Quote:
Originally Posted by Enoch Root
I think it is you that is not following - the stats include all the players, including the guys who end up as grinders.
The mistake that I believe you are making is that you are making a qualitative assessment that there is a higher percentage of grinders coming from the AHL than there is from the NCAA. But you have no proof of this at all - show us some evidence to back up your view.
I am not sure why you think NCAA prospects are more high-end. Again, if you can show evidence of that, please do. But let's look at the Flames as an example: coming from the NCAA, we have Knight, Agostino, Hanowski, Van Brabant, Arnold and Gaudreau. The only high-end, offensive player in that group is Gaudreau. And I would argue that the Flames' NCAA prospects are probably more talented in the aggregate than most teams.
Let me try and explain this again: the NHLE numbers are averages. They include all players that make the jump. There is no evidence that one source of players produces more grinders or scorers or any particular kind of player than any of the other sources do. But even if they did, that gets factored into the numbers.
For example, one of the common comments with respect to Gaudreau's NHLE is that he is older than the other guys being compared to (like Kane). However, you have to keep in mind that all of the players coming from the CHL, on average, are younger than the players coming from the NCAA, on average.
In other words, if you look at Kane's numbers relative to other CHLers, you are comparing him to other teenagers who have made the jump straight to the NHL. In other words, other good young players. And yet his numbers are much better than the average numbers of that group.
Now look at Gaudreau. His stats are being compared to other NCAA players who are good enough to make the jump. Gaudreau's numbers are not only much better than the average, but he is also much younger than them. In other words, his age should actually be looked at as more of a disadvantage to him (or maybe at least as much) as Kane and Crosby's numbers are. (Kane and Crosby were 18, compared to the group which are mostly 19 year olds, and Gaudreau is 20, compared to his group which is mostly 22 and 23 year olds).
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Not sure what exactly you are arguing about, but may people familiar with NHLE recognize this problem with AHL call ups in relation to NHLE:
http://www.behindthenet.ca/projecting_to_nhl.php
"This method tends to underestimate the difficulty of leagues that are substantially weaker than the NHL. This happens because only the top players get called up to the NHL – before the call-up, they were on the first line and playing the power play; after the call-up, they’re 3rd or 4th liners. This cuts down on both their overall ice time, and on their power play time, which is when they’d get the best opportunities to score.
We can improve this estimate by considering only even-strength goals:"