Sportsnet's top 20 left wingers

[Kingsfan1]

Sportsnet is a joke .

 

[Sensinitis]

I agree with most of the list

 

[Sensinitis]

Amazing that with the amount of hockey most people on here watch, so many still don't understand that there's a lot more to the game than being really good at one-timing the puck from the left circle.

not so much amazing, as it is frustrating...

 

[Billy Kvcmu]

First of all, Ovi is still top 2 winger in the league (Including both LW and RW)
Second, why even separate wingers to LW and RW in ranking

 

[maacoshark]

Ovechkin number 9? These guys ranked Ovi worse defensively than Gaudreau. Ovi isnt a selke candidate but he is average defensively. They obviously dont watch him play.

 

[maacoshark]

So stats are only useful when they confirm what we already believe, and they're useless when they show something different?

Instead of dismissing it as garbage because it doesn't give expected results, why not look into why? It's not some opaque mystery why Ovy is down in this ranking:
A) It takes into account the last 3 seasons; for Ovechkin, this includes 2 of his worst seasons
B) Even though the list is biased towards offence, it takes defence and transition into account and Ovechkin is below-average in both of these areas. You could argue stats have trouble evaluating defensive play, and that's true, but it's not like he ever had a reputation as a good defensive player to begin with.

Honestly, this list is far from perfect, and I'd put Ovy higher myself, but it's still more interesting than 99% of rankings out there (and more interesting than 99.9% of the content Sportsnet generally puts out). It had some actual work put into it and it's backed up by a consistent methodology. It's better than putting out another list that has players basically ranked by PPG.

Ovis rank on defence and transition is all about reputation. Watch him on a daily basis and you know these rankings arent accurate.

 

[Zuluss]

Instead of dismissing it as garbage because it doesn't give expected results, why not look into why? It's not some opaque mystery why Ovy is down in this ranking:
A) It takes into account the last 3 seasons; for Ovechkin, this includes 2 of his worst seasons
B) Even though the list is biased towards offence, it takes defence and transition into account and Ovechkin is below-average in both of these areas. You could argue stats have trouble evaluating defensive play, and that's true, but it's not like he ever had a reputation as a good defensive player to begin with.

Well, if that's off the last three years, the folks who have produced the list are out of their minds.

Just look at the All-Star teams voting: Ovechkin ismore the only one who was almost unanimously considered a top3 winger in all three years. Three players got votes in all three years (Marchand, Benn, and Panarin), but this past season only 7 people had either Panarin or Benn in their top3, and in 15/16 Marchand got 3% of the vote (whereas Ovechkin got 35% of the vote in 16/17, which was his weakest year).

If we add up all vote-points (3 for the 1st place, 2 for 2nd, 1 for 3rd) from all three years, which would be biased against Ovechkin, since the winner in one year generally collects as much votes as someone who is 3rd two years in a row, we still have Ovechkin with 1087 points, followed by Marchand with 790, Benn and Hall with 651 and 646, Panarin and Giroux with 375 and 368 (all Giroux votes are from the last season), and then Gaudreau with 102.

I mean, here is your list, voted by 150 hockey writers, with defense, puck possession and all that taken into account.

The Sportsnet list does not have any logic to it. Giroux over Ovechkin? Well, probably they value the most recent season the most. But then Benn over Ovechkin? He was off the radar the last two seasons, 2% of the vote last season, 0.13% this season. So it is one or the other, and most probably both are wrong. Panarin over Ovechkin? They were close only in 16/17, and in both 15/16 and 17/18 Ovechkin was way better. Forsberg has just a handful of votes from two years ago and nothing recently, and the same is true about Gaudreau.