Why the Jake Hate????

[Provost]

2 minutes ago, Wanless said:

 

 

 

You want Jake to stop putting up points and regress back to his career average (which by the way has improved every year as evident by his stat line and the eye test) so you don't have to pay him?

 

You talk about zone starts but neglect to bring in to factor that the primary center he plays with has been getting even higher o zone starts than him

 

That is evidently NOT what I said.  I said that he could quite possibly regress to his norm AFTER we pay him for his peak performance... making him a bad value.

The slightly more ozone starts that Gaudette gets have nothing to do with Jake's performance at all as Jake wouldn't be on the ice with him for the times that make that difference.  Jake gets the 5th highest ozone start % and the 5th lowest dzone start % on the entire team (with one of those 5 being Goldobin who played 1 game).  He is being set up to succeed by getting premium minutes against lower competition compared with the rest of the team.  He is also costing us on the defensive side of the puck even more than he is contributing on the offensive side.

You also can make big mistakes by looking at season averages, look at his splits to see what season averages hide.

If you break up his season, he wasn't faring any better than average in October, November, or now in January (which has so far been his worst month of PPG production this season which would put him on pace for a 30 point season).  He had an excellent single month in December where he was almost a PPG that has skewed his season average higher.

If you look at last year, his performance got worse statistically as the season went on, not better.  He scored a full 7 points total after the New Year, and got most of his points (18)  in the first half of the season before games got tougher and tighter.

So you have a guy that is performing poorly for every month but ONE in more than a calendar year... so it makes it tough to make any claim that he is consistently improving.  statistically it is absolutely pointing towards his December success being an anomaly.  Just looking at the graph and removing any player or even it representing hockey, it would clearly show "special cause" variation rather than an improving trendline.

I want him to succeed, and I really want to see how he reacts to being in playoff games and if it is easier for him to bring intensity in that type of environment.  At the same time, he has absolutely earned his doubters and hasn't earned the praise he is getting for "turning a corner".

There is even a great argument to be made that he is worth more in trade value right now than he would bring us in performance.  The idea of a 1st round pick of his size with his wheels that "could" be a 20-25 goal scorer might be more attractive than the player he actually turns out to be which the numbers say is probably a 30-35 point guy.  It is always risk and reward, and we certainly seem more risk adverse than reward focussed.  We still lament Michael Grabner as the one that got away... and he has hardly been a stand out NHLer over the span of his career.

[Wanless]

15 minutes ago, Provost said:

That is evidently NOT what I said.  I said that he could quite possibly regress to his norm AFTER we pay him for his peak performance... making him a bad value.

The slightly more ozone starts that Gaudette gets have nothing to do with Jake's performance at all as Jake wouldn't be on the ice with him for the times that make that difference.  Jake gets the 5th highest ozone start % and the 5th lowest dzone start % on the entire team (with one of those 5 being Goldobin who played 1 game).  He is being set up to succeed by getting premium minutes against lower competition compared with the rest of the team.  He is also costing us on the defensive side of the puck even more than he is contributing on the offensive side.

You also can make big mistakes by looking at season averages, look at his splits to see what season averages hide.

If you break up his season, he wasn't faring any better than average in October, November, or now in January (which has so far been his worst month of PPG production this season which would put him on pace for a 30 point season).  He had an excellent single month in December where he was almost a PPG that has skewed his season average higher.

If you look at last year, his performance got worse statistically as the season went on, not better.  He scored a full 7 points total after the New Year, and got most of his points (18)  in the first half of the season before games got tougher and tighter.

So you have a guy that is performing poorly for every month but ONE in more than a calendar year... so it makes it tough to make any claim that he is consistently improving.  statistically it is absolutely pointing towards his December success being an anomaly.  Just looking at the graph and removing any player or even it representing hockey, it would clearly show "special cause" variation rather than an improving trendline.

I want him to succeed, and I really want to see how he reacts to being in playoff games and if it is easier for him to bring intensity in that type of environment.  At the same time, he has absolutely earned his doubters and hasn't earned the praise he is getting for "turning a corner".

