What are your thoughts about Richard's 1944/45 season?

[BenchBrawl]

Off-topic rant about the psychological context and significance of that 50 in 50 season—going on a tangent (feel free to ignore):

In the public imagination 50 goals is still the significant benchmark to this day, regardless of context. You're not a real goalscoring bad ass unless you score 50 goals in a season. It's irrational, it's arbitrary, yet psychologically, it matters, so it's not arbitrary after all, as shown as recently as 2017-2018 when Ovechkin fought like a madman to get that 50th.

I've read a thesis which IIRC was trying to pinpoint the exact moment when the legend of Rocket Richard was born. I can't find the name of the thesis right now, I read it a few years ago, but from memory the author pinpointed the two weeks from March 23 to April 13 in 1944.

This was playoff time of the 1943-1944 season—Richard's first real season—and on March 23 Montreal faced Toronto for Game 2 (after a 1-3 defeat in Game 1). In Game 2 Richard scored 5 goals in a 5-1 win, receiving the 3 stars of the match. Blake and Lach got 5 and 4 assists respectively. Hence again the legend of the Punch Line is strongly tied to that game statistically speaking. Anyway, Montreal ended up defeating Toronto in 5 games with 4 straight wins, the last 3 of which Richard didn't do much offensively.

Now facing Chicago in the Stanley Cup Final, Montreal won Game 1 with a score of 5-1. Again, Richard didn't do much. Then in Game 2 (again!), Richard scored 3 goals in a 3-1 victory. Second time in those playoffs that Richard scored all the goals for Montreal in a game. The author of the thesis argues that by then people tied the Canadiens' fate with Richard's performance to an abnormal degree. The Canadiens are Richard, Richard is the Canadiens. The author stresses the psychological importance that Richard scored all the goals for Montreal in those two games.

This was the radio and newspaper era, this is where people got informed about Les Canadiens unless they went to see the games in person, and French-Canadiens were still under the boot of both the anglophone economic domination and the very powerful Catholic Church, and here came this Maurice Richard scoring all the goals for Montreal. Anyway, Montreal won Game 1, Game 2 and Game 3, and in Game 4 Montreal was trailing 1-4 at the start of the 3rd period. Elmer Lach scored a goal making it 2-4. Late in the 3rd period Richard scored back-to-back goals at 16:05 and 17:20 to make it 4-4. This looks strangely like the 1979 Guy Lafleur goal. Ultimately Toe Blake scored the OT goal, winning the Montreal Canadiens their first Stanley Cup in 13 years since the Howie Morenz days. In a way, those playoffs are the beginning of the Montreal Canadiens aura as the most dominant franchise in hockey history, insofar as it's the beginning of Maurice Richard, and from then it goes from Richard to Béliveau to Lafleur, a 35 years period inside of which the Quebec population "liberated itself", giving the impression that Richard was a spiritual savior.

So the author says the 1943-1944 playoffs is when the Rocket Richard legend was born in the Quebec collective subconscious. Most specifically, in Game 2 against Chicago when Richard repeated his exploit of scoring every Montreal goal. Then the late 3rd period back-to-back goals in Game 4 were like a confirmation, an icing on the cake. Richard was a rookie that season (though he played 16 games the year prior), and he came strong like that in the playoffs, à la Roy and Dryden. A legend was born.

After all that, he comes back the next season and immediately scores 50 in 50. The psychological soil was already fertile from the 1944 playoffs for the 50 in 50 season to leave a deep mark in the public psyche. All this at the end of the biggest war humanity had ever seen.

All of this was to give food for thought as to the psychological context that enabled Maurice Richard to become a larger-than-life legend.

 

[BenchBrawl]

And to add a comment on the thesis above, I vaguely remember that in the Top 40 Playoff Performers Project when Richard's playoff record was unpacked and it was seen that he scored his 12 goals in 1944 concentrated in "blow outs" games like the 5-1 and 3-1 wins, it was a point argued in his disfavor.

The author's thesis brings a radical new interpretation of this fact, arguing that it was crucial to his legend that he did this instead of scoring 1 goal in every single game. Hockey-wise, perhaps the latter is better. But in a sense, Richard, like a goalie stealing a game, won those two games by himself, as well as the late 3rd period back-to-back goals in which he insured Montreal would get to OT to win the Stanley Cup after a 13 years drought. Psychologically, it made him greater in the public's eyes.

 

[Vilica]

Both Richard threads, the Ovechkin thread, even that thread about the NHL being predictable are asking essentially the same questions.

What is competition? How do we define it, and can we quantify it? What do we know about Maurice Richard? What do we know about the players he competed against and with? When we look at his peers, who he competed against at the time, what do we see, compared to Alex Ovechkin's peers, who he competes against in his time?

Others have started the process of defining his competition, but in this post I'm going to approach competition on a more abstract level. Throughout NHL history, players have been divided into lines, and those lines labeled 1st line/2nd line/et cetera. The first line generally produces more than the 2nd line, the 2nd line more than the 3rd, and so on. Production gets denominated in points, for the most part, though point totals are highly dependent on team and league scoring levels. In any case, when you look at point totals for a particular team that scores a particular amount, player point totals fall into 2 categories - actual production or de facto production. That production, when defining by line, also depends on how many teams are in the league, and how restrictive one wants to be about defining 1st line production.

