Where do you place Ovechkin on your personal list of the greatest players of all time?

[Michael Farkas]

It’s not a reset - in fact it’s the precise opposite. We are talking about competition pool and Ovechkin. I rank Ovi higher because of the competition pool but I do not see how you are factoring - or not factoring it - into your ranking.

To be specific: you say Richard was the most technically skilled player while Ovi never was. But Rocket’s competition pool was significantly smaller, both in terms of the history of the league to that point and in terms of his peers. So to me, that’s not a valid point of comparison or reason to put Rocket over Ovi. It’s like saying Morenz was considered the best skater ever but Coffey wasn’t.

It's the same process as any scouting venture. If you're assigned to a new league or if you're a crossover guy, the first thing you ought to do is understand the league. Watch some games without any focus on your targets...just understand how the league is played, how it's coached, how it's officiated, its pace, etc. Then once you have a feel for that, then you dig in on your targets.

But in the process of that, you get a feel for how good the league is. Again, it's more skill than math really. Folks get all upset about the "talent pool" concept, but it's based on macro-population factors...more or less a pointless exercise. As I've said before...elite talent clusters randomly...environmental factors involved as well...

Mick Jagger born July 1943
John Lennon born October 1940
Paul McCartney born June 1942
Keith Richards born December 1943
Eric Burdon born May 1941

et cetera...

UK's population is up some 40% since that time and they haven't produced a god damn thing after 1978 except for Radiohead and, for a moment, Amy Winehouse...why is this? Isn't there more talent? Shouldn't they, ya know, not suck...?

Everyone knows Manet (1832), Degas (1834), Cezanne (1839), Monet (1840), Renoir (1841), etc. but if you've spent time in museums, you know that there's a slew of similar level talent that doesn't quite get the recognition of the old masters. Henri Fantin-Latour (1836), for instance. So, it's not like it was nine guys making art in their basement and we just had to deal with it. There was legit competition and the artists that emerged, generally emerged for good reason.

And we go through these phases..."the dark ages", famously, for one. You look at when sport really took off in North America, for instance, was after World War II settled up (but we recognize that WWII era play was poor). Women became more involved in the workforce, it allowed more leisure time...and the 1950's became a real evolutionary time for many sports. Forward passing started to really evolve in football, implementation of the shot clock in the NBA, NHL saw modern roster rules more or less come into effect paving the way for shorter shifts, power play rules modernized, etc. Play just generally got better around this time. The sport that we know it as (in any case, except maybe baseball, which has been around for 200,000 years) formed around this time. It ushered in a new wave of talent. For maybe the first time, legitimately, you grew up wanting to be a hockey player because you saw it on film, you heard it on the radio, or you attended organized, professional games. That's a Canadian boom. In the U.S. you couldn't find an American in the NHL in 1973. Miracle on Ice 1980, then when kids have to decide what sport to be serious about at 14, 15, 16...well, more chose hockey. So look at the 1983, 1984 first rounds...there's talent! And by 1996, the U.S. wins a legit tournament. That's a U.S. boom. Germany silvers at the 2018 Olympics (blowing a gold), in 2020 they effectively have three first round picks for the first time ever.

There's more people now, but there's a zillion more things to do too. Not only do we still farm and fish, but we have millions upon millions of people working in the previously non-existent tech sector. The healthcare sector...millions and millions more than there was...etc.

Anyway, I could go on for 20 more pages about this...but ultimately, I don't care who Maurice Richard wasn't playing against in the same way that I don't care who Alexander Ovechkin isn't playing against. It's not like Ovechkin has to power through five million more useless citizens to get to the net...he's going against Dan Girardi. Is Dan Girardi better or worse than the guy that Maurice Richard was going against? You can't graph your way to that answer, unfortunately.

So, what's my process? I evaluate the talent that I'm after, and I evaluate who he's going against. It's like any other scouting situation. You have to understand the player and the competition.

Why wasn't this player drafted? Tyler Hennen at eliteprospects.com
But this player was: Jackson Hallum at eliteprospects.com

If you know MN-HS hockey, it's easy to figure out.

And the whole thing isn't linear...just like development. It's not a video game. Watch a game from 1965 and watch a game from 1981...there was a ton more non-Canadians in the NHL in the latter, the game was way, way worse. There was a ton more Russians in the NHL in '99, '00, '01 that area...two, three times more than there are today...game was better then? Nah, probably not. There was a new opportunity for Soviet born players to get here, and they took it. And the NHL took them. We were #blessed to get Pavel Bure over here. But he also brought Viacheslav Butsayev with him...

But now I'm going to leak into the viable KHL environmental factor, and that's a bridge too far for this post.

But, in short, you have to find a way to get some eyes on the quality of play. Whether the population of North Bay is 20 trillion people or 16 people, you're only going against the players on the ice and you need to evaluate them on their merit.

 

[Victorias]

Recently, I was thinking about players across all of the 4 majors sports, who were born in the early '60s (or let's say '59 to '65), and how (IMO) they seem be the greatest generation of athlete/sports stars. To be clear, I'm not from that generation. But I wondered if it was the peak point of some sort of combination of alpha-male, athleticism, creativity (and kids still playing outdoors with other neighborhood kids and such), and everything not being as rigid as today. Maybe kids (in their teens) growing up in the '70s, had it best in terms of balance.

So while we have more people, you'd think that the competition is greater (I would think this could be true), but, I find that things like music, TV, film, video games, a lot of the sports that I watch, have become duller and way too synthetic. Yet, there's MORE competition, in everything today. There's a law of diminishing returns, and I think it kicked in a while back.

