone here wants to do any analysis on it for if certain teams are affected more). The early seasons from 1917-1918 too 1941-1942 seem to be totally complete (I show two missing regular season games, but those seem to simply be games with no goals or penalties... technically speaking any game pre 2005 lockout with no goals or penalties would be flagged as a missing game without goals or penalties because those are the only live "events" tracked back then). I haven't yet bothered to fully go through and grab data for the recent seasons after 2018-2019, but it does seem like the NHL's data is much more complete recently, and I do believe they have been going back and adding event data for previously missing games (only for recent new NHL seasons though) as well from spot checking.

The issue with the data from the stats API is simply that three star selections are voted on by various groups and the source is never stated. You have broadcasters, print media, and so on, and of course these differ a lot (just look at any game broadcast by two different entities, you'll get different three star selections, and the print media would similarily differ). Now, the NHL does have source of the three star selections (sometimes) on the HTML reports, but those go back to the early 2000s only...

Lastly, anyone else remember on the late nineties/early 2000s NHL website where you could choose your own three stars during the game and see percentages of who others voted for? They gotta bring that back lol

 

[Staniowski]

Three-star selections generally overrate goaltenders...they often become a default pick if nobody else stands out, or if the team allows few goals (whether the goalie played well or not).

And generally underrates defensemen, defensive forwards, and even offensive stars...re: the latter, you know you've made it as a superstar scorer if you lead the game in scoring and you don't get even a 3rd star.

 

[Staniowski]

Re: Patrick Roy

Roy was a good goalie but his importance to those Habs teams has always been overrated. If you watch the '86 or '89 or '93 playoffs, you're not going to see Roy dominating those teams. And he's often not their best player. Some of those teams probably had the best combined group of defensemen and defensive forwards that any NHL team has had in the past 40 years.

In '86, Roy definitely didn't deserve the Conn Smythe. Carbonneau should've won it, and Lemieux was also deserving. Then, McPhee, Skrudland, Chelios and Roy in whatever order.

In '93, I have no problem with Roy winning the Conn Smythe, but it's a relatively weak win. And he didn't need to win it. There were 2 or 3 other guys who could've won it. But Roy played well. The Habs played excellent defensively....

 

[The Panther]

Three-star selections generally overrate goaltenders...they often become a default pick if nobody else stands out, or if the team allows few goals (whether the goalie played well or not).

Agree.

And generally underrates defensemen, defensive forwards, and even offensive stars...re: the latter, you know you've made it as a superstar scorer if you lead the game in scoring and you don't get even a 3rd star.

Agree.

Re: Patrick Roy

Roy was a good goalie but his importance to those Habs teams has always been overrated. If you watch the '86 or '89 or '93 playoffs, you're not going to see Roy dominating those teams. And he's often not their best player. Some of those teams probably had the best combined group of defensemen and defensive forwards that any NHL team has had in the past 40 years.

In '86, Roy definitely didn't deserve the Conn Smythe. Carbonneau should've won it, and Lemieux was also deserving. Then, McPhee, Skrudland, Chelios and Roy in whatever order.

In '93, I have no problem with Roy winning the Conn Smythe, but it's a relatively weak win. And he didn't need to win it. There were 2 or 3 other guys who could've won it. But Roy played well. The Habs played excellent defensively....

Agree.

Was Roy one of the all-time greats at his position? Yes. Was he over-rated? Yes.

 

[Hockey Outsider]

I'll beat a dead horse a bit more and show how much Giguere stood out on the 2003 Ducks.

Player	Season	1st	2nd	3rd	TOTAL
Jean-Sebastien Giguere	2003​	9​	3​		33​
Paul Kariya	2003​	1​	2​		7​
Steve Rucchin	2003​	1​	1​	1​	6​
Petr Sykora	2003​		1​	3​	5​
Mike Leclerc	2003​		2​	1​	5​
Steve Thomas	2003​	1​	1​		5​
Adam Oates	2003​	1​		1​	4​
Ruslan Salei	2003​	1​			3​
Sandis Ozolinsh	2003​	1​			3​
Stanislav Chistov	2003​		1​		2​
Keith Carney	2003​		1​		2​
Rob Niedermayer	2003​			1​	1​
Samuel Pahlsson	2003​			1​	1​
Kurt Sauer	2003​			1​	1​
Jason Krog	2003​			1​	1​

No other team that I've looked at comes close to this. Giguere was named first star more than every other player on the team combined. (And I agree with the comments made by a few people that goalies are easy to overrate based on three stars, but, at least in this case, it feels justified).