There is even a great argument to be made that he is worth more in trade value right now than he would bring us in performance.  The idea of a 1st round pick of his size with his wheels that "could" be a 20-25 goal scorer might be more attractive than the player he actually turns out to be which the numbers say is probably a 30-35 point guy.  It is always risk and reward, and we certainly seem more risk adverse than reward focussed.  We still lament Michael Grabner as the one that got away... and he has hardly been a stand out NHLer over the span of his career.

You keep bringing up ozone starts. Who has higher percentage??

 

Last year he was used in a more defensive/grinder role, this year he's being given the opportunity for offense

 

Yeah he had a great December and a lousy November the whole team did.

 

Since he's been with Gaudette that line has been used for strictly offence as Gaudette struggle defensively.

 

Have you looked at Millers career? There are a lot of similarities in stats and down to how AV had to treat and coach him to get JT to realize his potential.

 

Jake is better than you are giving him credit for

 

[oldnews]

35 minutes ago, Wanless said:

 

 

 

You want Jake to stop putting up points and regress back to his career average (which by the way has improved every year as evident by his stat line and the eye test) so you don't have to pay him?

 

You talk about zone starts but neglect to bring in to factor that the primary center he plays with has been getting even higher o zone starts than him

 

His shooting percent is 5% higher than in previous years but fail to mention that this year 36% of his shots are coming from the slot compared to 31% last year while the league average is 33%. He's not just getting lucky with his shots, he shooting from a more dangerous location. https://www.icydata.hockey/players/2063/jake-virtanen

Another interesting stat is that he has 29% of his goals coming from the right side of the net, last year 0% and goals from the left side at 7% this year and 20%. 

 

So if anything this tells me a combination of he's being coached to up his abilities, he's recognizing and utilizing his abilities, his shot is getting better, he's placing himself in higher danger shooting locations

 

Based on my eye test, Jake is much more engaged this season, he's now also starting to get under the skin of opponents with his play, Malkin as the standout. And while his offense is increasing he is still hitting at almost 2 recorded his per game, his average but could be higher, and takeaway giveaway at a 2-1 ration.

 

Jake is improving his offense this season and will show that he is going to be a great third liner. He still might be able to up his numbers by playing with better line mates but as long as his linemates numbers don't go down then he's worth 4.5/year you are worried about.

 

The reality is this team now has players worth 4+ million contracts but has a couple dead weight contracts. But in managing it, we will see players like Pearson or Tanev being moved to make the space for Petterson and Hughes. But because of good drafting guys like Hoglander Lind and Podkolzin come in on ELC and on d maybe a Rafferty or Woo steps up or Tryamkim works out. Teams that are continually doing well keep their growing players and move on from those that play a role they feel are replaceable. 

 

If the team has to move on from Tanev and the d suffers a little it wouldn't be the first time a team has regressed due to cap constraints. It's part of the long term game of staying competetive.

 

Also keeping Virtanen for 5 more seasons>keeping Tanev for 5 more seasons

 

Good post.   Regarding 'returning to the mean' I find it borderline absurd to refer to a player's seasons as a 19-22 year old as forming a 'mean'. 

That sounds like the 'logic' of 20 year olds that believe they know everything, and fail to take into account improvement and development = not many players are finished improving by age 22 - the return to mean thing is ironic imo, even if only cherry-picked for an isolated shooting percentage statistic (and it's not as simple as that cherry pick).   

