Predicting International Success in Jr Career.

[Calirose]

I know Belleville has an international sized ice. If some players are simply better on larger ice we should see that reflected in Jr. games played at Belleville and those not (controlling for the teams' records and vigilant for guys being traded to Belleville or playing them more at a stronger or weaker part of their career).

Has anyone seen any work done on this?

Thanks!

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[Calirose]

This could help predict Olympic success / be useful for hockey canada.

 

[hatterson]

I haven't seen anything similar but I think your two biggest hurdles are the fact that you're looking at junior careers, which are hard to directly map to NHL careers anyway, as well as small sample sizes.

Using 100-200 games (max) when a guy is 16-20 against random junior teams is going to have significant issues mapping to performance in a best on best tournament anywhere from 5-15 years later.

Is it possible that some players are simply better on larger ice? Certainly, it seems that there are specific skill sets that would map well to a larger ice surface, namely speed. However I think you'd need a larger sample size from a more relevant period of a players career to really derive anything of much use.