I am not sure how many times I can say that I don't care that you ranked Draisaitl behind the likes of MacKinnon or Barkov or Matthews or Marner or Pastrnak or whom ever. This whole thing started when I responded to your claim that Draisaitl was at risk of being a one-year wonder, and your use of xGFrel to compare Draisiatl and Marner. I never asked you for some detailed analysis to back up your rankings. Your response in defense of your original statement was to suggest that people would be disappointed if Draisaitl had a 30/80 season. I then pointed out that I acknowledge that people might be disappointed by a 30/80 season but that in reality this was not a bad thing because few of the others on the list had exceeded that threshold. My question to you was simply why you singled out Draisaitl for the one-year wonder title since pretty much everyone on the list other than MacKinnon and McDavid were equally as susceptible to such a comment. Perhaps I should have simply left it at that but instead we ended up with me several posts later posting a list of all of the players who had averaged even 30 goals and 70 points to simply make the point that even this threshold was reserved almost exclusively for elite players.The point being that regression to this level by Draisaaitl or any of the others on the list would not in itself negate their previous accomplishments. It seems though that you did not like the fact that I used simple stats for my list instead of doing some detailed analysis. But this very much the main issue that you seem to be having trouble with. I used exactly the stats that addressed the point I was trying to make in the best possible way. The fact that they were straightforward is actually a positive. The key is that the stats I chose directly supported the assertion I was making.
I am most definitely a homer... Having followed the Oilers since 1972 the fact that I still do despite the last decade plus is pretty much evidence of this. But at no time was I mad about you slighting "my guy". I have explained the evolution of our conversation above. I clearly outlined why I objected to the term one-year wonder in the context of this list. I have also admitted that this part of the conversation probably went too far. But your use of the term "cherry-picked" is incorrect in this context. Cherry-picking refers to a careful choice of data to suppress evidence or to obfuscate. In this case, my assertion was that few players in the league average 30/70. To verify that statement the proper set of data is the actual list of players that do so, which is what I provided you with. You can argue that three years was not the right number but I explained why I chose it, including historical references. and also confirmed that had the number been 4 or 5 years the results would have been virtually identical. So that is exactly the opposite of cherry-picking. But a lot of the issue here is that you continued to mistakenly assume that I was trying to prove that Draisaitl > Pastrnak when I explicitly stated that this was not my goal. So part of the issue centering around the use of analytics is to actually understand what is being hypothesized.
It is not up to me to develop a study to support your assertions. All I did is point out that your numbers did not prove what you say they did. For example, your stats concerning Marner on the pk were seriously flawed. But I also pointed out that the nature of the problem of comparing two players on the pk from two different teams over one year is inherently difficult to address statistically with the data we have access to. So your any purely statistical analysis I might do using the same data set is also very likely to be rather flawed. and as such would not really be all that helpful. The point being that part of being able to use numbers correctly is knowing when they won't answer your question.
I am fully aware of the Draisatl/ Mcdaid issue. What most Oiler fans have a problem with is two-fold:
1) The perception that there are tow states in the NHL. a) Playing with McDavid and b) not playing with McDavid. Somehow Point playing with Kucherov and Stamkos as well as some very good defenseman is less of a lift than Draisaitl playing with McDavid for 60% of a season and then plugs for the rest.
2) That McDavid floats all boats equally. This is the XXX would hit 50/100 playing with McDavid as well. The problem with this is that there are actual counter examples to this. Nugent Hopkins for example had a higher individual point rate 5 vs5 over two years playing away from McDavid than he did with McDavid. And there are legitimate reasons why this is the case. Others have also struggled playing with McDavid. While Draisatl unquestionably benefits from playing with McDavid, statistically McDavid benefits equally as much from playing with him. And this is not true of any other player he has played with to date. Draisaitl and McDavid fit together remarkably well. The only pair that I have seen in Olier silks that I though were better was Gretky/Kurri, and I had season tickets through the whole glory years so I saw gretzky/Messier and Messier/Anderson.
I actually agree with you that part of the issue is that the duo works so well together. I also understand why people who are not so informed simply assume that this is McDavid floating Draisaitl's boat. But it really is a tribute to Draisiatl's exceptional skill that he can elevate a player of McDavid's stature as much as he does. It is actually quite special to watch, especially lie.
The issue here is that it is not the tool but rather matching the tool to the task. If I am to chose between a hammer and a chain saw it is useful to know if my task is to drive nails or cut down a tree.
In the end we have probably bored everyone else in this thread. You knwo my position and I know yours. Perhaps it is best that we leave it at that and simply agree to move on.