There was that clip of Maruk yesterday, but we viewed that clip differently. I thought there was a lot more character in hockey at that point in time, that everything about it was more entertaining.

For example, AAU strips a lot original creativitely out of a young basketball player, and I can't help but think similar things are being done in all of sport. I mean with hockey, just the fact that it's priced-out so many people from playing over the years, leads me to believe that while there are more people today than say 40 years ago, there are fewer people of lower classes involved in the sport. You might have passed on a number of great players in the process, not to mention, generation talents.

There may be some degree of saturation in North American talent, but definitely not internationally (see: Messi, Ohtani, Jokic). And internationally, players specialize earlier than they do here.

Even in North America, it could instead be people getting priced out - like you said - or simply that the level of competition is so high that it’s hard to stand out unless you are truly special (Lebron, McDavid, Mahomes). I personally think the latter is the case. The incentives are higher than ever as are the resources dedicated to development.

 

[Victorias]

It's the same process as any scouting venture. If you're assigned to a new league or if you're a crossover guy, the first thing you ought to do is understand the league. Watch some games without any focus on your targets...just understand how the league is played, how it's coached, how it's officiated, its pace, etc. Then once you have a feel for that, then you dig in on your targets.

But in the process of that, you get a feel for how good the league is. Again, it's more skill than math really. Folks get all upset about the "talent pool" concept, but it's based on macro-population factors...more or less a pointless exercise. As I've said before...elite talent clusters randomly...environmental factors involved as well...

Mick Jagger born July 1943
John Lennon born October 1940
Paul McCartney born June 1942
Keith Richards born December 1943
Eric Burdon born May 1941

et cetera...

UK's population is up some 40% since that time and they haven't produced a god damn thing after 1978 except for Radiohead and, for a moment, Amy Winehouse...why is this? Isn't there more talent? Shouldn't they, ya know, not suck...?

Everyone knows Manet (1832), Degas (1834), Cezanne (1839), Monet (1840), Renoir (1841), etc. but if you've spent time in museums, you know that there's a slew of similar level talent that doesn't quite get the recognition of the old masters. Henri Fantin-Latour (1836), for instance. So, it's not like it was nine guys making art in their basement and we just had to deal with it. There was legit competition and the artists that emerged, generally emerged for good reason.

And we go through these phases..."the dark ages", famously, for one. You look at when sport really took off in North America, for instance, was after World War II settled up (but we recognize that WWII era play was poor). Women became more involved in the workforce, it allowed more leisure time...and the 1950's became a real evolutionary time for many sports. Forward passing started to really evolve in football, implementation of the shot clock in the NBA, NHL saw modern roster rules more or less come into effect paving the way for shorter shifts, power play rules modernized, etc. Play just generally got better around this time. The sport that we know it as (in any case, except maybe baseball, which has been around for 200,000 years) formed around this time. It ushered in a new wave of talent. For maybe the first time, legitimately, you grew up wanting to be a hockey player because you saw it on film, you heard it on the radio, or you attended organized, professional games. That's a Canadian boom. In the U.S. you couldn't find an American in the NHL in 1973. Miracle on Ice 1980, then when kids have to decide what sport to be serious about at 14, 15, 16...well, more chose hockey. So look at the 1983, 1984 first rounds...there's talent! And by 1996, the U.S. wins a legit tournament. That's a U.S. boom. Germany silvers at the 2018 Olympics (blowing a gold), in 2020 they effectively have three first round picks for the first time ever.

There's more people now, but there's a zillion more things to do too. Not only do we still farm and fish, but we have millions upon millions of people working in the previously non-existent tech sector. The healthcare sector...millions and millions more than there was...etc.

Anyway, I could go on for 20 more pages about this...but ultimately, I don't care who Maurice Richard wasn't playing against in the same way that I don't care who Alexander Ovechkin isn't playing against. It's not like Ovechkin has to power through five million more useless citizens to get to the net...he's going against Dan Girardi. Is Dan Girardi better or worse than the guy that Maurice Richard was going against? You can't graph your way to that answer, unfortunately.

So, what's my process? I evaluate the talent that I'm after, and I evaluate who he's going against. It's like any other scouting situation. You have to understand the player and the competition.

Why wasn't this player drafted? Tyler Hennen at eliteprospects.com
But this player was: Jackson Hallum at eliteprospects.com

If you know MN-HS hockey, it's easy to figure out.

And the whole thing isn't linear...just like development. It's not a video game. Watch a game from 1965 and watch a game from 1981...there was a ton more non-Canadians in the NHL in the latter, the game was way, way worse. There was a ton more Russians in the NHL in '99, '00, '01 that area...two, three times more than there are today...game was better then? Nah, probably not. There was a new opportunity for Soviet born players to get here, and they took it. And the NHL took them. We were #blessed to get Pavel Bure over here. But he also brought Viacheslav Butsayev with him...

But now I'm going to leak into the viable KHL environmental factor, and that's a bridge too far for this post.

But, in short, you have to find a way to get some eyes on the quality of play. Whether the population of North Bay is 20 trillion people or 16 people, you're only going against the players on the ice and you need to evaluate them on their merit.

Thanks for the thoughtful reply.

