The Great Player Theory

[Rumcajs]

Nothing groundbreaking but I had the following thought the other day. Over the course of the last 15 years that I have spent watching the National Hockey League "great" players have always managed to find their way to the Stanley Cup Finals--note but not always win.

Players like Marian Gaborik, Rick Nash, Henrik Lundqvist, Marian Hossa, Zdeno Chara, Zach Parise, Claude Giroux, Patrice Bergeron, Ryan Getzlaf, Kris Letang, Pavel Datsyuk, Eric Staal the list goes on and on have managed to get a chance at winning the cup by in large due to their contributions to the teams' playoff run.

Be it with the original team that drafted them or a team which they were traded or signed to, all of the following and many more across the league-- that most would consider as "great" players-- made it to the Stanley Cup Finals at least ONCE.

So according to this theory, the greatness emanating from Erik Karlsson and Bobby Ryan will deliver another chance at the cup. It isn't certain that they will share their chance at the cup with the Ottawa Senators but according to the "Great Player Theory" they will both have a chance one day.

So what does the scientific community have to say about this?

Notes:
I am fully aware of the correlation/causation jib jab so save it!
I am also aware that several "great" players never had a chance at the cup! My "model" only used 95% CI

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[Scrub*]

I disagree.

 

[Fusbolito]

Having done entirely too much work on this before realizing it's not really necessary, and getting of on a giant tangent before getting to my point, I will say that your end conclusion is probably correct, most great players do, indeed, get a shot at the cup, but it's probably because most great players who weren't part of a team explosion (see 1988-1991 Oilers because Pocklington was a greedy so-and-so, 2011 Flyers because Homer, etc.) stay with one team most of their career (most being a relative term) because trading star players is a losing proposition, most of the time, and because most teams will, on average, make at least one Stanley Cup Final during a 20-year period. In addition, if a player makes a final, they are more likely to be happy with their team. If they are unhappy, they are more likely to attempt to force a trade, skewing the statistics in favour of making at least one final in your career.

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Tangent time! I started looking at Cup finalists in 1982, mostly because it was when I was born, and started paying attention (I totally paid attention at 0 years old, shut up). The following is a list of franchises, and the number of cup finals they've been to in those 32 years:

NYI III
Vancouver III
Edmonton IIIIIII
Philadelphia IIII
Montreal III
Calgary III
Boston IIII
Pittsburgh IIII
Minn/Dall III
Chicago III
Los Angeles III
NYR II
New Jersey IIIII
Detroit IIIIII
Colorado II
Florida I
Washington I
Buffalo I
Carolina II
Anaheim II
Tampa Bay I
Ottawa I
Toronto 0
Atl/Winn 0
Winn/Phx 0
San Jose 0
Nashville 0
MinnWild 0
St. Louis 0
Columbus 0

So of the 30 franchises extant since 1982, 22 have made it to a cup final. Of the 8 that have not, 5 are expansion teams SINCE 1982. For teams like San Jose, this isn't REALLY an excuse, since they've been in the league 20 years now, but it's not really an anomaly yet.

The only three teams that have not made a final since 1982 that existed before 1982 are Toronto, St. Louis and Winnipeg/Phoenix. Now, St. Louis made three straight finals in 1968-1970. They didn't win a game, but they did make it there, and are on the path again to possibly making it back one of these days.

Winnipeg/Phoenix has never made it to a final in the NHL, but they have won THREE WHA championships.

What does this giant tangent mean? That of every franchise that still exists in the NHL, and existed in 1982, the Leafs are the only one that hasn't made a professional hockey final since 1970.

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Anyway, yes, I'm sure, at some point or other, Karlsson and Ryan will be a part of a Stanley Cup final. The other reason is usually because if a team is mired in futility for long enough, their big stars typically want out (Iginla, Nash, Kovalchuk, Heatley, etc.) and the ideal trade destination is to a team with a good chance at the cup. Teams usually have a minimum of 5-7 years with their young stars to show them they can make the finals, which is when UFA sets in at 27 (or 7 years played) and most teams also try to sign bridge contracts that eat up years of UFA eligibility.

So I think that your conclusion is correct, but not as statistically significant as it might initially seem. If 1/30th of the players, around 3.3%, win a cup in any given year, it follows that every year, 6.6% will reach the finals. If an average career for a talented player lasts 15 years, (and were the chance to win a cup every single year equal, which it is not), one of them would have approximately a 39.55% chance to win a cup. Taking the same stats, a good player, all things being equal, has a 64.10% chance to make the finals in that same time period, and, adding in the option to switch teams to a better one to improve your chances if you feel you won't, even taking into account repeat finalists, that probably rises to about 80%.

There's no accurate way to model if or when a player will make it to a finals, but a 4/5 chance for a good player in a 15 year career will make it is not too shabby.

Note: This is not a real statistical analysis, it is a conglomeration of opinions, guesses, biases and shaky logic, but one that I think will fool most bystanders because it uses two decimal places.

 

[Rumcajs]

I like the 6.6% idea. Matches the theme. Perhaps I should make a database and find the Pearsons Coefficient. Although the data might suggest that the more years you have the more chances you have and skill doesnt necessarily matter

 

[StefanW]

You may want to take a step back and figure out whether your IV and DV are separate. Players are often not considered great at all until they win the cup (i.e. Gaborik), so winning the cup makes good players seem great rather than the other way around. It is circular logic.

The only way around this is to identify great players coming in to the league now and track how many of them win a cup over their careers. That way you are not looking back with hindsight and getting caught in a tautology.

 

[Fusbolito]

You may want to take a step back and figure out whether your IV and DV are separate. Players are often not considered great at all until they win the cup (i.e. Gaborik), so winning the cup makes good players seem great rather than the other way around. It is circular logic.

The only way around this is to identify great players coming in to the league now and track how many of them win a cup over their careers. That way you are not looking back with hindsight and getting caught in a tautology.

I was in no way implying that my analysis was anything but a rough guess estimate, especially since this is a real life situation and not a model, and will vary wildly from person to person, not even following predictive personality trends, since each individual action relies on an organization, an owner, a GM, a coach, a player, and an environment for every single divergence point. Besides which, there are far too many variables, dependent AND independent in every single one of those actors to make an accurate model of the situation, and that's just to model the career of a single player. To get an overall trend or at least a model of a trend, we'd need to define good vs. great as well, as you point out, and oh dear I've gone crosseyed.

I think it's better to rely, at least in this case, on percentages based on randomness since randomness is, ironically, predictable.

 

[HavlatMach9]

i wonder if the theory (it's more a thought than even a hypothesis) could be expanded to majority of good players at some point play in the finals

 

[Rumcajs]

i wonder if the theory (it's more a thought than even a hypothesis) could be expanded to majority of good players at some point play in the finals

Keep it at "great". When I think good I think of Cammelleri, Vrbata or Fisher