To take an extreme example, the 13-14 Buffalo Sabres scored 150 goals in 82 games, and their 3 leading forward scorers were Hodgson with 44, Ennis with 43, and Stafford with 34. That's the Sabres top line production, but that's not actual top line production, just de facto top line, as Hodgson and Ennis were between the 103rd and 115th high scoring forwards that year. Compare that to the 53-54 Blackhawks, who scored 133 goals in 70 games, and whose 3 leading forward scorers were Wilson with 42, Mosienko 34, and Conacher 28. Wilson finished 14th in scoring, Mosienko tied 23rd. De facto "1st line" production would be the top 18 scorers for 53-54, and the top 90 scorers for 13-14, but again we generally don't define 1st line production that wide.

What I wanted to do was create a database of team scoring, and see how point totals derived from team goals, to mathematically define 1st line production for a particular player (eg find all the teams that averaged say 3.05 goals for/game, and look up all their forwards to see how their point totals compare to each other), but I haven't finished that part of my project yet, so I'm reduced to defining it more abstractly rather than concretely. However, not having the exact numbers allows me to think about my definitions without already possessing the answers to my questions - for example how wide to define the margins around 3.05 - do I include teams that scored 2.99 or 3.11 with teams that scored 3.05? On the other side, the question is, using points as differentiation,what's the difference between being a 1C and "being a 1C"? [For a partial visual representation of that database, see here - Tableau Public - I removed the war years by default but you can add them back in. Also, I've ignored games missed in this visualization and further experiments have shown that to be more accurate, you probably should remove those missed games from each player's tally. However, that's a lot of manual labor tracking game logs that I don't want to do.]

Moving back to Maurice Richard, you'll find no argument from me if you were to say that he provided actual 1st line production for most all of his career (or in vernacular "being a 1W"). You'd also get no argument from me if you were to say that the number of player-seasons of actual 1st line production were fewer in Richard's career than during Ovechkin's career. There are two main reasons for that - talent and opportunity. More teams means more player-seasons, which means more opportunities for actual 1st line production to exist. However, when you look at player-seasons during Maurice Richard's career, all too often you have de facto 1st line production and not actual 1st line production, even in favorable scoring environments. That's the other side - talent - whereby the players competing with Maurice Richard are not good enough to produce at actual 1st line rates.

Returning to the 53-54 and 13-14 seasons, if you sort both of them by PPG, you have 2 players above 1, 4 players above 0.89, 6 above 0.74, 16 above 0.60, 30 above 0.50 and 83 forwards scoring a point in 53-54, compared to 13 above 1, 23 above 0.89, 60 above 0.74, 114 above 0.60, 151 above 0.50, and 516 players scoring a point in 13-14. That's the final issue in defining competition - the depth of talent. 1st line players are 1st line players in any era, but far too often in the pre-expansion era, you had no depth. Ken Mosdell is a fine player, but compare him boosting his production off Maurice Richard to Dainius Zubrus centering a young Alex Ovechkin - Mosdell receives 2 end of season All-Star nods, Zubrus receives no votes. More teams means more opportunities for player-seasons to be actual 1st line production, but depth of talent means that far more players have the ability to display actual 1st line production rather than just de facto 1st line production.

That is what goosed Maurice Richard's margins during the war years. Even with the lack of depth back then, there were enough players whose ceilings were 'average 1st line player or above average 2nd line player' to compete with Maurice Richard. Yet, when they left for the war, they were replaced by players whose ceilings were 'average 2nd line player to above average 3rd line player'. Maurice Richard is still the actual elite 1st line player he is, but now his competition is much weaker, and margins much higher. This also manifests itself in the post-war era when looking at Richard's production against specific teams. Detroit had players on Richard's actual 1st line level, so his production dropped below his average. Chicago did not have players on Richard's level, so his production was above his average.

I do think the structure of a 6 team league boosted player production beyond what you'd expect in a balanced league, though it is a bit of a tautology - these players on good teams are as good because they didn't have to play themselves. Maurice Richard's production was higher than you'd expect because he played 28 games against Detroit/Toronto and 42 games against Boston/New York/Chicago. My contention is that the benefit of playing New York/Chicago 40% of the time had a bigger effect on his numbers than playing Detroit/Toronto 40% of the time. I feel this is borne out by team-level results over the time period - take the first 10 years after the NHL went to 70 games, 49-50 through 58-59, Montreal played Chicago 140 times (of 700 total games), scoring 504 goals and allowing 289 (3.60/2.06), a +215 goal differential. Compare that to another good team/bad team pairing from the modern NHL, Washington and Florida between 05-06 and 18-19, during which they played 70 times (of 1114 total games), Washington scoring 212 goals and allowing 192 (3.03/2.74), a +20 goal differential. [Full team results for that time period - Washington .609 P%, +269 goal differential, 3.02/2.78 per game, Florida .517 P%, -254 goal differential, 2.65/2.88 per game; Montreal .599 P%, +512 goal differential, 2.94/2.21 per game, Chicago .355 P%, -589 goal differential, 2.40/3.24 per game.]

