Absolutely I would like to read your paper. Thanks for the offer. I'd feel much better having the possibility of contributing (not promising or predicting) than just knocking this thing.
http://hfboards.mandatory.com/showthread.php?t=1177875&highlight=improve+adjusted+scoring
Levelling the playing field is the bias. I believe they are arguing that the outliers should be the focus of attention. Current methods focus on the mean and attempt to rectify variance by adjusting the outliers. The authors refute this approach.
The field of top forwards was not nearly the same during the respective eras of Sittler and Sundin. Therefore to compare how they finished among their peers without any context is not a level, or fair, comparison and is of minimal value.
A better method might be to compare the outliers like Gretzky seasons in order to compare seasons or eras. I would argue that including outliers that didn't exist complicates the debate to a degree that might lead to absurdities or paralyze the debate altogether.
I'm not sure exactly what you're driving at here. Again, no "outliers that didn't exist" are being imagined nor included. The additional outliers that did exist during Sundin's time are simply being acknowledged as important competition that did not exist in Sittler's time. It doesn't matter whether in Sittler's time, overseas players were inferior, or rarely playing by choice and/or some sort of barrier. All that matters is that they were for the most part a non-factor at that time, while in Sundin's time they were fierce competition at forward.
The only real alternative explanation for the rise of overseas/U.S. players is that the pool of Canadian hockey players has decreased by the appropriate amount to allow such. Please show me any substantial, valid reasons why the population of high quality Canadian hockey players was only 50-75% as large in the past 20 years as in Sittler's time.
The study I did examines how "outliers" of sorts (top tier players) performed from season to season. It
does remove outliers (in the form of very large fluctuations in each direction) in order to have a more reliable result (using the median or middle half in terms of % change).
Every debate needs a beginning so what would be the result of calculating the actual percentage of NHL goals scored by the top 20% of goal scorers? This number would vary according to extreme outliers. This number can be calculated within that group as a percentage of goals scored by the group. This would of course identify extreme outliers within the group. Would this not be a more meaningful way of identifying weak and strong years? It's infinitely more sophisticated than dividing by 82. I believe it should be consistent with the study.
The result of such calculation wouldn't really depend on outliers of Gretzky's caliber. It would primarily depend on such factors as the depth of competition at various levels, how opportunity was divided amongst various types of players, and perhaps how players of different calibers are favored/disfavored by the environment at that time. If you create a clone of each NHL player and add them to the available player pool, the top 20% may score a similar or dissimilar proportion of goals, but in either case the top 20% would contain higher quality players (basically only players that would have been top 10% without the cloning).
It has some merit as you say but I see it as fantasy hockey calculations. Bar talk. I think this board has potential to take over that role. A persistant, tightly moderated debate could eventually produce results. I'm thinking sticky, no
level comments allowed at all and after all this board isn't going anywhere. These things take time. The cultural change is the most difficult. Especially when no one is managing it.
I agree that without an attempt at proper methodology, adjusted data is not being properly applied. I like the idea of a sticky thread for data analysis and other topics, but that is likely up to the moderators and I don't know the criteria for such things.
Considering the alternatives I'm quite satisfied with comparing to peers. But I think one must consider that NHL and O6 team records transcend a single season's competition value. Not to mention his performances in the playoffs. Remember or perhaps I need to clarify that I'm talking about a player rising to the ocassion in an era that the playoffs were pretty hard to miss. I think his third place finish is the only year that he pushed hard for the whole season. The fact that he, Trottier and LaFleur stand out as extreme outliers is valid. It's a dominance that Sundin never got close to. He had more chances than Sittler to do so. 12 seasons to 9. Not to mention the whole of his career.
I don't agree that adding imaginary outliers adds anything to the debate. What's missing is an adequate method of comparing the top 20% and the top 20% within that group to other seasons.
I understand why one may prefer Sittler based on his peak playoff performances. Whether this negates Sundin's much higher production over almost any length of their careers depends on how one values such things, but apparently most believe Sundin's superior production over any period from 2-18 years overshadows Sittler's shorter and less consistent flashes of brilliance.
I don't see how Sittler's finishing third is so superior to Sundin finishing fourth. It was more of an "outlier" performance by each of them. I guess when the proponents of Sittler have proclaimed his superior leadership as an alleged reason, saying that he may have "tried harder" with more competition doesn't exactly sway me in his favor. Gretzky must have been bored to tears!
Consider that the arguments I've seen so far just indicate a bias for Sundin. But this guy was injured and that guy was... a lot of bullcrap. A more proper response would be to argue that Sundin was better offensively and why. If he truly was then the content of the argument wouldn't matter. But all I hear is excuses for why Sundin didn't do what Sittler did and excuses for why Sittler did what he did. This is very poor argument. The ad hominems speak for themselves and together all this tends to give me confidence in my argument.
There is no bias for Sundin that I can see. I think it's been a fair evaluation, although there may be an "outlier". Most people are attempting to put the accomplishments of each player in the proper context.
I don't know what you mean by "ad hominems". If you mean that I responded to being attacked and characterized as some sort of black magician trying to mislead others in an attempt to prove Sundin's superiority, then you should realize:
- I explained in depth my reasoning for preferring Sundin on the basis of their entire NHL/international careers
- I allowed room for one to choose Sittler based on his peak playoff performances
- I have been repeatedly attacked and accused by this poster, whose main defense is attack, distracting arguments and using any inconsequential error as "proof" that an argument is invalid and/or misleading. If you choose to follow in his footsteps, I will treat you similarly.