I can acknowledge there may be talent clustering around events like the Miracle, but I don’t agree that it’s a general phenomenon not tied to population. For example, my favorite British bands are Kasabian, Arctic Monkeys, Royal Blood, etc and I think they’re better than any from decades ago. Maybe they don’t have the same following because there are so many good options. Or perhaps more people love those old Brit bands because they grew up with them, so they get more radio time now and become even more popular. But I bet if they played Royal Blood in a hockey rink everyone would download their songs in an instant.

Competition for certain types of art obviously peaked when that type of art was popularized, so yeah peak impressionist competition was in Monet’s time. There’s no longer an incentive to produce impressionist art because art is all about breaking boundaries and that boundary has already been broken.

There are certainly more options for work/entertainment, but I don’t see why the proportion of athletically inclined individuals would decrease. If you’re like me, you were born wanting to be an athlete; it was just a question of sport choice (and that choice hasn’t meaningfully increased in options). Either way, I’m using the assumption that the talent pool for hockey has in fact grown. Maybe it has decreased for Canada but it has certainly increased globally.

Yeah, I get that you reach your judgement by watching the players. But that’s not something that you can easily convey to someone else unless it’s players from the same environment. We basically have to take your word for it, which is fine in the sense that I respect your opinion but in this case the process of arriving at a ranking is more interesting than the ranking itself. Which is why I’ve prodded you…

 

[Neutrinos]

Ruth hit 714 HR in 8399 at-bats

Aaron hit 755 HR in 12364 at-bats

At quick glance, that's about 50% more at-bats for Aaron

Does anybody consider Aaron to be a better HR hitter than Ruth?


Using the same logic, why are so many quick to label Ovechkin as the best goal scorer ever when he's also the NHL's all-time leader in shots?

McDavid scored 64 goals on 352 shots last season, whereas Ovechkin took 446 shots during his 65 goal year, so doesn't that make McDavid the better goal scorer during their respective peak scoring seasons?

How many extra goals would Lemieux and Gretzky have scored during their primes if they were determined to shoot the puck as often as Ovechkin has

 

[Harry Waters]

Ruth hit 714 HR in 8399 at-bats

Aaron hit 755 HR in 12364 at-bats

At quick glance, that's about 50% more at-bats for Aaron

Does anybody consider Aaron to be a better HR hitter than Ruth?


Using the same logic, why are so many quick to label Ovechkin as the best goal scorer ever when he's also the NHL's all-time leader in shots?

McDavid scored 64 goals on 352 shots last season, whereas Ovechkin took 446 shots during his 65 goal year, so doesn't that make McDavid the better goal scorer during their respective peak scoring seasons?

How many extra goals would Lemieux and Gretzky have scored during their primes if they were determined to shoot the puck as often as Ovechkin has

That may be one of the worst analogies I've ever seen on here and that's saying something. The bolded is just the icing on the cake. I don't even know where to start.

 

[Victorias]

That may be one of the worst analogies I've ever seen on here and that's saying something. The bolded is just the icing on the cake. I don't even know where to start.

For real. This guy…

Have you ever heard the phrase “get pucks to the net and good things happen”?

Getting a shot, especially a shot on goal is a skill in hockey. Getting an at bat is not a skill. Getting a shot in basketball is not a skill either (at least if you are tall enough to be a pro).

If Gretz or Mario focused more on scoring, maybe they would have more goals and fewer assists. So they would basically be Ovi??

 

[The Panther]

Ruth hit 714 HR in 8399 at-bats

Aaron hit 755 HR in 12364 at-bats

At quick glance, that's about 50% more at-bats for Aaron

Does anybody consider Aaron to be a better HR hitter than Ruth?


Using the same logic, why are so many quick to label Ovechkin as the best goal scorer ever when he's also the NHL's all-time leader in shots?

McDavid scored 64 goals on 352 shots last season, whereas Ovechkin took 446 shots during his 65 goal year, so doesn't that make McDavid the better goal scorer during their respective peak scoring seasons?

How many extra goals would Lemieux and Gretzky have scored during their primes if they were determined to shoot the puck as often as Ovechkin has

Umm... Because in baseball the number of at-bats is limited, whereas in hockey the number of shots you're allowed to take isn't ?

 

[Neutrinos]

For real. This guy…

Have you ever heard the phrase “get pucks to the net and good things happen”?

Getting a shot, especially a shot on goal is a skill in hockey. Getting an at bat is not a skill. Getting a shot in basketball is not a skill either (at least if you are tall enough to be a pro).

If Gretz or Mario focused more on scoring, maybe they would have more goals and fewer assists. So they would basically be Ovi??

Have you ever heard the phrase "put the ball in play and good things happen"?

Putting the bat on the ball is a skill, as is hitting it to where they ain't

Umm... Because in baseball the number of at-bats is limited, whereas in hockey the number of shots you're allowed to take isn't ?

My point is that more at-bats/shots is going to lead to more HR/goals

Whether at-bats are limited within a game is irrelevant

 

[filinski77]

Ruth hit 714 HR in 8399 at-bats

Aaron hit 755 HR in 12364 at-bats

At quick glance, that's about 50% more at-bats for Aaron

Does anybody consider Aaron to be a better HR hitter than Ruth?


Using the same logic, why are so many quick to label Ovechkin as the best goal scorer ever when he's also the NHL's all-time leader in shots?

McDavid scored 64 goals on 352 shots last season, whereas Ovechkin took 446 shots during his 65 goal year, so doesn't that make McDavid the better goal scorer during their respective peak scoring seasons?

