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The Exception that Proves the Rule |
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In today's Hotstove feature, myself, Todd Cordell, Ryan Wilson, Tim Chiasson, and Michael Stuart, ranked the top five wingers.
With all due respect to my friends and colleagues, I disagreed so much with their rankings of Alex Oveckin that I thought I had to write up a rebuttal and hopefully sway their opinions on who the NHL's best winger really is.
Because here is the thing: Alex Ovechkin is the best winger in the NHL today and in the running for the best winger of all-time.
Now, I know the reasons that people under-rate him: Bad possession numbers (recently), not great 5 v 5 numbers, poor plus/minus and general all around poor defense, a lack of leadership, no Cups and of course, a bad attitude. These - well most of them - are valid objections to the bolded statement above.
I'll be willing to argue that Obe4knh can overcome all of those at anytime, but for today's blog I just want to focus on Possession and 5 v 5 stats, since those are the best arguments against him.
Possession and 5v5 Play:
First off, I support the use of these stats. I am not arguing that they don't matter, only that there are exceptions that people are not acknowledging when they, for example, put down Ovechkin for not being a good possession or 5v5 player. I think the problem arises from people not realizing that there can be exceptions to the rules. It's that simple.
For an exaggerated example of what I mean: Let's assume that when you score 4 goals in a game you will usually win. Now imagine you have a player who can score those 4 goals on 4 shots every time. Now, if that were the case it wouldn't matter how badly you were out-possessed because you'll still score enough to win most games, and he would be an exception to an otherwise fairly constant rule. Agreed? Keep that in mind as we proceed.
Possession and 5 v 5 play are great stats. What they do is help you overcome confirmation bias (a tendency to favor information that confirms what you already know and disregard that which doesn't) and account for luck.
Possession correlates to goals scored by a team over the long term, which means that if you possess the puck you will score and thus win. This is not really arguable, it's been mathematically demonstrated and thus the reason why people appreciate advanced stats.
Goals are not usually a strong measurement for a players effectiveness. A player may play a great game and not score, or play a poor game, get lucky and pot a goal or two. To more effectively understand who is playing well and who is not, we now look to possession stats like Corsi to determine who had the puck that most - but this comes down to averages and aggregates and Ovechkin just doesn't need to drive possession like others do to be effective, as proven by his very consistent goal totals.
Even if we acknowledge that Ovechkin's high Corsi rating over the last 7 seasons is the result of some highly crazy goal scoring numbers earlier in his career and just focus on the last three years (which I am sure is what my colleagues meant when they said he was not strong in this area) we need to realize that these stats exist to quantify players on a macro level - i.e it gives the best indication about the most players.
But these are only useful stats if we acknowledge their limitations. The main two being that if you can score goals consistently with less possession, or you can make up for deficiencies in even strength play other ways, then they cease to matter. There is, as far as I know, only one player who has shown he can do this long-term.
Ovechkin does not need to be evaluated based on either possession or 5v5 play because he scores enough and consistently enough to overcome the obvious correlation to winning and success that these stats are usually indicators for. In short, he is the exception that proves the rule.
In other words: if you can score 8 more goals than any other player and consistently do so, then the advanced stats are irrelevant because a close look at the numbers shows that OV doesn't need to do what the majority of other players have to do because he scores so much more than they do. If his scoring was lucky, it would matter. But, for instance, Clark MacArthur can drive the play as much he wants, he can't score 51 goals.
Corsi simply does not account for the fact that Ovechkin does not need to possess the puck as much as other players to score an equal or greater amount of goals.
5 on 5 measures a players effectiveness under normal game conditions and eschews the power play so that we can have an un-distorted look at how a player normally performs. Again, very useful stat and quite telling - for almost every player but Ovechkin.
Let's look at his 5 on 5 play. According to hockey-reference.com he had only 39 even strength, 5 on 5 points last season. Considering that he scored 79 points in total, that is alarming. Or it would be if that was were we stopped looking.
Ovechkin scored 27 goals 5 v 5 which is still good enough for 5th in the league. He also only had 12 assists at even strength, but a lot of that low number can be attributed to his linemates and is not necessarily his fault.
In a normal situation, we would detract value from OV for failing to be as dominant 5 v 5 as he is on the power-play, ostensibly because more time is spent there and it's more indicative of his normal game and how he will mostly be used as a player. Also, such massive power-play stats are likely not sustainable.
Again, for most players yes. For OV, no. He has lead the league in PP goals in each of the last two years. He has been top 5 in the NHL in 4 of the last 5 years and the one year he wasn't was the year his shooting percentage was roughly 35% lower than his career average.
What this means is that Ovechkin's PP scoring prowess is sustainable. He is easily the best player in the NHL on the PP and PP goals count in the final score just as much as regular strength goals.
The upshot of all this is that Ovechin is so good and so consistent on the Power Play that it overcomes any even strength problems he may have. Furthermore, his shooting percentage is so consistently high and his talent so off the charts that he can't be evaluated by using the normal methods.
My conclusion is this: Possession and 5v5 are irrelevant when it comes to Ovechkin. He has 82 goals in his last 126 games. To put this in perspective, that is 24 goals over a season and a half more than Corey Perry, the player almost universally considered to be superior.
Goals are a relatively rare event and if you can outscore your biggest competition by 24 goals, I am just not sure there are enough other things Perry can do in a hockey game that Ovechkin can't or won't do that will overcome a 24 goal differential.
When a player scores goals at a rate so consistent that he overcomes the reasons for not considering goals a good indication of play in the first place, you have to adjust your evaluation methods.
And that is why Alexander Ovechkin is the best winger in hockey. By a significant margin.
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