Second Thoughts

Was Eichel's Rookie Season Better Than Kariya's?

by Ryan Lambert/Columnist

[Author’s note: Last time I tried to look at some era-adjusted scoring, all the data was fine except for when I compared Paul Kariya's freshman year to Johnny Gaudreau's junior year. There was an error in the Excel code I wrote, and it overweighted Gaudreau's assist number significantly. That has been fixed below.]

Everyone knows the numbers: 25-75-100. Twenty-five goals, seventy-five assists, one hundred points, and all in just 39 games. Paul Kariya’s is a freshman scoring record that will almost certainly never be broken.

But as we know the reason for that is that it was a lot, lot, lot easier to score back then; the average save percentage was about 15 or 20 points lower in the early- and mid-90s than it is today. In fact, it’s also about 10 points higher than it was just a decade ago.

And so, no, Jack Eichel didn’t come close to breaking 100 points, nor could he ever have, not with an all-star team behind him. Given the constraints of the modern game, this was, is, and almost certainly always will be an untouchable number.

But again, the context.

Teams this season scored an average of just 101.8 goals over the course of an average 37.6 games this season. That’s just 2.71 goals per game. Back in 1992-93, when Kariya was terrorizing opposing goalies, teams scored an average of 147.6 goals in 36.1 games, an average of 4.1 per game.

But as was demonstrated before, we can account for these real changes to the game using an adjusted-scoring formula from Hockey Reference. That will obviously penalize Kariya, in a way, for playing when the games were finishing 5-4 every night instead of 3-2, while also giving Eichel a boost for the same reason.

These numbers attempt to normalize for a neutral scoring era, in which teams play 37 games, score about 3.25 goals per game, and there are 1.6 assists on every goal (those are taken from the averages seen in 1992-93, 1997-98, 1999-2000, 2002-03, and this season, when the five highest-scoring seasons by draft-eligible freshmen were posted).

Last time out, we learned that Jack Eichel was almost certainly going to finish well ahead of Brian Gionta (62 points), Dany Heatley (56), and Zach Parise (61), the three closest competitors to Kariya’s crown to date. Now with the passage of time we see that this was the case, and in an era in which it’s far tougher to score. Thus, his era-adjusted numbers are so high above theirs as to not be worth examining; Parise’s was closest, and he was still off by about 2.5 goals and almost 13 assists.

So now we’re down, predictably, to Eichel vs. Kariya. This was the matchup of destiny, to be sure. And here are the final results, assuming a 37-game season for both:

Now, this information comes with a few caveats. Quality of linemates, quality of opponent, etc., etc.

But here’s the huge caveat that no one ever talks about: Kariya’s famous 25-75-100 includes his scoring in two exhibition games against Canadian teams.

The guy who writes the BU blog Burnt Boats did the legwork on this and shared his findings with me, because he noticed that the 1992-93 Black Bears’ equally famous 42-1-2 record included two games against New Brunswick in which Maine outscored its opponents a 20-3 on aggregate, and Kariya racked up nine of his 100 points (on two goals and seven assists). Which means that in games against NCAA teams, Kariya actually went 23-68-91 in 37 games, rather than 25-75-100. It seems that back in the 1990s, most — but not all — teams counted wins and scoring in exhibitions in their records.

This of course does nothing to diminish Kariya’s incredible accomplishment as a freshman, but it does give you pause. And it certainly makes his era-adjusted scoring numbers come down a lot closer to Eichel’s. Probably below them.

So, when adjusting for scoring you’d say, “Well just take those out of there, then,” and sure, if you knew all the data for every team back then, you could. But this wasn’t a standardized thing, and some games played against NCAA teams likewise could have been considered exhibitions back then. And era adjustments are predicated on knowing exactly how many goals and assists came across the entire season, so some teams not-counting exhibitions in everyone's totals while others did so significantly muddies the waters when it comes to figuring out just how much games played, goal scored, and assists per goal totals should come down.

In short: We have to include the exhibition games from back then because it’s the best data we have without undertaking a massive project. You could also, theoretically, factor in Eichel’s 0-5-5 in his exhibition against St. Thomas this season, but again, things get messy when you try to do that.

But with all that having been said, I feel confident in believing that Eichel's was the most impressive statistical season ever recorded by a draft-eligible freshman in NCAA history.

The acknowledgement of Kariya’s era-induced stat-padding also sheds new light on Johnny Gaudreau’s season as being extremely impressive; the most in anything we can consider the modern game, with all due respect to Tony Hrkac’s 116 in 1986-87 (which was more of a clown show in terms of goals scored and games played than 1992-93). Hrkac played 48 games that year, and 15 guys broke 70 points, so it’s not even worth discussing: any season played since Kariya’s — in which "only" six cleared 70 — was much harder to score in than in the 1980s.

So let’s have a look at Kariya, Gaudreau, and Eichel side by side.

Kariya Eichel Gaudreau Goals 20.46 30.71 38.62 Assists 63.55 49.9 44.49 Pts 84.01 80.61 83.11 G/gm 0.55 0.83 1.04 A/gm 1.72 1.35 1.2 Pts/gm 2.27 2.18 2.25

As you can see, Gaudreau is marginally ahead of Eichel, and much closer to Kariya’s artificially inflated number, so in terms of production, it should be no surprise that scoring 80 in 40 in this era is the greatest scoring season of all time. But 71 in 41 just a year later was closer to it than I expected.

So Eichel came very, very close to Gaudreau’s mark. And he was two years younger. And he probably surpassed Kariya’s if you exclude the two exhibitions, which you should.

I guess you take that.