Was Lemieux still in his peak in 1995-96?

[jigglysquishy]

I fail to see how having 34 more points in the exact same amount of gp 70 than the closest non teamate is anywhere near as dominant as having 41 more points in 12 less games 82 vs 70 than the closest non teamate. His season was nowhere near as dominant as lemieuxs 96.

Scoring was much much much lower in 53 than in 96. If you're not going to take scoring environments into account you might as well not have the discussion.

Howe was 156% the PPG of Richard, next closest teammate. Lemieux was 158% the PPG of Sakic, the next closest teammate.

 

[Nathaniel Skywalker]

Scoring was much much much lower in 53 than in 96. If you're not going to take scoring environments into account you might as well not have the discussion.

Howe was 156% the PPG of Richard, next closest teammate. Lemieux was 158% the PPG of Sakic, the next closest teammate.

Scoring environment has nothing to do with how much better lemieux was in comparison to his peers. N this is not even going into the fact howe was playing in a 6 team canadian league with 99 percent canadian players. The 53 season was 70 games played. Fittingly in this comparison lemieux only plated 70 games in 96. I just checked the game logs for jagr n sakic through 70 gp in 96.

This is what it would have looked like if all 3 played 70 games

Lemieux 161
Jagr 133
Sakic 103

In comparison to 53 where the 3 leading scorers all played 70
Howe 95
Lindsay 71
Richard 61

So lemieux had 28 more points than his closest teamate n second leading scorer vs 24 for howe and lemieux had 58 more points than the closest non teamate n third leading scorer vs 34 for howe. The stats are right there. No need for any further dissecting.

 

[jigglysquishy]

The rates are more important, not the points. Lower scoring environment is lower points. This is day 1 stuff.

They both scored 156% of non closest teammate after 70 games.

 

[Nathaniel Skywalker]

The rates are more important, not the points. Lower scoring environment is lower points. This is day 1 stuff.

Your talking about rates and I'm showing you raw production directly to their peers who played in the exact same scoring environment. N no offensive to Ted Lindsay but he'd have 0 chance against a prime Jagr in a scoring race and lemieux still dominated jagr to a higher degree than howe did Lindsay. Agree to disagree I guess

 

[Nathaniel Skywalker]

The rates are more important, not the points. Lower scoring environment is lower points. This is day 1 stuff.

They both scored 156% of non closest teammate after 70 games.

It's interesting because sans 92-93 96 may just be lemieuxs second most dominant season compared to his peers right in line with 88-89 but here's where I like to factor in who was in second place in scoring etc. I find dominating prime gretzky circa 88-89 better than dominating a prime jagr.

 

[jigglysquishy]

Your talking about rates and I'm showing you raw production directly to their peers who played in the exact same scoring environment. N no offensive to Ted Lindsay but he'd have 0 chance against a prime Jagr in a scoring race and lemieux still dominated jagr to a higher degree than howe did Lindsay. Agree to disagree I guess

You're struggling to understand what the scoring environment actually entails.

No one was going to put a 58 point gap on closest non teammate in 1953. No peak Gretzky. Not peak Lemieux. That's a gap of 186% the production.

1 point is not 1 point across era.

 

[JackSlater]

Scoring environment has nothing to do with how much better lemieux was in comparison to his peers. N this is not even going into the fact howe was playing in a 6 team canadian league with 99 percent canadian players. The 53 season was 70 games played. Fittingly in this comparison lemieux only plated 70 games in 96. I just checked the game logs for jagr n sakic through 70 gp in 96.

This is what it would have looked like if all 3 played 70 games

Lemieux 161
Jagr 133
Sakic 103

In comparison to 53 where the 3 leading scorers all played 70
Howe 95
Lindsay 71
Richard 61

So lemieux had 28 more points than his closest teamate n second leading scorer vs 24 for howe and lemieux had 58 more points than the closest non teamate n third leading scorer vs 34 for howe. The stats are right there. No need for any further dissecting.