He scored 15 goals last year at the 'mean', he's supposed to return to, in more matchup slanted minutes -  if Jake continues to play well, his shooting percentage can taper off,  yet he'll be playing more minutes, and possibly stepping up in the lineup with more dangerous scoring linemates (to counterbalance any perceived 'mean').  My opinion is that he's getting and creating better chances this season - so I don't put much stake in these types of pseudo-'analytical', reductive attempts to underplay players like this.  These guys seem to pick their favorites - and their whipping boys and never stop trying too hard to run negative spin against their targets.  Sometimes players like Virtanen simply improve over time - I think that's what we're seeing, and there have been fairly consistent signs along his trajectory.  Green is no idiot - I'm certain he understands 'analytics' and is presented with them on an ongoing basis - analytics that I'd wager are more sophistocated than what the JD Burkes come up with.   Virtanen's zone starts might be inflated as a result of playing with Gaudette, who is clearly being 'sheltered' as much as possible under the circumstances - however, at the same time, Gaudette's underlying numbers are weaker than Virtanen's.   Virtanen's shot attempt differential (corsi) is 3.4% higher than Gaudette's, his zone starts 2.2% lower = in other words, Virtanen's possession numbers improve when he's not playing with Gaudette.  Gaudette is a good playmaker - that attribute can assist Virtanen's production, however Gaudette gives up/loses the 'possession' battle (and isn't a strong faceoff guy) - meaning that line winds up leaning towards the defending aspect of the game as opposed to attacking.   This is where linemates like Roussel and Virtanen serve to ease the weight on Gaudette.  If anything, the situational reality thus far this season - the absence of Sutter and Beagle for long stretches, has arguably 'deflated' the conditions for both Gaudette and Virtanen to produce (more difficult minutes do not necessarily translate to more production vs fewer minutes that are more opportune).  Gaudette scored 13 pts in his first 19 games this season, 6 in the 19 since.   I won't be the least bit surprised if the entire bottom six starts producing more now that they are getting healthier.

[Provost]

27 minutes ago, Wanless said:

 

Yeah he had a great December and a lousy November the whole team did.

 

Since he's been with Gaudette that line has been used for strictly offence as Gaudette struggle defensively.

 

Have you looked at Millers career? There are a lot of similarities in stats and down to how AV had to treat and coach him to get JT to realize his potential.

 

Jake is better than you are giving him credit for

 

You keep ignoring the things you don't like.

 

He didn't just have a lousy November.  He had a lousy September (training camp), he had a lousy October, he had a lousy November, and has had a lousy January.  It isn't just struggling when the team struggles, that is objectively just not true.  He also had a lousy January-April last season.  There is no massive jump of him "finally getting it", there is a single month of great performance which has already petered off.  You can't talk around that and just say you "believe" he has trended better when the math says it isn't true.  Math doesn't care about your feelings, it cares about reality.

His numbers look nothing like Miller's.  Miller's worst season since becoming a full time NHLer is better than Jake's best season.  When he was Jake's age he was outperforming him by a wide margin. There is no comparison between a guy that has always been greater than .5 PPG average (except for seasons when he was an AHL player with injury call ups to the NHL) and a guy that has generally been a .25-.35 PPG player in the NHL.  Even if their numbers were similar, you can't extrapolate one player's progression and assume another player will progress the same way.

Jake "could" become better more consistently, he hasn't shown it yet so the risk of that not happening is still much higher than the upside opportunity of it actually materializing.

 

Edited January 18, 2020 by Provost

[oldnews]

49 minutes ago, Wanless said:

 

Have you looked at Millers career? There are a lot of similarities in stats and down to how AV had to treat and coach him to get JT to realize his potential.

 

Jake is better than you are giving him credit for

 

This is an interesting point, one I don't see an honest, realistic response to - rather an evasion.

 

Miller at age 21

10 goals, 13 assists, 23 pts,  20 at event strength,  58 games played, 52.3% ozone starts, 12:42 ice time.

Virtanen at age 21

10 goals, 10 assists, all 20 at even strength, 75 games played, 44.8% ozone starts, 11:59 ice time.

 

It's actually a pretty interesting comparison.  Miller played with Hayes and Hagelin, a pair of guys that had 45 and 35 pts respectively - with higher ozone/different situational usage than Virtanen, so I think it's an interesting trade off between the extra 17 games Virtanen played, and the situational advantage Miller had.

 

Miller at 22

22 goals, 21 assists, 82 games, 15:02 ice time, 57.8% ozone starts, playing with Stepan and Zuccarello.   Those two lead the Rangers in scoring (61 and 58 pts) on a team that was well coached (AV) and had 101 pts

Jake at 22

15 goals, 10 assists, 70 games, 14:49 ice time, 45.4% ozone starts, playing primarily with Sutter and Roussel (who were both injured for long stretches), on a team that struggled to maintain .500 hockey (81 pts on the season).

Miller understandably had the better at-22-yrs-of-age season, but the performed in a significantly different context.