How many extra goals would Lemieux and Gretzky have scored during their primes if they were determined to shoot the puck as often as Ovechkin has

1) The logic is flawed, because Ovechkin is a world-class shot generator. In baseball, you cant “generate” extra at-bats. Plus - a shot that doesn’t go in can still be a great thing, whereas not hitting the ball is (almost always) not a good thing.

2) You can’t compare shooting numbers and % between players - too much variance and context needed. Ovechkin takes a ton of his shots from very far distances, that of course will have lower shooting %’s. Think of how many shots he has from the top of the circle. McDavid doesn’t have a good enough shot to be lethal from that far away.

Overall - just a silly thought process in your post.

 

[Victorias]

Have you ever heard the phrase "put the ball in play and good things happen"?

Putting the bat on the ball is a skill, as is hitting it to where they ain't

Yeah, getting hits or contact is a skill. What does that have to do with getting at bats? You get an at-bat if you are on the lineup card and it’s your turn in the order.

An at-bat is not putting the ball into play or necessarily hitting it anywhere.

 

[wetcoast]

Recently, I was thinking about players across all of the 4 majors sports, who were born in the early '60s (or let's say '59 to '65), and how (IMO) they seem be the greatest generation of athlete/sports stars. To be clear, I'm not from that generation. But I wondered if it was the peak point of some sort of combination of alpha-male, athleticism, creativity (and kids still playing outdoors with other neighborhood kids and such), and everything not being as rigid as today. Maybe kids (in their teens) growing up in the '70s, had it best in terms of balance.

So while we have more people, you'd think that the competition is greater (I would think this could be true), but, I find that things like music, TV, film, video games, a lot of the sports that I watch, have become duller and way too synthetic. Yet, there's MORE competition, in everything today. There's a law of diminishing returns, and I think it kicked in a while back.

There was that clip of Maruk yesterday, but we viewed that clip differently. I thought there was a lot more character in hockey at that point in time, that everything about it was more entertaining.

For example, AAU strips a lot original creativitely out of a young basketball player, and I can't help but think similar things are being done in all of sport. I mean with hockey, just the fact that it's priced-out so many people from playing over the years, leads me to believe that while there are more people today than say 40 years ago, there are fewer people of lower classes involved in the sport. You might have passed on a number of great players in the process, not to mention, generation talents.

Two words Baby Boomers.

Also to your other points , pretty much all of the sports has had film and better coaching which helps to defense more than to offense.

In some of the sports, hockey specifically, the game is way more structured and coached and less organic offensively than it used to be.

 

[wetcoast]

For real. This guy…

Have you ever heard the phrase “get pucks to the net and good things happen”?

Getting a shot, especially a shot on goal is a skill in hockey. Getting an at bat is not a skill. Getting a shot in basketball is not a skill either (at least if you are tall enough to be a pro).

If Gretz or Mario focused more on scoring, maybe they would have more goals and fewer assists. So they would basically be Ovi??

It's funny that the part in bold reminded me of a story I heard several years ago, not sure if it was high school or collegiate level but the team tried to score as fast as they could every play and had pretty good success playing that way.

I also wanted to add Muse to those other English bans and great music and music geniuses are around today than ever before just in different forms, jazz, ethnic, hip hop, rap ect...

One of the main reasons the Beatles and Rolling Stones seem so formidable is the baby boomer age group they emerged in and the UK has had many great bands since then with Dire Straits, Muse, U2, Depeche Mode and Duran Duran (personal favorites) the entire band of Genesis and their solo projects music is just fragmented now.

 

[The Panther]

I don't think it is. Richard had a lot of help from his teammates - much more than Ovie ever did (not close).

Anyway, it's a good exercise to see who was more integral to their team:

View attachment 742067

So basically Ovechkin was far more integral to his team than Richard was to his, and you can't blame this on age.

Ovechkin led his team in regular season goals 100% of the time, and points 78% of the time. For Richard it's 50% and 28%. (Richard was also simultaneously out-pointed and out-goaled in his prime by teammates Elmer Lach, Toe Blake, and someone named Billy Reay).

In the playoffs Ovechkin is at 64% for both. For Richard it's 24% and 41%.

"Who was more integral to their team" is an impossible thing to accurately measure. As you are surely aware, a very small League (say, the 6 teams Maurice Richard played within) has a very high concentration of high-end (Canadian) talent, whereas the 31-32 team League Ovechkin plays in has a moderate/low concentration of high-end (international) talent. In Richard's early years, the NHL was all over the place in terms of competitive teams and Cup winners (Montreal was 1st in 1947 and almost last in 1948), but by the late-40s onward, it was basically the Habs, Wings, and Leafs in competition.

This meant that Richard played (as did all players on the Leafs, Wings, and Canadiens) with a high-concentration of talent. When you're playing with Lach, Beliveau, Geoffrion, Richard Jr., Olmstead, and a balanced scoring attack for most seasons, it's obviously less likely that you'll dominate team scoring year after year, consistently (esp. if --- like Richard and Ovechkin --- you're more of a shoot-first player who doesn't rack up huge assist numbers).

To put it another way, let's say the NHL Ovechkin played in was 16 teams instead of 32. So now, each NHL club has approximately twice the high-end talent it currently has. That is, instead of playing with old-Fedorov, Backstrom, Green, Carlson, Oshie, and Kuznetsov, Ovechkin would have played his career with all those guys plus another 6 (or whatever) All Star / notable players, possible high-end talents that would rival him in overall scoring (if not goals).

