The Data-Based Drafting Thread (what players would a Potato pick?)

[Melvin]

Congrats dude. Glad to see it.

Thanks man.

I am not going to be around here very much anymore. I am just too fearful of threads getting randomly firebombed and/or locked for no reason; if that were to happen to this thread I would cry. I am happy to continue the discussion with you guys on Twitter or somewhere else where I don't have to worry about a bunch of stuff that I put a lot of effort into getting deleted.

 

[vancityluongo]

That's pretty simple thinking that is generally sold to everyone.

The best strategy in my opinion is setting conservative exit points and entering and existing the market, on a leveraged basis based on general market trends. Can't be afraid to exit the market at the first sign of a downturn and re-enter as the market recovers.

Oh, agreed. Was referring just to what the baseline advice should be.

I'd still relate what you're saying to player management and the trade market. One strategy could be to develop and sell high young defenseman that can skate and score powerplay points because they will often be overvalued after a couple seasons in the league. This applies to varying degrees, but here are some examples: Dion Phaneuf, Kevin Shattenkirk, Aaron Ekblad, Michael Del Zotto, Olli Maata, Matt Carle, Andrej Meszaros. All of those players had hot offensive starts to their career, but less defensive success and development which affected their longevity and continued effectiveness.

Using some general rules like don't buy companies that are well past their pre-revenue phase but still don't generate profit (don't draft defensive forwards that can't score at a top-6 rate in junior because they simply won't make it) will add further success to holding a diversified portfolio (making lots of picks). But like in the stock market, we're not at market efficiency just because there are teams that don't even meet that bare minimum threshold by outsmarting themselves.

 

[Phenomenon13]

Thanks man.

I am not going to be around here very much anymore. I am just too fearful of threads getting randomly firebombed and/or locked for no reason; if that were to happen to this thread I would cry. I am happy to continue the discussion with you guys on Twitter or somewhere else where I don't have to worry about a bunch of stuff that I put a lot of effort into getting deleted.

I guess this goodbye my friend. Best of luck

 

[David Bruce Banner]

What? Why in the world would anyone delete this excellent and useful information?

I don’t use Twitter, Melvin, so o hope you stick around.

But if not, happy trails!

 

[Mr. Canucklehead]

Good luck with the new job, Mevin - congratulations.

 

[PecaFan]

Congrats on the job, but it's sad that this thread is basically done with.

So you would never draft a 19yo?

I actually do think that would be an excellent guideline for the potato. I don't know what the numbers are, but I'm pretty sure that overagers have a way lower percentage of making the NHL than 18 year olds. And the ones that do make it just seem to be 4th liners, 3rd liners at best.

It just seems better to let someone else take the longshot risk.

 

[MS]

Congrats on the job, but it's sad that this thread is basically done with.



I actually do think that would be an excellent guideline for the potato. I don't know what the numbers are, but I'm pretty sure that overagers have a way lower percentage of making the NHL than 18 year olds. And the ones that do make it just seem to be 4th liners, 3rd liners at best.

It just seems better to let someone else take the longshot risk.

Overagers actually have a far higher chance of making the NHL than first-time eligible guys in rounds 3-7. Go through drafts in the last 10 years and look count the guys who have made it and whether they were eligible previously.

Gillis was spot-on on this. His scouts just couldn’t identify the right overagers aside from Hutton.

 

[PecaFan]

I'll take your word for it that it's higher. It makes some sense, as you're more sure what you're drafting with the extra years of watching them.

How many turn out to be stars? I still feel that they're depth players at best.

 

[MS]

I'll take your word for it that it's higher. It makes some sense, as you're more sure what you're drafting with the extra years of watching them.

How many turn out to be stars? I still feel that they're depth players at best.

I mean, there aren’t a lot of stars that come from lower rounds from either age group.

But there aren’t any more Mark Stones than there are Paraykos/Goatisbeheres/Arvidssons.

 

[Jyrki21]

@Melvin, have you crunched the data on who the potato would have picked with the available guys at each of the Canucks' spots for this past draft?

 

[Melvin]

@Melvin, have you crunched the data on who the potato would have picked with the available guys at each of the Canucks' spots for this past draft?

Yes.

It's a bit of a weird one for a number of reasons.