 

My caution would be to avoid underestimating players like this prematurely. ie Neiderreiter - who was dealt at age 20, after 64 NHL games in which he scored 2 goals and 1 assist.  Those numbers climbed to comparable to Miller's at 21, 22 - and then he continued to uptick to a 57 pt player at age 24.  

Worth asking what kind of "mean" had been set by age 22....but in any event, an interesting comparison you suggest in looking at MIller and Virtanen.

Edited January 18, 2020 by oldnews

[Wanless]

32 minutes ago, Provost said:

You keep ignoring the things you don't like.

 

He didn't just have a lousy November.  He had a lousy September (training camp), he had a lousy October, he had a lousy November, and has had a lousy January.  It isn't just struggling when the team struggles, that is objectively just not true.  He also had a lousy January-April last season.  There is no massive jump of him "finally getting it", there is a single month of great performance which has already petered off.  You can't talk around that and just say you "believe" he has trended better when the math says it isn't true.  Math doesn't care about your feelings, it cares about reality.

His numbers look nothing like Miller's.  Miller's worst season since becoming a full time NHLer is better than Jake's best season.  When he was Jake's age he was outperforming him by a wide margin. There is no comparison between a guy that has always been greater than .5 PPG average (except for seasons when he was an AHL player with injury call ups to the NHL) and a guy that has generally been a .25-.35 PPG player in the NHL.  Even if their numbers were similar, you can't extrapolate one player's progression and assume another player will progress the same way.

Jake "could" become better more consistently, he hasn't shown it yet so the risk of that not happening is still much higher than the upside opportunity of it actually materializing.

 

Miller first 4 years 0.39 points per game

Virtanen first 4 years 0.33 

 

I would say that is close especially taking into account that Jake started his NHL career a year younger.

 

And you know what, Jake struggled with putting up points last year when he was assigned defensive minutes, most players have that happen

 

Your argument only looks at what has happened that is why you are being opposed by others

 

You have yet to 'project' development and take that into account

 

Currently Jake is producing good numbers for a third liner, but he has shown he can produce like a second liner. This is my take that others share. I will say he either carves a nice first line burrows type role or is the player that makes a third line a great line

 

But you can argue everyone who sees the potential in Jake's game by pointing to the past all you want, just don't get upset when people stop taking you seriously

[Wanless]

39 minutes ago, oldnews said:

This is an interesting point, one I don't see an honest, realistic response to - rather an evasion.

 

Miller at age 21

10 goals, 13 assists, 23 pts,  20 at event strength,  58 games played, 52.3% ozone starts, 12:42 ice time.

Virtanen at age 21

10 goals, 10 assists, all 20 at even strength, 75 games played, 44.8% ozone starts, 11:59 ice time.

 

It's actually a pretty interesting comparison.  Miller played with Hayes and Hagelin, a pair of guys that had 45 and 35 pts respectively - with higher ozone/different situational usage than Virtanen, so I think it's an interesting trade off between the extra 17 games Virtanen played, and the situational advantage Miller had.

 

Miller at 22

22 goals, 21 assists, 82 games, 15:02 ice time, 57.8% ozone starts, playing with Stepan and Zuccarello.   Those two lead the Rangers in scoring (61 and 58 pts) on a team that was well coached (AV) and had 101 pts

Jake at 22

15 goals, 10 assists, 70 games, 14:49 ice time, 45.4% ozone starts, playing primarily with Sutter and Roussel (who were both injured for long stretches), on a team that struggled to maintain .500 hockey (81 pts on the season).

Miller understandably had the better at-22-yrs-of-age season, but the performed in a significantly different context.

 

My caution would be to avoid underestimating players like this prematurely. ie Neiderreiter - who was dealt at age 20, after 64 NHL games in which he scored 2 goals and 1 assist.  Those numbers climbed to comparable to Miller's at 21, 22 - and then he continued to uptick to a 57 pt player at age 24.  

Worth asking what kind of "mean" had been set by age 22....but in any event, an interesting comparison you suggest in looking at MIller and Virtanen.

And now Prevost is suggesting that Virtanens numbers are being inflated, due to being played in an offensive role with ozone starts. But they are actually now trending towards the numbers miller had in his 23 year old season while playing, this far, with inferior players.

