Quote:
Originally Posted by Vulcan
Discussing hockey with you is kind of strange. For players called up from the AHL for attributes other than scoring, how about Lance Bouma, Brian McGrattan, and Ben Hanowski. I'm not going to go through every NHL lineup to show you what is obvious.
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Sometimes, that is what it takes to make your point, instead of to simply accept on intuition that this must be the case. You are probably right about the "grinder quotient" from the AHL being higher, but how do we know without actually running the numbers. Furthermore, if you are going to dismiss the differences in NHLE between the NCAA and the AHL based on this intuition, then shouldn't it be all the more imperative to do the research in order to get a more precise idea about that difference?
Furthermore, I find your problem with the comparison for this reason a little puzzling. If you are correct (and you probably are, as I have said), then the reason why the NHLE averages between the AHL and the NCAA are so close probably has something to do with the types of players that emerge from each of these leagues.
But that shouldn't matter at all when it comes to understanding the number applied to Gaudreau's college production. Compared to all these other players from the select class of an "elite few NCAA offensive specialists", his numbers are off the charts. It bodes well for him, and has virtually nothing to do with how the NCAA NHLE compares to that for other leagues.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Vulcan
The thing is, have fun with your NHLE stats but I don't put much faith in them trying to predict any players output.
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Look. No one is suggesting that NHLE determines how good a player Gaudreau will be at the NHL level, or even if he will have any success at all. I have not yet used it to make any predictions about Gaudreau's NHL output. But what it does do is show comparisons—lots of them. It compares Gaudreau's production to globalised averages from thousands of other players from dozens of other leagues. It is a gauge that helps (not definitively) to illustrate how he compares upon entry to the NHL to other players from other leagues who started their NHL careers.
I don't much care about using this figure as a barometer for measuring expectations of production for next year. Rather, here is the part of HIS NHLE that I find most interesting, most compelling, and most useful.
It is the fact that he is one of only five players in the last fifteen years to register a +60 rating, and every one of those other players is an elite offensive player at the NHL level. Put simply, this in itself bodes well for anticipating his success; it would suggest that he has a greater chance of being a great NHL player than he does of failing to become a NHL regular. With how consistent the +60 class has been, Gaudreau's failure to become a first-line talent
would actually be an exception.