Family relations as a measure of talent pool

[tarheelhockey]

Crowdsourcing the board's expertise on this one. Do you think the following statement makes a sound hypothesis?

Hypothesis: The number of family connections in the NHL (e.g. brothers, sons) should decrease as the level of competition for roster spots increases.

Relevant factors:

Number of people playing the sport in total
Promotion based on merit vs other factors
Number of roster spots available​

I'm preparing to crunch some data on this, but I don't want my own biases getting in the way. Looking for some feedback on the hypothesis before I make the deep dive.

Thanks in advance.

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[LeHab]

Are you trying to assess if more competitive teams have less player nepotism?

Something similar could be done for drafts if sample is large enough. Are players with family connections (parent or sibling) favored in drafts?

 

[morehockeystats]

Are you trying to assess if more competitive teams have less player nepotism?

Something similar could be done for drafts if sample is large enough. Are players with family connections (parent or sibling) favored in drafts?

You can argue that there is a confounder, since a player who is closely related to a former NHL player would likely have a better continuing hockey education.

 

[Legionnaire11]

It should be compared to other leagues as well, as they have all had a larger footprint and level of popularity for much longer than the NHL and thus if family ties are less present over time in those leagues, it should help prove any conclusion drawn from NHL trends.

 

[LeHab]

You can argue that there is a confounder, since a player who is closely related to a former NHL player would likely have a better continuing hockey education.

Yeah there are factors like this that should be controlled for but might be hard or not possible. I was thinking in terms of if a player with family connections is drafted at rank X, how does he compare down the road to others drafted at similar spots without connections. Once again a drafted player with known connections might get more visibility and opportunities for development (more ice time) than someone without.

 

[JackSlater]

It feels like a reasonable hypothesis, with finances being probably the biggest reason.

 

[tarheelhockey]

Are you trying to assess if more competitive teams have less player nepotism?

I'm looking at it from a league-competitiveness standpoint. If we see the number of siblings in the NHL (as a percentage of the whole) rising or falling over a given time period, it seems logical to me that this would correlate with an expanding or contracting talent pool.

You can argue that there is a confounder, since a player who is closely related to a former NHL player would likely have a better continuing hockey education.

Yeah there are factors like this that should be controlled for but might be hard or not possible. I was thinking in terms of if a player with family connections is drafted at rank X, how does he compare down the road to others drafted at similar spots without connections. Once again a drafted player with known connections might get more visibility and opportunities for development (more ice time) than someone without.

These are both good points, and I'm not sure that they can be controlled for because parental influence is so unquantifiable and also fundamental to a person's upbringing. Not sure how to peel those layers apart in a way that would be fair.

That being said, shouldn't the effect be diluted as the overall number of players rises? It seems to me that if millions and millions of people are playing a sport and have access to promotion, then it should be exceedingly rare to see multiple people from the same household emerge in the top 0.1% of that pool. Like, bordering on lottery odds.

Something that just crossed my mind -- perhaps success is the better indicator rather than mere participation? A player could advance to the NHL on his family's connections, but success in the NHL would be even more unlikely as a concidence?

It should be compared to other leagues as well, as they have all had a larger footprint and level of popularity for much longer than the NHL and thus if family ties are less present over time in those leagues, it should help prove any conclusion drawn from NHL trends.

I was thinking about this too, especially in soccer where there is such a massive and accessible talent pool. But I'm not sure how to even begin tracking family connections across soccer leagues

 

[morehockeystats]

Yeah there are factors like this that should be controlled for but might be hard or not possible. I was thinking in terms of if a player with family connections is drafted at rank X, how does he compare down the road to others drafted at similar spots without connections. Once again a drafted player with known connections might get more visibility and opportunities for development (more ice time) than someone without.

You might want to read "The Book of Why" by Prof. Judea Pearl and NM Dana MacKenzie (the latter one is an online friend of mine) for the controlling of confounders.

 

[LeHab]

That being said, shouldn't the effect be diluted as the overall number of players rises? It seems to me that if millions and millions of people are playing a sport and have access to promotion, then it should be exceedingly rare to see multiple people from the same household emerge in the top 0.1% of that pool. Like, bordering on lottery odds.

Do you have reliable sources for hockey participation across multiple years/countries?

 

[tarheelhockey]

Do you have reliable sources for hockey participation across multiple years/countries?

I don’t think a truly reliable source exists. “Hockey participation” isn’t something that can really be quantified.

That said, we can make some reasonable inferences. The biggest factor that we can know with some certainty is the number of boys aged 10-18 in a country at a given time. That gives us a baseline for how many players could be in the NHL pipeline at a given time.

