wilfpaiement
Registered User
- Apr 8, 2024
- 27
- 41
Duke Keats. By all accounts, the man was an absolute beast. A stud center in the Mark Messier mould, not as swift a skater but a much better stickhandler and playmaker.
It's always been something of an obsession with me - the question "How would X have performed in the modern NHL?"
Now, of course there's no way to answer this question perfectly. There will always be some conjecture and assumption in any cross-era "translation" exercise. However, with numbers sometimes you can arrive at what appears to be a fairly decent result.
Take the case of Mr. Keats. I took his four core seasons:
So right off the bat we have assumption #1 - that we can simply tally up these four seasons to get a nice, fat sample size of The Iron Duke in his prime. This is a huge assumption and very likely a bad one. After all, the level of talent, competition etc. in the "Big 4" Alberta Hockey League and Western Canadian Hockey League in the early 1920s is (it's safe to assume) lower than that of the NHL in 2022-23, which is the season I ended up using as my base - to "translate" Keats' numbers to.
Is there any way to rectify this situation? I don't know. If anyone has somehow managed to measure league equivalencies going back to these long gone eras in hockey history, well, then I'd love to see it. However, for the sake of this exercise, I have no choice but to gloss over this assumption and proceed in my cross-era translation.
Okay, so I tallied up Keats' prime four seasons. Basically what we're doing here is satisfying the need for a big enough sample size (in this case 77 games total). As these numbers are spread out over 3+ years we're more getting a general, in-his-prime snapshot of Duke Keats rather than a true moment in time.
So ... what we end up with for a tally is a scoring line for Keats of: 77 - 95 - 58 - 153 - 196
From here we get a scoring "temperature" for the four seasons. We then determine how Keats performed in that climate and extrapolate these numbers to the 2022-23 NHL league averages for goals, assists and penalty minutes. Finally we assume - from anecdotal evidence and a full NY Times statistical record (including ice times for every player) for the 1927-28 season - that Keats, as a stud center, played 44 minutes a game. If you think that's off, well, you're entitled to believe that, but the rosters for Keats' Eskimos seem to suggest there were other centers that "subbed" him. So I went with 44 minutes of ice for an estimate.
The final result, if you're into this kind of historical study - putting flesh on the bones of dead men - is not surprising given all we know about Keats from sportswriters of the day as well as interviews with Keats' peers. Let's drop The Iron Duke into the 2022-23 NHL. Here are your "new" Top 5 scorers:
Keats was a beast. Does this prove it? No. But it certainly supports all the gushing his peers did about him back in the day.
Talk about forgotten greatness. Keats is to me one of the greatest hockey players who nobody knows a damn thing about.
Anyway, hope you enjoyed this little exercise.
It's always been something of an obsession with me - the question "How would X have performed in the modern NHL?"
Now, of course there's no way to answer this question perfectly. There will always be some conjecture and assumption in any cross-era "translation" exercise. However, with numbers sometimes you can arrive at what appears to be a fairly decent result.
Take the case of Mr. Keats. I took his four core seasons:
So right off the bat we have assumption #1 - that we can simply tally up these four seasons to get a nice, fat sample size of The Iron Duke in his prime. This is a huge assumption and very likely a bad one. After all, the level of talent, competition etc. in the "Big 4" Alberta Hockey League and Western Canadian Hockey League in the early 1920s is (it's safe to assume) lower than that of the NHL in 2022-23, which is the season I ended up using as my base - to "translate" Keats' numbers to.
Is there any way to rectify this situation? I don't know. If anyone has somehow managed to measure league equivalencies going back to these long gone eras in hockey history, well, then I'd love to see it. However, for the sake of this exercise, I have no choice but to gloss over this assumption and proceed in my cross-era translation.
Okay, so I tallied up Keats' prime four seasons. Basically what we're doing here is satisfying the need for a big enough sample size (in this case 77 games total). As these numbers are spread out over 3+ years we're more getting a general, in-his-prime snapshot of Duke Keats rather than a true moment in time.
So ... what we end up with for a tally is a scoring line for Keats of: 77 - 95 - 58 - 153 - 196
From here we get a scoring "temperature" for the four seasons. We then determine how Keats performed in that climate and extrapolate these numbers to the 2022-23 NHL league averages for goals, assists and penalty minutes. Finally we assume - from anecdotal evidence and a full NY Times statistical record (including ice times for every player) for the 1927-28 season - that Keats, as a stud center, played 44 minutes a game. If you think that's off, well, you're entitled to believe that, but the rosters for Keats' Eskimos seem to suggest there were other centers that "subbed" him. So I went with 44 minutes of ice for an estimate.
The final result, if you're into this kind of historical study - putting flesh on the bones of dead men - is not surprising given all we know about Keats from sportswriters of the day as well as interviews with Keats' peers. Let's drop The Iron Duke into the 2022-23 NHL. Here are your "new" Top 5 scorers:
Keats was a beast. Does this prove it? No. But it certainly supports all the gushing his peers did about him back in the day.
Talk about forgotten greatness. Keats is to me one of the greatest hockey players who nobody knows a damn thing about.
Anyway, hope you enjoyed this little exercise.