HighOnHockey

Right, but of course what year they're in is the more relevant factor than a few birth months. Late birthday players are a season ahead in their development by the time of the draft. That's relevant, even if you're talking a December vs January. Although this year everything may be a little skewed because of the lost covid season.

Better than Gulyayev you think???

As with most Sens fans, I'm pretty stoked about the current situation. I think they're going to be ready to do some damage next year. I thought maybe they could sneak into the playoffs this year, but it wasn't meant to be with the injuries. Guys like Norris, Batherson, Stutzle all just entering their primes. Stutzle is suddenly a number one center in the league and had 91 points last year. Shane Pinto and Jake Sanderson are coming along very nicely. I was really happy about the acquisitions of DeBrincat and Giroux, even though they weren't my top targets, but just to see the team was moving on from the Melnyk era. Lol, people here complain about ownership a fair amount, but you guys have no f**king clue. My top three Sens acquisition targets going back to last summer were Nick Schmaltz, Travis Konecny and Jakub Chychrun, so while I was a little underwhelmed with Giroux and DeBrincat instead, I was over the moon about Chychrun. A lot of Sens fans weren't as interested in Chychrun because, like here, people get pretty goofy about the RHD thing, and the Sens already have Chabot on the left side with Sanderson coming up. But in my experience, at least as many if not more teams win Cups with top defensemen on separate pairs (Niedermayer/Pronger. Hedman/McDonagh, Pietrangelo/Parayko) vs. a single pair (Keith/Seabrook, Pietrangelo/Theodore). Dorion acquired the star players he did rather than the likes of Konecny or Schmaltz because he was able to do those deals with just picks, and not touch his stacked prospect pool. It's maybe not in the top handful of prospect pools in the league just because the gamebreakers have already pretty much all graduated, but it still has depth that would put the Canucks' prospect pool to shame. Zack Ostapchuk was traded in the WHL from Vancouver to Winnipeg for 3 first round picks+. Probably the prospect fan are most excited for is Ridly Greig, who people are comparing to Brad Marchand. Then Yegor Sokolov, Lassi Thomson, Roby Jarventie, Mads Sogaard, Leevi Merilainen are all looking promising, among others. I dunno, most fans here are clamoring for a full tear-down and rebuild rather than a gradual retool. The Sens went about as all-out rebuild as you can get, and while it's incredibly exciting now coming out the other end, if you're a devoted fan of your team who watches most of the games, I wouldn't wish it on anybody.

Lol not even close.

Outstanding stuff. Much appreciated your posting. Got me thinking I'd like to do one of my own but just with the outlets I know and trust. You just assign each ranking 1 point for 1st overall and 50 points for 50th overall kinda thing? No weights I presume?

Fair enough, but for Willander that's 25 games worth of international tournament play, and generally speaking at a higher level of competition than what he would be facing in the Swedish junior league. The 4 and 5 Nations would be higher quality of competition because they're only the likes of USA, Sweden, Finland, Czechs, without all the punching bag teams bringing down the overall quality. The quality of competition at Hlinkas and IIHF U18s vary wildly from team to team. And of course the WJAC is the highest of all of them, as it is a U19 tournament. Willander stood out at that tournament in particular. Also, again, you need to consider how NHL teams get their information, not just how it appears to us fans. It will always be the local area scouts getting first looks at prospects, and then they bring that information back to their groups. Scouting directors will take that information and the players that the area scouts are particularly high on will be flagged higher for crossover. Head scouts and crossover scouts (the higher ranking folks with a bigger say in the scouting meetings) will make a point to go and see select league games of players their area scouts are high on, but I would wager that a much higher portion of their viewings will come at these international tournaments, and again, for most players from Sweden, Finland, Czechia this year, that's 20+ potential viewings. So to distill my point down, while the area scouts will have tons of viewings from league games and they're the ones that know their players best and will be advocating for them at the scouting meetings, other area scouts will be advocating for their own players, and the team's higher ranking scouts who are charged with actually settling these debates, they will tend to have had much more of their viewings from international tournament play. That said, for the Canucks, Gradin is one of the highest ranking scouts, so he'll have tons of first hand knowledge from both league and tournament play.

You mean based on the U18s? But you realize it's only among fans/media that he rose based on U18s. NHL scouts would have seen him at last springs 5N U17s, then this year at Hlinkas, fall 5N U18s, WJAC, spring 4N U18s. And then of course league games, but it's not always a direct correlation between the knowledge of area scouts and their team's overall scouting staff, which is why the tournaments are important, because we know head scouts and crossover guys will be there. The spring U18s tournament that means so much to us fans, for NHL scouts is really just for finalizing last-minute touch-ups

All this talk of ASP and Willander, I think Theo Lindstein is getting a little lost in the mix here. He was a 52% corsi on an SHL team that had to play for relegation. Unlike Willander or ASP he played the full season in SHL. Played regular minutes and was among his team's ATOI leaders in the relegation matches. He also showed at the international tournaments throughout the year that he has a nose for creating offense with his shot from the blueline.