You're doing a bad job of this. As you were already told it's the rate that matters as opposed to the raw difference, and even then you could (should) have picked Lindros as the comparable as opposed to Sakic, as Lindros' ppg x 70 was 110 that year. That's without getting into how adjusting other players down to 70 games benefits Lemieux, who I believe sat out most back to back games that year to stay fresh.

To do the work for you, if we factor out teammates and focus only on Canadians, as well as scale Lindros down to 70 games even though he did not play an advantageous schedule like Lemieux did, this is how Howe 1953 and Lemieux 1996 compare to the next best scorer:

Howe vs Richard: 95/61 = 56% advantage for Howe
Lemieux vs Lindros: 161/110 = 46% advantage for Lemieux

 

[dr robbie]

Your talking about rates and I'm showing you raw production directly to their peers who played in the exact same scoring environment. N no offensive to Ted Lindsay but he'd have 0 chance against a prime Jagr in a scoring race and lemieux still dominated jagr to a higher degree than howe did Lindsay. Agree to disagree I guess

You kind of answer correctly, but then back track for some reason. How can you compare "raw production directly to their peers" but then not factor in the fact that they are NOT the same scoring environments in 1996 (3.14 gpg) as in 1953 (2.4 gpg). That's just silly. You have to compare players to their peers and their relative environment to make any logical argument. Jiggly is correct in that you have to use percentages against peers (or whole league if you wish) and not raw totals otherwise the results are meaningless as the environments are completely different.

 

[Nathaniel Skywalker]

I was merely comparing the top 3 scorers directly. I'll admit I've never been huge on percentages etc because there Is a lot of variables that can skew them. Quality of competition, injuries etc.

 

[JackSlater]

I was merely comparing the top 3 scorers directly. I'll admit I've never been huge on percentages etc because there Is a lot of variables that can skew them. Quality of competition, injuries etc.

Those same variables exist by comparing raw totals, and you did dip into rates to benefit Lemieux by scaling other players down to 70 games. Comparing the rates at least somewhat eliminates the variable of league scoring levels.

 

[67 others]

Do you mean peak or prime?

Peak is your single absolutely best year, or sometimes best 3 years. Its the top of the mountain of your performance of your career.

Prime would be more the word you are looking for I think. Those years when you are performing at a very high level

 

[Hockey Outsider]

Obviously, scoring stats from 1953 can't be compared to stats from 1996. The two most obvious reasons are 1996 was a much higher-scoring season, and the schedule was longer. (Granted, both Howe and Lemieux played 70 games, but Lemieux missed a dozen games while Howe didn't miss any).

With those two basic adjustments, Howe's 95 points are comparable to approximately 95 * 82/70 * 3.14/2.40 = 146 points. Lemieux is still ahead, and he achieved this in fewer games, but now they're in the same ballpark (taking into account Howe's physicality and much strong two-way play).

Assists are a subtler point that need to be considered. Not many people realize that during the 1950's, the NHL awarded fewer assists per goal compared to the modern NHL. Leaguewide, there were 1.66 assists per goal in 1996, but only 1.50 assists per goal in 1953. Applying this adjustment and Howe is up to 154 adjusted points (75 goals, 78 assists).

Another subtle point is the split between ES, PP and SH scoring. Surprisingly, 1996 only featured about 13% more goals per game at ES compared to 1953. But there was a massive difference in scoring on the powerplay (it was 90% higher in 1996 compared to 1953). Unfortunately we don't have enough data to tell if more powerplays were being called in 1996, if powerplays were more successful (ie a higher percentage resulted in a goal), or some combination of both. But for Lemieux, a player who by 1996 got a significant portion of his points on the powerplay, this is a huge advantage. He wouldn't have come close to putting up the same scoring totals in 1953 because PP goals were much less common back then. (Shorthanded offense was also far more common in 1996 - 121% more goals per game compared to 1953 - but since this is a relatively small part of offense, it doesn't have a huge impact).

Here's my best estimate of what Lemieux's production would have looked like, scaling everything back to 1953:

SEASON	ES G	ES A	PP G	PP A	SH G	SH A	Goals	Assists	Points
Howe (1953)	37	30	11	16	1	0	49	46	95
Lemieux (1996)	23	30	14	19	3	0	40	49	89

Of course I'm not saying that Lemieux would have scored exactly 89 points (no more, no less) in 1953. But it's a ballpark estimate that helps adjust for context (just like we need to do if we're comparing dollars to Euros, or prices from today to prices from 30 years ago).

