Athletic’s Corey Pronman ranks his top U-23 players

[xECK29x]

Pronmon sucks, and you won't change my mind

 

[xECK29x]

A scout knows what he is looking at and what he is looking for. Pronman is a journalism major that watches hockey games

He's an opinion columnist at best.

 

[Kaner9]

I aint gonna fault a guy for having an opinion. Not what I would go with for a ranking though

 

[Machinehead]

It's a bad list but in Pronman's defense, I think some of these responses are not taking age into account.

 

[2Pair]

From your definition he might be a bad scout, but a bad scout is still a scout.

And by your definition, anyone that has ever watched a hockey game qualifies as a scout. That would make your definition pretty much useless.

 

[2Pair]

He's an opinion columnist at best.

And that's what he's paid to be. Pronman isn't the problem. The problem are the people that think there's any substance to his opinions.

 

[Garthinater]

it was clearly explained.

It’s a 2016 and under draft eligible list. ranks the best players from the last 5 draft classes.


Matthews was a late birthday. Like players like Tavares/eichel/Mario.

Heck 5 years from now laf will be on the 23 and under list at 23

Thanks for pointing that out, I didn't notice he used the draft dates.

Most lists of this nature, that I have seen, tend to use birth year, not draft year for the age cut off.

Example: top 25 under 25 list has no players aged 25.

 

[Legion34]

Thanks for pointing that out, I didn't notice he used the draft dates.

Most lists of this nature, that I have seen, tend to use birth year, not draft year for the age cut off.

Example: top 25 under 25 list has no players aged 25.

sure. But i think we have to keep in mind that this list would have been done in the off season. Matthews would have been 22 in normal times.

ranking players 5 up to 5 years after draft is pretty common.

Covid ruins everything is my only answer

 

[tsujimoto74]

It's a bad list but in Pronman's defense, I think some of these responses are not taking age into account.

Much of HF, I think, is thrown off by the idea of a list that ranks something other than "which player has been the best/most hyped in the past ~month?"

 

[Lahey]

Why is Heiskanen as the #1 crazy? He arguably had the greatest playoff performance by a u23 defenceman ever and has zero flaws in his game.

I think the #1 and #2 spots are between Heiskanen and Pettersson and it comes down to preference. Both are extremely high IQ, which I value a lot, and both will win championships in this league.

If you're worried about Matthews, he lacks the IQ and ability to make linemates better to challenge for #1.

Hahahahaha careful the agenda is showing!

 

[HyPnOtiK]

Corey Pronman of the Athletic ranks his top U-23 players.

This is a projection on who he believes will have the best careers. It’s actually 155 players in total, but I’ll just post the top-25 here to discuss.

1. Auston Matthews
2. Rasmus Dahlin
3. Elias Pettersson
4. Alexis Lafreniere
5. Matthew Tkachuk
6. Andrei Svechnikov
7. Patrick Laine
8. Jack Hughes
9. Kaapo Kakko
10. Quinton Byfield
11. Quinn Hughes
12. Brady Tkachuk
13. Cale Makar
14. Miro Heiskanen
15. Tim Stutzle
16. Kirby Dach
17. Lucas Raymond
18. Pierre Luc-Dubois
19. Cole Perfetti
20. Robert Thomas
21. Nico Hischier
22. Milhail Sergachev
23. Trevor Zegras
24. Charlie McAvoy
25. Barrett Hayton

Alarming to say the least

Too high:
Laine
Kakko
Serg
Hischier
Perfetti
Thomas
Hayton

Too low:
Heiskanen
McAvoy
PLD

 

[HyPnOtiK]

2. Dahlin



11. Q. Hughes
13. Makar
14. Heiskanen





24. McAvoy


What have we been watching?

Id take all those defenseman going forward over McAvoy in a heart beat. Your issue should be Serg ahead of him.

 

[HyPnOtiK]

Still searching for Carter Hart on this list too.

 

[Ted Hoffman]

I've never been a Pronman fan but man are there ever some wildly off-base criticisms here. He's really pissed some people off by ranking their favorite player low or something.

Not the point of my criticism.

He is a scout. There is no doctoral degree for scouting, you just watch and evaluate hockey players, that's all.

Hell, by that definition every one of us is a scout. [Ken Dryden reference goes here.] The question is whether he's significantly better than the average scout. That bar should be higher than "better than 50% of the population." Probably also higher than "better than 51% of the population" or "better than 52% of the population" or ... ranking somewhere into the top-quarter might be a good threshold. I might settle for top-third.

One can have great insights and lots of good observations, and still draw poor conclusions. The question isn't about watching and evaluating and expressing thoughts. It's about being able to accurately rank guys, and my question still stands: is he significantly better at doing this than others who also do the same work and get a fraction of the fanfare? Or, is he basically as hit-and-miss as anyone else but his hits get lots of attention while his misses get quietly swept under the rug?

I bet Pronman could get hired by an org if he wanted to go that route, but having never worked inside an org before, he'd have to start low and work his way up, and that would be a paycut and loss of status from working for TheAthletic.

1. I have no doubt he could get hired by an organization if he wanted to.
2. If you really think he'd have to start low and work up, I've got bad news for you on how organizations make hiring decisions when it comes to people who have name recognition.
3. HFBoards doesn't have enough bandwidth, and I don't have nearly the time, for me to go through the list of people who've been hired as supposed experts on [topic], who got hired with great fanfare, and proceeded to show they were totally clueless and crashed out in flames. Most of them went on to get a 2nd, 3rd, 4th chance elsewhere because someone was still convinced the people before them had it all wrong. I really don't have time to go through all the times people have misunderstand analytics and still landed jobs because they had some website or some service that spouted a bunch of fancy-looking data and someone in an organization said wow, that looks really impressive, we gotta have them here! Meanwhile, there are several much more significant items to both team and individual performance that could (should) be investigated, and no one is even scratching the surface on them.