Yeah all interesting questions. I've been playing around with the equivalency chart lately. https://towardsdatascience.com/nhl-equivalency-and-prospect-projection-models-building-the-nhl-equivalency-model-part-2-6f275a45e22 Allsvenskan - 0.351 VHL - 0.328 Almost identical quality leagues, Podkolzin played 12:18 per game his draft year. Dvorsky played 14:50. The key difference, like you mentioned, is the production in the junior leagues. Dvorsky's 2.1 p/g is the highest ever (min 10 GP) total in that league by a U18. You don't put up numbers like that just because you're big and strong. Even converting to MHL ([0.091/0.143]x[21/10]) numbers would give him 13 points in 10 games to Podkolzin's 8 in 12. And of course what he did at U18s was on another level, even if the numbers might be a little skewed due to the lower quality of competition this year; Dvorsky did everything for that team. He took the second most faceoffs in the tournament and won 57.14%, and in Allsvenskan he was a pretty respectable 48.38%. He's a smart, heavy, two-way, true center with some skill. I know some people question the upside, and like you said he doesn't have that one skill that really stands out, but to me he's just the complete package, everything you could ask for in a center in your top six, especially come playoffs. He's still in the mix for my top five, although I'm undecided between him and Smith. As for playing pro too early hurting a player's development, it definitely can happen. I think regarding the quality of prospects we're talking about here (Dvorsky, Sale) it shouldn't be a concern; they're pretty clearly ready, and are too good for their junior leagues - Sale scored over 2 p/g at 16. Even if he went to Sweden it wouldn't be that much better. He'd need to come to North America to play junior hockey at a suitable level. I see what you're saying about maybe not getting the same offensive opportunities and such, but on the other side of it, junior-style offense won't work in the NHL, and the sooner you can start to learn how to create offence within the tighter and stricter strictures of pro hockey, I think that is probably a good thing. And teams are generally pretty good about playing players at a level suitable to them - their play dictates it. Take Sandin-Pellikka or Otto Senberg this year, they played some games in SHL but just weren't really ready so they spent most of the year in junior.

Going back to @smithers joe 's earlier comment: I've been watching Dvorsky and Sale lately and gushing about their hockey IQ, but then I started thinking "why is it always the pro players I tend to think of as the highest IQ players in their draft classes?" Same goes for Fantilli (not pro, but still much higher level than junior) or Carlsson, or in recent drafts Svechkov, Yurov, Clarke, Nemec, Kasper, etc. We could say "of course they are, that's why they're playing pro so early" and there is some truth to that, but there's also been some prospects in recent drafts who were playing pro and I wasn't as convinced about - Lysell, Edvinsson, Kemell, Halttunen for example. But it occurred to me, it doesn't necessarily mean they're the highest IQ players in their draft, it just means they've proven it at a much higher level than others. Unfortunately, for North American kids pro hockey isn't really an option. The Canadians in particular are stuck paying in junior. We can see why so many like Fantilli, Wood, Celebrini, Hague are taking the Junior A/NCAA option to get a chance to play at a higher level sooner. It makes it hard trying to compare a Barlow or a Musty, Ritchie, Benson etc. against guys like Sale or Dvorsky, who've already proven they can do it at the next level. With the junior players we can really only see the hockey IQ they need up to this level of hockey, and from there we just have to try and extrapolate.

I certainly don't mean to take sides with that other fellow, but there was a thread made the other day with what I thought was one of the better thought out Canucks trade proposals I've seen in a while. After hiring Babcock and acquiring Provorov (and last summer signing Gaudreau), Columbus has made it clear they're looking to take the next step in their rebuild. @Coconuts proposed Columbus sends 3rd overall to Vancouver in exchange for J.T. Miller and 11th overall. Columbus already has clear top line wingers but just lacks a number one C. Sure they could add Fantilli or Carlsson and have a 1C within 2-3 years, but Gaudreau is already gonna be 30 this summer. Miller is an Ohio native, and we know how important local talent is in Columbus to help grow the hockey culture in the area. This way they get their 1C now and still come away with a really good prospect at 11. Perhaps Kekelainen thinks Michkov will fall and they can still land him at 11. As you said, they would want to get an immediate 2C out of any such deal. Well, Fantilli/Carlsson would be pretty darn close.

That's the whole point of scouting is to try. If it was just who's the best player right now things would be a whole lot easier.

The further along I get in negotiations with my RFAs, the more I begin to realize I may not be able to fit everyone under the cap. Will probably need to move one of Bobrovsky or Reinhart. Preference would be Bobrovsky. Could also offer retention on Reinhart, but the asking price would be quite a bit higher than for Bob.

You're the one that said it.

Well I'm sorry if you think Elias Pettersson was "statistically slaughtered" his 17 year old season.

Dvorsky statistically slaughtered in Allsvenskan eh? The 7th best p/g ever in that league (min 20 games), about dead even with Elias Pettersson at the same sage.

