Sorting players by top-10 leaderboard finishes?

[SidGenoMario]

Hockey-reference of course has the individual leaderboard finishes for every player, but is there a website that can sort all players by # of finishes in a certain stat?

Like, is there a tool that would let me sort players by number of finishes in top 5 in assists? That would be really handy if this thing existed.

Click to read more...

 

[seventieslord]

No, not on that site, but I did a couple of studies you may find interesting.

I've partially disowned them lately, because I think if you finish 25th in something with 80% of the leader, you did a lot better than a guy who was 15th place with 65% of the leader, and this obviously doesn't account for that. But you wanted leaderboard finishes, here they are:

http://hfboards.com/showthread.php?t=614595&highlight=consistency
http://hfboards.com/showthread.php?t=633070&highlight=consistency

 

[TheDevilMadeMe]

Hockey Outsider did the same thing 70s did, but for points (only going as far back as 1968 though):

http://hfboards.ca/showthread.php?t=686975

 

[SidGenoMario]

seventieslord, how did you do those? If you didn't have a database, that would have taken ages to make!

 

[jkrx]

No, not on that site, but I did a couple of studies you may find interesting.

I've partially disowned them lately, because I think if you finish 25th in something with 80% of the leader, you did a lot better than a guy who was 15th place with 65% of the leader, and this obviously doesn't account for that. But you wanted leaderboard finishes, here they are:

http://hfboards.com/showthread.php?t=614595&highlight=consistency
http://hfboards.com/showthread.php?t=633070&highlight=consistency

Excellent lists 70s... the tables should be put in a sticky.

 

[Gobias Industries]

Both lists speak volumes as to why Oates should already be in the Hall of Fame...

 

[Hardyvan123]

Interesting stuff as always but there is always a difference in being top 2,5,10,20 in a 6 team league than a 12 team or a 30 team league.

In a smaller league it is possible to show up more often on the season lists and in a bigger league it is easier to show up on fewer top finishes but be higher in career goals, assists or points.

I guess to put it simply is that not all top finishes can be weighed equally, but there is no formula to weigh them either, it's subjective.

 

[seventieslord]

seventieslord, how did you do those? If you didn't have a database, that would have taken ages to make!

I had a system. Describing it would be boring, but yeah, it worked for me. It didn't take as long as it probably looks.

 

[pappyline]

seventies did a great job on these analyses. Looking back, one flaw I notice is that he included PCHA stats but ignored WHA & WCHL/WHL stats. The WHA stats (even with a 70% factor) would certainly have given Hull & Howe more top finishes & the WCHL/WHL stats would have given Bill Cook more.

 

[Leafs Forever]

seventies did a great job on these analyses. Looking back, one flaw I notice is that he included PCHA stats but ignored WHA & WCHL/WHL stats. The WHA stats (even with a 70% factor) would certainly have given Hull & Howe more top finishes & the WCHL/WHL stats would have given Bill Cook more.

Actually, he did include WCHL/WHL:

So I went over the leaderboards of the OPHL (1910-1911), NHA (1910-1917), PCHA (1912-1924) and WCHL/WHL (1922-1926) and constructed a simulated consolidated top-20 goalscorers list based on the actual stats of those leagues. This was not done just with raw numbers but intuitively based on what I have learned about all these early players and the telltale signs about the strengths of each of these leagues over the years. For example, the 1910 and 1911 OPHL was weak compared to the NHA, and they only had two players who I considered top-10 in hockey in 1910 and none in 1911. In some seasons the PCHA had just 7 of the top-20 scorers; in others they had 12. When the WCHL came around there was one season (1922) where none of their players were a top-5 scorer in hockey, but then they got stronger and saw 6 players make the leaderboard in 1923 and 1924, and then were virtually dead even with the NHL in 1925 and 1926. As I said, this was done intuitively and to the best of my abilities - I'm not interested in debating the merits of the system. It was done subjectively, with objectivity in mind, if that makes any sense.

