I'm not really sure who considers Tasarov among the greatest coaches of all-time, or why, insofar as they do. .
I'll go on record as saying that I do. He's definitely in my personal top-5. I don't really have the energy to argue on his behalf, his GMs should though. He was not
just a builder, he didn't just oversee and provide theoretical wisdom, he was the guy on the ice doing the actual coaching. When you look at everything - his international record, how he was regarded by his peers, and perhaps most importantly, his influence on North America - he should be a shoo-in for anyone's top-10.
I don't hold his training methods against him for two reasons: 1) History has proven he was just plain ahead of his time. What he had his players doing isn't too much different from what all teams are doing now. 2) He coached like a communist because he was one, because he was a Soviet. We start to get into muddy waters when we talk about this, but I don't want to hold the political landscape of a player or coach's country against them in any way. He was a product of that environment.
Does it help or hurt an elite player at even strength to play on a second line? I don't know.
I, too, have often wondered.
Fedorov placed 1st, 2nd, 6th and 7th in playoff scoring in those seasons. Placing in the 6 - 7 range for a first line forward on a team that goes to the finals is actually not all that surprising, as there are only six first line forwards who skate in the Cup finals.
I get what you're saying, but the top 6-7 scoring players are almost never forwards from the cup winners.
In 1996, Fedorov was 6th in points, and led Detroit. Lemieux and Jagr, semifinalists, were 2nd and 3rd.
In 1997, Fedorov was 7th in points, and lef Detroit. Sakic, Lemieux and Kamensky, semifinalists defeated by Fedorov, were 2nd, 3rd, and 4th.
When the playoffs are all said and done, being 6th-7th in scoring is a damn impressive achievement, and I don't see that these are exceptions.
Unless half of the GMs in this ATD are socks of Bilros, I can't imagine anyone cares how many games the playoffs were in Boucher's era.
I disagree with arguments that categorically undermine the importance of an era, BUT... don't the low games totals mean that our degree of certainty about Boucher's stats being representative of true greatness is lower?
Contrary to what some may think, I am not a stats expert. I don't know how to really get this across, but I'll try. Over the course of 7-9 games, there is a lot of opportunity for "noise" to come in, noise that won't get smoothed out or regressed to the mean like it would in a 20-30 game period. I would say that in a 20-game sample, we can look at the scoring leaders and be pretty certain that if all those games were replayed, the results would look quite similar. On the other hand, if we played just one game out and assumed that all players would score the same way for the next 19, we'd almost certainly be wrong. Whichever player was fortunate enough to have three points that night would not have 60 after 20. And so on.
The point is that larger sample sizes should be respected. And that I am bad at this. overpass would probably be better.
we cannot judge an ATD player's expected playoff production only based on his real-life playoff results. To do so would lead us to drafting Claude Lemieux in the top 100. Playoff results are a good indicator of a player's clutch ability, but they are not the end all and be all of what we should expect from ATD players in the postseason. Actual talent level and production over a whole career (including the regular season) is still very important.
Indeed it is.
Considering playoff games are generally about 10% of a player's total resume, what would you venture as a reasonable breakdown to assess their fantasy playoff ability? I'm thinking something like 75/25, which assigns greater value to what they did in the playoffs but still doesn't undermine everything they built in their regular season career, which, (going back to sample sizes), is likely what their playoff career would ultimately look like if it was the same number of games, give or take a small percentage of heroes and chokers.