Examining Scotty Campbell's Greatness

[Matt_O 896]

 

 Warning: A lot of reading is ahead. Read at your own discretion 

 

We all know Scotty Campbell is the greatest VHL player of all time. It’s not even up for debate. I’ve tried to discredit Campbell’s success in an attempt to show how he had an easier time scoring than modern day players. In my last article about the decline in scoring, I even tried to convert Campbell’s stats to modern day numbers. They were not nearly as impressive, although still hall of fame worthy. Using the data from my last article, I was planning on converting every hall of famers stats to modern day scoring totals, and then ranking everyone accordingly. When I was starting to make graphs based on players stats, I quickly realized that Scotty Campbell’s dominance transcends eras. It doesn’t matter if he had an easier time than modern day players, he still dominated at an unprecedented level. I don’t think enough people truly understand just how dominant he was. So, I made seven different graphs showcasing how good he really was.

 

For some people, they like to use statistics to determine who is greatest. Other people like to use clutch stats, such as playoff performance, championships, or other things. I’m going to try to appeal to both of these people. On the x axis, we have regular season points per game, and the y axis is for playoff points per game. I even included a line that helps show how players are playing. If you are below the line, you are better in the regular season. Above the line, you are better in the playoffs. On this graph, we only used hall of famers as well. Basically, if you super high up but not very far to the right, you are a great playoff performer. If you are kind of low but pretty far to the right, you aren’t so good in the playoffs. Let's take a look.

 

 

Every hall of famer sits between the 1 to 1.5 regular season points per game range and the 1.5 to 0.5 playoff points per game mark. Everyone except Brett Slobodzian and Scotty Campbell, of course. Slobodzian was a remarkable playoff performer, with 2.08 points per game in his 36 games played. Campbell was also a great playoff performer, with a career playoff points per game average of 1.81. Campbell’s regular season dominance was much greater though. Does this mean Scotty Campbell is a choker? Not necessarily.

 

First of all, we have to understand that playing slightly worse in the playoffs doesn’t mean you are a choker. In the regular season, players can dominate against worse opponents, but come playoff time that isn’t going to happen. That explains why almost every single hall of fame player does a little bit worse in the playoffs than the regular season, but it doesn’t explain Slobodzian. How was he just so dominant? There are a couple reasons for this.

 

Firstly, Slobodzian played on what might be the greatest team in VHL history, the early Calgary Wranglers. They won back to back cups in S2 and S3, and they had 69 wins in S1 before losing to the Scotty Campbell led Vasteras team. He also did that in only 38 playoff games. Campbell’s 1.81 points per game is over the course of 72 games. Would Slobodzian have sustained his pace? It’s impossible to know, but we do know this: If you take Scotty Campbell's last 35 playoff games (a similar size to Slobodzian’s 38), we get a playoff points per game average of… 2.09. Ever so slightly better than Slobodzian’s 2.08. This is the only graph that Campbell doesn’t completely break, but had Slobodzian played a full career, maybe Campbell would have destroyed this graph too. It’s safe to assume Slobodzian’s points per game average would go down with a larger sample size. Here’s a tip: If you ever want to find Campbell on a graph, just look for the little dot that’s super far away from anyone else. 9 times out of 10, that’s him. Let's look at more playoff statistics.

 

I don’t really like using ‘clutch’ stats to determine greatness, especially in a sim league since it’s just numbers, but scoring big goals is important. Campbell didn’t shine away from the spotlight. On this graph, the x axis shows playoff assists, while the y axis shows playoff goals.

 

 

On this graph I labeled two players, Scotty Campbell and John Locke. Both played a very similar amount of games, and Locke scored four more goals than Campbell did. At first glance, Locke seems like more of an outlier than Campbell. Well, that’s because he is. But we really have to consider why that is the case. Locke may have four more goals, but he has 28 less assists than Campbell. The only reason Locke looks like such an outlier is because he didn’t have enough assists to follow the somewhat linear trend. There isn’t a trendline, but you can see the way the dots go in a somewhat uniform fashion. 

 

Elijah Incognito is another player that sticks out. I didn’t label him only because there wouldn’t have been enough room, but he is the player right around 20 on the y axis but is all the way over to the right on the x axis. He had 73 playoff assists, which is tied for the same amount as Campbell. However, he has 36 less goals. Anytime a player has Campbell beat in one thing, Campbell destroys them in the other. It’s like training all your life to become great at sword fighting a specific way because your arch rival sword fights in a certain way. You get to the duel, but it turns out he has other strategies he can use. You may be better than him at that style you practiced but he will dominate you with the other style. This was Scotty Campbell. Anytime a player was able to keep up with him in one statistical category, he completely destroyed them in all the other stat columns. 