 

I'm wondering how much of an impact miller is having with Virtanen, as a mentor, vs the Rousell or Ferland as a mentor.

 

Also, thanks for diving into those stats, it helps my comparison but also shows how Virtanen was deployed last year.

 

Deployment is something I see a lot of stats guys neglecting. Earlier this year people were suggesting Sutter was losing his defensive touch because of his zone starts but conveniently overlooking that he was playing RW with Gaudette for a stretch.

[Provost]

5 minutes ago, Wanless said:

Miller first 4 years 0.39 points per game

Virtanen first 4 years 0.33 

 

I would say that is close especially taking into account that Jake started his NHL career a year younger.

 

And you know what, Jake struggled with putting up points last year when he was assigned defensive minutes, most players have that happen

 

Your argument only looks at what has happened that is why you are being opposed by others

 

You have yet to 'project' development and take that into account

 

Currently Jake is producing good numbers for a third liner, but he has shown he can produce like a second liner. This is my take that others share. I will say he either carves a nice first line burrows type role or is the player that makes a third line a great line

 

But you can argue everyone who sees the potential in Jake's game by pointing to the past all you want, just don't get upset when people stop taking you seriously

Those numbers aren't right... it was actually .28 for Jake and .38 for Miller in their first four years in the NHL.

Also you are including seasons where Miller as in the AHL and playing some games as a call up, which is disingenuous and not comparable to the way Jake progressed.  Same way it would be disingenuous if I used Jake's 2016-17 year where he was in the AHL and player 10 NHL games (with 1 single point) and saying that represented a massive decline in his development. From the moment Miller became even mostly an NHLer in 2014-15 (58 games in NHL and 18 games in AHL) he has outperformed every single year of Jake's NHL career.

The sentence "your argument only looks at what has happened" as some sort of error on my part may be the single most ludicrous comment ever made on this forum.  That is literally the only way you can look at a player because none of us has the ability to see the future. 
You also don't seem to even understand the concept of projection.  It is literally looking at "what has happened" and trying to extrapolate that into the future.  That is exactly what I am doing.  If you can't take onjective reality seriously and can only point to your ability to magically see into the future while ignoring everything that has happened with the player's performance AND ignore what the word projection actually means.... then me actually spending the time to do the work and explain reality to you has been fairly useless.  

Jake's trendline has been fairly flat with very modest improvement on what wasn't a great baseline.  He had a single blip on that pretty even trendline in December of this year which has since corrected back to his regular level of production and small incremental improvement year over year since he was a rookie.  In actual statistics that is called "special cause" variation, meaning that it is indicative of something OTHER than the normal trend.  Sometimes that is just a random blip, sometimes it is caused by some other variable other than that player himself.  So PROJECTING his development you effectively throw away the blip and instead only look at the common cause variation (his year over year development) and use that to project forward.  So if you look at a reasonably large sample size of his most recent play, since the beginning of 2019 through to the present... if you exclude December (the special cause variation blip) he is at a .35 PPG average and that puts him at under 30 points per 82 games.  Even if you include the blip of great performance which by all mathematical rules is not indicative of his true development... he only moves up to .43 PPG or 35 points per 82 games.

Every single indicator so far says he had a short period of outperforming his actual level of play.  That doesn't say there is no possibility that he suddenly takes off at some point and becomes a legit 2nd line winger, it means that hasn't been shown by his performance or projections at all.

[nuk76]

He should take 2- 21/2 million. WHY? Was it his fault that benning doesn't know how to negotiate a contract and overpays players? Is he worth less than Ferland 3.5M, beagle 3m, pearson 3.7M and canucks are  paying miller 4x his salary for 2 more goals.?  When does he get a chance to play for 10 games or so on the first line? He always gets held to a higher standard than a few other losers on this team that i could name. For the posters on here that think he's good trade bait, i wish he would get traded to boston or pittsburgh so i could listen to the whining for the next 10 yrs. The guy has to play on lines where he has to skate at 1/2 speed. Can't see any player being motivated by being the coaches whipping boy. He should be on the first line because he brings speed that stretches the ice for pettersson and gives him more room to operate. Just my 2 bits worth. carry on.