 

[Hockey Outsider]

I'm going through the regular season three stars data. Much less interesting than the playoff data. At a high level:

• the top ten single seasons consist of Hasek (1997, 1998 and 1999), McDavid (2018 and 2019 - and easily on pace in the COVID-shortened 2021 season), Jagr (1999 and 2006), Fedorov (his all-time great 1994 campaign), Lemieux (1996 - with 1993 just outside), and surprisingly Pekka Rinne (2012).
• the "all-time" (1992 to 2022) forward leaders were Jagr, Ovechkin, Crosby, Modano, Sakic, Selanne, Iginla and Thornton. Per game the leaders are Lemieux, McDavid, Crosby, Matthews, Ovechkin, Forsnerg. Lindros, Bure, Sakic, and Malkin.
• for goalies, the leaders were Brodeur, Luongo, Lundqvist, Joseph and Hasek. (Per game the leaders Hasek, Lundqvist, Rask and Vasilevskiy).
• defensemen get way less recognition than other positions. The leaders were Lidstrom, Leetch, Burns, Pronger, Blake, Niedermayer and Chara. Per game the leaders at Leetch, Karlsson, Bourque, MacInnis, Josi and Pronger.

 

[JackSlater]

I'll beat a dead horse a bit more and show how much Giguere stood out on the 2003 Ducks.

Player	Season	1st	2nd	3rd	TOTAL
Jean-Sebastien Giguere	2003​	9​	3​		33​
Paul Kariya	2003​	1​	2​		7​
Steve Rucchin	2003​	1​	1​	1​	6​
Petr Sykora	2003​		1​	3​	5​
Mike Leclerc	2003​		2​	1​	5​
Steve Thomas	2003​	1​	1​		5​
Adam Oates	2003​	1​		1​	4​
Ruslan Salei	2003​	1​			3​
Sandis Ozolinsh	2003​	1​			3​
Stanislav Chistov	2003​		1​		2​
Keith Carney	2003​		1​		2​
Rob Niedermayer	2003​			1​	1​
Samuel Pahlsson	2003​			1​	1​
Kurt Sauer	2003​			1​	1​
Jason Krog	2003​			1​	1​

No other team that I've looked at comes close to this. Giguere was named first star more than every other player on the team combined. (And I agree with the comments made by a few people that goalies are easy to overrate based on three stars, but, at least in this case, it feels justified).

The numbers with Giguere that year are always ridiculous. In Anaheim's 21 games, the team scored 2 or fewer goals 12 times (8 times only scoring once or zero times) meaning that Giguere needed to keep it to one goal or zero in order for the team to win over half of the time. Somehow the team reached game 7 of the finals. Also since this stemmed from a discussion of Hasek in 1999, in the 1999 playoffs Buffalo scored 3 or more goals in 14 of its 21 games. That's in almost the exact same scoring environment as well.

 

[Pominville Knows]

Most "three star" points, single playoff run - excluding goalies

Player	Season	1st	2nd	3rd	TOTAL
Evgeni Malkin	2009​	5​	4​	2​	25​
Daniel Alfredsson	2007​	6​	2​	1​	23​
Joe Sakic	1996​	5​	3​	1​	22​
Joe Sakic	2001​	3​	4​	4​	21​
Evgeny Kuznetsov	2018​	4​	4​	1​	21​
Victor Hedman	2020​	5​	1​	3​	20​
Brayden Point	2020​	3​	5​	1​	20​
Henrik Zetterberg	2008​	3​	3​	4​	19​
Wayne Gretzky	1993​	4​	3​	1​	19​
Mark Messier	1994​	5​	1​	2​	19​
Martin St. Louis	2014​	4​	3​	1​	19​
Connor McDavid	2022​	3​	2​	5​	18​
Igor Larionov	1994​	3​	4​	1​	18​
Cale Makar	2022​	3​	4​	1​	18​
Sideny Crosby	2009​	2​	3​	5​	17​
Nikita Kucherov	2020​	2​	4​	3​	17​
Peter Forsberg	2000​	3​	3​	2​	17​
Peter Forsberg	2002​	3​	3​	2​	17​
Joe Nieuwendyk	1999​	3​	3​	2​	17​
Keith Primeau	2004​	2​	5​	1​	17​
Ryan Getzlaf	2017​	3​	4​		17​
Eric Lindros	1997​	4​	2​	1​	17​
Brian Leetch	1994​	4​	2​	1​	17​
Brett Hull	2000​	3​	4​		17​
Chris Pronger	2006​	3​	2​	3​	16​
Jamie Langenbrunner	2003​	4​	1​	2​	16​
Claude Lemieux	1995​	5​		1​	16​

Evgeni Malkin gets the top spot here, but Joe Sakic has two of the top five. McDavid's performance from last spring looks incredible (given that his team was swept in the conference finals).

Again, it would probably be more informative to look at this as a percentage of games played.

It's much harder to stand out as a defensemen. Only Hedman, Makar, Leetch and Pronger are in the top 25.

Most surprising name? I realize this is going back almost 30 years now, but I wasn't expecting to see Igor Larionov here.

As incredible as McDavid's run was, the very next guy on that list is Larionov in 1994...

