The Scoring Title, Re-Counted
Remove the goals scored after a game was decided and a different player leads the league in points in 30 of 108 seasons. Here are the champions who lose their titles, and what they have in common.
Each season, the NHL crowns a scoring champion. It's one of the most straightforward records in the sport.
But points are counted the same way whether they arrive in a tied game in the third period, or as the ninth goal of a 9–1 win. So we asked a simple question. Recount every season with the What If rule, and does the same player still lead the league?
About one season in four
The answer is: not always. Across the 108 completed seasons, from 1917-18 to 2025-26, a different player leads in points in 30 of them. In the other 78, the champion stays the same.
It isn't a quirk of one era. Before 1967 it happens in 15 of 50 seasons (30%), from 1967-68 to 1989-90 in 5 of 23 (22%), and since 1990-91 in 10 of 35 (29%).
The recent flips
Here are the ten flips since the early 1990s. For each, the table shows the official champion's points and what they become under the rule, then the new What If champion and his What If points.
| Season | Official champion | Official points | His What If points | What If champion | His What If points |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1991-92 | Mario Lemieux | 131 | 95 | Wayne Gretzky | 101 |
| 1992-93 | Mario Lemieux | 160 | 117 | Pat LaFontaine | 123 |
| 1997-98 | Jaromir Jagr | 102 | 74 | Wayne Gretzky | 81 |
| 2002-03 | Peter Forsberg | 106 | 79 | Joe Thornton | 86 |
| 2009-10 | Henrik Sedin | 112 | 86 | Sidney Crosby | 89 |
| 2010-11 | Daniel Sedin | 104 | 84 | Martin St. Louis | 85 |
| 2011-12 | Evgeni Malkin | 109 | 83 | Steven Stamkos | 86 |
| 2014-15 | Jamie Benn | 87 | 70 | John Tavares | 73 |
| 2018-19 | Nikita Kucherov | 128 | 94 | Connor McDavid | 100 |
| 2024-25 | Nikita Kucherov | 121 | 78 | Leon Draisaitl | 95 |
Two of them stand out. In 2018-19, Kucherov's 128 points had 27% of them come after the game was decided, against 14% of McDavid's 116. In 2024-25, 36% of Kucherov's 121 were padded, against 10% of Draisaitl's 106. Nathan MacKinnon, second in that race officially with 116, finished with 88.
Why the same teams keep appearing
The pattern isn't random. In 21 of the 28 flipped seasons with six or more teams, the official champion played for one of the three most padded teams in the league. Those teams padded 30.0% of their goals on average, against a league average of 21.4%.
The champions themselves show it too. When the official leader loses the title, 30.4% of his points were padded. When he keeps it, 23.2% were. The league average for players with 40 or more points is 21.9%.
The clearest example is Guy Lafleur. He won the scoring title three seasons in a row, from 1975-76 to 1977-78, with 125, 136 and 132 points. All three flip, each to a different player, and none of them a Canadien:
- 1975-76: Lafleur's 125 become 80, and Pierre Larouche leads with 84.
- 1976-77: Lafleur's 136 become 77, and Marcel Dionne leads with 89.
- 1977-78: Lafleur's 132 become 87, and Darryl Sittler leads with 91.
Montréal padded 37.4%, 45.7% and 38.7% of its goals in those three seasons, the most in the league each year. It's what you'd expect from a dominant team. They won big, and their stars collected a lot of points once the games were already won.
Howe's 95
The biggest official lead that doesn't survive the rule belongs to Gordie Howe in 1952-53. He won the title with 95 points, 24 clear of his teammate Ted Lindsay, who had 71. But 47% of Howe's points came after the game was decided. His What If total is 50, and Wally Hergesheimer, who finished with 59 points officially, leads with 52.
Most flips are close
These aren't blowouts in the other direction. In 14 of the 30 flipped seasons, the new leader beats the official champion by 3 What If points or fewer, and the median margin is 4. The new leader was usually near the top already: the official runner-up in 14 of the 30 cases, and third in 10 more.
So the rule doesn't usually crown an unknown. It tends to promote the player who was closest, and who scored more of his points while the game was still in doubt.
The What If record book
Re-counted over the whole history, the scoring titles look like this. Ties are split, so a shared title counts as half.
| Player | Official titles | What If titles |
|---|---|---|
| Wayne Gretzky | 10.5 | 12 |
| Connor McDavid | 6 | 7 |
| Gordie Howe | 6 | 6 |
| Phil Esposito | 5 | 5 |
| Mario Lemieux | 6 | 4 |
| Nikita Kucherov | 3 | 1 |
| Guy Lafleur | 3 | 0 |
| Marcel Dionne | 0.5 | 4 |
| Andy Bathgate | 0.5 | 4 |
Gretzky's total grows to 12, and McDavid moves into second place, past Howe and Lemieux. Lafleur's three titles vanish. Dionne and Bathgate, who each only shared the lead once in the official record, end up with four apiece.
What this does and doesn't say
It doesn't say anyone's trophy was undeserved. Points at any point in the game are real production. In our tests, padde points predict a player's next season about as well as any other points do, so removing them doesn't give a more accurate read of who's best. What the What If champion tells you is something narrower: who led the league in points while the game was still in doubt.
A few limits. The NHL's own play-by-play for 2009-10 lacks goal events for about 32 games, so that season's What If totals can be a point or two too high, and the Sedin and Crosby race is close enough to go either way. Early seasons had few teams and short schedules, and about half of the changes come before 1967. And ties at the top are shared here, so our title counts can differ by half a title from the official record.
To see the full re-count for any season, pick it on the Season Leaders page. For why padding follows team strength and not a player's character, see Is Killer Instinct Real?.