ScottM Posted March 17, 2015 Share Posted March 17, 2015 I've been trying to decide how to ask this so that it makes sense. I'm not sure if I've really figured it out, but I'm just going to go for it. Obviously, the NHL was a stronger league than the WHA, but the latter was obviously not a peewee league considering some of the names that moved to/started in the league. I don't believe that Gordie Howe would have scored 975 goals or that Bobby Hull would have scored 913 goals had they never left the NHL, but their goal (and assist) totals certainly would be higher than what they are. My questions then, are, how "valuable" would you say WHA points are as compared to NHL points? What about goalies? How would you compare the GAA? Would it be fair to leave wins and losses as they are? I'm asking all this because I've got somewhat of a project in mind and I want to use the entirety of the players' careers, and I don't want to leave out players who played a significant part of their careers in the WHA. Anyway, that's all I'll say about that for now. Lol Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TropicalFruitGirl26 Posted March 17, 2015 Share Posted March 17, 2015 Well, not knowing a ton about the WHA, I would say that if you are going to talk about a given player, and their career spanned both leagues at a time when teams of the WHA were considered 'on par' with teams of the NHL (and thus, the stats just as legitimate), then stats from both leagues are fair game. Besides, a great player is a great player...regardless of league.And I don't think you will get much argument that players such as Bobby Hull or Gordie Howe were great players...whether they were scoring goals in the NHL or WHA. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
notfondajane Posted March 18, 2015 Share Posted March 18, 2015 I agree with tropical fruit girl. If I'm not mistaken, in the W.H.A final year every team made a profit. I really didn't want to see the merger. I was hoping for something similar to baseball! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WordsOfWisdom Posted March 18, 2015 Share Posted March 18, 2015 The travel schedule in the WHA must have really sucked! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ScottM Posted March 23, 2015 Author Share Posted March 23, 2015 I intended to post a link to this thread for some discussion, but forgot. I just now remembered about it, so here it is: http://hockeyanalytics.com/Research_files/League_Equivalencies.pdf The idea is an interesting one, and one thing that sticks out on the table comparing the NHL to the WHA and the AHL of the 70's is the low relative rating of the WHA in the 1976-77 season. Something tells me that that article may be quite useful, but maybe better applied with an average of all of the seasons. Any thoughts? Even with that article, I'm still stumped as to how to handle goaltender wins and losses. Sure, in the NHL the goalies would have better (on average) players shooting at them, but they'd also be supported by better players. I wonder if that could fairly be considered a wash. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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