This appears to be a misrepresentation of the primary disagreement that triggered these series of exchanges and escalated into a more complex set of arguments and discussions. The primary conflict was whether or not an amateur can make an equivalently accurate, if not more so, assessment of a draft eligible player than a professional. More specifically, can a fan/hobbyist more accurately assess the talent and abilities of a series of draft eligible prospects, determine the correct rank ordering of their upside and likelihood of attaining it, and determine whether or not a specific player should be drafted at a specific point in the draft than a professional scouting staff employed by an NHL team.
The answer to that question, in all likelihood is no. There are no special provisions or qualifiers here. We are not assessing some kind of hypothetical scenario where the fan/hobbyist has access to the exact same information as the professional. On average the vast majority of fans/hobbyists will have watched far less footage of the draft eligible prospects and will not have had the opportunity to interview them, their coaches, team mates and gathered all other information that a typical NHL scouting staff deems relevant to evaluating prospects and making drafting decisions about them. Therefore unless we are talking about some kind of outlier then we know that the average fan is operating on an inferior set of information for which to make their evaluations and rank ordering of prospects.
A second argument, associated with the first, was that there is some level of expertise or competency that is developed as a consequence of becoming a professional at the highest level. That that competency provides some level of specialized knowledge that cannot be easily emulated and therefore creates a disparity in abilities. In this case, someone who has spent nearly 10 years scouting NHL and has worked their way up to becoming a chief amateur scout for an NHL team, and who collaborates with a team of NHL scouts who have spent similar (and in some cases more) time scouting NHL players will likely have some insights into how to evaluate NHL draft eligible prospects that is more accurate than whatever insights a typical fan/hobbyist might have in their own evaluations.
The counter argument to the second argument really doesn't make any sense. It is essentially suggesting that a typical fan/hobbyist who watches hockey is as good at scouting as a team of professional scouts. There might be some rare scenarios where fan/hobbyist assessment happens to outperform a team of professionals but there is no real meaning that can be extrapolated from that. Those scenarios are likely random events which could be equivalent to someone flipping a coin or rolling a dice and just ending up lucky with their prediction. They would be unlikely to replicate such predictive abilities and if put to the test they would likely vastly underperform those groups of professionals.
The only other scenario, is that a fan/hobbyist has dedicated some time to learning how to evaluate players and as a consequence has developed some competency. There are still likely to be substantial limitations in their abilities that they would only be made aware of through the pursuit of becoming a professional scout and evaluating their perspectives against the perspectives of other professionals. If by chance, this fan/hobbyist happens to make somewhat accurate assessments of some of the draft eligible players then this brings us back to this first argument in which case they are operating on an inferior set of information, and if they were made aware of said information their evaluations would likely change.
Wow. Nope. Not a misrepresentation, at all. We've been talking about outliers from the very beginning. We were never just talking about "some fan". In fact, I specifically gave an example of some experience which could produce such an outlier that was outside of the proposed "high level professional" doctrine and dogma you seem to be caught up in. Don't know how you missed that. But I am not surprised.
And again, the fact that professional scouts, coaches and GMs exist that never played the sport at a high level, automatically proves the high level of playing as a requirement theory wrong.
I never made half those claims you seem to have imagined. Or are assuming. And now you're just digging yourself a deeper hole.
You are also assessing drafting, prospects and scouting as if it were simply a sequence of logical steps and therefore concrete observations by which some specialized skill was needed to unlock a positive outcome. But it's not. And that was also discussed. If it were, then the professionals would not get it wrong so often. But they do. Which is why there is, on top of a human element, which can't be clearly defined, an aspect of chance. And determining probability in this case is a subjective procedure not an objective one. You are using information gathered and assessed objectively, but the decision itself is subjective, dependent on an individuals subjective criteria. And this was also clearly stated in previous posts. I really am not even sure how you came to the conclusion that there is a "correct" order. But that assumption in itself belies your lack of understanding of this entire topic.
So you mention chance. But you seem to be missing the fact that professionals don't make equivalent choices. There is no "right" or "correct" choice and certainly no "correct" order of rank or "correct" evaluation of likelihood to reach a certain potential. This isn't EA sports NHL 2021. You can't play through a season, determine which prospects become the biggest stars, then go back and draft them in the "correct" order. The entire process is dependent on elements of chance, elements of both objective and subjective determination. Which is what helps to narrow the playing field among both professionals relative to one another and amateurs relative to one another and relative to the professionals. You seem to want to remove this element of chance and subjectivity but it can't be removed. And as long as it retains these elements, the rest does not follow the logic which you have put forth.
And in order for your dogma to be correct, there would have to be pure objectivity, which there is not. The only determinant for failure or success is long term outcome and even then there could be two competing theories of success. Two players could both succeed and to a very close degree. Which would then require an element of subjective preference. So no one, not the most experienced professional knows the "correct" choice. If they did, they would be a seer and they'd be wasting their time working when they could just as easily predict the outcome of a massive national lottery.
I am not sure what metric for success you are using. But if you think that metric is solely objective you would be wrong. There certainly are clear failures and successes but beyond that, things are far more dependent on subjectivity, on opinion, individual theory, circumstance, situational and environmental factors, and once again rearing its ugly head, chance. This isn't fantasy hockey or fantasy sports either, where the sole determinant is statistical superiority. Of course each game is determined by numeric superiority. But arriving at that numeric superiority is not a matter of aggregating the highest possible statistical value. If that were the case, the job of being a GM or even a coach would be far easier than it is. Not that it's overly complicated mind you.
But now that you wrote all that, I have to say, I think you are looking at this from a very hypothetical space. Where professionals were never wrong and had some extra sensory organ beyond what is available to your average human being. And as if the underlying factors were coded into a matrix and the output definitive. It's not. See the above human element and aspect probability.
And no one ever said that practical experience was not helpful or sometimes necessary to discern certain aspects of the observation. That was never stated. At all. The claim was, that playing at a high level is not the only way to gain such insight. And further, that a hobbyist or someone that didn't play at a high level can still obtain many of these insights. And again, if we are talking about experience, then someone who played at a very high level but has not been working in that specific task at a high level could never outperform someone who has been working at that specific task at a high level for a lengthy period. But that is also not the case. While I am sure someone with 10 years experience in scouting will know a bit more about what they are doing than a player, one year removed from his playing career who has just undertaken scouting, that does not mean the person with the 10 years of scouting experience will necessarily outperform the recently retired player. Because there are many other factors that determine the outcome.
You really have no clue what's going on do you? ROFL. No wonder this conversation went sideways. I'm not sure if you even know where you are right now.