From there, we can look at indicators of how much of the population is being actualized into hockey. Number of rinks, number of leagues. I’m suspicious of taking registration data at face value, but it does add another layer of information.

From there we can think about the quality of the pipeline — how good is the training, and how much access does it provide to promotion? Historically the OHL has provided the “easiest” path whereas many countries were simply cut off... so millions of participating players were not actually in the pipeline. Best indicator is simply the share of players who graduate to the NHL.

Put that all together and you have a reasonable estimate of the NHL pipeline at a given point in time. The problem is that it’s a LOT of work and the sources of information aren’t uniformly reliable.

The potential value of the family-relations data is that it could serve as a proxy measure. In theory, a higher number of brothers from the same household making the NHL could indicate a league pulling its players from a more restricted pool of talent and/or opportunity.

 

[Stephen]

Or maybe there's just an economy of scale of siblings developing into NHL talents based on similar genetics, environment, access to training, commitment level of parents, financial resources, programs, etc.

The use of siblings as a proxy for talent pool seems flimsy.

 

[tarheelhockey]

Or maybe there's just an economy of scale of siblings developing into NHL talents based on similar genetics, environment, access to training, commitment level of parents, financial resources, programs, etc.

The use of siblings as a proxy for talent pool seems flimsy.

Even if it's true that there's an economy of scale, is it not also true that the proportion of successful siblings should decrease as the talent pool widens?

Because even if their conditions are favorable, expanding the pool would make it increasingly likely that the marginal differences between two siblings (one slightly taller, more athletic, more committed, luckier to avoid injury) would result in the weaker sibling being weeded out due to increased competition for a static number of roster spots.

So if I increase the talent pool from 1 million to 10 million, the absolute number of siblings might go up but the proportion of them in the league would go down, correct?

 

[martingail11]

It is easy to judge about how many are involved in sports activity. Thank you for your post.

 

[DannyGallivan]

Crowdsourcing the board's expertise on this one. Do you think the following statement makes a sound hypothesis?

Hypothesis: The number of family connections in the NHL (e.g. brothers, sons) should decrease as the level of competition for roster spots increases.

Relevant factors:

Number of people playing the sport in total
Promotion based on merit vs other factors
Number of roster spots available​

I'm preparing to crunch some data on this, but I don't want my own biases getting in the way. Looking for some feedback on the hypothesis before I make the deep dive.

Thanks in advance.

I'm more interested in the number of previous NHL-related players (most notably those who's fathers were players) who make it... is it more a matter of genetics, or is it resources (I heard that Brindamour had an $80,000 rink built for his kids to play hockey all year round... might have some of the details wrong on that, but there is no doubt that millionaire hockey players have much better resources for their kids to follow in their footsteps).

 

[tarheelhockey]

I'm more interested in the number of previous NHL-related players (most notably those who's fathers were players) who make it... is it more a matter of genetics, or is it resources (I heard that Brindamour had an $80,000 rink built for his kids to play hockey all year round... might have some of the details wrong on that, but there is no doubt that millionaire hockey players have much better resources for their kids to follow in their footsteps).

Yeah, after processing the question a bit more I think siblings are a different subject entirely than other family relations.

As you say, something like a parent or uncle in the NHL tends to open doors. There’s the money, the connections, the name recognition, the sharing of insight on how to succeed. And of course... the genetics. Looking at them against the general talent pool gives us some insight into unevenness in the development system.

Looking at siblings puts the focus on people who begin with (more or less) identical circumstances. In theory, the odds should skew heavily against any given pair of people making the NHL — because even with identical circumstances, there is still a gradient between the two individuals. The increasing or decreasing tolerance for that gradient is an indicator on the availability of alternatives — and therefore a decent proxy for the expansion or contraction of the talent pool.

Then there’s the sub-group that fulfills both conditions: siblings who come from NHL families. My gut is that the talent-pool measure would give a truer result if this sub-group were excluded, because as you say they have a built-in promotional advantage that confounds the analysis.

 

[abo9]

Does anyone know what's the proportion of players in the NHL that are related to NHL players, or is there a website keeping track of this data?

 

[tarheelhockey]

Does anyone know what's the proportion of players in the NHL that are related to NHL players, or is there a website keeping track of this data?

There are lists on wikipedia, etc. You have to go through manually to determine who was playing in a particular season.

 

[JackFr]

I'd be curious to see whether the rate of family relations has increased at a higher rate than the growth of NHL roster sizes.

 

[abo9]

There are lists on wikipedia, etc. You have to go through manually to determine who was playing in a particular season.

Ok thanks, bc I was watching a game the other day and they presented a couple players I was surprised to learn were related to former NHLers, so this thread came to mind.

Sorry I can't offer too many insights for your idea for a study, but I think it's a very interesting idea!