I'm not saying this to take away from Ovechkin's truly remarkable domination of his team's scoring since he entered the League. I am merely saying that straight-up comparing a legendary player's scoring domination on his average-talent level clubs (Ovechkin) with another legendary player's scoring domination on a highly talented club in a tiny League (Richard) is not a valid point of comparison. Many compare Beliveau's career to Crosby, as a simple example. If Ovechkin had played the back-half of his entire career with young Crosby as a teammate (as Richard did Beliveau), would Ovechkin have led the Caps in scoring for 18 years in a row? I am going to guess not. But he might have won more than 1 Cup, so I'm pretty sure Ovechkin would take that trade-off...

Just as an example of how integral Maurice Richard often was to his team in crunch-time, look at what he did for Montreal in the 1958 playoffs, when he was 36-going-on-37 years old and was the oldest player in the NHL:

Round 1 vs. Detroit
-- Game one: 2 goals, 1 assist in the first period to effectively win the game. Another assist in the third.
-- Game two: With the score 2-1 Montreal after two, Richard scores another 2 goals in the third to clinch the win.
-- Game three: Assists on a late 2nd period goal to tie the game, 1-1. (Pronovost scores in OT to win it for Montreal.)
-- Game four: Scores 3 goals, including the game/series winner with 10 minutes left, as Montreal edges Detroit 4-3. (Howe puts up a goal and an assist for the Wings.)

Round 2 (Finals) vs. Boston
-- Game one: Montreal edges Boston 2-1. Richard assists on the game-winning goal in the 2nd by Dickie Moore.
-- Game two: Boston beats Montreal 5-2, and Richard is held off the score-sheet. (He takes a slashing penalty in the 2nd that leads to a Boston goal.)
-- Game three, Boston Garden: Richard scores 2 goals (incl. the opener) as Montreal wins 3-0.
-- Game four: Boston wins at home, 3-1, to even the series at two games apiece. Richard is completely held off the score-sheet.
-- Game five: Back at the Forum, a 2-2 tie carries into overtime. Maurice Richard scores in the sixth minute of overtime to win the game.
-- Game six: At the Garden, Richard scores Montreal's 2nd goal in the third minute of play. Habs wins 5-2 (incl. an empty netter) and take the series and the Cup.

Thus, Maurice Richard --- again, the oldest guy in the League --- scored 11 goals in 10 playoff games, and put up 15 points, easily best on his team. Four of his 11 goals were game winners, including in overtime in game five of the Finals.

In the playoffs, Richard was kept off the score-sheet twice. Those were the only two games that Montreal lost.

 

[Dennis Bonvie]

"Who was more integral to their team" is an impossible thing to accurately measure. As you are surely aware, a very small League (say, the 6 teams Maurice Richard played within) has a very high concentration of high-end (Canadian) talent, whereas the 31-32 team League Ovechkin plays in has a moderate/low concentration of high-end (international) talent. In Richard's early years, the NHL was all over the place in terms of competitive teams and Cup winners (Montreal was 1st in 1947 and almost last in 1948), but by the late-40s onward, it was basically the Habs, Wings, and Leafs in competition.

This meant that Richard played (as did all players on the Leafs, Wings, and Canadiens) with a high-concentration of talent. When you're playing with Lach, Beliveau, Geoffrion, Richard Jr., Olmstead, and a balanced scoring attack for most seasons, it's obviously less likely that you'll dominate team scoring year after year, consistently (esp. if --- like Richard and Ovechkin --- you're more of a shoot-first player who doesn't rack up huge assist numbers).

To put it another way, let's say the NHL Ovechkin played in was 16 teams instead of 32. So now, each NHL club has approximately twice the high-end talent it currently has. That is, instead of playing with old-Fedorov, Backstrom, Green, Carlson, Oshie, and Kuznetsov, Ovechkin would have played his career with all those guys plus another 6 (or whatever) All Star / notable players, possible high-end talents that would rival him in overall scoring (if not goals).

I'm not saying this to take away from Ovechkin's truly remarkable domination of his team's scoring since he entered the League. I am merely saying that straight-up comparing a legendary player's scoring domination on his average-talent level clubs (Ovechkin) with another legendary player's scoring domination on a highly talented club in a tiny League (Richard) is not a valid point of comparison. Many compare Beliveau's career to Crosby, as a simple example. If Ovechkin had played the back-half of his entire career with young Crosby as a teammate (as Richard did Beliveau), would Ovechkin have led the Caps in scoring for 18 years in a row? I am going to guess not. But he might have won more than 1 Cup, so I'm pretty sure Ovechkin would take that trade-off...

Just as an example of how integral Maurice Richard often was to his team in crunch-time, look at what he did for Montreal in the 1958 playoffs, when he was 36-going-on-37 years old and was the oldest player in the NHL:

Round 1 vs. Detroit
-- Game one: 2 goals, 1 assist in the first period to effectively win the game. Another assist in the third.
-- Game two: With the score 2-1 Montreal after two, Richard scores another 2 goals in the third to clinch the win.
-- Game three: Assists on a late 2nd period goal to tie the game, 1-1. (Pronovost scores in OT to win it for Montreal.)
-- Game four: Scores 3 goals, including the game/series winner with 10 minutes left, as Montreal edges Detroit 4-3. (Howe puts up a goal and an assist for the Wings.)