 

[Hockey Outsider]

Hart winner vs three-stars leader

Season	Three-stars leader	Hart winner	Comments
1992​	Lemieux	Messier	Messier out of the top 20
1993​	Lemieux	Lemieux
1994​	Fedorov	Fedorov
1995​	Jagr/Fleury	Lindros	Lindros only 6th
1996​	Lemieux	Lemieux
1997​	Hasek	Hasek	Lemieux first among forwards
1998​	Hasek	Hasek	Jagr first among forwards
1999​	Jagr	Jagr	Hasek right behind
2000​	Joseph	Pronger	Pronger tied for 17th; Bure first among forwards
2001​	Sakic	Sakic
2002​	Theodore	Theodore	Iginla right behind
2003​	Luongo	Forsberg	Forsberg out of the top ten; Heatley first among forwards
2004​	Luongo	St. Louis	St. Louis first among forwards
2006​	Jagr	Thornton
2007​	Lecavalier	Crosby	Crosby a single point behind
2008​	Ovechkin	Ovechkin	Zetterberg and Thornton a single point behind
2009​	Crosby	Ovechkin
2010​	Crosby	Sedin	Sedin only T-12th
2011​	Price	Perry	Perry T-11th; Kesler (surprisingly) 1st among forwards
2012​	Rinne	Malkin	Malkin easily 1st among forwards
2013​	Datsyuk/Miller	Ovechkin	Ovechkin only 20th
2014​	Varlamov	Crosby	Crosby easily first among forwards
2015​	Price	Price
2016​	Lundqvist	Kane	Kane first among forwards
2017​	Bobrovsky	McDavid	Crosby first among forwards; McDavid 6th
2018​	McDavid	Hall	McDavid first by enormous margin; Hall 4th
2019​	McDavid	Kucherov	Kucherov finished 2nd
2020​	McDavid	Draisaitl	Draisaitl finished 2nd
2021​	McDavid	McDavid
2022​	Matthews	Matthews	McDavid right behind

Over the past 30 seasons, the three-stars leader won the Hart trophy 12 times (1993, 1994, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2001, 2002, 2008, 2015, 2021 and 2022).

There are four more years where the Hart winner was the leader among forwards (2004, 2012, 2014, 2016). Then a few more years where it was fairly close (2007, 2019, 2020).

In terms of who gain the most (looking at "three stars"?) McDavid has two Hart trophies, but he was the leader in three-star votes four years in a row (he led by a massive margin in 2018, when he wasn't even a Hart finalist). Jagr has one Hart trophy, but led the league in three-star votes three times (once tied). Ovechkin has three Hart trophies but only led the league once.

Crosby looks pretty good by this metric. He led the league twice (2009 and 2010), was a close second in 2007, and twice more was the leader among forwards (2014 and 2017).

Players who won the Hart in a year they placed outside of the top ten in three-star voting include Pronger (2000 - understandable as it's tough as a defensemen to get picked), Messier (1992), Forsberg (2003), Sedin (2010), Perry (2011), and Ovechkin (2013).

 

[pnep]

Someone (wisely) asked @pnep if he had any data about this and, not surprisingly, he did.

updated data

7.7 MB file on MEGA

mega.nz

 

[wetcoast]

As incredible as McDavid's run was, the very next guy on that list is Larionov in 1994...

Larionov was really that good in his 2 rounds that season.

 

[TheStatican]

Larionov was really that good in his 2 rounds that season.

Wow that's crazy he got that many selections in only two rounds, perhaps the record for players who've only gone that far. But certainly he was the driving force on that team no one else had more than 10 points, though Makarov had 8 goals likely soaked up many of the other stars. It's clear where Larionov got most of his stars from too, he had multiple point games in 6 of the teams 7 wins. Only in one win did he go scoreless and in all the teams losses he had no more than one point, he got two stars in those 8 games including at least one 2nd star.

 

[seekritdude]

Can't recall ever seeing that particular stat before, but I said it before and ill say it again, people forget just how good Larionov was in 94. The sharks only won 3 games the entire season with out him. I know I have this video up on my page sound is bad but what are you gonna do with this old clips ya know. Its funny because generally I feel like again Larionov gets a bit of a cold shoulder sometimes on this board, but when you actually sit down and look at the grand scheme of things when he was the teams number 1 line so to speak he did well for himself. Sharks did well with Larionov when he was healthy and after that terrible start, once they started playing the OV line the sharks were again what it was the last half of the season or maybe was it last third the third best team in the league stat wise. 95-96 I always thought interesting stat was if you take away Larionovs first four games on san jose, then the entire russian for were one through five in plus in minus leading the league. I dunno if thats ever happened before. Stlll the most dominate line ive ever seen night in and night out watching it regularly. Its crazy when you see their actual stats cuz youd think man they must all have 100+ points cuz some of the games just seemed so ridiculous.