OHL controversy

A debate is underway in the OHL, revolving around whether superstar John Tavares really did break the OHL's all-time goalscoring record last weekend, like the league says he did.

Tavares scored career goals #213, 214, and 215 on the weekend, which the OHL says breaks Peter Lee's career record of 213 which had stood since 1976. But some people say Lee actually scored 216 goals, not 213, which would mean Tavares is actually two goals short of owning the record. And so now we have a problem....because what if Tavares sits out the last two regular season games to rest up for playoffs, or - perhaps even worse - plays those two games but doesn't score two goals? And then somewhere down the line, proof emerges that the record is actually 216, not the 213 the OHL claims?

Personally, I think it's ridiculous that the OHL doesn't have some ironclad guarantee of what their record is. I know the keeping of stats was shoddy in a lot of places back in the 60's, 70's, etc - but the OHL has known for at least a year now that Tavares was going to have a good shot at this record this season. Why does it seem like all this vault-searching and fact-checking are being done at the last minute?

Leagues need to take this stuff seriously if they want their records to have credibility. Which is why I'd like to point out that two and a half months later, the WHL game summaries and "official" scoring statistics still say Joey Leach played for the Ice on Dec 27, Dec 28, Dec 31, Jan 2, and Jan 3. In fact, that was Brendan Hurley and not Leach. Hurley actually took 6 PIM in those games, PIMs which are, as of right now, credited to Leach's total. So can we trust anything the WHL "official" statistics tell us? The next time somebody in the WHL breaks a "record", is that the actual record, or just what a league who sometimes doesn't take accuracy seriously enough says is the record?