Round 2 (Finals) vs. Boston
-- Game one: Montreal edges Boston 2-1. Richard assists on the game-winning goal in the 2nd by Dickie Moore.
-- Game two: Boston beats Montreal 5-2, and Richard is held off the score-sheet. (He takes a slashing penalty in the 2nd that leads to a Boston goal.)
-- Game three, Boston Garden: Richard scores 2 goals (incl. the opener) as Montreal wins 3-0.
-- Game four: Boston wins at home, 3-1, to even the series at two games apiece. Richard is completely held off the score-sheet.
-- Game five: Back at the Forum, a 2-2 tie carries into overtime. Maurice Richard scores in the sixth minute of overtime to win the game.
-- Game six: At the Garden, Richard scores Montreal's 2nd goal in the third minute of play. Habs wins 5-2 (incl. an empty netter) and take the series and the Cup.

Thus, Maurice Richard --- again, the oldest guy in the League --- scored 11 goals in 10 playoff games, and put up 15 points, easily best on his team. Four of his 11 goals were game winners, including in overtime in game five of the Finals.

In the playoffs, Richard was kept off the score-sheet twice. Those were the only two games that Montreal lost.

Canadiens won the Cup in Richards last 5 seasons.

The following year they were knock off in the first round by Chicago. With the seies tied 1-1, the Black Hawks won game 3 in 3 overtimes, 2-1. After tying the series at 2 a peice, the mighty Canadiens were shutout in Games 5 & 6.

Seems they were missing that guy who scored the big goals.

 

[BigBadBruins7708]

Canadiens won the Cup in Richards last 5 seasons.

The following year they were knock off in the first round by Chicago. With the seies tied 1-1, the Black Hawks won game 3 in 3 overtimes, 2-1. After tying the series at 2 a peice, the mighty Canadiens were shutout in Games 5 & 6.

Seems they were missing that guy who scored the big goals.

But they didnt miss him in his last 2 seasons? The ones where they won 2 Cups and he only played 11 total playoff games and had 1 goal?

 

[Dennis Bonvie]

But they didnt miss him in his last 2 seasons? The ones where they won 2 Cups and he only played 11 total playoff games and had 1 goal?

Good point.

1959-60 the Canadiens swept both series in the playoffs and The Rocket played in all 8 games.

1958-59 he only played 3 games and the Canadiens did struggle to get by Chicago.

 

[BraveCanadian]

Recently, I was thinking about players across all of the 4 majors sports, who were born in the early '60s (or let's say '59 to '65), and how (IMO) they seem be the greatest generation of athlete/sports stars. To be clear, I'm not from that generation. But I wondered if it was the peak point of some sort of combination of alpha-male, athleticism, creativity (and kids still playing outdoors with other neighborhood kids and such), and everything not being as rigid as today. Maybe kids (in their teens) growing up in the '70s, had it best in terms of balance.

So while we have more people, you'd think that the competition is greater (I would think this could be true), but, I find that things like music, TV, film, video games, a lot of the sports that I watch, have become duller and way too synthetic. Yet, there's MORE competition, in everything today. There's a law of diminishing returns, and I think it kicked in a while back.

There was that clip of Maruk yesterday, but we viewed that clip differently. I thought there was a lot more character in hockey at that point in time, that everything about it was more entertaining.

For example, AAU strips a lot original creativitely out of a young basketball player, and I can't help but think similar things are being done in all of sport. I mean with hockey, just the fact that it's priced-out so many people from playing over the years, leads me to believe that while there are more people today than say 40 years ago, there are fewer people of lower classes involved in the sport. You might have passed on a number of great players in the process, not to mention, generation talents.

The baby boom during/after a period of huge public investment and during a time of shared economic prosperity that has not been replicated before or since would do it.

 

[vadim sharifijanov]

The baby boom during/after a period of huge public investment and during a time of shared economic prosperity that has not been replicated before or since would do it.

this

i live in vancouver, the third biggest market in the biggest hockey country in the world

there are literally not enough ice rinks for the amount of kids who want to (and can afford to) play

 

[sr edler]

I don't have a list, but Ovi never impressed me in international hockey. He always looked, for lack of a better word, pretty milquetoast in those tourneys, or dare I say borderline lost, despite always being a very enthusiastic participant. And on a pretty sizeable sample size too. I'm very high on international hockey myself, as I view it as a sign of great versatility and adaptability to (sometimes) larger ice surfaces, and such, and it's also cream of the crop competition, even moreso than your daily regular season NHL chores, IMO.

You don't have to win the Olympics, because various national teams are not of comparable overall strength, but your individual showings still matter obviously.

I'm also not the greatest fan of post-peak Ovi, you know the guy who couldn't eclipse 90 points in a season in over a decade despite mostly floating around waiting for one-timers. He did however have an inspirational 2018 playoffs in terms of goalscoring, after team Holtby/Eller had saved the day down in Ohio, but I'll always remember those playoffs for Kuznetsov, first and foremost, pretty much a masterclass in driving play with sustained pressure. No ways that team moves past both Pittsburgh and Tampa, or Vegas, without that particular element (which is also an indictment of Becks).

I'm sure our friend here on the board, MJ himself, will say we're out to "get" Ovi or something, in a concerted effort propelled by blind nativism and boomer nostalgia, and such things, but it's never been personal for me, I've levelled the same type of critique recently towards A. Matthews, which is I think he's too dependent on Marner (or even Nylander, when they play together), doesn't drive enough play for a player his stature, and overall floats around too much.