 

Let's look at one final graph to appeal to ‘clutch’ statisticians. On the x axis, we have goals. On the y axis, we have game winning goals. 

 

(Sorry the graph is small, VHL image uploading is a tragedy)

 

I don’t think I even need to label which dot is Campbell this time.

 

It’s obvious that the more goals you score, the more game winners you will have. It just makes sense. You can even see that with the very clear linear progression of all the dots. When the spotlight was shining, Scotty Campbell never disappointed. I took the average of all players with 100 or more goals just to have a decent sample size and saw that for every 6.58 goals, one would be a game winner. Scotty Campbell scored a game winner once for every 5.95 goals, clearly a cut ahead of the rest. Not only that, but he scored at a rate so much greater than everyone else that his increased rate in scoring game winners was so evident, as shown in this graph. You could make the argument that his regular season goal scoring is what makes him seem like such an outlier, which wouldn’t be completely wrong. However, he still is considerably ahead of second placed Unassisted, who had 84 game winners. The distance between Campbell and Unassisted, who are first and second in game winners respectively, is equal to the distance between Unassisted and Tarik Saeijs, who is ranked 21. That’s a considerable jump down the leaderboard. Campbell scored at an unprecedented rate, but we haven’t even gotten started.

 

This next graph I’m about to show you tell us just how many points Campbell would score. On the x axis we have games played, on the y we have points per game averages. You are gonna pretty clearly see that a lot of data points are clumped together in lines. Those games come in 72 game intervals because that’s the amount of games most players play. I only included players with 200 or more career games for a good sample size, since anyone can have a great points per game average if they play only one or two seasons. Let’s take a look at another graph, shall we? I hope your eyes aren’t hurting.

 

(Sorry for the bad cropping, VHL image uploading for some reason did this and I can't fix it)

 

Campbell is very clearly again way ahead of everyone else. I labeled a few players, but I want to focus on Brett Slobodzian. He is Campbell’s biggest competitor again, but he has an unfair advantage. He played over 200 less games than Campbell, making the pace he scored at much easier to sustain. Campbell played a full career, and scored 2.15 points per game. 2.15! I don’t think you guys are beginning to understand how insane that is. I know obviously it just sounds crazy, but this is on a whole different level. This might be one of the most jaw dropping stats I have ever seen, and I’ll explain why. On the graph it doesn’t seem as crazy as some other things I’m going to show you, but let me just give you some context.

 

Wayne Gretzky is very clearly the greatest player in NHL history. It’s not even a competition. He scored at a rate of 1.921 points per game, which is still really crazy. Mario Lemiuex is second on the list with a points per game mark of 1.883. These two were absurd. The difference between them is only .038. The difference between Campbell and second placed Slobodzian (who played 200 less games) is .38, ten times greater than the difference between Gretzky and Lemiuex. That’s pretty crazy, but it gets even more absurd.

 

The difference between first placed Campbell to second placed Slobodzian is equal to the distance between Slobodzian and 61st placed Carl Jacobs, a hall of famer. That’s pretty cool, but let's make it even crazier. The difference between Campbell and Slobodzian is equal to the difference between Jacobs (61st place) and 294th placed Sven Wolf. That’s a huge difference, but lets keep going. Just bear with me for a moment. Right around 1.01 points per game, which is what Wolf is at, we have multiple hall of famers. Freeman at 1.03, Ay Ay Ron at 0.99, and Jake Wylde at 0.97. If we turn to the NHL point per game leaders, we see guys like Mats Sundin, Teemu Selanne, and Darryl Sittler sitting around 1.01. These guys are hall of famers too. Let's take the difference between first placed Gretzky and second placed Lemiuex and see how big of a difference it makes in the NHL all time points per game leaderboards, shall we? We go all the way down to… more hall of famers? Not just any hall of famers either, we have guys like Luc Robitaille, Cam Neely, Ray Bourque, even Maurice Richard all hovering in that area. When we take the difference from Gretzky to Lemiuex, we go from elite hall of famers to more elite hall of famers. Now lets see what happens when we do that with Campbell and Slobodzian.