Based on this, I think it's accurate to say that Howe (1953) and Lemieux (1996) were in the same ballpark offensively. Even after all of these adjustments, Lemieux was a bit more productive per game (by about 9%), but Howe was a far better all-around player (especially at this point in their respective careers). I don't think it's controversial to say that Howe's best season is at least equal to what might be Lemieux's 4th best season.

 

[Overrated]

Of course I'm not saying that Lemieux would have scored exactly 89 points (no more, no less) in 1953. But it's a ballpark estimate that helps adjust for context (just like we need to do if we're comparing dollars to Euros, or prices from today to prices from 30 years ago).

Based on this, I think it's accurate to say that Howe (1953) and Lemieux (1996) were in the same ballpark offensively. Even after all of these adjustments, Lemieux was a bit more productive per game (by about 9%), but Howe was a far better all-around player (especially at this point in their respective careers). I don't think it's controversial to say that Howe's best season is at least equal to what might be Lemieux's 4th best season.

It's not controversial but it's unlikely to be true. The game was much smaller and Richard was 31 so Gordie wasn't competing against any star forward at their peak. Lemieux's competition were all legends.

 

[Staniowski]

Howe was not in the same class offensively as Lemieux; there's not a chance Howe would have come close to scoring as well as Lemieux did in '95-'96. Howe wasn't as good a scorer as Jagr either, and maybe not as good as Lindros....Howe was about the same as Beliveau as a scorer, and probably similar to Lindros.

Howe wouldn't ever come close to Lemieux or Gretzky in scoring.

 

[Staniowski]

It's not controversial but it's unlikely to be true. The game was much smaller and Richard was 31 so Gordie wasn't competing against any star forward at their peak. Lemieux's competition were all legends.

Yes, Howe had extremely weak competition in scoring. There was virtually nobody around Howe's age who was any good at all as a scorer. They were all in their 30s, or weak players. He was a far cry from competing against Jagr, Lindros, and all those other good '90s scorers.

 

[daver]

Howe was not in the same class offensively as Lemieux; there's not a chance Howe would have come close to scoring as well as Lemieux did in '95-'96. Howe wasn't as good a scorer as Jagr either, and maybe not as good as Lindros....Howe was about the same as Beliveau as a scorer, and probably similar to Lindros.

Howe wouldn't ever come close to Lemieux or Gretzky in scoring.

How are you coming to this conclusion?

 

[Drytoast]

Lemiux may have lost his step but I feel he was the only shooter who honestly intimidated Hasak at that time.

 

[Overrated]

Howe was not in the same class offensively as Lemieux; there's not a chance Howe would have come close to scoring as well as Lemieux did in '95-'96. Howe wasn't as good a scorer as Jagr either, and maybe not as good as Lindros....Howe was about the same as Beliveau as a scorer, and probably similar to Lindros.

Howe wouldn't ever come close to Lemieux or Gretzky in scoring.

I agree but Howe was clearly better than Beliveau in scoring, he led the league in goals 5 times after all.

 

[tabness]

It's not controversial but it's unlikely to be true. The game was much smaller and Richard was 31 so Gordie wasn't competing against any star forward at their peak. Lemieux's competition were all legends.

Here is 1952-1953:

It was recognized back then that the league strengthened during the later fifties (just as for example it was recognized that the league strengthened in the later eighties from the early eighties for Gretzky's big margins). The early fifties had what, peak Maurice Richard, to serve as a benchmark for Howe who was a big time goal scorer but not so much point getter. Beyond Richard, as mentioned above, the other big guys were either older or just coming up. This shouldn't really even be controversial right? Most of the original six legends weren't at their best/in the league during the early fifties.