First, as mentioned, the potato selects Fagemo at 10th overall. Now, were I, a sentient human, making selections based on this methodology, I would not do this. I would do basically *exactly* what the LA Kings did. They took Turcotte, Kaliyev and then Fagemo, thereby getting the potato's #3, #4 and #7 by taking them at strategic spots. Brilliant!

But the potato isn't that smart, so you get Fagemo at #10. Sorry.

The other weird thing about this draft is the Canucks had a bevy of low picks. The potato commonly takes guys in the 6 and 7 rounds who end up undrafted, and because the Canucks had the majority of the picks in those rounds, the potato ended up with a lot of players who in reality ended up undrafted.


#10 - Samuel Fagemo
#40 - Nathan Legare
#122 - Matt Struthers
#133 - Jere Innala
#156 - Yegor Serdyuk
#175 - Justin Bergeron
#180 - Cole Mackay
#195 - Lukas Wernblom
#215 - Eli Zummack

A lot of overagers in this one. Would be interested in trying to sign Struthers and Bergeron now that they're undrafted.

Now, if you were picking with the prescience of knowing where players eventually go (which is what they do in the "so you think you can draft" thread) you might do something like this:

#10 - Arthur Kaliyev
#40 - Samuel Fagemo
#122 - Henry Rybinski
#133 - Yegor Serdyuk
#156 - Luka Burzan
#175 - Matias Mäntykivi
#180 - John Malone
#195 - Eric Ciccolini
#215 - Matthew Struthers

Something like this.

 

[mossey3535]

Hey dude congratulations!!!!

 

[PecaFan]

I still think ignoring the over-agers in the first round is the better strategy. Which would have made the Canuck pick Kaliyev, correct?

I'm going to be very interested in watching those two develop, especially great that they're in the same system. It's almost a perfect study.

 

[Bleach Clean]

@Melvin, I'm going to ask the question here:

If Demko achieves 164 games, how does that factor into Benning's overall drafting ability?

 

[Melvin]

@Melvin, I'm going to ask the question here:

If Demko achieves 164 games, how does that factor into Benning's overall drafting ability?

That would take, what, 3-4 years? Hard to say how much it would affect things by then.

But also goalies are stupid.

 

[Melvin]

Checking in on this for the first time this season:

Quinn Hughes making the potato look foolish right now, although Bouchard and Dobson are still top prospects. Will be fascinating to watch that play out.

As for 2019, Kaliyev leads the OHL in scoring and Fagemo is putting up pretty good numbers in the SHL, so that's looking alright. I still think trading down and taking Kaliyev while picking up another pick was the way to go, but we'll see.

Some other potato favourites to look at: Filip Hallander has been injured all year playing only 2 SHL games. I was hoping he'd see AHL action this year.

Here's an early top-20 for 2020, just to throw some names on the board to talk about:

Marco Rossi
Alexis Lafrenière
Quinton Byfield
Cole Perfetti
Anton Lundell
Tyson Foerster
Mavrik Bourque
Jamie Drysdale
Connor Zary
Jacob Perreault
Alexander Holtz
Jérémie Poirier
Noel Gunler
Sean Farrell
Jack Quinn
Ryan O'Rourke
Seth Jarvis
Lucas Raymond
Pavel Novak
Ryan Francis

Extremely CHL-heavy draft so far. Not a ton of players in the US or Europe really emerging at the top yet.

 

[Melvin]

Interesting dude that's ranked pretty high right now: Adam Wilsby, 19 yo defender with 20 points in 17 games in the Allsvenskan. Technically his 3rd draft I think as he'd have been eligible for 2018.

I had him ranked around 115th in last year's draft but he went unselected. He was the potato's pick for a few teams I think so it will be intersting if he gets picked this year

 

[Jyrki21]

Interesting dude that's ranked pretty high right now: Adam Wilsby, 19 yo defender with 20 points in 17 games in the Allsvenskan. Technically his 3rd draft I think as he'd have been eligible for 2018.

I had him ranked around 115th in last year's draft but he went unselected. He was the potato's pick for a few teams I think so it will be intersting if he gets picked this year

This is precisely the type of value proposition you'd hope that an NHL front office would consider, especially with later picks where they're pretty much just hoping for the best anyway. Hopefully the addition of Ryan Biech (even if he's doing video) suggests greater openness by the Canucks to look at the stuff their eyes don't see, but I have my doubts.

