Happy Birthday, Bobby Orr....

Makes sense to me.

 

No way. You're going to have to explain to me how Gretzky gets credit for Dennis Maruk scoring 60 goals, Mike Bullard scoring 51, John Ogrodnick scoring 55. The numbers were outrageously inflated with or without Gretzky.

Let's put Gretzky (and Lemieux) aside for a second and look at the next tier of stars. From 1982 to 1994, the NHL's fifth-leading scorer averaged 115.2 ppg. From 1996 to 2007 (not counting the shortened '95 season or the '05 non-season), the No.5 scorer averaged 94.7 ppg. Over 20 points difference, after bigger money begat higher stakes, which begat increasingly defensive tactics.

The "Total Hockey" stat guys came up with Adjusting Scoring totals, taking into account the era in which players competed (goals per game in that era), number of games played, and number of players allowed per team on the roster. The formula obliterates Gretzky's dominance of the all-time leaders list:

CAREER POINTS
Name Actual Points Adjusted Points
1. Gretzky 2857 2259
2. Howe 1850 2109
3. Esposito 1590 1444

CAREER GOALS
Name Actual Goals Adjusted Goals
1. Howe 801 988
2. Gretzky 894 779
3. Esposito 717 708

SINGLE-SEASON GOALS
Name Actual Goals Adjusted Goals
1. Br. Hull 1991 86 80
2. Esposito '71 76 76
3. Lemieux '89 85 73
4. Gretzky '82 92 73

The 92-goal season? Yeah, it's tied for third now. (The 212-point season is also tied for third when adjusted to 153.) So yes, Gretzky's adjusted stats leave him as still the greatest point-scorer in NHL history ... but by 150 points instead of 1,007. And Howe takes over as top goal-scorer.

And I'm glad you mentioned the "more assists than anyone had points" detail. NHL assists have become the cheapest stat in North American sports in the last 30 years. Heading into the 2005-06 season, the NHL's goals-per-game record list looked like so: Nos. 1-17, all guys who played in the 1910s and '20s. Gretzky's the first modern-day player, with 1.18 per game in 1983-84.

The assists-per-game record list? Of the top 35 seasons, all but six took place in the '80s or '90s. (Orr, BTW had the top two seasons outside that time frame). Helps when you instantly dole out assists to the last two guys who touched the puck before virtually every goal, regardless of the player's actual role it setting up the goal, don't you think?

The untouchable nature of those records has everything to do with his era. If he played today, those numbers would be much lower. To deny that is utterly ridiculous. Ovechkin's the first player to score 60 in 12 years, but Gretzky would be putting up 212 points in 2008? No way in hell.

And, JR, good point on Doug Harvey.

 

Nice response.

I'm not going to dispute anything you said -- I can't argue that numbers weren't higher in the 1980s than before or since. Of course they were. And I can't argue that the numbers went drastically down in the 1990s and into this decade (thank the New Jersey Devils for that.)

Of course some eras are going to be better for offense, and some aren't. Which is why Gretzky would never put up 215 points in 2008 -- but that doesn't take away from the fact that he did put up 215 points in 1986. Howe would have scored more points if he had played in the 1980s, too. But he didn't.

I like adjusted stats as much as anybody, but the fact is, they don't take the place of what really happened. Gretzky didn't have 73 goals in 1982 -- he had an NHL-record 92. Howe didn't have 2,100 points in his career -- he had a then-record 1,850. I can appreciate the argument that Gretzky might not have dominated the 1980s as much as Howe dominated the 1950s, but "adjusted" numbers, which are flawed to begin with, aren't going to convince me.

Adjusted scoring is flawed because it tries to neutralize every era into a "common" era. But there are too many variables that can't be counted, and games aren't played in a vacuum. Howe's NHL in 1954 can't be compared within the same statistical vacuum to Gretzky's NHL in 1984 -- what they had to deal with was vastly different. You simply can't create a formula that makes a valid statistical comparison between a six-team league filled with 100 percent Canadians that didn't go farther west than Chicago and a 21-team league with one division having teams stretching from Winnipeg to Edmonton to Vancouver to Los Angeles. There's no math that can quantify variables like that. It's a different era, and a different game.

The better statistical comparison is to the peers within a player's own era, because they all faced the same conditions. When Gretzky had 215 points, the Art Ross runner-up, Lemieux, had 141. When he had 208 the year before, the runner-up, Kurri, had 135. I don't care how inflated the era was, Gretzky was outscoring the rest of the league by 70 points every single year. That's not inflated -- that's just pure domination.

Orr dominated his era, too. And he revolutionized the game (which Gretzky never did.)

But nobody dominated like Gretzky. Adjusted, inflated, whatever. Nobody can match him, and it's silly to argue otherwise.

 

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart once said in the 1960s that he couldn't define pornography, but he knows it when he sees it.
Well, it's the same with Bobby Orr.
Hockey purists might not be able to define why or who the best hockey player of all-time is, but when anyone who knows the game watches No. 4 play in person, or later on on video, they know he was the best there ever was -- and the best there ever will be!

 

yeah, you're right.
Gretzky was a bum

idiot

 

I don't think anyone is saying Gretzky is a bum.

 

Brodeur's father Denis did shoot the 72 series, but he didn't take the iconic shot.
The Star's Frank Lennon shot that one.
http://www.cbc.ca/arts/story/2006/08/22/frank-lennon-obit.html

 

Those Total Hockey stats are a classic case of people overthinking shit ...

 

The Total Stats people (who want to apply baseball sabrmetrics to hockey) haven't "proven" anything. On the surface they would appear to have a particular agenda (Gretzky isn't all that he's cracked up to be) and then juke the stats to prove their point.

The fact that there were more goals scored in the 80's era doesn't diminish anything.

Hockey styles of play are cyclical: The New Jersey Devils Stanley Cup team of '95 created a new style of hockey: play not to lose. And because it was successful, what did every GM do for the next ten years? Take every last bit of creativity out of the game and turn it into (Brett Hull's worlds) a rodeo. And reduce the number of goals as a result.

Used to be all goalies were 5'10" until Dryden came around and from that point on everybody wanted a guy who was 6'4" in net.

Burke wins the Cup and now what do you need? A semi-revised version of the Broad Street Bullies. But because it's Burke's team, not only are they big, strong and mean, they're fast as hell.

The "new" NHL made the Darrien Hatcher's of this world dinosaurs. The days of the lumbering, "can't skate" but I can hang on for dear life era is done.

The argument as to who's the greatest hockey player is like asking, who was the greatest architect of the 20t century: Frank Lloyd Wright or Mies Van Der Rohe? Yup, they were both great architects but their styles, philosophy and approach to their art were so radically different to defy comparison.

For the person who doesn't know a lot about hockey, Orr wins hands-down. I hate to say this but you actually have to have played the game at some level to really appreciate how brilliant Gretzky was.

My point is: you don't penalize someone or reward them because of the era they played in. It's a nice parlour game but that's about as far as you can take it.

 

Oldtimers will say Howe was the best. I only saw Howe in his later years, but I saw Orr and I saw Gretzky.

Orr was the best.

And stats don't even begin to tell the story. Stats don't measure how when he played on the road, that the entire building would draw in its collective breath -- you could hear the gasp, even on TV -- every single time he touched the puck because they knew that at any moment the guy could go coast to coast and score against you, making you look totally sick in the process.

Stats don't capture how he made it look like he was the only one out there. And these were not bums.

Fresh set of knees? Sixty years old? Hell, I'd throw him out there today for a shootout.

Orr was the best.