Fundamentally, it's gotta be recognized that the margin would likely change simply changing the year or having a different set of players. The assumption that the benchmark is going to stay consistent across years is not one that's really jiving with any contemporaneous understanding of events at all. Margin over some benchmark really doesn't tell you much at all, unless of course, you take the assumption that the benchmark is consistent across years. Frankly, that assumption is unpalatable.

Unfortunately we don't have enough data to tell if more powerplays were being called in 1996, if powerplays were more successful (ie a higher percentage resulted in a goal), or some combination of both.

Leaguewide powerplay opportunity and powerplay percentage data is available on the NHL site (and Hockey Reference) but only since 1977-1978 (you might already know this, just wanted to point out)

NHL Stats

The official source for NHL Stats including skaters, goalies, teams stats and more.

www.nhl.com

1995-96 NHL Summary | Hockey-Reference.com

Check out the Eastern, Western Conference and Playoff series Standings, Statistics, Leaders and more for the 1995-96 NHL season on Hockey-Reference.com

www.hockey-reference.com

However, you actually can parse through the game events and literally create the powerplay opportunity stat (and thus derive the percentage stat) through the game logs themselves. The data is available even for the original six years, just not easily accessible.

So like just eyeballing things, the Red Wings got quite a few powerplay opportunities in the first few games of the 1952-1953 season, ranging from four to over ten (this is ignoring coincidental penalties/majors/misconducts of course).

 

[TheStatican]

I would put Howe 52-53 above Lemieux 95-96. Similar PPG dominance over non teammates. More dominant in goals and much more dominant on even strength. Much stronger two way game. But that's probably the only Howe season I'd put above Lemieux 95-96.

Well now that's a glaring omission on my part... I looked at Beliveau & Hull but not Howe, smh. But I'm kind of glad I did miss it since it brought that particular season of Howe's into the discussion.

That list is a great reminder that the adjusted numbers on H Reference are a complete mess.

I agree and disagree. Certainly adjusted numbers are not to be looked on as some kind absolute fact and the figures they produce do seem questionable at times. But the formula they use is straight forward, they equalize scoring for all seasons and then adjust for roster size which actually benefits players from earlier eras.

I still think they're a better way of comparing players than just using raw totals alone. For instance when comparing Lemieux's '96 season with Howe's '53 the numbers go from;
161 vs 95 and 69 vs 40 to
156 vs 131 and 67 vs 65

We need some kind of metric to adjust for the differing scoring levels across eras as you yourself note; 1 point is not 1 point across eras, and H Reference is the only site that even bothers to try. But like all tools it has it's flaws, such as not taking into consideration how concentrated scoring is towards the top end.

Comparison against one's peers is another informative tool perhaps even more useful however it's flaw is it doesn't take into consideration the overall talent level in the league at the time. There's no debating Howe dominated his peers that season by the same degree as Lemieux did but as other have noted he did not have the same level of competition. But I would also agree that doesn't necessarily mean Lemieux was better in '96 as like you mentioned Howe brought other aspects to his game in addition to his scoring prowess. I think the Lindros comparison is rather apt, except Howe was an even better scorer and not injury prone.

Do you mean peak or prime?

Peak is your single absolutely best year, or sometimes best 3 years. Its the top of the mountain of your performance of your career.

Prime would be more the word you are looking for I think. Those years when you are performing at a very high level

Peak.
I don't think there's any debate that Lemieux was still in his prime in 95-96.

Most players only have a 1 or 2 year peak, but some like Gretzky for instance had a much longer peak where they maintained nearly the same level of performance over a span greater than just 3 years.

 

[daver]

Well now that's a glaring omission on my part... I looked at Beliveau & Hull but not Howe, smh. But I'm kind of glad I did miss it since it brought that particular season of Howe's into the discussion.



I agree and disagree. Certainly adjusted numbers are not to be looked on as some kind absolute fact and the figures they produce do seem questionable at times. But the formula they use is straight forward, they equalize scoring for all seasons and then adjust for roster size which actually benefits players from earlier eras.