[oldnews]

13 minutes ago, Wanless said:

And now Prevost is suggesting that Virtanens numbers are being inflated, due to being played in an offensive role with ozone starts. But they are actually now trending towards the numbers miller had in his 23 year old season while playing, this far, with inferior players.

 

I'm wondering how much of an impact miller is having with Virtanen, as a mentor, vs the Rousell or Ferland as a mentor.

 

Also, thanks for diving into those stats, it helps my comparison but also shows how Virtanen was deployed last year.

 

Deployment is something I see a lot of stats guys neglecting. Earlier this year people were suggesting Sutter was losing his defensive touch because of his zone starts but conveniently overlooking that he was playing RW with Gaudette for a stretch.

https://frozenpool.dobbersports.com/players/jake-virtanen

 

Well that's a claim that fails to stand up to any reality test.

 

There is a complete chart of all of Virtanen's production.

He has 3 pts playing with Horvat and Pearson.

1 pt playing with Pettersson and Miller.

He has 5 pts playing on the second powerplay unit.

He has 5 pts playing with Gaudette and Roussel - where his ozone starts are misleadingly high by virture of sheltering Gaudette in a center role, and in the absence of key shutdown centers.

He has 3 pts playing with Sutter/Leivo.

 

As I've pointed out already, Virtanen's ozone starts - as a result of / while playing with Gaudette are misleading for a number of reasons - not the least of which are the fact that Gaudette's 5 on 5 production and underlying possession numbers are simply not  very good (nor is he strong in the faceoff circle, another factor that makes it difficult for Green to utilize him in dzone starts.  None of this is a criticism of Gaudette - it simply indicates that he's not really ready for harder mnutes at center at the NHL level, and the optimal conditions for him to be successful are either as a winger for Sutter, or as a platoon/upside secondary scoring line - if/when the Sutter, Beagle (and Horvat) lines are able to give Green the kind of conditions where he can provide Gaudette the kind of minutes in which he can thrive and be successful.

Gaudette loses the 'possession' battle at this point - his corsi is 44.8% with 57.1% ozone starts - not exactly conditions in which Virtanen's production is "inflated" - and moreover, if anyone bothers to look at his actual production in context - as outlined by that chart I linked - the whole argument is a sandcastle.

[nuk76]

Forgot to mention sutter and his 4.4M salary. Thank god that's coming to an end. But of course we will let him go and get nothing for him like usual. Be smart trade tanav while he still has some value. 

[CptCanuck16]

2 hours ago, Provost said:

If you break up his season, he wasn't faring any better than average in October, November, or now in January (which has so far been his worst month of PPG production this season which would put him on pace for a 30 point season).  He had an excellent single month in December where he was almost a PPG that has skewed his season average higher.

If you look at last year, his performance got worse statistically as the season went on, not better.  He scored a full 7 points total after the New Year, and got most of his points (18)  in the first half of the season before games got tougher and tighter.

If you want to examine his performance under a microscope like you're doing than you should be looking at his points-per-minute average rather than points per game. If you recall the month of December was the month that Jake started playing some decent minutes and was also added to PP2. It's kind of hard to put up a PPG when you're averaging 8 minutes a game like he was in Oct/Nov, no? Can you point out anyone else in the league who puts up big numbers while playing less than 1/6 of the game?

 

If you look at the team stats for last year the entire team fell off the cliff.  Remember Petterson had 10 goals in his 1st 10 games played and was above a PPG at the midway point of the season but ended the year with *only* 66 points? I guess if we use the same measuring stick on him that you want to use on Virt than he isn't worth a big contract either?

[CptCanuck16]

2 hours ago, Provost said:

than he would bring us in performance.  The idea of a 1st round pick of his size with his wheels that "could" be a 20-25 goal scorer might be more attractive than the player he actually turns out to be which the numbers say is probably a 30-35 point guy.  It is always risk and reward, and we certainly seem more risk adverse than reward focussed.  We still lament Michael Grabner as the one that got away... and he has hardly been a stand out NHLer over the span of his career.

This is utter nonsense.  Trade him for a pick that might end up to be another Hunter Shinkurik when he's proven himself as a legit 3rd liner with upward potential??? Henrik and Daniel were 30-40 point players until their 5th season when they had their breakout year. You were probably advocating to trade them for picks back then too eh?

