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You know you do. This list ranks the success of the 2009 draft relative to their draft position. The listing:

10. Jared Cowen, D
Ottawa Senators, No. 9 overall
9. John Tavares, F
New York Islanders, No. 1 overall
8. Nick Leddy, D
Minnesota Wild, No. 16 overall
7. Oliver Ekman-Larsson, D
Phoenix Coyotes, No. 6 overall
6. Evander Kane, F
Atlanta Thrashers, No. 4 overall
5. Marcus Johansson, F
Washington Capitals, No. 24 overall
4. Craig Smith, F
Nashville Predators, No. 98 overall
3. Dmitry Kulikov, D
Florida Panthers, No. 14 overall
2. Ryan O'Reilly, F
Colorado Avalanche, No. 33 overall
1. Matt Duchene, F
Colorado Avalanche, No. 3 overall

Have at it...

4 months ago Untitled_tiny IslesFanInNJ 25 comments 0 recs  | 

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The criteria
1. 41 games: Most players from the 2009 draft have played a minimal number of games, which isn’t enough to do a decent evaluation. So I’m including only players who have played at least 41 games — half a season’s worth.

2. Expected performance vs. actual performance: I’m evaluating the 2009 class using Tom Awad’s GVT value stat. For the unfamiliar, GVT incorporates a variety of offensive and defensive statistics to provide a final player value score. I’m calculating their expected GVT per season, which is based on draft slot. But those expectations are normalized for players who have had two years to develop.

3. Pressure on top-five picks: Most players are allowed time to develop. But players drafted in the top five are expected to contribute a lot more a lot earlier. So these rankings take that into consideration.

AND the write-up for JT:

Tavares made his first All-Star Game and is becoming one of the most dynamic offensive players in the game. But he’s No. 9 on this list because the expectations for the top pick are extremely high. Just look at the list of forwards picked No. 1 in the past decade: Ilya Kovalchuk, Rick Nash, Alex Ovechkin, Sidney Crosby, Patrick Kane and Steven Stamkos. The only guy on that list who wasn’t a point-per-game player by his third year was Nash. Tavares is just barely meeting that mark, so he still has to prove he’s in the same class as the aforementioned players.

Success was survival and, kid, it still is

by IslesFanInNJ on Feb 2, 2012 12:35 PM EST reply actions  

And Matt Duchene has met expectations for the 3rd overall pick?

HAH! ESPN is a f*ckin joke. This is ridiculous, JT is far and away the best player to come out fo that draft

"Mario Lemiuex… I used to respect you."- Turgeon1992

by Zhora on Feb 2, 2012 12:48 PM EST up reply actions   1 recs

as i pointed out in the comments section of the espn article...

JT has a better ppg in his 3rd year (1.08) than that of Kovalchuk, Kane and Nash, and only ‘barely’ worse than that of Stamkos, who ofcourse was playing with St Louis, V. Lecavalier, etc at the time. I didn’t look up Crosby or OV with the assumption that JT’s ppg was worse. I get the value angle of the article so i guess JT would need to be leading the league in scoring dramatically to have the best value as a number 1 pick.

by DirtyIsle on Feb 2, 2012 1:01 PM EST up reply actions  

The BS of it is

that he was producing that at the NHL level while others are being judged on a 41 game half-season sample…many after spending a bunch of time in juniors or the AHL because they COULDN’T make it to the NHL?

Neil Smith @bigdealneil94 @KeithLHHockey @craigjbutton hey keith GFY
Website:Lighthouse HockeyTwitter: @KeithLHHockey

by Keith Quinn on Feb 2, 2012 1:10 PM EST up reply actions  

According to other commenters, you need to work on your reading comprehension

Which is silly. This list couldn’t be more arbitrarily arbitrary.

I can’t get past the Duchene at #1 thing. Not so much that he is #1 (in a poll based on relative value, I guess you could argue the point), but that the same criteria giving him #1 puts JT at #9.

