All Time NHL Stats: Part II

All-Time Stats—Where Do Your Favorite Players Rank? Part II.

Written By: Mark "The Hard Hitter" Ritter

In the first edition we visited the leaders in all-time game winning goals, all-time Plus/Minus leaders and the all-time Points leader. This time we will take a look at the all-time Assists leader, all-time Games Played leader and the all-time Penalty Minute leader; you just might be surprised who sits at No.1.

All-time Assists Leader

This ones not even close, and yep, you guessed it, “The Great One” is the champ of this category. Let’s take a closer look...

Wayne Gretzky—With a career 1963 assists, Gretzky has made it nearly impossible for any player to even dream about matching his total. If a player were to play 19 seasons he would have to average over 100 assists a season to catch Gretzky, not likely to happen. Don’t forget, Gretzky holds the all-time record for points with 2,857, Mark Messier is ranked second overall with 1,887,

Gretzky has more assists than Messier has points—enough said! Both of these records will be virtually impossible to touch.

Ronald “Ron” Francis—I am a little surprised to find Francis here, until you think back to all the great teams Francis played on. His best season came as a member of the Pittsburgh Penguins in 1995/'96 when he racked up 92 assists. Francis, much like Marcel Dionne, is/was a very underrated player. Francis finished his career with 1,249 career assists.

Mark Messier—Ok, so it’s little surprise that Messier is here. Messier was a member of those great Edmonton Oiler teams, but it should be noted that Messier was still one heck of a hockey player well past the Gretzky trade. Messier finished his career with 1193 assists.

Surprises?

I got a few for you. First, we gotta give some props to Ray Bourque for being the all-time assist leader for defenseman. Bourque narrowly edged out Paul Coffey by a margin of 34 assists (1,169 to 1,135). Of note, Bourque also beat Coffey in plus/minus and overall points as well; I guess that takes care of the Bourque or Coffey argument, it’s Bourque by a landslide!

Back to the assist leaders; from the “Old school”, Gordie Howe is ranked eighth with a total of 1,049, just 16 ahead of Mario Lemieux. Joe Sakic currently sits at 11th all-time, just 17 assists behind Lemieux.

It says here Sakic will pass both Lemieux and Howe when all is said and done.

Other notables? Al MacInnis sits at number 14 all-time with a total of 934 assists, Stan Mikita is ranked at number 16 all-time with a total of 926 and Dale Hawerchuk sits at 19th overall, ahead of such great players as, Phil Esposito, Denis Savard, Bobby Clarke, Alex Delvecchio, Jari Kurri and Guy Lafleur. For the record, Lafleur had 793 assists in his career.

All-Time Games Played Leaders

This is the one category that not only speaks about the passion the player had for the game, but also the conditioning and health of the player. Sure, players like Bobby Orr would have loved to stay in the game, but injuries made that a mute point. Let’s take a look at who the all-time leaders are.

Gordon “Gordie” Howe—He began his career in the NHL in 1946...he played his last game in 1980 for a total of 1767 games played. Oh yeah, he averaged over a point a game, put up 42 points and was a Plus 9 in his final year with the now defunct Hartford Whalers (Became the Carolina Hurricanes).

Not too bad for a guy who was 52 years old at the time! Gordie, why the heck did you stop lacing them up?

Mark Messier—The “Moose” was definitely one of the greats, when he was ready to leave the game we all knew it would be quite a while until we were privileged enough to watch a player like Messier again.

Messier, like Howe before him, lived and breathed hockey; the funny thing is, both of these players had the reputation for being two of the toughest guys to ever lace up the skates, as such, neither one of them had to fight very often, but when they did, it was more then memorable.

Messier played a total of 1,756 games.

Ronald “Ron” Francis—Played 1,731 games, most of them memorable. Francis was extremely durable, known more for his play-making than anything else. Francis, as Don Cherry says, was a “Beauty.”

Surprises?

Boston Bruins great John “Johnny” Bucyk sits at No.10 with a total of 1,540 games played; Bucyk played his first season in 1955/'56 and finished off his career in 1978. Bucyk put up 1,369 points and only had 497 Penalty Minutes over that time, pretty impressive!

Other notables? Larry Murphy played 1,615 games, good enough for seventh overall. Doug Gilmour played 1,474 career games, ranking him 15th overall, just 13 games behind Wayne Gretzky. Luke Richardson played 1,417 games, good enough for 23rd overall, ranking him ahead of greats such as, Al MacInnis, Paul Coffey, Stan Mikita, Larry Robinson and Phil Esposito—who ranks 50th overall.

All-Time Penalty Minute Leaders

This is the only category where being the “leader” typically means you were anything but a leader on the ice. Let’s take a look at the NHL’s all-time penalty leaders, probably the all-time goons too, but who’s counting?

Dave “Tiger” Williams—3,966 career penalty minutes. That’s just a shade over 198 periods spent in the penalty box, nice!

No surprise here, Williams was one of the toughest players to ever don the blades. Williams could put out a DVD just featuring his own fights, he may have lost a few fights, but his opponents sure as heck knew they were in a fight if they had the berries to drop the gloves with Tiger.

Williams was also known for riding his hockey stick and pumping his fists in the air after he scored a goal. Williams was a classic!

Dale Hunter—Hunter was one of the dirtiest players of all-time, this definitely helped him acquire his career penalty minutes. Make no mistake about it, Hunter was one tough SOB, he earned all 3,565 penalty minutes he received.

Tie Domi—Love him or hate him, the one thing you had to respect about Domi was the fact that he never ducked anyone. Much like Tiger Williams before him, Tie Domi was loved by the Toronto Maple Leafs fateful...lol...It seems the Leafs are dominating this category!

Domi had 3,515 career penalty minutes, for those of you that are no good at Math, that’s just under 176 complete periods spent in the box. Good work Tie, thanks for the memories...

Surprises?

Wayne Gretzky was ranked at No. 4 overall....Yeah, right! This is one of the few categories where Gretzky is nowhere to be found.

Patrick “Pat” Verbeek came in at 11th overall with a total of 2,905, really...this time I am not joking! Name one memorable fight Verbeek had? He must have been real stupid when he was on the ice...a slasher? a hooker? what the heck did he do to rack up nearly 3,000 PIM’s?

Verbeek had 1,063 career points, he also had a career minus 44 rating. The penalty minutes help explain the plus/minus, but I am still puzzled at the number of minutes he had.

Other notables? Gary Roberts sits at 18th overall with 2,549 career penalty minutes, Gordon Wells sits at 27th with 2,359 career minutes—I know, who the “H-E-double hockey sticks” is Gordon Wells?

Dave “The Hammer” Schultz sits way down the ladder ranked 34th overall with 2,294 career penalty minutes, given Schultz’s rap, I would have thought he would be ranked higher than that.

MIA...Where did Wendel Clark rank? 87th overall with 1,690 career penalty minutes, just 5 PIM’s ahead of the great Gordie Howe. Want an even bigger surprise? Claude Lemieux is ranked 74th overall, one PIM behind Wilfred “Wilf” Paiement. Hmmm...

Tune in next time when we will look at All-Time Shot leaders, Power Play Goal leaders and the All-Time Goal scoring leaders.

Until next time,

Peace!