I've been looking at this more closely. The method all makes a lot of sense and sounds valid to me, despite a very layman's understanding of math and statis. But it's interesting that this is a case where the larger data set may in some ways reduce the accuracy of the results. The data used is from 2005 to 2020. Up until maybe 2010 or so the Czech league was still among the best in the world, and then at some point the quality dropped off somewhat, although it's hard to say exactly how much and to what extent it has recovered in the past few years. Would be cool to see the data broken down into smaller chronological segments to try and track how different league qualities have changed over the years. I would also think Slovakian Extraliga has declined fairly significantly from the start of the data set. Kind of neat to see how high the quality of the World Junior Championships tournament is. Almost on the level of some of the secondary hockey country's top pro leagues. A little surprising to see USHL ahead of WHL. Since I was doing a deep dive on Eduard Sale lately, I thought it would be interesting to see how the comparisons would look if we were to assume the numbers for the Czech leagues were correct - we know they'll likely produce more impressive numbers than they should, so keeping that in mind - Czech U20 over OHL is 0.074 over 0.144 = 0.51389. Times that by Eduard Sale's 2.28205 from the Czech U20 league at 16, converted to OHL numbers would be 1.17272, well ahead of any of the top guys there; Barlow was 0.80 and Ritchie was 0.69. Converted to WHL numbers he'd be 1.19767, ahead of Cristall, Benson, Yager and anyone but Bedard. His 17 year old season is a little less impressive,. Converts to 1.32 OHL p/g, ahead of everyone in the OHL except Barlow and Musty. But I can never make sense of how to account for the differences in ice time. Sale played 12 mins per game in the Extraliga. Seems like that should have to be accounted for, but not sure how much that should be considered to be baked in to the initial conversion. Makes my head hurt to think about too much.

I still don't understand why you think I'm trying to "punish them" them for being 18 though? Every time I bring it you keep saying things like I'm trying to favor certain players over others, but when have I ever argued a player should be ranked better or worse because of their birthday? Like when I tried to correct you about statistical comparables for Hameenaho you said something like "those stats sound pretty good, not sure how that's supposed to an argument against Hameenaho." But I was never trying to argue against him, I was trying to argue for an accurate assessment of him. If anything I think I was doing the player a favor by showing how positive the stats could still be if you used the correct comparables, rather than using false comparables and then comparing the player to Juaraj Slafkovsky. If I say "x is a, not b", I'm not making a value claim about x, I'm making a simple observation. You can call it a "fixation on birthdays" all you want, but every piece of information is important. If someone lists a player's height or weight or country of origin wrong, those should be corrected too. Maybe it's not that important, but accuracy and correctness are always better than their opposites.

And one more bonus clip. This was Sale as an under-age at the Chablais Trophy (5 Nations) tournament. He's got that separation gear:

Eduard Sale is becoming one of my absolute favorite players in the draft. Had to tag @R3aL in this one. Sale looks to me like one of the most translatable skilled offensive forwards this year. One of the better 200-foot wingers I've seen in recent draft classes. You so often only see his level of hockey IQ at this age in players who aren't great skaters and need to learn to use smarts to compensate. The majority of the time Sale is able to make the play with his positioning and by reading the play, but when he needs to, kid can burn. And it's not just his speed, he's agile and smooth on his edges, and able to be highly deceptive with his skating maneuvers. He's always looking to put his body in between the puck and opposing players to give himself extra time to make a play, and he's fantastic in limited time and space, reading and reacting instantaneously to make deft touch passing plays in traffic. The most common criticism I've seen against Sale is regarding physicality and being "soft", so I figured I'd put together a few highlights of his physical play. The first three are from the Czech Extraliga this season where keep in mind he's 168 lbs (wearing #28); the next two are from last summer's Hlinka Cup (#12) Here we see him up against a 207 lb longtime KHL veteran defenseman (Sale is #28 in white): Here he goes against 6'4, 184 lb Jakub Dvorak, who should also go early in this year's draft, and again Sale's team comes away with possession (Sale is #28 in blue this time): A nice burst of speed to get by the defenseman and take the bump but maintain his balance and, at least momentarily, possession (#28 blue): And this is him against his peers: This one is just fun:

Right but every one of those kids was 18. The 17 year olds had little hope.

I guess I should probably be looking to add more quantity to my prospect pool. Would consider trade-back scenarios from pick 20.

This was an interesting idea. Well argued for why Columbus might do it. I doubt it would actually happen, but I guess you never know. Depends in part on if Columbus thinks there will be someone there they like at 11. Maybe they expect Michkov will fall that far. They get Miller and their number two ranked guy and call it a day. I still think it's worth it for Vancouver to offload Miller's contract and get a sure chance at one of Carlsson or Fantilli.

Do you have a link to the source? Seems like this could be extremely useful but I don't know how much weight to put into it until I've read their methodology.

What the hell is wrong with this guy?