Calder Poll, May 2011

[HF Article]

The top rookies of 2010-11 as voted by HF staff.

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[Trafalgar Sadge Law]

This list is Pejorative Slured, how is it that Taylor Hall scores more points and goals than Brad Marchand in 12 less games, playing on the worst team in the NHL, and often having to face the oppositions' best defenders. yet Marchand makes the list and he doesn't?

 

[Torts]

PK Subban

I feel he got snubbed, kid should be in the running.

 

[Bure]

I love Carlson above Subban, some people don't understand that Carlson was arguebly the Capitals # 1 D man.

No hate on Subban ethier.

 

[Red08]

I don't understand how Fowler ranks above Shattenkirk.

 

[Falcons93]

I hate Edmonton, but how in the **** does Taylor Hall not make the list? Some of the names above him are insulting. Marchand? Bobrovsky? Anyone not named Skinner, Couture, and Grabner? I can understand trying to be unique, but this list is just off base.

 

[bcv]

I love Carlson above Subban, some people don't understand that Carlson was arguebly the Capitals # 1 D man.

No hate on Subban ethier.

Subban was also the #1 Dman this year.. But yeah, I feel like Carlson was ahead of Subban this year.

 

[Homesick]

I like Grabner. I feel he overcame more, and led all rookies in goals.

Signed,
Oilers fan not the least bit slighted that Hall was left off.....he didnt deserve it.

 

[Hooch314]

I love how incredibly well represented Shattenkirk is. Doesn't even crack this prestigious website's top 10 list.

Just shows once again how little the people who run this site know about hockey.

 

[LuckyLuke87]

I love how incredibly well represented Shattenkirk is. Doesn't even crack this prestigious website's top 10 list.

Just shows once again how little the people who run this site know about hockey.

Holly true...

 

[Kevin Forbes]

Hey guys, sorry I didn't see this thread earlier, I've been on the road most of this week (finished off the article a few days ago from my hotel room) and must have missed seeing this thread.

Some explanations:

First off, for every one of these articles, we have an open thread on the staff forum for staff to participate and submit their lists of top 15 rookies. Those results are then averaged out and paired down to the top 10 that form the article. The number of votes depends on the number of writers who participate, but usually I'm working with somewhere around 12 lists each time.

The actual spreadsheet is on my memory stick which is somewhere in my suitcase that I've yet to unpack, but I know both Hall and Shattenkirk were part of the discussions and fell just short.

Speaking for myself, Hall was a guy who I thought was behind Marchand for a couple reasons. The main one was simple winnability. I rank my list with the thought that if Couture wasn't a rookie this year, who would win, if Skinner wasn't and so on. To me, the injury and missing the last quarter of the season knocked Hall down a peg.
Secondly, I don't think the difference in production was that far off. Hall had one more point in eight fewer games, but saw more icetime, especially on the powerplay. Obviously Marchand played for a superior team (Boston scored about 50 goals more than Edmonton), but didn't see the same opportunities that Hall did. We can go back and forth about this, but in the end, I decided it was pretty much a wash.

There was a lot of differing opinions on Marchand and on Hall and the votes just evened out with one over the other. It's interesting, because while the voting period was open, I did raise the question about Hall (and Eberle) and their placement. At the time, I compared their seasons to those of guys like Stepan and Ennis (who I thought might be comparable, injuries notwithstanding). Regarding those guys (maybe less so Eberle), it was just a lot of split votes that put Marchand and Stepan in and left Ennis and Hall out.

That vote splitting had a similar effect with Shattenkirk. He was a guy that was pretty consistently ranked in that 9-12 spot, but was surpassed by other players who were perhaps a bit more polarizing. A player like Bobrovsky and Marchand who were voted anywhere from 5th to 14th averaged out to be higher.

You may not agree with the results, but hopefully this helps explain how we came up with the list.
Thanks for reading!

 

[rumrokh]

Am I the only one who thinks that defense smacks of not watching these guys play?
Marchand is a good, hardworking player, but he really doesn't compare favorably to Hall if you watch them play.

After the obvious few guys, this list is about two things:
1. Perceived projection as opposed to who actually had the best season
2. The best rookies on the best and/or favorite teams

Plus, there are very good ways to prevent polarized opinions from controlling your results: throw out the most extreme votes when you're determining position. If a guy regularly cracks the top ten, but gets edged due to a few really high votes, despite the fact that the edging player is in fewer total top tens, why let that skew things?
Clifford and Tedenby are solid players, but have to be homer votes or larks. That is proof enough that people are juicing their rankings. There are lots of ways you can weight your system or create thresholds to prevent that.

 

[Kevin Forbes]

Plus, there are very good ways to prevent polarized opinions from controlling your results: throw out the most extreme votes when you're determining position. If a guy regularly cracks the top ten, but gets edged due to a few really high votes, despite the fact that the edging player is in fewer total top tens, why let that skew things?
Clifford and Tedenby are solid players, but have to be homer votes or larks. That is proof enough that people are juicing their rankings. There are lots of ways you can weight your system or create thresholds to prevent that.

Thanks for the feedback.

My issue with that is if I throw out the top vote and the bottom vote for each player, some months that might knock the list down to having four writers actual voting on the list. Ideally we want to include as many opinions as possible. It's not the easiest, because we're working with deadlines and we want the article to be timely.
Keep in mind that, as mentioned above, I ask the writers for a list of 15 rookies. So in the cases of players like Clifford and Tedenby, they were isolated votes in that 14th, 15th spot.

Hall's injury really gummed things up for him, because without it, I think he would have been at least pushing Grabner for that #3 spot. Unfortunately, not playing the final quarter of the season hurt his chances at being named the "the player selected as the most proficient in his first year of competition" in the eyes of the HF writers. It remains to be seen if the PHWA writers agree.

 

[Teemu]

I like how Crawford was never listed on any of the previous top 10 Calder polls and then finishes at #4