[oldnews]

23 minutes ago, CptCanuck16 said:

If you want to examine his performance under a microscope like you're doing than you should be looking at his points-per-minute average rather than points per game. If you recall the month of December was the month that Jake started playing some decent minutes and was also added to PP2. It's kind of hard to put up a PPG when you're averaging 8 minutes a game like he was in Oct/Nov, no? Can you point out anyone else in the league who puts up big numbers while playing less than 1/6 of the game?

 

If you look at the team stats for last year the entire team fell off the cliff.  Remember Petterson had 10 goals in his 1st 10 games played and was above a PPG at the midway point of the season but ended the year with *only* 66 points? I guess if we use the same measuring stick on him that you want to use on Virt than he isn't worth a big contract either?

Gaudette has experienced precisely the same change in production (where are the articles about Gaudette's shooting percentage, ozone starts, faceoff percentage, underlying numbers, etc, or the cautions over being prematurely optimistic vs Gaudette's actual outcomes?)   That would point to what that crowd hates - acknowledging the importance of Sutter and Beagle.   Gaudette's drop in production from 1st 19 games (13 pts) to last 19 games (6 points) has little to do with games getting 'tougher or tighter' and more to do with what Green is able to do when he has Sutter, Beagle and Edler in his lineup vs what the team looks like with Horvat's line as the principal matchup line,  and Gaudette exposed/in over his head on the defensive side of the game.  

The Canucksarmy crowd  evidently have no idea of the team dynamic that Benning/Green have built - what they intend with a healthy lineup.   The fact they don't understand the value of a Sutter or Beagle translates into the  erroneous assumption that Gaudette is better off without them in the lineup - that he'll have a better opportunity with more minutes if he's given the 3C role prematurely.    Until they manage to understand what Green is actually doing, and why, they'll never manage to 'critique' it, or one-up his player/personnel decisions.

 

If you want to see a happy Travis Green - watch the postgame videos from the Arizona win - where he's referring to having his key shutdown guys back in the lineup and literally drooling over the Beagle line with Motte and now Sutter on that wing.  I would not expect to see Sutter remain exclusively on the wing - I think Green's hand has clearly been shown earlier in the season - when he used a '5 line' setup - a highly effective setup in my opinion - where he has as I've pointed out elsewhere, three matchup and three scoring line options - and the irony and reality of it is that the scoring lines are all better off when Green also has a full complement of shutdown options.

Edited January 18, 2020 by oldnews

[Wanless]

19 minutes ago, Provost said:

Those numbers aren't right... it was actually .28 for Jake and .38 for Miller in their first four years in the NHL.

Also you are including seasons where Miller as in the AHL and playing some games as a call up, which is disingenuous and not comparable to the way Jake progressed.  Same way it would be disingenuous if I used Jake's 2016-17 year where he was in the AHL and player 10 NHL games (with 1 single point) and saying that represented a massive decline in his development. From the moment Miller became even mostly an NHLer in 2014-15 (58 games in NHL and 18 games in AHL) he has outperformed every single year of Jake's NHL career.

The sentence "your argument only looks at what has happened" as some sort of error on my part may be the single most ludicrous comment ever made on this forum.  That is literally the only way you can look at a player because none of us has the ability to see the future. 
You also don't seem to even understand the concept of projection.  It is literally looking at "what has happened" and trying to extrapolate that into the future.  That is exactly what I am doing.  If you can't take onjective reality seriously and can only point to your ability to magically see into the future while ignoring everything that has happened with the player's performance AND ignore what the word projection actually means.... then me actually spending the time to do the work and explain reality to you has been fairly useless.  

Jake's trendline has been fairly flat with very modest improvement on what wasn't a great baseline.  He had a single blip on that pretty even trendline in December of this year which has since corrected back to his regular level of production and small incremental improvement year over year since he was a rookie.  In actual statistics that is called "special cause" variation, meaning that it is indicative of something OTHER than the normal trend.  Sometimes that is just a random blip, sometimes it is caused by some other variable other than that player himself.  So PROJECTING his development you effectively throw away the blip and instead only look at the common cause variation (his year over year development) and use that to project forward.  So if you look at a reasonably large sample size of his most recent play, since the beginning of 2019 through to the present... if you exclude December (the special cause variation blip) he is at a .35 PPG average and that puts him at under 30 points per 82 games.  Even if you include the blip of great performance which by all mathematical rules is not indicative of his true development... he only moves up to .43 PPG or 35 points per 82 games.