 

[BadgerBruce]

It's the same process as any scouting venture. If you're assigned to a new league or if you're a crossover guy, the first thing you ought to do is understand the league. Watch some games without any focus on your targets...just understand how the league is played, how it's coached, how it's officiated, its pace, etc. Then once you have a feel for that, then you dig in on your targets.

But in the process of that, you get a feel for how good the league is. Again, it's more skill than math really. Folks get all upset about the "talent pool" concept, but it's based on macro-population factors...more or less a pointless exercise. As I've said before...elite talent clusters randomly...environmental factors involved as well...

Mick Jagger born July 1943
John Lennon born October 1940
Paul McCartney born June 1942
Keith Richards born December 1943
Eric Burdon born May 1941

et cetera...

UK's population is up some 40% since that time and they haven't produced a god damn thing after 1978 except for Radiohead and, for a moment, Amy Winehouse...why is this? Isn't there more talent? Shouldn't they, ya know, not suck...?

Everyone knows Manet (1832), Degas (1834), Cezanne (1839), Monet (1840), Renoir (1841), etc. but if you've spent time in museums, you know that there's a slew of similar level talent that doesn't quite get the recognition of the old masters. Henri Fantin-Latour (1836), for instance. So, it's not like it was nine guys making art in their basement and we just had to deal with it. There was legit competition and the artists that emerged, generally emerged for good reason.

And we go through these phases..."the dark ages", famously, for one. You look at when sport really took off in North America, for instance, was after World War II settled up (but we recognize that WWII era play was poor). Women became more involved in the workforce, it allowed more leisure time...and the 1950's became a real evolutionary time for many sports. Forward passing started to really evolve in football, implementation of the shot clock in the NBA, NHL saw modern roster rules more or less come into effect paving the way for shorter shifts, power play rules modernized, etc. Play just generally got better around this time. The sport that we know it as (in any case, except maybe baseball, which has been around for 200,000 years) formed around this time. It ushered in a new wave of talent. For maybe the first time, legitimately, you grew up wanting to be a hockey player because you saw it on film, you heard it on the radio, or you attended organized, professional games. That's a Canadian boom. In the U.S. you couldn't find an American in the NHL in 1973. Miracle on Ice 1980, then when kids have to decide what sport to be serious about at 14, 15, 16...well, more chose hockey. So look at the 1983, 1984 first rounds...there's talent! And by 1996, the U.S. wins a legit tournament. That's a U.S. boom. Germany silvers at the 2018 Olympics (blowing a gold), in 2020 they effectively have three first round picks for the first time ever.

There's more people now, but there's a zillion more things to do too. Not only do we still farm and fish, but we have millions upon millions of people working in the previously non-existent tech sector. The healthcare sector...millions and millions more than there was...etc.

Anyway, I could go on for 20 more pages about this...but ultimately, I don't care who Maurice Richard wasn't playing against in the same way that I don't care who Alexander Ovechkin isn't playing against. It's not like Ovechkin has to power through five million more useless citizens to get to the net...he's going against Dan Girardi. Is Dan Girardi better or worse than the guy that Maurice Richard was going against? You can't graph your way to that answer, unfortunately.

So, what's my process? I evaluate the talent that I'm after, and I evaluate who he's going against. It's like any other scouting situation. You have to understand the player and the competition.

Why wasn't this player drafted? Tyler Hennen at eliteprospects.com
But this player was: Jackson Hallum at eliteprospects.com

If you know MN-HS hockey, it's easy to figure out.

And the whole thing isn't linear...just like development. It's not a video game. Watch a game from 1965 and watch a game from 1981...there was a ton more non-Canadians in the NHL in the latter, the game was way, way worse. There was a ton more Russians in the NHL in '99, '00, '01 that area...two, three times more than there are today...game was better then? Nah, probably not. There was a new opportunity for Soviet born players to get here, and they took it. And the NHL took them. We were #blessed to get Pavel Bure over here. But he also brought Viacheslav Butsayev with him...

But now I'm going to leak into the viable KHL environmental factor, and that's a bridge too far for this post.

But, in short, you have to find a way to get some eyes on the quality of play. Whether the population of North Bay is 20 trillion people or 16 people, you're only going against the players on the ice and you need to evaluate them on their merit.

Bill James wrote about this some time ago now:

Shakespeare and Verlander | Articles | Bill James Online

I’m not a nostalgic person who clings to some imaginary hockey golden age. But I began playing in the mid-60s and eventually coached for 35 years. What do I know for sure? That a larger talent pool does not always mean a superior talent pool. Anyone who has read James’ article will likely know exactly what I mean.

 

[BraveCanadian]

Bill James wrote about this some time ago now:

Shakespeare and Verlander | Articles | Bill James Online

I’m not a nostalgic person who clings to some imaginary hockey golden age. But I began playing in the mid-60s and eventually coached for 35 years. What do I know for sure? That a larger talent pool does not always mean a superior talent pool. Anyone who has read James’ article will likely know exactly what I mean.

That’s a great read

 

[filinski77]

I don't have a list, but Ovi never impressed me in international hockey. He always looked, for lack of a better word, pretty milquetoast in those tourneys, or dare I say borderline lost, despite always being a very enthusiastic participant. And on a pretty sizeable sample size too. I'm very high on international hockey myself, as I view it as a sign of great versatility and adaptability to (sometimes) larger ice surfaces, and such, and it's also cream of the crop competition, even moreso than your daily regular season NHL chores, IMO.

You don't have to win the Olympics, because various national teams are not of comparable overall strength, but your individual showings still matter obviously.

