1. Welcome to SportsJournalists.com, a friendly forum for discussing all things sports and journalism.

    Your voice is missing! You will need to register for a free account to get access to the following site features:
    • Reply to discussions and create your own threads.
    • Access to private conversations with other members.
    • Fewer ads.

    We hope to see you as a part of our community soon!

Happy 64th Birthday Bobby Orr....the greatest hockey player ever

Discussion in 'Sports and News' started by JR, Mar 20, 2012.

  1. Versatile

    Versatile Active Member

    But Wayne Gretzky was creating a goal and a half a game for his teammates in 1981-82, and that absolutely has to be factored in as a reason his scoring didn't account for the same percentage of his team's as Joe Malone's.

    Average goals per game in 1919-20: 4.791666667.
    Averages goals per game in 1981-82: 4.0125.

    If you adjust Gretzky's individual goal-scoring output to the pace of goal-scoring in 1919-20, then adjust his games played to 24, he would have scored 33 goals that season. He would have added 43 assists, though, while Malone had 10.*

    * — Here's the formula: (((92/(321/80))*(115/24))/80)*24.

    Maybe Malone was a better pure goal-scorer than Gretzky, though I hope you'd consider Gretzky's willingness to pass as a detriment to his goal-scoring production. I don't have much doubt that Gretzky would have posted several 100-goal seasons had shooting been at the top of his to-do list.

    Gretzky accounted for, through assists and goals, 212 of his team's 417 goals (51.6 percent) in 1981-82. Malone accounted for 49 of his team's 91 (53.8 percent) in 1919-20. But that argument you made of his teammates' inadequacies explains away the 2.2 percent difference and more: Gretzky's teammates were more capable of scoring without him.
     
  2. Double J

    Double J Active Member

    There's no way we'll ever know for sure, but I'd be willing to bet that Malone was actually in on almost every goal Quebec scored that year.

    He was given credit for 10 assists, but very little attention was paid back then to assists. Quebec was credited with 91 goals that year but only 49 assists, according to these stats. So at least 42 of their goals were registered as unassisted, which seems pretty unlikely.

    Guys played far more minutes then, often the entire game. If you look at Quebec's roster for that season, the Bulldogs had only seven skaters who played in even half of the 24 games that year. So it's fair to say that any time Quebec scored a goal that year, Malone was more than likely on the ice. (This also means he was probably also on the ice every time a goal was scored against Quebec, which means he would have had a Bill Mikkelson-ish plus-minus, but I digress.)

    I don't have anything to base this on other than my own intuition, but I'd guess that if the NHL fairly gave out assists then like they do now, Malone would easily have had at least 70 points that year, and probably more. But let's be conservative and assume he created one goal per game for his teammates. So that works out to 39 goals, 24 assists and 63 points.

    If that's the case, Malone was in on nearly 70 per cent of his team's goals. Maybe Gretzky would have outpointed him 76-63, but his ability to put up a lot of points while playing for a much stronger team would not necessarily prove that he was the better player (see: Hodge, Ken; Bruins, Boston).
     
  3. Ben_Hecht

    Ben_Hecht Active Member

    Gordie Howe laughs, hysterically.
     
  4. Joe Williams

    Joe Williams Well-Known Member

    Reminds me of 1 of Henry Aaron's claims to fame: Take away every one of his HR's and he still had more than 3,000 hits. [3,771 - 755 = 3,016]
     
  5. cyclingwriter

    cyclingwriter Active Member

    Was always fascinated by Malone's numbers as a kid. The year he scored 44, he also missed two games...so basically, he could have been the first 50 goal scorer in league history with a little little luck.

    That being said his 44 came in the NHL first season and was essentially a three-team league.
     
Draft saved Draft deleted

Share This Page