Short: if the tag "they're significantly above average" is going to be affixed to someone, I expect to see tangible proof of it - not a bunch of conjecture and appeals to authority and populism.

You can't find an NHL team that was willing to take Kucherov higher than where Pronman would have taken him, that's the end of the debate.

Grigorenko was not #2 quality, but I wouldn't be so sure that he wouldn't go in the 1st round, that whole draft was abysmal and relatively devoid of talent. He had Forsberg much higher (good) and I don't know why you'd think Galchenyuk would be especially prized in a re-draft.

Everyone including Yzerman, Jarmo, or whoever else you think is a draft-wiz, has tons of misses. It's just about doing relatively well, and if Pronman really would have drafted Kucherov, Point, Barzal, Aho, etc.. then you have to think he's doing at least average.

You've completely missed the point here and committed the same error I point out when you talk about the hits Pronman has while ignoring his misses. Congrats.

 

[majormajor]

Hell, by that definition every one of us is a scout. [Ken Dryden reference goes here.] The question is whether he's significantly better than the average scout. That bar should be higher than "better than 50% of the population." Probably also higher than "better than 51% of the population" or "better than 52% of the population" or ... ranking somewhere into the top-quarter might be a good threshold. I might settle for top-third.

One can have great insights and lots of good observations, and still draw poor conclusions. The question isn't about watching and evaluating and expressing thoughts. It's about being able to accurately rank guys, and my question still stands: is he significantly better at doing this than others who also do the same work and get a fraction of the fanfare? Or, is he basically as hit-and-miss as anyone else but his hits get lots of attention while his misses get quietly swept under the rug?


1. I have no doubt he could get hired by an organization if he wanted to.
2. If you really think he'd have to start low and work up, I've got bad news for you on how organizations make hiring decisions when it comes to people who have name recognition.
3. HFBoards doesn't have enough bandwidth, and I don't have nearly the time, for me to go through the list of people who've been hired as supposed experts on [topic], who got hired with great fanfare, and proceeded to show they were totally clueless and crashed out in flames. Most of them went on to get a 2nd, 3rd, 4th chance elsewhere because someone was still convinced the people before them had it all wrong. I really don't have time to go through all the times people have misunderstand analytics and still landed jobs because they had some website or some service that spouted a bunch of fancy-looking data and someone in an organization said wow, that looks really impressive, we gotta have them here! Meanwhile, there are several much more significant items to both team and individual performance that could (should) be investigated, and no one is even scratching the surface on them.

Short: if the tag "they're significantly above average" is going to be affixed to someone, I expect to see tangible proof of it - not a bunch of conjecture and appeals to authority and populism.


You've completely missed the point here and committed the same error I point out when you talk about the hits Pronman has while ignoring his misses. Congrats.

"Congrats"? I think your blood sugar might have dipped on you here.

You mostly reiterated the same points that I was making - that scouting is measured in how well someone does in relative terms.

Though I'm not sure if we've yet understood each other when it comes to "misses". To my mind, if a GM selects Kucherov, Point, Barzal, and Aho in the span of six years, then they've already done quite well whether they have ten misses or fourty. You don't need to count misses. That is a very easy group to build a winner around. Colorado for example has drafted terribly except for that group of four first rounders - Landeskog 2011, Mackinnon 2013, Rantanen 2015, and Makar 2017. Nearly every other pick in that span was poor. But once you have that much elite talent you can build a contender around them through trades and signings.

 

[Frobbo]

Not sure that the Einsteins here criticizing Pronman have a lot of cred when they can't seem to figure out how Mathews is on the list. LOL CP is another voice, who has his bias in evaluation. With conflicting/contrasting bias' on a team's panel of NHL scouts I could see where his input would be valuable given his best player hits over the years. Scouting is about hits and misses with the hits being much more important. CP may do that pretty well.

 

[Ted Hoffman]

"Congrats"? I think your blood sugar might have dipped on you here.

I'm pretty confident you don't have the first clue what I think or how I feel. Don't ever try pretending you do.

You mostly reiterated the same points that I was making - that scouting is measured in how well someone does in relative terms.

And then proceeded to talk about instances where Pronman rated guys higher than someone picked them and that player went on to be great, while failing to note instances where Pronman rated guys as high or higher than teams picked the player and the player went on to crap out. That's ... kind of critical to my point, which you didn't reiterate. Hence, congrats on continuing to argue one side.

Though I'm not sure if we've yet understood each other when it comes to "misses". To my mind, if a GM selects Kucherov, Point, Barzal, and Aho in the span of six years, then they've already done quite well whether they have ten misses or fourty. You don't need to count misses. That is a very easy group to build a winner around. Colorado for example has drafted terribly except for that group of four first rounders - Landeskog 2011, Mackinnon 2013, Rantanen 2015, and Makar 2017. Nearly every other pick in that span was poor. But once you have that much elite talent you can build a contender around them through trades and signings.

This is an awesome straw man point. I say it's a straw man, because you addressed something other than the question I raise: whether Pronman's rankings are a more accurate representation of what those prospects will go on to do than anyone else's, or if all the hits are offset by all the misses and he's really no more accurate than the average ranking of all people doing prospect rankings. If you want to discuss whether GMs - more accurately the scouting departments that work under those GMs - are better/worse at evaluating prospects, kick off that thread and we can all opine there, but IMO it's irrelevant to the topic at hand.