I'm also not the greatest fan of post-peak Ovi, you know the guy who couldn't eclipse 90 points in a season in over a decade despite mostly floating around waiting for one-timers. He did however have an inspirational 2018 playoffs in terms of goalscoring, after team Holtby/Eller had saved the day down in Ohio, but I'll always remember those playoffs for Kuznetsov, first and foremost, pretty much a masterclass in driving play with sustained pressure. No ways that team moves past both Pittsburgh and Tampa, or Vegas, without that particular element (which is also an indictment of Becks).

I'm sure our friend here on the board, MJ himself, will say we're out to "get" Ovi or something, in a concerted effort propelled by blind nativism and boomer nostalgia, and such things, but it's never been personal for me, I've levelled the same type of critique recently towards A. Matthews, which is I think he's too dependent on Marner (or even Nylander, when they play together), doesn't drive enough play for a player his stature, and overall floats around too much.

International hockey is one that is so hard to quantify and analyze. Team success is essentially useless to use due to massive gaps in strength of teams. And individual success requires a ton of context to get anything meaningful (ie. teammates play a huge part, what teams you played to put up points against plays a huge part etc.)

Olympics:
-> 2006: Ovechkin makes the Olympic all-star team (something Crosby has never done)
-> 2010: Point per game, and finishes 2nd on the team in points and 2nd in goals (only behind Malkin)
-> 2014: Disappointing performance, finishes 4th in goals and 6th in points on the team (and if I recall correctly, the team stuck him on a bad line and gave him no opportunities to succeed - which is common with Russian coaching strategies)

World Juniors:
Ovechkin was dominant

World Championships:
A super hard tournament to assess due to the following facts:
1) Team strength varies significantly due to certain players still being in the NHL playoffs or just not wanting to play
2) Individual play is almost impossible to assess properly due to players being injured and not at 100% (after playing a whole year of NHL hockey
2b) Also hard to tell effort level due to the fact that it's not really ever a best-on-best competition

Despite that, Ovechkin has in the WC's:
-> 3 golds, 2 silvers, 4 bronzes in this tournament
-> 2x WC all-star team
-> 7 different WC's with a point/gp or better

For example, one might look at the 2011 World Championship and see Ovechkin went 0+0 through 5 games and assume he is bad at international play. But in reality, he had a knee injury and other injuries as well that he played through in the end of the NHL season, and through the same in the playoffs. He could have easily chosen not to play in the WC due to being injured, but he was fine playing in a limited role (not high up in the lineup, lower PP time) to try and help Russia. But others would mark him as a negative here (whereas not playing at all would not be a negative).

World Cup of Hockey:
Fake tournament where the teams weren't even real international teams. Can't really fault anyone as it's hard to assess the actual effort level, plus Ovechkin was already like 32 or something when that tournament happened.

Conclusion:
Ovechkin actually has a pretty great international resume once you start to consider some context.

Crosby in the Olympics:
Much more team success yes, but Ovechkin still wins those golds if he was on Canada, and Russia wins nothing if Crosby was on Russia.
-> 2006: Crosby doesn't play (meanwhile Ovechkin is on the OG all-star team
-> 2010: Crosby was also a point/gp similar to Ovechkin, yet Crosby had much more support. Crosby was in a 4-way tie for 2nd in points (Ovechkin was 2nd alone), and a 3-way tie for 2nd in goals. Ontop of that, Canada had THREE d-men that had 1 less point than Crosby did.
-> 2014: Crosby also has a disappointing overall performance. 0.5 points/gp 3-way tie for 5th in points on his team, 5-way tie for 5th in goals on his team.

Crosby in the World Championships:
-> Only played in 2, was great in both, and once made the WC all-star team

If we're being honest, Ovechkin was better in the World Juniors than Crosby was, just as good in the Olympics (outside of team success), has way more high-end World Championships than Crosby does (he also has more bad showings - which I've added injury and other context to).

Genuinly think that Ovechkin's international resume just gets severely underrated.

 

[Michael Farkas]

2011 World Championship and see Ovechkin went 0+0 through 5 games

but he was fine playing in a limited role (not high up in the lineup, lower PP time) to try and help Russia

2010: Crosby was also a point/gp

Canada had THREE d-men that had 1 less point than Crosby did.

I'm sorry to nitpick like this...but anyone that doesn't fall head over heels in love with Ovechkin is called some sort of "-ist" and is exhibiting some sort of "-ism" (which we all know is how mature people communicate effectively)...but this framing, this is objective...?

 

[seventieslord]

It is strange framing.

In BOB events, PPG over similar sample sizes is 1.05 to 0.65.
In other senior events, it's 1.50 to 0.79 (though sample sizes are very different).

The WJC doesn't really matter at this point, but anyone pointing out that OV was "better in the world juniors" than Crosby has to ignore their ages to make that comparison with a straight face.

Age matters in junior hockey so much, and especially in international junior hockey. They only played in the WJC at the same ages once. At age 17. One was 6-6-1-7 and one was 6-6-3-9. Big whoop.

Aside from that, Crosby played one WJC as a 16 year old. OV has no season to compare to. OV played in WJCs as an 18 and 19 year old. Crosby has no seasons to compare to that.

 

[MeHateHe]

but this framing, this is objective...?

Yeah, but this entire discussion has been one that isn't worthy of this forum. Too many fans who can't see past their own fandom. It is, to argue my own point, entirely too early to be discussing this player's legacy or where he falls on top-25 lists.