 

[BenchBrawl]

Sweeney Schriner's 22 goals in 26 games might be more informative than it looks. Just doing this for fun.

Schriner in 1944-1945, now 33 years old, and having missed the previous season, scores at a 0.85 GPG clip. Extrapolated to 50 games, that's 42.5 goals.

Schriner had been a goalscoring title contender for multiple seasons a few years before 1945, but usually came up short of winning by a few goals. Four seasons in particular he finished 2nd, 4th, 4th and 4th in goalscoring. I took his ratio over the goalscoring leader in those four years, yielding 0.92, 0.80, 0.91 and 0.82. Averaging this, we get 0.86. Sounds reasonable to me.

So if he had scored 42.5 goals in 1945, using the 0.86 ratio, we'd expect the artificial goalscoring leader to have scored 49.4 goals. Looks pretty damn close to what Richard actually scored. So under that statistical theory build on nothing but Schriner and his relation to past goalscoring leaders, I obtained an "average" goalscoring leader, which might just be what Richard was.

I understand there's many potential problems with that argument, but still it looks reasonable overall. Granted since I decided that the conclusion looks "reasonable", somewhere inside of me I had already accepted it prior to doing any of this. So be it.

 

[daver]

yes and in those years they had their highest scoring placements ever.

A lot of players who were average to not NHL caliber ended up having top 10 scoring years. And as soon as the flood of real players came home, they were back to average or out of the league very quickly.

It was possible for tremendous players to dominate far beyond what they normally could under the circumstances and I have given several examples.

Some players were given more offensive opportunities than they would have normally gotten hence the higher scoring placements. Doesn't necessarily mean the league was weaker or those players' individual performances were of less caliber than the players they replaced. You can argue that a player or two maybe gets more than 32 goals but that also means a player or two who did finish in the Top Ten in goals, gets less than they did because they would have gotten less offensive opportunities. This is why I think it is of marginal consideration that some regulars did not play that year.

What I am looking for is proof that a number of regulars being absent from the league created the conditions for whatever elite goalscorers were playing that year to have outlier type seasons like Richard did. One would have expected that Cain or Liscombe, players you would expect to be challenging for the goal title in any other season given they were T2 the year before behind Bentley, the goals champ from the previous season, did not also see a huge jump in their production, relative to the rest of the league, in a significantly weaker league. Instead, Cain was 2nd and only slightly ahead of the pack again, and Liscombe was 5th in goals per game among the Top Ten scorers that year.

Only Richard, a player who had two more goalscoring seasons that were slightly less dominant than his 44/45 season, one of which was well after the war, had an outlier season. Yet we are to believe that it is unreasonable to give him credit for that season, or almost full credit, in terms of his domination.

The only argument being made is "his numbers and domination HAD to be inflated just because". There has not been one shred of reasonable statistical evidence provided that questions his level of domination that year.

If he never approaches that level of domination again or if any other elite goalscorer also had a huge season in 44/45, I am a lot more willing to accept the "weaker league" argument.

 

[daver]

Sweeney Schriner's 22 goals in 26 games might be more informative than it looks. Just doing this for fun.

Schriner in 1944-1945, now 33 years old, and having missed the previous season, scores at a 0.85 GPG clip. Extrapolated to 50 games, that's 42.5 goals.

Schriner had been a goalscoring title contender for multiple seasons a few years before 1945, but usually came up short of winning by a few goals. Four seasons in particular he finished 2nd, 4th, 4th and 4th in goalscoring. I took his ratio over the goalscoring leader in those four years, yielding 0.92, 0.80, 0.91 and 0.82. Averaging this, we get 0.86. Sounds reasonable to me.

So if he had scored 42.5 goals in 1945, using the 0.86 ratio, we'd expect the artificial goalscoring leader to have scored 49.4 goals. Looks pretty damn close to what Richard actually scored. So under that statistical theory build on nothing but Schriner and his relation to past goalscoring leaders, I obtained an "average" goalscoring leader, which might just be what Richard was.

I understand there's many potential problems with that argument, but still it looks reasonable overall. Granted since I decided that the conclusion looks "reasonable", somewhere inside of me I had already accepted it prior to doing any of this. So be it.

The obvious problem is that Sweeney only played 26 games that year. If he continued at that pace, he puts up an unusually high season in relation to his other career goal finishes/placement in the pack. Doesn't make sense to include a statistical outlier as a base in your calculation.

It is clear that scoring was up in the mid-forties vs. the early 40s and late 40s. That fully explains why the goal leaders were well above 30 in the mid-40s and why Richard hit 50 in 44/45.

The issue is taking this information as a sign of "weakness" or, more importantly, that it created the conditions for an outlier seasons for whatever elite goalscorers were still in the league. There is not statistical evidence to back up that premise.

 

[daver]

IMO the only way that Richard’s 1945 can be taken at something close to face value, is if we can demonstrate that 50 was not his actual ceiling that year... that he could actually have scored more against bad teams but throttled back and showed some mercy.

You have done a lot work here. Two things:

(1) Where is the statistical work to show unequivocally that Richard’s 1945 cannot "be taken at something close to face value", in terms of his domination vs. his peers. Listing players who could have played is not evidence, let alone reasonable statistical evidence.

