How can I determine how many points the great scoring lines in NHL history racked
up together?
Is there a list of the greatest NHL lines in history? I have one for the 1970's.
Odd -- we wrote a reply to this shortly after it came in, and somehow it didn't get posted.
Anyway, Rick, like so many questions here, the answer is more complicated than one might expect. The problem enters when you try to figure out how many games any three guys actually played together as a line. Back in the day, line combinations tended to be established in training camp, and, barring injury or the team really hitting a slump, the same three forwards would play together as a combination all season long, and often season after season. Through the years, line shuffling became more standard practise, and nowadays, of course, line combos are often rearranged game to game, period to period, even shift to shift. That's one reason you no longer hear of lines with nifty nicknames, like the Kid Line or the Pony Line or the GAG Line. Line combinations get split up and rearranged way too frequently for any current trio to establish any sort of identity. Even, say, Buffalo's French Connection of the '70s, a favourite of ours here of course, was broken up often for a period here, a stretch of several games there, in response to a lack of scoring on the second line, for instance, or a scoring slump or a lack of defensive integrity on the big scoring line.
So the question becomes, do you consider only those goals scored or points credited when all three members of the line were actually on the ice together, or do you just add up the goals and points for the three individual players while they were teammates who frequently but didn't always play together?
Let's look at one of hockey's best and most famous lines, Detroit's Production Line -- Abel, Lindsay, and Howe. It seems now like these guys and Montreal's Punch Line dominated the '50s, but in fact the Motor City troika were all teammates for only six years, 1946-47 through 1951-52. Abel played all 60 games that first season, but Lindsay missed one and Howe, then a skeptically regarded rookie, missed two. How often did they actually play together that first year? Individually, they totalled 53 goals and 112 points, but were those goals and points accumulated as a unit, or were they often skating with different linemates? The trio didn't really become a force until their fourth season as teammates, when Howe really blossomed. In 1949-50, they combined for 92 goals and 215 points, but here Abel and Lindsay each missed one game of the 70-game slate, so do any points Howe accrued in their absence count as points for the line? In their final year together, before Abel was dealt to Chicago, they amassed 94 goals and 191 points. Howe and Lindsay played the whole schedule, but Abel was out of action for eight games. So again, do goals and points Howe and Lindsay earned with Alex Delvecchio or Glen Skov or Metro Prystai as their centreman count toward the Production Line totals?
That's a judgment call and depends entirely on how you define your terms.
Hope this helps, Rick. Thanks for a great question.
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Replying to:
How can I determine how many points the great scoring lines in NHL history racked
up together?
Is there a list of the greatest NHL lines in history? I have one for the 1970's.