I still think they're a better way of comparing players than just using raw totals alone. For instance when comparing Lemieux's '96 season with Howe's '53 the numbers go from;
161 vs 95 and 69 vs 40 to
156 vs 131 and 67 vs 65

We need some kind of metric to adjust for the differing scoring levels across eras as you yourself note; 1 point is not 1 point across eras, and H Reference is the only site that even bothers to try. But like all tools it has it's flaws, such as not taking into consideration how concentrated scoring is towards the top end.

Comparison against one's peers is another informative tool perhaps even more useful however it's flaw is it doesn't take into consideration the overall talent level in the league at the time. There's no debating Howe dominated his peers that season by the same degree as Lemieux did but as other have noted he did not have the same level of competition. But I would also agree that doesn't necessarily mean Lemieux was better in '96 as like you mentioned Howe brought other aspects to his game in addition to his scoring prowess. I think the Lindros comparison is rather apt, except Howe was an even better scorer and not injury prone.

Howe is the absolute last player in NHL history whose numbers need questioning. He was the clear most dominant offensive player of the O6 era; the evidence of which encompasses 20 seasons. He had four era-best type seasons vs. one each for his peers (Hull, Beliveau, and Mikita) with the best one (52/53) being untouchable. "Adjusting" numbers to clearly bring down all O6 players doesn't pass the smell test.

It wasn't until Wayne that one could reasonably say that Howe had been surpassed offensively and then we know how Wayne and Mario compared.

That being said, IMO, Howe was not on Mario's level offensively but Howe's 52/53 season, arguably a statistical anomaly for him, was on par with Mario's 95/96 season. It can be argued that Mario's per game level was higher but that is tempered with the fact that he skipped games to stay fresh.

As for the OP, that last fact pushed him outside his peak, IMO.

 

[Staniowski]

How are you coming to this conclusion?

Based on everything I know about the players, including watching them play. Howe was an excellent scorer, but there have been guys who've been better.

Since 1980, I think Makarov, Jagr, Crosby, and McDavid are all better scorers than Howe. And Lindros was probably just as good or better.

There's no denying Howe's offensive talents, but he was a dominant scorer against some very weak competition.

 

[daver]

Based on everything I know about the players, including watching them play. Howe was an excellent scorer, but there have been guys who've been better.

Since 1980, I think Makarov, Jagr, Crosby, and McDavid are all better scorers than Howe. And Lindros was probably just as good or better.

There's no denying Howe's offensive talents, but he was a dominant scorer against some very weak competition.

By what metric are you measuring his competition?

From 1946/47 to 1953/54, he had the four best point totals in that timeframe: NHL Stats

despite those four seasons having the four lowest league GPGs: NHL League Averages | Hockey-Reference.com

 

[Hobnobs]

Based on everything I know about the players, including watching them play. Howe was an excellent scorer, but there have been guys who've been better.

Since 1980, I think Makarov, Jagr, Crosby, and McDavid are all better scorers than Howe. And Lindros was probably just as good or better.

There's no denying Howe's offensive talents, but he was a dominant scorer against some very weak competition.

Today I learned that Maurice Richard, Geoffrion, Ted Lindsay, Sid Smith, Beliveau etc are weak competition.

 

[MadLuke]

Today I learned that Maurice Richard, Geoffrion, Ted Lindsay, Sid Smith, Beliveau etc are weak competition.

Beliveau-Geoffrion were yet to be factor during Howe 53 season, Richard was over 30 by that point.

So for Howe peak competition during Howe peak season he could have a point, if we include Ricahrd to Beliveau prime, Howe 95 points and 49 goals look great still obviously:

NHL Stats

The official source for NHL Stats including skaters, goalies, teams stats and more.

www.nhl.com

But that really not far from Beliveau best season for points or Richard for goals:

NHL Stats

The official source for NHL Stats including skaters, goalies, teams stats and more.

www.nhl.com

Still the best of the era, but the separation is not that special, that said Beliveau all time great has well Richard for goal scoring, so scoring like some of the best ever...

i.e. if we want to include great like Beliveau when talking about Howe peak, we need to compare what Howe did during his peak with what Beliveau will do just 2-3 year's later, not when Howe was settting record with Beliveau out of the league or playing less than 45 games, prime Richard years before, 54-55 Geoffrion not the 20 years old version and so on.