Czech Your Math
I am lizard king
How can we better evaluate forwards which were injured and still had excellent seasons? This is a difficult question which has no exact answer. It is especially difficult to balance a player's ability and his value.
Many often use PPG or pro-rated seasons to indicate ability. This seems reasonable at first glance, but is it really? It may be much easier to maintain a higher PPG over a limited number of games. We can't be certain how injured players are, whether they play most/all of the season, or miss a substantial number of games. This makes fair comparison much more difficult. It may even more problematic for players who miss a large portion of the season and/or have a (adjusted or non-adjusted) PPG that significantly exceeds there established peak over large majorities of multiple seasons. For some instances of high PPG over stretches of a half season or less, during the past two decades, see this thread:
Best Half Seasons
Players that miss games have less general value than if they didn't miss some/all of those games and compared to other players which didn't as well. However, a team is able to replace that player while he is injured, so that may lessen the effect to some degree.
Others have used various methods to navigate this dilemma:
1) Simply give a player credit for his PPG over a full season.
2) Use a player's PPG ranking and only credit him for the games he plays, then sum the games over an arbitrary threshold ranking (e.g. 55 games at a top 10 pace).
3) Calculate how many total points he was over an arbitrary PPG threshold. IOW, 60 points in 40 games is 20 points over 1.00 PPG: 60 - (40 * 1.00) = +20
4) Ignore this thorny problem and use total points as the best indication of the player's ability/value for that season.
I'm presenting the results of a couple of methods. One is commonly used already, and is only applicable to multiple seasons. That is to add the actual games and actual points (in this case adjusted for league gpg & assist/goal, but not schedule) to calculate a PPG for an arbitrary number of games over multiple seasons. These season are not necessarily (and in fact not likely to be) consecutive. The other is not commonly used, and that is using the harmonic mean of the player's actual points and his points pro-rated to 82 GP (both adjusted, including schedule). The formula for this method is:
Harmonic Points (HP) = 2 * (AP * PP) / (AP + PP) , where AP = Actual adjusted points and PP = Pro-rated adjusted points
I don't claim these methods are clearly superior to all others, but believe they provide fair alternative methods of evaluating an injured player's ability and crediting him, at least partially, for games missed. Players starting their careers in the 70s or after were included in the lists that follow. I used simple adjusted points (to 6.00 gpg and 1.667 assists/goal).
Many often use PPG or pro-rated seasons to indicate ability. This seems reasonable at first glance, but is it really? It may be much easier to maintain a higher PPG over a limited number of games. We can't be certain how injured players are, whether they play most/all of the season, or miss a substantial number of games. This makes fair comparison much more difficult. It may even more problematic for players who miss a large portion of the season and/or have a (adjusted or non-adjusted) PPG that significantly exceeds there established peak over large majorities of multiple seasons. For some instances of high PPG over stretches of a half season or less, during the past two decades, see this thread:
Best Half Seasons
Players that miss games have less general value than if they didn't miss some/all of those games and compared to other players which didn't as well. However, a team is able to replace that player while he is injured, so that may lessen the effect to some degree.
Others have used various methods to navigate this dilemma:
1) Simply give a player credit for his PPG over a full season.
2) Use a player's PPG ranking and only credit him for the games he plays, then sum the games over an arbitrary threshold ranking (e.g. 55 games at a top 10 pace).
3) Calculate how many total points he was over an arbitrary PPG threshold. IOW, 60 points in 40 games is 20 points over 1.00 PPG: 60 - (40 * 1.00) = +20
4) Ignore this thorny problem and use total points as the best indication of the player's ability/value for that season.
I'm presenting the results of a couple of methods. One is commonly used already, and is only applicable to multiple seasons. That is to add the actual games and actual points (in this case adjusted for league gpg & assist/goal, but not schedule) to calculate a PPG for an arbitrary number of games over multiple seasons. These season are not necessarily (and in fact not likely to be) consecutive. The other is not commonly used, and that is using the harmonic mean of the player's actual points and his points pro-rated to 82 GP (both adjusted, including schedule). The formula for this method is:
Harmonic Points (HP) = 2 * (AP * PP) / (AP + PP) , where AP = Actual adjusted points and PP = Pro-rated adjusted points
I don't claim these methods are clearly superior to all others, but believe they provide fair alternative methods of evaluating an injured player's ability and crediting him, at least partially, for games missed. Players starting their careers in the 70s or after were included in the lists that follow. I used simple adjusted points (to 6.00 gpg and 1.667 assists/goal).
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