 

Keep in mind, the 1.01 points per game mark has multiple VHL hall of famers. When you take the difference between first placed Campbell and second placed Slobodzian, you go from players like Julius Freeman, Ay Ay Ron, and Jake Wylde, all the way down to guys like Peter Payne, Nick Hampton, and Owen Sharpley. You don’t know who those guys are? Alright fair enough, you might be new here. Let me explain. Wait, you aren’t new here? You’ve been around for quite a while and still don’t know them?

 

 

 

Well, it isn’t really inconceivable. The three players I named, along with anyone else in a 100 player radius, are complete no name, mediocre sim players. These guys are the very definition of a mediocre role player. No one knows who they are. No one remembers their names, or writes about them. Hell, even the users behind those players might not even remember them. Their impact on the VHL was nothing. No one batted an eye when these guys retired. And yet, they still play a part in this story. The difference between Campbell and Slobodzian is the exact same as the difference between hall of famers and absolute nobodies. When we do the same for Gretzky and Lemiuex, it’s not at all the same. We go from some of the greatest players in league history to more of the greatest players in league history. Compared to Campbell, everyone else is merely a peasant. They were at the will of what Scotty wanted to do. No one could stop him. No one even came close, not even some of the other greatest players of all time. We still have to keep in mind that Slobodzian only played 360 game, and if he had played a full career, chances are he wouldn't sustain that pace. The difference between Campbell and everyone else was so large, it’s hard to even comprehend. But let's keep going. I have a couple more things to show you.

 

I have two final graphs to show you. These are my personal favorites, just because of how clearly it shows Scotty’s dominance. Both graphs show the same thing, so I won’t label them. It shouldn’t be too hard to remember. On the x axis we have assists, and on the y we have goals. The higher up you are, the more goals you scored, and how far to the right you are is how any assists you had. The only difference between the graphs is that the one on the right only includes hall of fame players, while the one on the left has every player to ever play a game in the VHL. In case you don’t know your rights and lefts, the hall of fame graph is red and the every player graph is in blue. If you don’t know rights and lefts and are colorblind, well, I have nothing for you.

 

 

These graphs show a noticeable trend, especially the graph that includes every player. At first it’s just a big collection of dots, but then once we get to a point where players are scoring enough points, there is a clear and obvious split. The players that flatten out are defenseman, who have far more assists than goals. The players that continue going up are forwards, who score goals and get assists at a more even rate. This is evident in the hall of fame graph too, you can clearly see a split. You could even group the dots into two separate categories entirely with the way it’s split. But that isn’t what we are here for.

 

As we go up the chart, we see some of the greatest players in VHL history. You see the two dots farthest to the right on either graph? That’s Japinder Singh and Sterling Labatte, two of the greatest defensemen of all time. The dot highest up the y axis is Christian Stolzschweiger, closely followed by fellow VHL greats Mike Szatkowski and Matt Thompson. 

 

Wait a minute.

 

Where is Campbell? Did I miss him? There’s no way, he must be in there somewhere. Did I actually miss him?

 

 

 

Oh. There he is.

 

 

 

 

2,400ish words

 

 

Edited January 25, 2021 by Matt_O
Pictures messed up/graphs in wrong spot

[Prout 373]

REVIEW- Love the graphs and your In depth review and research on this. Well written and strong points. Overall a solid article and would like seeing more of these styles for future players or HOF’s.

 

9/10

[Victor 10,580]

20 hours ago, Matt_O said:

These guys are the very definition of a mediocre role player. No one knows who they are. No one remembers their names, or writes about them. Hell, even the users behind those players might not even remember them. Their impact on the VHL was nothing. No one batted an eye when these guys retired

Unbelievable disrespect on two time Boulet winner Peter Payne and also the legendary nagger. 

 

Also I stan Scotty Campbell.

 

Disappointed at no Chershenko mentions for playoffs

[BOOM 8,447]

Great detail and analysis of the Scotty Campbell phenomenon. Well written and informative for anyone looking into the great one. 

 

9/10.

[Matt_O 896]

2 hours ago, Victor said:

Unbelievable disrespect on two time Boulet winner Peter Payne and also the legendary nagger. 

 

Also I stan Scotty Campbell.

 

Disappointed at no Chershenko mentions for playoffs

I didn't even realize Payne won two boulets, but I stand by my belief that the Boulet is the worst award in the VHL so he is still a mediocre role player in my eyes

[Victor 10,580]

1 hour ago, Matt_O said:

I didn't even realize Payne won two boulets, but I stand by my belief that the Boulet is the worst award in the VHL so he is still a mediocre role player in my eyes

Also tbf Payne was probably the worst Boulet winner. Especially two time winner 

[Matt_O 896]

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