The methodology and usefulness of advanced statistics in hockey are certainly open to question. But your statement that I have to reject them if they don't deliver completely consistent results is a terrible knee-jerk argument. You're correct if you're arguing that most advanced stats are unreliable in smaller isolated samples, but you're overlooking that Dickinson has delivered positive defensive results every season of his career regardless of deployment while the example you've used is limited to one season. Interestingly, you've also used zone starts, an advanced stat which generally has a weak influence on performance, to bolster your argument.
If a stat generates a result that Joe Pavelski is the best defensive forward in the NHL, it's total garbage. Yes, if you have an understanding of math and logic you have to immediately reject a stat that delivers a result that bad.
I've said he's a solid defensive player. Yes, I agree that other stats do support that. I don't buy that he's 'elite' and it has to be taken into consideration that those results were generated mainly on the wing next to Pavelski/Benn, playing for a team/system that seems to generate excellent defensive results for everybody.
It doesn't imply that at all. It means he'd be an excellent shutdown center, and thereby probably among the better and more valuable 3rd liners in the league. You're creating a strawman by presuming someone made a claim that is more difficult to defend than what he actually said.
What? How is saying 'one of the best #3 centers in the league' different than 'one of the most valuable 3rd liners in the league'?
What a stupid argument. It's nonsense. He's neither of those things until proven otherwise, and right now the evidence would be strongly in the other direction. It's insane over-hyping of a guy where reasonable expectations/hopes would be to tread water as an average #3 C in a new role he hasn't really played before.
And again, the post I quoted said that 'Dickinson IS an excellent shutdown C' which is a total assumption on a role he's never really played, from a poster who loses his shit about other people making assumptions that players who have been bad for years will continue to be bad in a Canuck uniform.
He has played this role before, intermittently in the regular season and in the playoffs when Faska was injured, where he got a lot of attention for shutting down the best line in the NHL.
Faksa has missed like 10 games in his career. Dickinson's time as a #3C has been *very* limited.
He's not a scorer and his offence was down slightly last year but he scored at a 3rd line rate from 2018-2020.
His offensive production is well below-average for a #3 center in a league which is moving toward 3 scoring lines. His production last year is especially poor when you consider the amount of minutes he spent with Pavelski/Benn.
Being slightly below average on faceoffs has basically no effect on outcome and you've argued this yourself on many occasions when saying the opposite wouldn't have suited your argument. From another thread:
"The reason faceoff stats are irrelevant is that it's basically impossible to be good enough at them to register a statistically significant effect."
44% is worse than 'slightly below average'.
I agree that faceoffs aren't that important, but do you actually think Travis Green - who is obsessed with faceoffs - is ok putting a 44% faceoff guy out there as his matchup high-leverage C?
It will be a major issue for him. The way the league works, you can't play that role while being that poor in the circle.
