Tuesday, 17 June 2014

Quick Hits: On Trades and Finding Talent

So I was talking Kesler trade with Thomas Drance today. He brought up a point that I don't totally agree with:
You do need a lot of good players to build a serious contender, and Vancouver doesn't have enough good players. Therefore, Vancouver needs more good players. It's a pretty simple formula. The trick, of course, is getting enough good players.

As this relates to Ryan Kesler, I'd rather move him for fewer, high-quality parts than a greater volume of lower-quality ones. For example, I'd take Hampus Lindholm from Anaheim over Emerson Etem and the 10th overall pick. Whether or not Anaheim would go for this is another matter entirely, but Lindholm + any additional BS throw-ins you can negotiate would be my preferred ask from Jim Benning's point of view.

The problem here is Vancouver still needs player volume to fill out a deep roster and build a contender, and trading your big ticket item for one guy doesn't help you with depth. It's likely a lateral move in terms of quality (hopefully), and roster spots filled. So at the end of the day, you're left essentially where you started, except you've moved towards the right side of the window of contention being open again. So if you're making a lateral move by trading for quality, why not address an immediate need and get a bunch of guys?

The answers are "scarcity" and "replacement cost" of top-end players relative to good depth guys, but instead of providing a lecture on economic theory and what the hell these mean, I'll go through the moves Dean Lombardi made to build a two-time Stanley Cup champion in Los Angeles, since I think the L.A. "model" is a good illustration in how to build a deep, effective, and sustainably successful NHL team. Lombardi took over the Kings in April of 2006. Here's how he acquired his forward group:

Anze Kopitar: Inherited from previous regime.
Justin Williams: Inherited Pavol Demitra. Traded Demitra to the Minnesota Wild for Patrick O'Sullivan and a 1st round pick in 2006 (Trevor Lewis). Dealt O'Sullivan and a 2nd round pick to Carolina for Justin Williams.
Marian Gaborik: Drafted Jonathan Bernier in the 1st round of 2006. Traded Bernier to Toronto for Matt Frattin, Ben Scrivens, and a 2nd round pick. Traded Ben Scrivens to Edmonton for a 3rd round pick. Traded Matt Frattin, a 2nd round pick, and a conditional 2nd/3rd round pick to Columbus for Marian Gaborik.
Jeff Carter: Inherited Eric Belanger and Tim Gleason. Traded Belanger and Gleason to Carolina in exchange for Jack Johnson and Oleg Tverdovsky. Traded Jack Johnson and a 1st round pick to Columbus for Jeff Carter.
Tyler Toffoli: Traded 2nd round pick and 4th round pick in 2010 to Colorado in exchange for 2nd round pick in 2010 (Tyler Toffoli).
Mike Richards: Inherited Brent Sopel. Traded Sopel to the Vancouver Canucks for a 2nd round pick in 2007 (Wayne Simmonds) and a 4th round pick in 2008. Drafted Brayden Schenn in the 1st round of 2009. Traded Simmonds, Schenn, and a 2nd round pick to the Philadelphia Flyers for Mike Richards.
Dustin Brown: Inherited from previous regime.
Jarrett Stoll: Inherited Lubomir Visnovsky. Traded Visnovsky to the Edmonton Oilers for Jarrett Stoll and Matt Greene.
Tanner Pearson: Drafted in the 1st round of the 2012 draft.
Kyle Clifford: Drafted in the 2nd round of the 2009 draft.
Dwight King: Inherited Craig Conroy. Traded Conroy to the Calgary Flames for Jamie Lundmark, a 2nd round pick in 2008, and a 4th round pick in 2007 (Dwight King).
Jordan Nolan: Drafted in the 7th round of the 2009 draft.

As for Los Angeles' D, Drew Doughty, Slava Voynov, and Alec Martinez were all drafted by the Kings, while Willie Mitchell and Jake Muzzin were UFA signings (Muzzin was drafted but never signed by Pittsburgh, so he became a free agent). Robyn Regehr and Matt Greene were both acquired via trade.