(2) This work could (or should) also be applied to every other goalscoring season by him and/or his peers if it is going to be used to apply context to his 44/45 season. I.e. the work doesn't appear to be unique to the war seasons but rather seems applicable to all seasons from the O6.

 

[daver]

Both Richard threads, the Ovechkin thread, even that thread about the NHL being predictable are asking essentially the same questions.

What is competition? How do we define it, and can we quantify it? What do we know about Maurice Richard? What do we know about the players he competed against and with? When we look at his peers, who he competed against at the time, what do we see, compared to Alex Ovechkin's peers, who he competes against in his time?

Others have started the process of defining his competition, but in this post I'm going to approach competition on a more abstract level. Throughout NHL history, players have been divided into lines, and those lines labeled 1st line/2nd line/et cetera. The first line generally produces more than the 2nd line, the 2nd line more than the 3rd, and so on. Production gets denominated in points, for the most part, though point totals are highly dependent on team and league scoring levels. In any case, when you look at point totals for a particular team that scores a particular amount, player point totals fall into 2 categories - actual production or de facto production. That production, when defining by line, also depends on how many teams are in the league, and how restrictive one wants to be about defining 1st line production.

To take an extreme example, the 13-14 Buffalo Sabres scored 150 goals in 82 games, and their 3 leading forward scorers were Hodgson with 44, Ennis with 43, and Stafford with 34. That's the Sabres top line production, but that's not actual top line production, just de facto top line, as Hodgson and Ennis were between the 103rd and 115th high scoring forwards that year. Compare that to the 53-54 Blackhawks, who scored 133 goals in 70 games, and whose 3 leading forward scorers were Wilson with 42, Mosienko 34, and Conacher 28. Wilson finished 14th in scoring, Mosienko tied 23rd. De facto "1st line" production would be the top 18 scorers for 53-54, and the top 90 scorers for 13-14, but again we generally don't define 1st line production that wide.

What I wanted to do was create a database of team scoring, and see how point totals derived from team goals, to mathematically define 1st line production for a particular player (eg find all the teams that averaged say 3.05 goals for/game, and look up all their forwards to see how their point totals compare to each other), but I haven't finished that part of my project yet, so I'm reduced to defining it more abstractly rather than concretely. However, not having the exact numbers allows me to think about my definitions without already possessing the answers to my questions - for example how wide to define the margins around 3.05 - do I include teams that scored 2.99 or 3.11 with teams that scored 3.05? On the other side, the question is, using points as differentiation,what's the difference between being a 1C and "being a 1C"? [For a partial visual representation of that database, see here - Tableau Public - I removed the war years by default but you can add them back in. Also, I've ignored games missed in this visualization and further experiments have shown that to be more accurate, you probably should remove those missed games from each player's tally. However, that's a lot of manual labor tracking game logs that I don't want to do.]

Moving back to Maurice Richard, you'll find no argument from me if you were to say that he provided actual 1st line production for most all of his career (or in vernacular "being a 1W"). You'd also get no argument from me if you were to say that the number of player-seasons of actual 1st line production were fewer in Richard's career than during Ovechkin's career. There are two main reasons for that - talent and opportunity. More teams means more player-seasons, which means more opportunities for actual 1st line production to exist. However, when you look at player-seasons during Maurice Richard's career, all too often you have de facto 1st line production and not actual 1st line production, even in favorable scoring environments. That's the other side - talent - whereby the players competing with Maurice Richard are not good enough to produce at actual 1st line rates.

Returning to the 53-54 and 13-14 seasons, if you sort both of them by PPG, you have 2 players above 1, 4 players above 0.89, 6 above 0.74, 16 above 0.60, 30 above 0.50 and 83 forwards scoring a point in 53-54, compared to 13 above 1, 23 above 0.89, 60 above 0.74, 114 above 0.60, 151 above 0.50, and 516 players scoring a point in 13-14. That's the final issue in defining competition - the depth of talent. 1st line players are 1st line players in any era, but far too often in the pre-expansion era, you had no depth. Ken Mosdell is a fine player, but compare him boosting his production off Maurice Richard to Dainius Zubrus centering a young Alex Ovechkin - Mosdell receives 2 end of season All-Star nods, Zubrus receives no votes. More teams means more opportunities for player-seasons to be actual 1st line production, but depth of talent means that far more players have the ability to display actual 1st line production rather than just de facto 1st line production.

That is what goosed Maurice Richard's margins during the war years. Even with the lack of depth back then, there were enough players whose ceilings were 'average 1st line player or above average 2nd line player' to compete with Maurice Richard. Yet, when they left for the war, they were replaced by players whose ceilings were 'average 2nd line player to above average 3rd line player'. Maurice Richard is still the actual elite 1st line player he is, but now his competition is much weaker, and margins much higher. This also manifests itself in the post-war era when looking at Richard's production against specific teams. Detroit had players on Richard's actual 1st line level, so his production dropped below his average. Chicago did not have players on Richard's level, so his production was above his average.

