It very well may have been influenced by injuries, but assessing how Sullivan used him is NOT inconsistent with saying the organization (management) sees ZAR as a top 6 talent. See Ryan Reaves for an example of the dichotomy between how management sees and the coach uses a player.
Indeed it isn't and my words were never intended to be meant otherwise.
However, I would point out that various journos have said the org regards McCann as a top 6 talent too. And that they're super high on Kahun. Obviously Guentzel, Galchenyuk and Horny are guys that end up in the top 6 regularly. And I'm not sure what the org thinks of Simon, but Sully and Sid clearly love him. Ditto Rust.
I don't disbelieve you guys saying the org thinks of ZAR as a top 6 talent but at the same time, the depth there means a lot of their top 6 talents will spend a lot of time outside it. And as such... well, unless they start moving guys out of the way to make space for him, they can believe what they want. The log jam and Sully will sort things out relatively fairly. And this summer they did the opposite of moving guys out of his way.
Totally cool. Just checking.
The one thing I think that gives more credibility to the numbers, again without having read the article (should probably just get an athletic sub as it's cheap all things considered), is the injury history. If the date projects Geno at 60ish games a year and 65 points, I can see how that projects to worse value vs let's say Duchene at 8MM playing 70 games and 70ish points.
That said, I think the hardest thing to figure into this data (and I'm not saying it makes this case) is how likely is it that you can replace any particular player for better value? For replacement level players, it's easier to use this data as there are a ton of other players you could get. With top 6 centers, even declining ones, it's very limited in how you can replace them.
I'll try and take a better look at their model and see what's going in at some point. I'd say I suspect injuries are part of it, but at the same time, Ovie also got a B- and is pretty fit. Plus Letang's a train wreck of injuries and got an A. So maybe it doesn't.
I'm also guessing it doesn't factor in ease of replacement and here I think it's right; at least, I think its right that the thing doesn't try to model that. Too many moving parts and I also like the purity of it either being bad value for the money or good.