I happen to listen to the Puck Podcast on a fairly regular basis. They are one of the podcasts that I listen to when I am exercising.

This past winter, I got out of shape and as result fell behind…

Anyway, so I am listening to the January podcast, and Doug says that maybe the reason Alex the Great has that many goals (as does Kovalchuk) is because the defense in the west is better and they play a lot of games against weaker Eastern teams. He then proceeds to rattle off the names of the great defenders that play in the west, guys like Niedermayer, Pronger and Lidstrom.

And just recently, Ron Wilson of the Sharks, remarked that there are no top ranked defensemen in the Eastern Conference after Brian Campbell arrived in San Jose.  As a fan of Mr. Markov, I would think that Mr. Wilson is mistaken, but after Markov, I would be hard pressed to name a top-rated defenseman in Eastern Conference.

Personally I think that Doug was wrong, because he discounted the fact that although the West may have better defensemen, the East has better goaltending.

One of the implications of Doug’s statement would be that the Ducks Getzlaf’s 23 goals are more valuable than Ovechkin’s 60 because they are against superior defense.

But facts and numbers are always more interesting than statements.

So I decided to see how many goals did Ovechkin score vs the West and vs the East.

Ovechkin has scored 60 goals, and has 7 goals in 6 games against the West.

What about Kovalchuk?

Kovalchuk had  3 goals in 6 games against the West.

All this shows is that great players will score regardless of who is defending them. And both Ovechkin and Kovalchuk are great players.