I do think the structure of a 6 team league boosted player production beyond what you'd expect in a balanced league, though it is a bit of a tautology - these players on good teams are as good because they didn't have to play themselves. Maurice Richard's production was higher than you'd expect because he played 28 games against Detroit/Toronto and 42 games against Boston/New York/Chicago. My contention is that the benefit of playing New York/Chicago 40% of the time had a bigger effect on his numbers than playing Detroit/Toronto 40% of the time. I feel this is borne out by team-level results over the time period - take the first 10 years after the NHL went to 70 games, 49-50 through 58-59, Montreal played Chicago 140 times (of 700 total games), scoring 504 goals and allowing 289 (3.60/2.06), a +215 goal differential. Compare that to another good team/bad team pairing from the modern NHL, Washington and Florida between 05-06 and 18-19, during which they played 70 times (of 1114 total games), Washington scoring 212 goals and allowing 192 (3.03/2.74), a +20 goal differential. [Full team results for that time period - Washington .609 P%, +269 goal differential, 3.02/2.78 per game, Florida .517 P%, -254 goal differential, 2.65/2.88 per game; Montreal .599 P%, +512 goal differential, 2.94/2.21 per game, Chicago .355 P%, -589 goal differential, 2.40/3.24 per game.]

Interesting stuff although it is getting away from the OP which is dealing with the unique situation that the war created and/or the idea that the league is "weaker" when scoring levels are up; both of which are alleged to have significantly inflated Richard's relative production that year, not just his raw goal total.

To your point, IMO, it is clear that comparing Top 5 - 10 scoring finishes from leagues with dramatically different #'s of teams needs statistical context. I.e. the 5th place scorer in the O6 was far more likely to be farther behind the scoring leader in a 30 team league. A 5th place O6 scorer is closer to a 10th place in a 30 team league.

I don't think this diminishes scoring titles won in any era nor should we open the door to "adjusting" seasons or using hypothetical scenarios to inflate or deflate seasons.

 

[daver]

Off-topic rant about the psychological context and significance of that 50 in 50 season—going on a tangent (feel free to ignore):

In the public imagination 50 goals is still the significant benchmark to this day, regardless of context. You're not a real goalscoring bad ass unless you score 50 goals in a season. It's irrational, it's arbitrary, yet psychologically, it matters, so it's not arbitrary after all, as shown as recently as 2017-2018 when Ovechkin fought like a madman to get that 50th.

I've read a thesis which IIRC was trying to pinpoint the exact moment when the legend of Rocket Richard was born. I can't find the name of the thesis right now, I read it a few years ago, but from memory the author pinpointed the two weeks from March 23 to April 13 in 1944.

This was playoff time of the 1943-1944 season—Richard's first real season—and on March 23 Montreal faced Toronto for Game 2 (after a 1-3 defeat in Game 1). In Game 2 Richard scored 5 goals in a 5-1 win. Blake and Lach got 5 and 4 assists respectively. Hence again the legend of the Punch Line is strongly tied to that game statistically speaking. Anyway, Montreal ended up defeating Toronto in 5 games with 4 straight wins, the last 3 of which Richard didn't do much offensively.

Now facing Chicago in the Stanley Cup Final, Montreal won Game 1 with a score of 5-1. Again, Richard didn't do much. Then in Game 2 (again!), Richard scored 3 goals in a 3-1 victory. Second time in those playoffs that Richard scored all the goals for Montreal in a game. The author of the thesis argues that by then people tied the Canadiens' fate with Richard's performance to an abnormal degree. The Canadiens are Richard, Richard is the Canadiens. The author stresses the psychological importance that Richard scored all the goals for Montreal in those two games.

This was the radio and newspaper era, this is where people got informed about Les Canadiens unless they went to see the games in person, and French-Canadiens were still under the boot of both the anglophone economic domination and the very powerful Catholic Church, and here came this Maurice Richard scoring all the goals for Montreal. Anyway, Montreal won Game 1, Game 2 and Game 3, and in Game 4 Montreal was trailing 1-4 at the start of the 3rd period. Elmer Lach scored a goal making it 2-4. Late in the 3rd period Richard scored back-to-back goals at 16:05 and 17:20 to make it 4-4. This looks strangely like the 1979 Guy Lafleur goal. Ultimately Toe Blake scored the OT goal, winning the Montreal Canadiens their first Stanley Cup in 13 years since the Howie Morenz days. In a way, those playoffs are the beginning of the Montreal Canadiens aura as the most dominant franchise in hockey history, insofar as it's the beginning of Maurice Richard, and from then it goes from Richard to Béliveau to Lafleur, a 35 years period inside of which the Quebec population "liberated itself", giving the impression that Richard was a spiritual savior.

So the author says the 1943-1944 playoffs is when the Rocket Richard legend was born in the Quebec collective subconscious. Most specifically, in Game 2 against Chicago when Richard repeated his exploit of scoring every Montreal goal. Then the late 3rd period back-to-back goals in Game 4 were like a confirmation, an icing on the cake. Richard was a rookie that season (though he played 16 games the year prior), and he came strong like that in the playoffs, à la Roy and Dryden. A legend was born.

After all that, he comes back the next season and immediately scores 50 in 50. The psychological soil was already fertile from the 1944 playoffs for the 50 in 50 season to leave a deep mark in the public psyche. All this at the end of the biggest war humanity had ever seen.