Every single indicator so far says he had a short period of outperforming his actual level of play.  That doesn't say there is no possibility that he suddenly takes off at some point and becomes a legit 2nd line winger, it means that hasn't been shown by his performance or projections at all.

Sure under the exact same circumstances jake could regress back as you say. The difference is he is playing under new circumstance a variable your argument has yet to touch on.

 

As for you special cause variation removing 25% of the season to come up with a realistic stat is plain stupid. It would be applicable while looking at the last 5 games where a player has one 3 point game and the rest of the games doesn't register a point while trying to say he is a 0.6 point/game player

 

Virtanen was no doubt playing the best hockey of his career in December but it wasn't a blip, it was him playing well and well enough to create some extra luck

 

And projection for Jake is a playing who is capable of putting up 40-50 points in a season, but is more likely a guy who puts up a point in 35-40% of games with a couple multi point games where he feasts in his current situation.

[CptCanuck16]

33 minutes ago, Provost said:

You also don't seem to even understand the concept of projection.  It is literally looking at "what has happened" and trying to extrapolate that into the future.  That is exactly what I am doing. 

Um, not exactly.  You seem to be saying Jake achieved his mean performance last season and is now on the decline. That's your opinion. Not a fact based on numbers. 

 

His offensive numbers indicate he has improved year over year, so if you extrapolate that into the future he is still on the upswing and is yet to reach his ceiling.

[Chicken.]

So happy to See Jake succeeding and winning over a good portion of the fan base. I don't really care what happened in the past, he was a kid that got rushed

into the nhl. 
If be gets it now then that is all that matters. I still think his endurance can improve but his hockey smarts recently are looking much better which likely

goes hand in hand with increased confidence in bis abilities and senses.

[riffraff]

Is this where I told you so happens?

[Provost]

24 minutes ago, CptCanuck16 said:

Um, not exactly.  You seem to be saying Jake achieved his mean performance last season and is now on the decline. That's your opinion. Not a fact based on numbers. 

 

His offensive numbers indicate he has improved year over year, so if you extrapolate that into the future he is still on the upswing and is yet to reach his ceiling.

I never said anywhere that he is on the decline.  I said his improvement has been incremental and modest.   That is not my opinion, that is reality.  I am pointing out that there isn’t some sudden arrival like people are saying where he has proven himself to be a vastly different player than he has been before.  Aside from a very short stretch of games, he has continued on that slow trajectory that you can easily plot out amongst his game to game performance.

 

You need to take a large enough sample to mean anything or project any trends.   A month or even a few months is not long enough to do that with any degree of confidence.

 

 

[CptCanuck16]

1 hour ago, Provost said:

I never said anywhere that he is on the decline.  I said his improvement has been incremental and modest.   That is not my opinion, that is reality.  I am pointing out that there isn’t some sudden arrival like people are saying where he has proven himself to be a vastly different player than he has been before.  Aside from a very short stretch of games, he has continued on that slow trajectory that you can easily plot out amongst his game to game performance.

 

You need to take a large enough sample to mean anything or project any trends.   A month or even a few months is not long enough to do that with any degree of confidence.

 

 

If his success in December was an anomaly and now he's regressing back to his former trajectory than I don't see a problem with that because his former trajectory was one of continuous improvement year over year! Who in their right mind complains about a young player who continues to improve?  You're right about the sample size though. Again I'll use the Sedins as an example, if you plot their performance over the first 4 years of their career the data suggests that their potential was to be 30-40 point players throughout their career.  As we now know that isn't what happened.  Like people do, they got better at their job as they gained more experience. Replot Jake's performance chart again when he's 25 and then again when he's 28 and come back to us with your conclusions once you have that as an adequate sample size. Right now it's just too early to tell. All we know for sure is that Jake continues to improve year over year.  The sample size is just too small to definitively draw any conclusions about his potential. Right now the sky is the limit.