[Jay Random]

Originally Posted by Ashasx

Literally, how?

"You're wrong" without explaining why

It's already been explained to you. You didn't get it.

Explain how the very data I showed proved me wrong?

Obviously I'm not going to do it for the skaters, but the relationship between draft position and becoming a starting goaltender is not nearly as strong as the relationship between the draft position of a skater and his likelihood of becoming an "impact" NHLer.

That's irrelevant. The correlation is not as strong, but it is nevertheless there. Therefore, there is still an opportunity cost in not picking a goalie until the later rounds. If the average benefit of picking a goalie in the second round is X, and the benefit of picking a goalie in the third round is 0.8X, then the opportunity cost of waiting till the third round to pick a goalie is 0.2X.

Since the correlation is stronger for skaters, there is also an opportunity cost in not picking a skater with a given pick, and deferring that to the later rounds. That opportunity cost is greater, expressed as a percentage of the average benefit from picking a skater. If the average benefit of picking a skater in the second round is Y, then the average benefit in the third might be 0.7Y, and the opportunity cost is 0.3Y.

(These numbers, you understand, are approximations. The important point is that the coefficient of X is smaller than the coefficient of Y: 0.2 < 0.3.)

From this, you conclude that the opportunity cost of not picking a skater is greater than the opportunity cost of not picking a goalie. But this does not follow unless you can assume that X and Y are equal. That is not a valid assumption. The value of a regular NHL goalie is so much greater than the value of an average NHL skater that the opportunity cost of passing up a good goalie is huge. To take an extreme case, if Montreal had passed up Carey Price at #5, there was no other player in that whole draft that could have contributed as much to their success.

In an ideal market, some buyers (i.e. teams) would overvalue particular players and some would undervalue them, but the errors would cancel out and the draft positions of both goalies and skaters would fairly reflect the opportunity cost of not drafting those particular players. However, the draft is a very non-ideal market. No two players are exactly alike, and the number of buyers is limited. So you get noticeable distortions, and the draft positions of players are loosely grouped around their fair value instead of being tightly clustered. Nevertheless, it's a good enough market that the relationship fairly holds.

You know, it's not like I'm ricardodw. I'm not making up stats that don't make sense. This is very basic stuff that many people, besides just me, have said in the past. I post on this forum to discuss things with other fans, not to contribute to groupthink.

The fact that you accuse everyone who disagrees with you of groupthink is precisely why so many of us find you obnoxious.

Don't take me seriously. Fine. Either stop acting like a child

That's two insults in one paragraph. ‘Groupthink’, and now ‘acting like a child’.

or put me on ignore so you don't have to post useless quips

Three insults.

to let people know you don't take me seriously. That is not conducive to a logical discussion.

Insulting the generality of CP posters three times in two sentences is even less conducive to logical discussion. In fact, I can't say that logical discussion is your strong point. Ad hominem abusive is not a valid method in any form of logic that I have ever heard of.