ProspectsFanatic
Registered User
- Nov 13, 2012
- 3,699
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First--yours is my favorite of all the "top prospects" lists on HF. Specifically because you use data.
I was glad to see you have Wassenius as a high 3rd rounder. I have mentioned him several times. And yes, I am a stat watcher. Because stats are objective. In fact, my only question to you would be related to this.
I agree on the aspects you noted and really like that you take strength of league and line mates into consideration. Those both make a big difference. Where I am not so sure is in the "subjective" measures of skating, shooting, puck control, and playmaking. Because the difference in any of those individually or all combined must surely show up in goals/assists. Over any season of 30 or more games luck should be mitigated. With luck minimized, an excellent skater with a very good shot will score more goals; an exceptional puck handler with excellent playmaking ability will have more assists. So either the subjective measures become redundant or introduce bias to explain why players that scouts really like aren't more productive.
Again I really like that you have created a model and I think it will consistently outperform subjective rankings. I think you might "trust" it a little more by letting the data stand on their own.
I am glad to hear you think I have the best approach.
I will truly cover everything on this thread, it is quite interesting that I was arguing with the previous poster the value of data over the eye test, now I will be arguing the opposite with you. Finding the right balance isn't obvious. But, I see that for the most part we vastly agree. What you said is very reminiscent of something similar I stated in the past, coming to similar conclusions as you:
"How do I evaluate players? I mainly look at statistics [...] Things like IQ and shooting don’t need a further look because they should translate into the criteria I value the most, statistics."
I still believe it to be true for the most part, but only for the most part. "Over any season of 30 or more games luck should be mitigated." I found this not to be true for that small of a sample size. Most players produce as they should, but there is always some outliers who either overperformed or underperformed during a season. In order to avoid being misled by unrepresentative numbers, outliers must be adjusted within a reasonable range.
For example, everyone knows that William Karlsson is probably not a consistent 40+ goals scorer even though he has been able to achieve that plateau this season. And that's where the evaluation of his overall offensive abilities, particularly the shooting category, and the data entered about the shooting percentage comes into play. The software would read that 23.3% is not a sustainable shooting ratio for such player, and subsequently pulls his goal total a bit lower to put him within a reasonable range of what you would expect out of that player. The reverse is also applicable, Lehkonen only had 2 goals in 36 games in the first half of this season, if on top of that you start factoring in that he was having quality ice time he would rank worse than basically any player in the league, but by looking at his shooting percentage that must have been around 3-5% it becomes evident that his 2 goals total is abnormal and unrepresentative. It feels necessary to me to make those slight adjustments in order to have the most representative results possible, but the reality is that most players produce as they should, so little adjustments are actually being made.
So that covers statistics adjustments, then there is also the projection dimension; over the years it became apparent to me that the game of faster skaters translates better at the next level. No matter how great of playmaker or shooter you are those strengths evaporates if you are unable to create time and space for yourself which becomes harder to obtain as you are moving up the leagues with players being faster and bigger. You have to greatly value the skating abilities of players in order to make good projections, otherwise stats watchers are greatly at risk of having players like Rychel and Shinkaruk in the top15 in the 2013 draft, a mistake I made in the past, but that I have learned from.
I have been speaking a lot about how I have been using the subjective evaluations in this thread, but what I would like people not to misinterpret is that I am mostly valuing statistics, I value statistics probably more than any other list, but I am also of the belief that you need to make small adjustments based on the viewing of players in order to obtain the best scouting results.
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