Not nearly as good as the stats that said Burmistrov was good, Dano is a top 6 talent and Petan is elite away from thorburn.
Cool... poor argument ignoring nuance for me to break down. My favourite!
1) Well actually, Burmistrov WAS good at the same stat... pre-KHL.
Burmistrov's 5v5 goal differential per hour was +2.35. That was higher than Wheeler, Little, Kane, Jokinen, Setoguchi, Slater, Miettinen, Glass, Wright, Thorburn, etc. Of the 21 forwards to play at least 500 mins when Burmistrov was on the Jets roster he was 7th. His linemates' percentage of goals for vs goals against improved with him by almost the exact same amount as did Corsi. He didn't score very well, but he scored passably good for a middle-six role, and was well admitted to being his poorest feature.
When Burmistrov returned from the KHL, he was a similar player stylistically, but his choices were more extreme. He held on to the puck and went east/west even more; his zone entries went from very strong controlled vs uncontrolled vs failure to poor; his trade offs in risk vs reward flipped. Both his "fancy stats" and his goal metrics were bad.
Burmistrov wasn't an argument of shot metrics vs goal metrics, as he did similarly well in both.
The argument then with Burmistrov was always that Burmistrov was better than Jokinen, deserved his ice time instead, and had very good chemistry with Evander Kane. In hindsight, that looks like it was true... whether by "those stats" or by goals.
2) Who the hell said Dano is top6?
Dano did well as a Jet, but well for his role. If you want to use 5v5 goal differential instead of "fancy stats," Dano places 10th out of the Jets 20 forwards to play over the same time.
The argument was always that Dano did relatively well in the time he had:
- His point production (and I'm including the droughts he had in CHI and COL, which makes him look worse than if we just looked at his time in WPG) paces well with Lowry and Copp, and out paces Armia, Tanev, Peluso, Hendricks, Lipon, Lemieux, Thorburn, Stafford, and Howden.
- His impact on linemate's expected goal differentials again was similar to Lowry and Copp, and out performed Armia, Tanev, Peluso, Hendricks, Lipon, Lemieux, Thorburn, Matthias, Stafford, and Howden.
It wasn't that he was a top-six forward... it was that he was one of the better bottom-line/six forwards (depending on whether it was a top-nine or top-six forward make up)...
and one of the stats used was actually scoring points.
The argument was that Dano is probably almost as good as Copp and better / more deserving than those players he outperformed listed above. My argument would be that Dano would optimally be a fourth line player with Copp and Lowry in a top-nine system (although Jets need Roslovic or another centre on top of Scheifele and Little for this ideal situation to happen).
Again, the argument was always more nuanced than those who are adversed to intelligent arguments would suggest.
3) Petan IS good... but who said he was elite?
Well... I mean... Petan was an elite WHL player, but that's a different argument. Also, Petan does sit above Wheeler, Little, Laine, and Ehlers this season in that goal stat Stanley did so well in...
People were once arguing that Petan didn't make good of his chance in the NHL. I just pointed out something about his scoring and what he was doing when he was actually "given a chance."
When I made the article about Petan with and without Thorburn, I noted that half his ice time (and over 2/3rds of his games played) were with what I called "non-scorers lines" (ex: Copp-Thorburn, and Thorburn-Tanev). In those minutes Petan put up results that were WORSE than even we typically see from sub-replacement players like Thorburn. In the minutes in what I'd call as a "scorer role," Petan scored between a 3rd line pace (1.5 P/60) to above top line pace (2.5 p/60)... depending on whether you'd want to call his time with Copp and Armia a scoring line or not...
Now, that 2.5 point per 60 pace would be elite... but I made a very intentional caveat to it:
"The results are probably somewhat unsustainable. This would essentially place Petan as a top 30 forward in the NHL. Not impossible, but also not probable. However, they are still meaningful."
In other words, the argument wasn't for saying how good Petan was/wasn't.
The argument was that Petan actually did do as well as you'd hope when he was given a chance.
So, while you tried to "ha!" moment, everything looks good for me in those arguments I made.