It doesn't seem like he slotted WHA, but he has good reason- too many oddities. But Howe and Hull seem to have more than enough finishes, anyway :p

 

[pappyline]

Actually, he did include WCHL/WHL:



It doesn't seem like he slotted WHA, but he has good reason- too many oddities. But Howe and Hull seem to have more than enough finishes, anyway :p

Missed that so I stand corrected on the WCHL/WHL. Should have known seventies was thorough enough to include them. Still think the WHA should be included. Maybe there were oddities in the WHA but the NHL had its share of oddities also during the 70's.

 

[seventieslord]

Missed that so I stand corrected on the WCHL/WHL. Should have known seventies was thorough enough to include them. Still think the WHA should be included. Maybe there were oddities in the WHA but the NHL had its share of oddities also during the 70's.

i would like to include them in some way. Looking at the leaderboards those years, I am pretty sure that the top-5 in the WHA were better than the 16th-20th guys in the NHL - at the very least.

Every decade had its guys who had a cup of coffee in the top-20. The last 15 years saw Berezin, Czerkawski, and Hoglund, for example. I think the "class" of guys who had that one "out of nowhere" season in the 70s is even weaker: Roseaire Paiment, Dennis Ververgaert, and Errol Thompson come to mind. I think that the possibility that they were top-20 at something for one season is less plausible than the idea that there were better players in the WHA, and in Europe.

if there was a really easy way, you can bet I'd try. But trying to apply a factor to WHA numbers works sometimes, and looks ugly other times. And I've never really been able to account for Dany Lawson - way down the depth chart in the NHL, then instantly the goal leader in the WHA.

 

[Fredrik_71]

Excellent work. Its quite the revelation seeing just how hard it is to get high on the lists. I personally thought e.g. Shanahan would place higher and Forsberg lower.

/Cheers

 

[Derick*]

Seventieslord has a dungeon in his basement he sleeps and eats in that he spends his waken moments compiling hockey stats in. I mean that in the best way possible.

 

[seventieslord]

Seventieslord has a dungeon in his basement he sleeps and eats in that he spends his waken moments compiling hockey stats in. I mean that in the best way possible.

It's more of a "man cave"... and it's on the second floor.

 

[tomf]

No, not on that site, but I did a couple of studies you may find interesting.

I've partially disowned them lately, because I think if you finish 25th in something with 80% of the leader, you did a lot better than a guy who was 15th place with 65% of the leader, and this obviously doesn't account for that. But you wanted leaderboard finishes, here they are:

http://hfboards.com/showthread.php?t=614595&highlight=consistency
http://hfboards.com/showthread.php?t=633070&highlight=consistency

Not to mention that assuming the same quality of league it's much harder to be Top10 in 800 player league than in 200 player league ...

 

[Derick*]

Not to mention that assuming the same quality of league it's much harder to be Top10 in 800 player league than in 200 player league ...

Well presumably those 600 people will be in the minors in the era of 200 and are still in the "pool" you're competing against. That's a controversial topic though. Should you then account for Europeans, for population increase, etc.?

 

[tomf]

If we assume that 600 of those players would be in minors we are basically assuming that there is roughly 4 times worse quality of competition in NHL. That doesn't seem very probable.

As you have mentioned there are those factors as population growth, inclusion of European (also USA) talent, etc. that can easily offset the expansion of the league.

But I agree it's not clearcut topic .

 

[Hardyvan123]

If we assume that 600 of those players would be in minors we are basically assuming that there is roughly 4 times worse quality of competition in NHL. That doesn't seem very probable.

As you have mentioned there are those factors as population growth, inclusion of European (also USA) talent, etc. that can easily offset the expansion of the league.

But I agree it's not clearcut topic .

Definitely not a clear cut topic on these boards, top 10 finishes, actually anything a player does needs to be taken in total context of time and place to be given any meaning and for comparing players in different times and places it becomes subjective, no way around it.