All of this was to give food for thought as to the psychological context that enabled Maurice Richard to become a larger-than-life legend.

Interesting post. I would add to this the overwhelming sense I get that "50 in 50" seems to trigger in some HOH posters an irrational need to argue against the total of "50" rather than Richard's level of domination that year. I am sure there have been many battles over whether 50 in 50 set the bar for goalscoring that wasn't broken until Wayne did 50 in 39.

I would certainly not be in that corner and would argue there were many goalscoring seasons in between 1945 and 1982 that were just as strong or stronger strictly from a domination vs. peers perspective, let alone other reasonable context being applied.

 

[JackSlater]

Some players were given more offensive opportunities than they would have normally gotten hence the higher scoring placements. Doesn't necessarily mean the league was weaker or those players' individual performances were of less caliber than the players they replaced. You can argue that a player or two maybe gets more than 32 goals but that also means a player or two who did finish in the Top Ten in goals, gets less than they did because they would have gotten less offensive opportunities. This is why I think it is of marginal consideration that some regulars did not play that year.

What I am looking for is proof that a number of regulars being absent from the league created the conditions for whatever elite goalscorers were playing that year to have outlier type seasons like Richard did. One would have expected that Cain or Liscombe, players you would expect to be challenging for the goal title in any other season given they were T2 the year before behind Bentley, the goals champ from the previous season, did not also see a huge jump in their production, relative to the rest of the league, in a significantly weaker league. Instead, Cain was 2nd and only slightly ahead of the pack again, and Liscombe was 5th in goals per game among the Top Ten scorers that year.

Only Richard, a player who had two more goalscoring seasons that were slightly less dominant than his 44/45 season, one of which was well after the war, had an outlier season. Yet we are to believe that it is unreasonable to give him credit for that season, or almost full credit, in terms of his domination.

The only argument being made is "his numbers and domination HAD to be inflated just because". There has not been one shred of reasonable statistical evidence provided that questions his level of domination that year.

If he never approaches that level of domination again or if any other elite goalscorer also had a huge season in 44/45, I am a lot more willing to accept the "weaker league" argument.

Why would we expect Cain or Liscombe to challenge for a goal scoring title in any other year? Liscombe was never in the top ten outside of the two severely weakened seasons. Cain was twice in the top ten but was trending downward in the years leading up to 1943 and was by that point into his 30s. Each of them saw their numbers drop drastically once the best players returned and were out of the NHL by 1946-1947. Both of them obviously had their goal scoring inflated both in raw and relative terms... just as Richard did. Give all of the other teams a starting goaltender and a full top line and the only reasonably expectation is that goal scoring would be closer.

The obvious problem is that Sweeney only played 26 games that year. If he continued at that pace, he puts up an unusually high season in relation to his other career goal finishes/placement in the pack. Doesn't make sense to include a statistical outlier as a base in your calculation.

It is clear that scoring was up in the mid-forties vs. the early 40s and late 40s. That fully explains why the goal leaders were well above 30 in the mid-40s and why Richard hit 50 in 44/45.

The issue is taking this information as a sign of "weakness" or, more importantly, that it created the conditions for an outlier seasons for whatever elite goalscorers were still in the league. There is not statistical evidence to back up that premise.

A huge increase in scoring, unprecedented other than the one season in which the NHL changed the rule of hockey drastically, indicates a weakened league. As does, even more obviously, the absence of over 80 established NHLers, including many of the top players in the league.

You have done a lot work here. Two things:

(1) Where is the statistical work to show unequivocally that Richard’s 1945 cannot "be taken at something close to face value", in terms of his domination vs. his peers. Listing players who could have played is not evidence, let alone reasonable statistical evidence.

(2) This work could (or should) also be applied to every other goalscoring season by him and/or his peers if it is going to be used to apply context to his 44/45 season. I.e. the work doesn't appear to be unique to the war seasons but rather seems applicable to all seasons from the O6.

Go ahead and apply it to every season in the original six era. You may be surprised by how few seasons outside of 1942-1945 had a massive number of players missing due to WW2.

Interesting stuff although it is getting away from the OP which is dealing with the unique situation that the war created and/or the idea that the league is "weaker" when scoring levels are up; both of which are alleged to have significantly inflated Richard's relative production that year, not just his raw goal total.

To your point, IMO, it is clear that comparing Top 5 - 10 scoring finishes from leagues with dramatically different #'s of teams needs statistical context. I.e. the 5th place scorer in the O6 was far more likely to be farther behind the scoring leader in a 30 team league. A 5th place O6 scorer is closer to a 10th place in a 30 team league.

I don't think this diminishes scoring titles won in any era nor should we open the door to "adjusting" seasons or using hypothetical scenarios to inflate or deflate seasons.

Again, are you attempting to deny that the NHL was made weaker due to World War 2?

I also find it bizarre that anyone would imply that context is something that is only applied occasionally. The context of every season should be considered.

 

[tarheelhockey]

The only argument being made is "his numbers and domination HAD to be inflated just because".

Listing players who could have played is not evidence, let alone reasonable statistical evidence.

"50 in 50" seems to trigger in some HOH posters an irrational need to argue against the total of "50" rather than Richard's level of domination that year.

