I can their raw playoff numbers in first three seasons be samples? Do understand the concept of what a sample is. It's pretty black and white who has the better playoff resume. It's a joke that this is even contemplated being overlooked. What the hell do you play the games for if it's not win championships.
I guess you should read up on population mean vs. sample mean.
There is player's ability (say, to score 100 points a season), that would be population mean.
There are actual games played: in a short sample, a 100-point player can produce at 50-point or 150-point pace due to luck, health, fluctuations in physical shape, etc. That observed pace would be sample mean.
If the sample is large, sample mean converges to population mean. Bad and good luck evens out, and a 100-point player will get around 100 points in a full season. If he cannot (for example, because he is never fully healthy), then he is not a 100-point player (e.g., Crosby is not a 90-point player anymore, even though he does have long streaks of producing above that pace, and McDavid currently is a 100-point player)
70-80 games are enough for the sample mean to converge to population mean, even though players' game-by-game production is not independent draws (they go through hot and cold streaks). 10-25 games in a playoff run are not nearly enough for sample mean to converge to population mean, especially given that independent observations in PO are PO series, not games (e.g., if the opposing team's goaltender goes on a hot streak, your team forwards will be underperforming game after game, and vice versa; in RS, you face a hot goalie today and then play a different team in two days).
People like talking about some X-factor that changes players' production in PO, but they overlook a simpler explanation that it is just random variation. And since the independent observations are series and not games, the random variation can be immense. For example, Stamkos scored at 0.306 gpg in his 49 PO games, Zetterberg scored at 0.422 gpg in 135 PO games. I do not think anyone would assume that come PO time, Zetterberg magically becomes a better goalscorer than Stamkos. A more likely explanation that the samples are really 8 PO series vs. 24 PO series, and Zetterberg was just luckier (e.g., in how his deep runs coincided with his better and healthier years). So I would not say that Stamkos is a bad PO goal-scorer, even after 50 games. And of course I am not going to say that McDavid is a bad PO player after 13 games. Probably just unlucky.
I guess we should also overlook McDavid's regular season #'s too because, you know, it's just a sample....
It is a much larger sample, and the sample mean is very close to the population mean. In contrast to PO, where he does not really have a sample yet.
) is just another good player lucky to be graced with Crosby’s talent?.