At the end of the day, we appear to be left with this formula:

  • Build the bare-bones skeleton of your team through the early picks of the draft (Kopitar, Doughty)
  • Trade multiple assets to acquire premium quality depth (Williams, Carter, Gaborik, Richards) 
  • Fill in the bottom-end holes in your roster from within by developing your own talent
  • Stay away from unrestricted free agency, except for unsigned prospects
Not since 2007 has Dean Lombardi traded down to stock the cupboards with quantity of players in lieu of quality. In fact, Lombardi has done the opposite most of the time by packaging up players and picks to take a home-run swing on the trade market. As a smart GM, he realizes that top-end talent, like Jeff Carter and Justin Williams and Marian Gaborik, is harder to come by than bundles of assets involving lesser players and draft picks. Hell, NHL teams are given seven free draft picks every year, but you have to work hard to find a Jeff Carter.

Of course, Lombardi's wheeling and dealing wouldn't be possible without a strong scouting department that's been among the league's best since he took over. If his scouts had not found Brayden Schenn, Wayne Simmonds, or Jonathan Bernier, it's unlikely he has enough assets to build a team as strong as the Kings are. And as an added bonus, his amateur scouting department has also landed the Kings Slava Voynov, Alec Martinez, Tyler Toffoli, Tanner Pearson, Dwight King and Jordan Nolan in recent years to fill out the roster and ultimately save money on pricier veteran UFA replacements. Amateur scouting really matters.

Coming full circle to Vancouver, yes the Canucks absolutely need to "re-stock" the cupboard. But, as the Kings have shown, there are other ways to find quantity of talent than trading your best trade chip for a bunch of assets that can be found through other processes. Land the single best asset you can for Ryan Kesler. Focus on the other stuff later.
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Sunday, 15 June 2014

Adjusted Draft Year Scoring For CHL Prospects

After adjusting scoring for age and era, it's clear that no CHLer has ever been as prolific as Sidney Crosby.
Here is a table showing the age and era adjusted scoring for every CHL forward drafted in the 1st round of the NHL entry draft since 2003, as well as some 2014 draft eligibles (highlighted with red text). My method for adjusting draft year scoring for age can be found here, and my method for adjusting scoring rate for era and CHL league was described in this post. All of total points per game, just age adjusted points per game, just era adjusted points per game, and a combined age and era adjusted points per game are included:



* = Draft year was unavailable due to injury, so draft-1 year was used instead. The age adjustment likely understates how well these players performed as 16-year olds in the CHL.
** = Drafted as a draft+1 player, so draft year scoring was used.
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Tuesday, 10 June 2014

Adjusting Scoring Rate for Age in CHL Prospects

Nathan MacKinnon, one of the youngest 1st round picks since 2003.
I wrote a post for Canucks Army this morning (read it here and click on all their advertising) in which I argued that Vancouver could expect to win a trade for the 1st overall draft choice this season - even if they gave up their 6th overall pick and Bo Horvat to do it - if they used the draft pick to select Kootenay's Sam Reinhart. The genesis of the pro-Reinhart argument is that Reinhart scored at a level comparable to other extremely highly-touted former prospects (and current NHL stars), therefore he was player worthy of being selected 1st overall, despite the skepticism among experts that this draft contains a "true #1 selection."

After publishing the article, it was pointed out to me that Reinhart is older than the average draft eligible prospect, and therefore his offensive numbers could not be fairly compared to a player like Sam Bennett, who is 8 months younger. The argument here is essentially that scoring rate increases with player age, and for the most part, this probably isn't an unreasonable generalization to make. 20 year olds score more than 19 year olds, who score more than 18 year olds, and so on and so forth. If this pattern exists on a macro scale, then it should logically exist on a micro scale, too. A kid who's 17.8 years old on in September should, in theory, score more than a kid who's 17.2 years old at the same point in time.

If this assumption is true, then we should be able to observe a consistent positive relationship between intra-year age and scoring rate. Fortunately, Josh Weissbock had previously scraped a whole bunch of data for a project we've currently postponed (we're instead working on Sham Sharron 2: Return of the Sham), so I had a repository of scoring and age data for every player to play in the OHL since 1990. Eliminating small sample size guys and correlating intra-year age with scoring rate, I was left with the following equation:

Pts/GP = (0.1672*Age) - 2.3714

This equation tells us that for every year a player ages, we can expect scoring rate to increase by 0.1672 points per game. This means that, for first time draft eligible players, we can adjust scoring rate for age through the following equation:

Age Adjusted Pts/GP = (1 - ([Age as of September of draft year - 17] * 0.1672)) * Pts/GP

This formula will estimate the predicted scoring rate of a player if they were exactly 17 years of age at the start of their draft year, based on their actual age and scoring rate. It is, for all intents and purposes, a measure of scoring relative to Nathan MacKinnon, who was almost exactly 17 years of age at the start of his draft year.