Given the amount and quality of work people are doing in this thread, these comments come across as not just usless to the conversation, but slap-in-face insulting.

When there's upwards of 90% consensus on a topic, and people are posting long arguments from a whole bunch of different angles to reinforce that consensus, there's a really good chance that the guy in the corner calling people "irrational" is not actually the expert in the room.

 

[daver]

Given the amount and quality of work people are doing in this thread, these comments come across as not just usless to the conversation, but slap-in-face insulting.

When there's upwards of 90% consensus on a topic, and people are posting long arguments from a whole bunch of different angles to reinforce that consensus, there's a really good chance that the guy in the corner calling people "irrational" is not actually the expert in the room.

I think a number of people are arguing against the total of 50, rather than the level of dominance and some others are arguing about O6 scoring feats in general.

Of those arguing that this was a war year and obviously the numbers need significant context still have not offered one shred of statistical evidence that backs a claim that Richard was not close to a level of dominance that the numbers show that year. Not one.

On top of that, I am seeing ignorance of his other two dominating seasons that should prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he had the ability to dominate like he did in 44/45 at an age where many other GOATs had their peaks. Also noone wants to touch the on why Cain and Liscombe couldn't also dominate like Richard. Or provide any other examples of a generational talent reaching an unbelievable level in a "weak" league that backs up a premise that that level of talent automatically reaches a higher level than they ever had when league talent is diluted.

It's an "on paper" argument until reasonable statistical arguments are presented.

 

[The Macho King]

This debate went from funny to annoying to funny and it's back at annoying again.

You're not going to find a "statistical" argument here because there's no other circumstance that comes close with which to take data from. Even the other "diluted" eras (early NHL when PCHL existed, WHA/Iron curtain era) still had most of the elite talent (well - we can debate PCHL another time as to whether that was the case). Once again - we're not talking about a "weak" league. We're talking about dropping the best player (or at least the most talented at the time even if he didn't have the resume yet), his line, and a handful of other elite players into the minor leagues and watching them wreck shit. It's Mario Lemieux's last season in junior.

I mean - look at what Justin Schultz did to the AHL during the lockout. Now imagine instead of Schultz, you drop a prime Erik Karlsson. That's the closest equivalent you're going to find.

 

[Michael Farkas]

Wait, wait, wait...are you guys saying that Bobby Hull didn't hit his athletic peak at age 36 when he scored 77 goals in the WHA...? There were other factors involved? That's unpossible...

 

[tarheelhockey]

I think a number of people are arguing against the total of 50, rather than the level of dominance and some others are arguing about O6 scoring feats in general.

Of those arguing that this was war year and obviousky the numbers need significant context still have not offered one shred of statistical evidence that backs a claim that Richard was not close to a level of dominance that the numbers show that year. Not one.

On top of that, I am seeing ignorance of his other two dominating seasons that should prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he had the ability to dominate like he did in 44/45 at an age where many other GOATs had their peaks. Also noone wants to touch the on why Cain and Liscombe couldn't also dominate like Richard. Or provide any other examples of a generational talent reaching an unbelievable level in a "weak" league that backs up a premise that that level of talent automatically reaches a higher level than they ever had when a talent is diluted.

It's an "on paper" argument until reasonable statistical arguments are presented.

These points have all been addressed. At this point you are just ignoring the responses and re-stating the questions, while insulting the people who answered them.


Of those arguing that this was war year and obviousky the numbers need significant context still have not offered one shred of statistical evidence that backs a claim that Richard was not close to a level of dominance that the numbers show that year. Not one.
- It is self-evident that the league was dramatically weaker during WWII than at any other time in its history. Simple logic, and I mean simple logic, tells us that a star player will dominate minor-leaguers at a higher level than he will dominate legitimate NHL'ers. Your continually re-stating a desire for "statistical evidence" is not a counter-argument. At the very least, be specific about what you're asking for here.

I am seeing ignorance of his other two dominating seasons that should prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he had the ability to dominate like he did in 44/45 at an age where many other GOATs had their peaks.
- Nonsense. This has been addressed repeatedly.

Also noone wants to touch the on why Cain and Liscombe couldn't also dominate like Richard.
- Nonsense. This has been addressed repeatedly. @JackSlater directly refuted this point just a few posts above, and you didn't even respond.

Or provide any other examples of a generational talent reaching an unbelievable level in a "weak" league that backs up a premise that that level of talent automatically reaches a higher level than they ever had when a talent is diluted.
- @Mike Farkas just gave you WHA-era Bobby Hull. Done.

 

[daver]

This debate went from funny to annoying to funny and it's back at annoying again.

You're not going to find a "statistical" argument here because there's no other circumstance that comes close with which to take data from. Even the other "diluted" eras (early NHL when PCHL existed, WHA/Iron curtain era) still had most of the elite talent (well - we can debate PCHL another time as to whether that was the case). Once again - we're not talking about a "weak" league. We're talking about dropping the best player (or at least the most talented at the time even if he didn't have the resume yet), his line, and a handful of other elite players into the minor leagues and watching them wreck ****. It's Mario Lemieux's last season in junior.

