Sortable Morenz Numbers

Part V of a IV-part Series, or is this more like an Appendix? Each day this week I have introduced a different list covering those players who have led the NHL in the three major offensive categories over the 93-year, 92-season history of the league, ranking them by number of titles in each of:

• Rocket Richard Trophy: Most goals
• Wayne Gretzky Trophy: Most assists
• Gordie Howe Trophy: Most points
• Howie Morenz Number: The sum of all such scoring titles

Each of those lists is available separately at the above links, but it occurred to me that we have the technology to do way better than that. Why not a sortable table that allows each of the above ordered lists to be re-created at a mouse click? I've always considered sortable stats to be the cat's meow, but this is my first attempt at doing them. The output, which is after the jump, is slightly buggy but mostly useful.

In all exactly 100 different players have shared the 304 offensive titles (including ties) from 1917-2010.  The 61 Hockey Hall of Famers are identified by an asterisk. 18 active players are shown in purple, after executive decisions on Jagr and Forsberg (both considered active) and Tkachuk (retired, because he's announced). Discounting a couple of guys still in limbo, historically there is about a 75% correlation between winning any league scoring crown even once, and making the HHoF.

The two columns following each player are the seasons in which they won their first and last crown (which can be the same season), not the full duration of their careers. A sort on either of those columns provides a different perspective on the chronology of the league's offensive stars.

One little bug is that all columns automatically sort from fewest to greatest. If you want top-down accounting, a second click on the little arrow that emerges on the top of the column will do the trick. Other small bugs are the weird secondary sort for ties, and the fact that players are alphabetized by given name, not surname. But the basic data is solid, and it's good to have it all in one place.

My thanks to Derek, who dreams in a language that only occurs to me in nightmares, namely computer code.