Success was survival and, kid, it still is

by IslesFanInNJ on Feb 2, 2012 1:34 PM EST up reply actions  

haha...i love it.

aaah, i had some time today so i thought it would be fun to play a bit. fun stuff…

by DirtyIsle on Feb 2, 2012 5:13 PM EST up reply actions  

This is why I avoid the ESPN site (and similar ones)

It’s a really useful, learned tool to be able to spot BS from a block away, then either cross the street or walk by without looking, rather than naively walk up to it, start a conversation, and let it ruin your day.

Just ignore them yo. Don’t give these writers the power over you they obviously crave.

by 19InARow on Feb 2, 2012 2:53 PM EST reply actions  

Believe me

I approached this with a whole bag of salt. I posted this more for a laugh than to rile up the LHH masses.

Success was survival and, kid, it still is

by IslesFanInNJ on Feb 2, 2012 3:19 PM EST up reply actions  

ESPN: The World Wide Leader in Trolling with Numbers

They create a value system, rank a bunch of players using it, watch the complaints roll in, then, comment on the comments. STRAWMEN ASSEMBLE!

If you take anyone of those guys over Tavares, you’re a fool. Or Mike Milbury.

(even O’Reilly, who’s very, very good)

"He's depriving some small village of a pretty good idiot" - Mike Milbury on Ziggy Palffy's agent. On Twitter: @Dan_of_Science

by PGI on Feb 2, 2012 4:22 PM EST reply actions  

I'm pretty sure this is not worth much hate guys

I don’t have insider, so I need to see the whole article, but I’m pretty sure I know what this is.

This is an article talking about draft RETURNS. In other words, it’s not a comparison of player value – they are not judging Tavares as the 9th best player here. They are judging, given what # draft pick each team had, how good each pick was.

(They’re probably doing this by comparing each player’s GVT with the average GVT for players taken with that draft pick).

This is not a bad post.

Writer at Beyond the Box Score and The Hardball Times
Pitchf/x enthusiast.
http://twitter.com/#!/garik16

by garik16 on Feb 2, 2012 5:14 PM EST reply actions  

Boo!

Fun sponge…

Success was survival and, kid, it still is

by IslesFanInNJ on Feb 2, 2012 10:44 PM EST up reply actions  

It's not a good post, either

Not if they don’t say up-front what, exactly, the adjustment is. Is it a subjective fudge? If it’s a calculation, why not post the method?

Besides, it really doesn’t matter one rip if JT isn’t farther ahead of Duchene than Stamkos is ahead of Bogosian. If he’s the best player of that draft, and he’s taken first, and he turns out to be the most productive player of that draft – that’s exactly what the Isles wanted.

First ESPN was dinging Tavares because of the quality of his teammates, and now they’re dinging him on the strength of his draft year? It’s like they sit around in a room and think to themselves that the Isles simply MUST have screwed this up somehow, they can’t have gotten it right, so let’s figure out which “equation” gets us to that conclusion. It’s bonkers.

We may be in the box, but you get the penalty.
Lighthouse Hockey - a beacon of greatness on the rocky coast of sports blog mediocrity
Non-hockey scribblings at nightflyblog

by mikb on Feb 2, 2012 11:06 PM EST up reply actions   1 recs

That's my "big picture" issue

They seem to be trying to create the narrative that “Tavares is overrated/not as good as everyone thinks.” Just as they created the “Chris Drury – Little League World Series Hero/Stanley Cup Champion/All-round Do-gooder and superhero” narrative while Drury turned out to be just a nice, well-rounded player with a boring-as-shit personality.

Also, ESPN’s desperate need to rank every player all the time for something ("Who’s better, Namath or Brady? Ty Cobb or Carl Crawford? Oscar Robertson or Chris Paul?) is probably the No. 3 reason I can’t stand the network.

