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Scott Gomez officially announced his retirement this week, putting an end to a 16-year career that saw him play more than 1,000 games, record more than 750 points and win a pair of Stanley Cups. There are not many players in NHL history that put together a resume with those accomplishments on it.

Only 142 can claim the 1,000 games and 750 points milestones (only 59 since 1990), and when you add the two Stanley Cups, of which he was a major contributing player, the list only gets shorter.

For Gomez, it was a career that pretty much breaks down into two parts. By the end, he was mostly known for the second part that was defined by his contract that was widely viewed as an albatross and one of the all-time great blunders in free agency, lengthy goal droughts (including one that stretched for more than a full calendar year), and the fact the Montreal Canadiens once traded Ryan McDonagh to get him and the remaining years of the aforementioned contract. The New York Rangers are still benefitting from that trade eight years later.

All of that tends to overshadow the first half of his career. The part where he was one of the best playmaking centers in the NHL for a solid eight-year stretch.

That part of his career seems to be too easily forgotten.

Originally a first-round pick by the New Jersey Devils (No. 28 overall) in 1998, Gomez broke into the NHL for the start of the 1999-00 season and was an immediate success. His rookie year saw him record 70 points (something only 25 players in the NHL did that season), win the Calder Trophy as the league’s rookie of the year, and help the Devils win the Stanley Cup.

From there, he would go on to be one of the league’s most productive centers for the next seven years, averaging more than 0.80 points per game and more than 0.60 assists per game. For the era, those numbers were darn impressive.

There were 330 forwards that played at least 400 games in the NHL between 1999 and 2007. Gomez’s points per game average during that stretch was 38th out of that group, while his assist numbers were good enough to put him in the top-10.

He did most of that while playing in the heart of the dead puck era, and for a Devils team that embodied that defensive style of play more than any other team in the league.

He was producing at that level, and in all of those conditions, while typically only getting 16 minutes of ice-time per night. That is basically second-line minutes, on a defense-first team that wasn’t known for offense and creativity, and he still scored like a first-liner.

The first half of his career is basically a giant “what if” question where you wonder what he could have done if he played in a system (and more importantly) an era that would have allowed his creativity and playmaking skills to really shine.

If rate stats (points per 60 minutes, etc.) had existed then like they do now, Gomez probably would have been one of the players that was an analytics superstar for that era.

Which brings up another point: Even as his production started to drop in the second half of his career, he still managed to put up some really strong possession numbers. For the six-year stretch between 2007 and 2013 he was a 54 percent Corsi player, a mark that was good enough for 33rd out of 198 forwards (minimum 4,000 minutes) during that stretch. Even as his game started to fall apart and slow down, he still had something to offer a team as a bottom-six forward that could if nothing else, help drive possession in his team’s favor.

The larger lesson here is that when evaluating players it is really easy to get caught up in the last thing we saw from them.

This is true when you are dealing with a smaller sample size like a single season and the roller coaster of emotions that goes with the various hot and cold streaks that happen, or a larger sample size like an entire career.

What the hockey world saw most recently from Gomez wasn’t him at his best, and that’s what seems to be remembered the most. It should not be what defines his career or his time in the NHL because it ignores nearly a decade of play where he was a core player for a team that won two Stanley Cups in four years and was one of the most productive players in the league at his position.

(Data in this post via Hockey-Reference and Hockey Analysis)

Scott Gomez was better than a lot of people will remember