To see how it works, we'll use John Tavares as an example. Tavares was roughly 17.94 years old at the start of his draft year, and he scored 104 points in 56 games, split between Oshawa and London. His age-adjusted points per game is as follows:

Tavares Adj. Pts/GP = (1 - ([Age as of September of draft year - 17] * 0.1672)) * Pts/GP
= (1 - ([17.94 - 17] * 0.1672)) * (104/56)
= (1 - ([0.94] * 0.1672)) * 1.857
= (1 - 0.157) * 1.857
= 0.843 * 1.857
Tavares Adj. Pts/GP = 1.565 Pts/GP

Whereas if you attempt the same formula with Nathan MacKinnon:

MacKinnon Adj. Pts/GP = (1 - ([Age as of September of draft year - 17] * 0.1672)) * Pts/GP
= (1 - ([17.00 - 17] * 0.1672)) * (75/44)
= (1 - ([0.0] * 0.1672)) * 1.705
= (1 - 0.0) * 1.705
= 1 * 1.705
MacKinnon Adj. Pts/GP = 1.705 Pts/GP

As you can probably see, the closer a player is to 17 years old at the beginning of their draft year, the smaller the adjustment to their scoring rate. As a side note, I don't know if this age adjustment works for any other age ranges than 17.0 years to 17.99 years old, as I basically just built it to look at first-time draft eligible players. I'll have to look into this later.

So there you have it, a formula to adjust scoring for intra-year age for first-time draft eligible CHL prospects. I don't know if anyone had done this publicly (if they have, I couldn't find it), but I hope this provides some useful insight going forward. 

---

As an aside, here are some top 2014-eligible prospects ranked by age adjusted Pts/GP:


Good news for Sam Bennett fans, however Reinhart still comes out on top when adjusting for league offense. Really though, both guys stack up well with some pretty elite company (and so does Nikolaj Ehlers, their closest comparables are here, here and here) and a team selecting 1st overall probably can't go wrong with either.
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Tuesday, 13 May 2014

Quick Hits: Trading Evgeni Malkin

Evgeni Malkin is pretty amazing and it maaaaaaay be a bad idea to trade him
The Pittsburgh Penguins lost to the New York Rangers in the 2nd round of the playoffs just minutes ago, so speculation is running rampant about what the Pens should and will do going forward as not to piss away the rest of their time with two of the best centres on the planet. Bob McKenzie suggested that Dan Bylsma is as good as gone, but Darren Pang put in to words what I'm sure was a common sentiment: perhaps it's time to trade Evgeni Malkin.

I can't help but think that this would be a massive overreaction, and simply doom the Penguins to more years of not being able to get back to the Stanley Cup. Tyler Dellow summed up the problem with trading Malkin well:
Having Evgeni Malkin, an elite scorer, on the roster allows the Penguins to have something that few other NHL teams can boast: two elite scoring lines. Subtracting Malkin removes an elite scoring line, so you have to replace that offence with the return in the Malkin trade. Right away, no team is going to give up a piece that can produce offense as well as Malkin can, so you're hoping for volume in return. This means you're weakening your second line to try and shore up your depth.

Let's do some quick back-of-the-envelope math to figure out what Pittsburgh would need for Malkin to make a trade worth their while. For the trade to be worthwhile, the boost in offence provided by the new 3rd line must equal the offence lost through trading Malkin. In the past 3 years, Malkin is 5th in the NHL in on-ice GF/20. Let's say you get a Kyle Turris/Derek Stepan/Logan Couture/Joe Pavelski in return as the centerpiece of a Malkin deal. You're presumably losing 0.29-0.31 goals/20 min from your second line, so that needs to be made up elsewhere. Assuming a straight upgrade on current Brandon Sutter, you're looking at a second Pavelski/Couture/Ryan O'Reilly/Jeff Skinner to even come close to make it worth Pittsburgh's while. If you assume Brandon Sutter is still capable of producing like Carolina Brandon Sutter, this second piece becomes someone like Ryan Getzlaf, John Tavares, or Taylor Hall.