"He's depriving some small village of a pretty good idiot" - Mike Milbury on Ziggy Palffy's agent. On Twitter: @Dan_of_Science

by PGI on Feb 3, 2012 10:15 AM EST up reply actions   1 recs

They are judging, given what # draft pick each team had, how good each pick was.

So basically it’s impossible to do well with the #1 pick, because unless he’s God himself he can’t really beat the RETURN.

Lighthouse Hockey: A flute with no holes is not a flute. A Dane with no holes is Frans Nielsen.

by Dominik on Feb 3, 2012 3:41 AM EST up reply actions  

Fixed
So basically it’s impossible to do well with the #1 pick, because unless he’s God Crosby himself he can’t really beat the RETURN.

Official choice of Lighthouse Dog #1.

by Fabtraption on Feb 3, 2012 11:34 AM EST up reply actions  

Let me rephrase.

“How good each pick was” doesn’t mean how good was the Team’s pick of that player (Tavares is the top player from that draft and no one argues otherwise atm). It means, for a first overall pick, how good does Tavares compare to other first overall picks!

Like I said, this has no substantive value. But it’s a question (which leads into another question of how good each draft class ends up being) that is of interest to draft-fanatics, and this is the NHL DRAFT blog.

Writer at Beyond the Box Score and The Hardball Times
Pitchf/x enthusiast.
http://twitter.com/#!/garik16

by garik16 on Feb 4, 2012 1:16 PM EST up reply actions  

Except that

Duchene, taken all of 2 spots after JT, and Kane, take 3 spots after are both way ahead of him. So yes, even basing it on returns, it’s a crock of shit.

by afrosupreme on Feb 3, 2012 6:26 AM EST up reply actions  

No, it's not.

The image above is for baseball, and doesn’t clearly show the effect on first round picks, but the general gist is there for hockey as well. The expected value from a 1st pick is WAY higher than a third pick. (It’s a good bit higher than a 2nd pick as well).

The fact that there are few drafts where there are a “top 3” rather than a consensus #1 pick doesn’t change this overall.

Writer at Beyond the Box Score and The Hardball Times
Pitchf/x enthusiast.
http://twitter.com/#!/garik16

by garik16 on Feb 4, 2012 1:14 PM EST up reply actions  

Perhaps, but even if you want to equate GVT with WAR, I’m not convinced it would pan out the same way in hockey. But still, it does seem like 2009 may end up being a deep draft year, so I guess it’s possible to have a number of overachievers.

I do feel their whole article is a little apple and oranges. As you say above:

It means, for a first overall pick, how good does Tavares compare to other first overall picks!

So comparing JT’s GVT to other first round picks seems useful for precisely that-how good of a #1 pick is he. But for comparing him to his draft class, it doesn’t seem to tell you very much at all.

by afrosupreme on Feb 4, 2012 2:22 PM EST up reply actions  

(GVT is meant to be an equivalent to WAR).

But yes, the article is basically pointless, but it’s the type of info that you might see on a blog focussing upon the NHL draft (Better title: “who are the unusually good picks for their draft slot in the 2009 draft?”)

Writer at Beyond the Box Score and The Hardball Times
Pitchf/x enthusiast.
http://twitter.com/#!/garik16

by garik16 on Feb 4, 2012 5:35 PM EST up reply actions  

you're right,

but still fun to give it to espn…

by DirtyIsle on Feb 2, 2012 5:55 PM EST reply actions  

Wow.

This list is like Lambert-level trolling.

Lighthouse Hockey: A flute with no holes is not a flute. A Dane with no holes is Frans Nielsen.

by Dominik on Feb 3, 2012 3:41 AM EST reply actions  

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha !!!!!!

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[catches breath]

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!!!!!!!!

I can always count on the Worldwide Leader to lighten my mood.

Contributor for Lighthouse Hockey. Definitely neither the Sniper nor the Enforcer.

by ICanSeeForIslesAndIsles on Feb 4, 2012 12:53 AM EST reply actions  


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