 

[Megaterio Llamas]

Mr Aquilini should talk to this Potato in my opinion. This kind of cerebral approach would compliment a gut player like Jimmy perfectly. Would be an exciting addition to Mr Aquilini's crack team of hockey advisers.

 

[ccjon]

@Hindustan Smyl

The point of the potato is to set a benchmark, a bare minimum, which any scouting staff or analytic team should be able to outperform.

 

[4Twenty]

Checking in on this for the first time this season:

Quinn Hughes making the potato look foolish right now, although Bouchard and Dobson are still top prospects. Will be fascinating to watch that play out.

As for 2019, Kaliyev leads the OHL in scoring and Fagemo is putting up pretty good numbers in the SHL, so that's looking alright. I still think trading down and taking Kaliyev while picking up another pick was the way to go, but we'll see.

Some other potato favourites to look at: Filip Hallander has been injured all year playing only 2 SHL games. I was hoping he'd see AHL action this year.

Here's an early top-20 for 2020, just to throw some names on the board to talk about:

Marco Rossi
Alexis Lafrenière
Quinton Byfield
Cole Perfetti
Anton Lundell
Tyson Foerster
Mavrik Bourque
Jamie Drysdale
Connor Zary
Jacob Perreault
Alexander Holtz
Jérémie Poirier
Noel Gunler
Sean Farrell
Jack Quinn
Ryan O'Rourke
Seth Jarvis
Lucas Raymond
Pavel Novak
Ryan Francis

Extremely CHL-heavy draft so far. Not a ton of players in the US or Europe really emerging at the top yet.

Interesting that the potato seems to have a lot of the same players as the scouts at this stage.

I wonder what the next 20 would look like, since most of the above names are already recognizable.

 

[Melvin]

@Hindustan Smyl

The point of the potato is to set a benchmark, a bare minimum, which any scouting staff or analytic team should be able to outperform.

Yes, exactly. The potato does not collect a salary and does zero scouting. Anyone who isn't doing better than this should probably be taken with a lot of skepticism.

Getting players in the draft isn't hard. Even getting good prospects isn't hard. That's the point.

People are frequently impressed whenever a team gets any collection of prospects from a draft. It's not hard. Guys like Bouchard, Lundestrom, Hallander, Kaliyev and Fagemo are good prospects. That's your baseline. Zero prospects isn't a reasonable baseline.

The value added by your scouting department is the value you receive ABOVE this baseline. If you aren't getting value above the baseline then why are you paying millions of dollars for a scouting department?

I never expected this method to actually outperform any teams. That would be ridiculous.

 

[Melvin]

Interesting that the potato seems to have a lot of the same players as the scouts at this stage.

I wonder what the next 20 would look like, since most of the above names are already recognizable.

That's interesting. I haven't had a lot of time to follow this so I wasn't sure how out of alignment it was with the scouts.

 

[Motte and Bailey]

This thread is a great exercise in analytics and data analysis but I have one pretty big gripe about the premise of calling it the potato. Calling it a potato is spitting in the face of everyone who put in the hard work of generating the league equivalency values and the many hours I’m sure it took Melvin to develop the algorithm and rank the draft eligibles according to the published research. You’re basically reducing those researchers’ contributions to something that an inanimate object is capable of doing. And why? So that you could make fun of Benning by saying he’s dumber than a potato. It’s really insulting to everyone and dishonest to represent this model as “brain dead” when it took a lot of smart people to work hard to create the model. It’s not a potato. Imagine if someone said Google’s search engine algorithms were as smart as a potato? They would be laughed out of the room and rightly so.

When you think about it, it puts a really dark negative and arrogant twist on something that should be a wonderful and exciting approach to drafting.

 

[4Twenty]

That's interesting. I haven't had a lot of time to follow this so I wasn't sure how out of alignment it was with the scouts.

Well in general the top skaters on most of the lists are Lafreniere, Byfield, Raymond, Holtz, Perfetti, Drysdale, Lundell, and Rossi. They're in the top 12 on most every ranking so far.

And the rest of the guys for the most part are getting late 1st rankings. Quinn, Farrell, and Foerester seem to be rising also.