The players existed but not in the NHL. We can only speculate as to how they would have performed in the NHL. This line of reasoning is fraut with assumptions and IMO does nothing to further the debate. We need a method to demonstrate how players across leagues compare. We can't just accept eyeball tests or I would have won this debate long ago. As would others with differing opinions. That's an absurdity. Those overseas outliers and their WHL brethren had less competition than the NHL players. One cannot simply assume that Sittler would score less or that any of them could have closed the 20 point gap between Sittler and Lemaire and passed Sittler that year. We don't know how that Sittler would have compared to players that didn't compete in the NHL. We don't know what teams they would have played for or who their team mates would be or whether they suffer an injury or whether they have an off year or whether they have difficulty adjusting to the pace, the increased competition, the cultural challenges, the wear and tear. Maybe stiffer competetion motivates Sittler even more and he scores more. Imaginary data or players does not improve the debate. It just speaks to bias. One needs an awful lot of outliers to overcome the short list of assumptions and actually impact Sittler's result in a meaningful way. I don't accept imaginary data no matter how it is presented.
The players existed in Sundin's time. I don't understand the bolded sentence, but otherwise it seems you are imagining that there are "imaginary" players and presuming that Sittler's performance relative to his peers would improve with basically double the competition.
I agree there's no hate of Sittler. I wasn't definitively suggesting there was one.
Opinions have to be substantiated. I have presented data in context that supports my eyeballs and recollections that Sittler was a more dynamic offensive player.
It's circumstantial but on the whole it adds up to support my argument. The data I've presented represents NHL and O6 records. These are independant of era or non-existant Russian and WHA NHLers. Others have shown Sittler's playoffs domination over Sundin. Since I'm saying Sittler is better because he rose to the occasion offensively I'd think that setting offensive records against the best teams and players of his era as well as his playoff performance does a pretty god job of justifying my eyeballs and recollections. We also have other data to refute the fluke argument. His placement against his peers in scoring compared to Sundin' who had 3 extra seasons includng 4 years experience on Sittler with the Leafs.
You suggested a widespread bias for Sundin and I don't believe that to be the case. You also don't seem to appreciate that others don't hold single game performances as the most reliable indicator of superiority. In that case, Sittler would be considered better than anyone offensively? If you choose not to even attempt to put the respective players' achievements in some sort of proper context, then you should realize that here many would consider that "bar talk." Incessantly repeating that there are imaginary players only displays your inability to grasp the concept being explained for you with great patience, not that your argument is logical.
But by the same token refutations also must achieve some standard.
-Fantasy hockey math admittedly contains a bias that has been refuted. Argue with the authors.
-Adding data contains assumptions that must also be justified in the context of the year or era in question. The 'you know what I mean argument' was refuted centuries ago. See Euclid.
-Inherent bias toward normalization manifested by adjusting outliers that has been refuted by a massive study must be accounted for by more than just stubborn rhetoric.
-Making excuses for one player's success and another player's lack of the same success is not a good argument. It evades the more proper argument showing that Sundin was better offensively. Why that approach?
First, you may (or may not) be interested to know that posters such as HockeyOutsider and myself (and presumably others) had indepedently developed the concept of "adjusted scoring" and had made some calculations based on such, before HockeyReference was even in existence (AFAIK). It's not so remarkable, being that the concept is founded in simple logic and what should be relatively basic math. As stated previously, HR.com is simply referred to as a common resource and reference point. However, it is not considered by many of us to be an unquestioned authority on the proper methodology.
As far as stubborn rhetoric, I would hope most posters understand the difference between that and a logical, reasoned argument based on fact and data. Refusal to acknowledge and use simple fact and logic falls more in the category of "stubborn rhetoric".
The eyeball and memory test seem to be the only substantiation for the claim that adding Euro and WHA players would alter the actual result of an NHL season. That argument fails your test. Does Hull score 77 goals in a fully integrated NHL? If not then how many? You must answer that question before you can definitively say what his impact on Sittler's results would be. Same thing for all the other imaginary NHLers. 'You know' doesn't cut it.
As I indicated I think a better method for comparing era's is needed. It must be focused on the outliers. It can't in any way be dependant on normaliztion or more specifically the cultural bias that is manifested by normalization. The authors of the study offer guidelines.
Don't forget to PM me about your study. I'd be interested in what you mailed Hockey.reference.com too.
In regards to Hull repeating his 1991(?) performances in a "more integrated NHL" is as follows:
- He likely would have been similarly affected by whichever factors precipitated the decline in league-wide scoring shortly after that period, in which case his raw "goals" would be expected to drop somewhat proportionally (although perhaps not quite that much, since 1991 was a relatively "tough" year for top scorers on an
already adjusted basis).
- He would have faced the additional competition from overseas forwards. In the case of his '91 performance, it was such an "outlier" (outstanding) performance, that he probably would lead the league in goals in any of the following years.
My study seems to at least partially address some of the very issues you are talking about in comparing across eras. It does not "normalize" anything, in the sense that it does not assume a "normal" distribution of players. It studies the outliers (top tier forwards) from one season to the next, uses their actual performance (in adjusted terms, but basically the very same results would be seen using "actual" PPG) from one season to the next, and finally links the "year over year" results to obtain numbers which can be utilized over longer periods. I'd prefer any comments or questions pertaining to that study to be posted in the original thread for that topic.
I don't want to get into specifics such as "how many goals would 1991 Hull score in Year X." However, the results of the study can be used to provide a very educated guess as to what that would be.