I mean - look at what Justin Schultz did to the AHL during the lockout. Now imagine instead of Schultz, you drop a prime Erik Karlsson. That's the closest equivalent you're going to find.

"On paper" argument. Why didn't Cain or Liscombe also dominate?

Many argue that in the 70s there were triple or more the amount of pro teams that there were pre-expansion. Can you explain why that isn't close to the war circumstance?

Or if one accepts the premise that scoring was up in the '70s thus it was diluted, where is the similar narrative surrounding Orr's scoring feats?

But f*** it, why bother when this all at a subjective level and noone wants to touch a statistical argument to the contrary. That on it's own confirms to me that people are set in their opinions.

 

[The Macho King]

A child thinks everything can be boiled to one type of argument. There's an n=1. You're not going to get a statistical argument and it's stupid as hell to insist on one. The whole reason why the war years are notable is because *there is no other period in hockey history with which to compare them to*. The only other era that may have had a similar situation would have been the influenza outbreak, but the league just canceled the season instead of playing it out.

Not everything is statistical. Sometimes you have to look at surrounding factors. Why didn't Cain or Liscombe also dominate? Maybe they weren't that good.

 

[daver]

Wait, wait, wait...are you guys saying that Bobby Hull didn't hit his athletic peak at age 36 when he scored 77 goals in the WHA...? There were other factors involved? That's unpossible...

What exactly is your argument? What does Hull's 77 goal season have in common with Richard's 50 goal season.

And I have attempted to present an objective statistical argument, I have no dog in this fight. I would appreciate some objectivity in return.

I have responded outside an objective parameter in response to others doing the same. I will try my best to keep it objective if others do too.

 

[daver]

A child thinks everything can be boiled to one type of argument. There's an n=1. You're not going to get a statistical argument and it's stupid as hell to insist on one. The whole reason why the war years are notable is because *there is no other period in hockey history with which to compare them to*. The only other era that may have had a similar situation would have been the influenza outbreak, but the league just canceled the season instead of playing it out.

I have responded outside an objective parameter in response to others doing the same. I will try my best to keep it objective if others do too.

Case in f***ing point.

 

[The Macho King]

What exactly is your argument? What does Hull's 77 goal season have in common with Richard's 50 goal season.

And I have attempted to present an objective statistical argument, I have no dog in this fight. I would appreciate some objectivity in return.

I have responded outside an objective parameter in response to others doing the same. I will try my best to keep it objective if others do too.

What exactly have you presented that adds anything to the discussion? We can all look at hockey reference.

Objective =/= right, especially when common sense dictates that you look at the surrounding factors.

 

[daver]

You're not going to get a statistical argument and it's stupid as hell to insist on one.

Your whole premise is a statistical one! "Richard's stats need context because of the stats of other players that year and/or the lack of stats of the players who went to war."

 

[daver]

What exactly have you presented that adds anything to the discussion? We can all look at hockey reference.

Objective =/= right, especially when common sense dictates that you look at the surrounding factors.

Statistics = objective.

Factors like hmmm I don't know...whether Richard replicated that level of dominance again? How about "I wonder how the other top goalscorers that were still in the league did that year?"

 

[daver]

I am seeing ignorance of his other two dominating seasons that should prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he had the ability to dominate like he did in 44/45 at an age where many other GOATs had their peaks.
- Nonsense. This has been addressed repeatedly.

That Cain and Liscombe both failed to step up their relative production that year to a level that would even hint at a weaker league? No, it has not.

 

[tarheelhockey]

Many argue that in the 70s there were triple or more the amount of pro teams that there were pre-expansion. Can you explain why that isn't close to the war circumstance?

Because with few exceptions, the best players remained in the NHL. The difference between 1967 and 1968 is the addition of bad expansion teams, not the deletion of top-end talent. Even during the WHA period, the major difference is that the NHL experienced dilution at the lower end of the rosters. With few exceptions, the best players in the world stayed in the NHL throughout that period.

That being said, it's broadly accepted that scoring was inflated in the 1970s. Esposito going from 21 goals to 76 didn't happen in a neutral environment. No serious-minded person would study the 1971 season and think "yes, Esposito would also have achieved this same statistical feat 5 years earlier".

Or if one accepts the premise that scoring was up in the '70s thus it was diluted, where is the similar narrative surrounding Orr's scoring feats?

People do have a similar understanding about Orr's scoring feats. What's significant about Orr isn't that he repeatedly scored 120+ points a season, but that he repeatedly led all players in points and came close to doubling his nearest peers who were the very best defensemen in the world at the time. The part of that sentence in italics is that part that doesn't compare to Richard's 1945.

But **** it, why bother when this all at a subjective level and noone wants to touch a statistical argument to the contrary. That on it's own confirms to me that people are set in their opinions.

The removal of top competition from the scoring race is an objective fact, not a subjective opinion. The statistical argument presents itself self-evidently, in the obvious and objectively-real fact that a whole bunch of players are missing from the league-wide scoring curve.

 

[The Macho King]

This goes back to the other thread, but what exactly is the end goal here?

Richard likely was the best goal scorer no matter whether the war happened or not - I don't see that as having been disputed. The only question has been "what degree". And there's no objective answer to that.

I've never seen someone be so smug about being wrong.