The more volume pieces you trade for, the more you presumably dilute the quality player coming back too. Some team will give you an entire 2nd line for Malkin, but you can find second line quality guys in free agency anyways. Mikhail Grabovski is available this offseason. Ray Shero could sign him to address depth while keeping Evgeni Malkin.

Long in short, Evgeni Malkin is worth two super-premium assets. No team is going to be willing to part with multiple core pieces, especially not to a team who's under the gun to upgrade. Pittsburgh cannot trade Evgeni Malkin and come out ahead. It just doesn't happen. I mean, it's not as if Malkin is a problem anyways:


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Tuesday, 6 May 2014

Quick Hits: Dumping Dump-ins

Mike Johnston looks incredulous, probably because someone suggested playing more chip-and-chase.
I hate chip-and-chase hockey. I think I've made enough of a stink about that on Twitter for it to be obvious, so it killed me to hear John Tortorella praising Zack Kassian for "dumping the puck in well" after his 4-assist game against the Sabres. I also tend to think that this perception of "safe" hockey plagues Canada at lower levels. In particular, the CHL.

I mean, Frederik Gauthier had a spot specifically designed for him on this past year's World Junior team, while Max Domi, Connor Brown, Scott Kosmachuk, Michael Dal Colle, Andreas Athanasiou, Brendan Leipsic, Sam Bennett, Jaedon Descheneau, and Anthony Duclair were hardly considered at all. Brown was the OHL's player of the year. Athanasiou and Kosmachuk were the top non-overage goal scorers in the OHL with 49 each. Duclair was one of only two QMJHLers to crack 50 goals. Domi, Bennett, Dal Colle, Leipsic, and Descheneau all generated nearly twice as much offence as Gauthier. Canada has talent to burn at the U20 level, and we continually burn it in the name of conservative, grind-it-out hockey.

It's a breath of fresh air then when a guy like Kyle Dubas comes on TSN radio and says something like this:
“There’s nothing more that makes me or our staff cringe than when we’re watching players in Bantam or at the Minor Midget level and the parents are yelling and the coaches are yelling to get the puck off the glass or to dump it in and chase when they’re on the attack. I think for the most part we cringe because we know we’re probably going to have to correct those things to try to reset or rewire a player after a playing style like that was ingrained in them for 10 years, and it’s difficult.I think every single player that plays the game, deep down and innately wants to have the puck on their stick. Myself and Sheldon told them that we weren’t going to be mad at our players if they tried to make a play and turned the puck over. That’s what every player in hockey wants to do, if they know that they have the grace of the staff.If the staff can show them success from the NHL or our seasons of controlling shots and creating chances they’re generally more receptive. We look at it as our job to develop them for the NHL and if they can’t process and make a play with the puck their chances for success are probably limited.”
That's via Hope Smoke by way of this Justin Bourne article.

The Soo Greyhounds, as Bourne notes, are a really good team. You know who's also a really good team? The Portland Winterhawks. Cam Charron noted here that they kinda blitzed the Edmonton Oil Kings in games 1 and 2, and the Oil Kings have made a thing of being un-blitzable this season. Cam counted the scoring chances at 20-4 at even strength in Portland's favour before score effects presumably kicked in, which is as sound a thrashing you'll see in hockey.

I saw the Winterhawks live on four different occasions this season, and the one thing that stood out to me was that they never ever seemed to chip and chase. With a top-6 forward group designed to eviscerate opponents with skill and speed, "safe" hockey doesn't really make sense anyways. I kept an unofficial count of zone entries when the Hawks played the Giants in the their final game of the 1st round, and was blown away by how rarely the Hawks even attempted the chip-and-chase. I believe of ~60 attempted entries, Portland attempted just one unforced dump-in. It was pretty amazing to watch, actually.

Winterhawks fan Megan (@butyoucarlotta on Twitter) tracked Winterhawks zone entries for game 1 of the WHL final, and here's what she found:

Even against the WHL's best defensive team that employs a 6'4 monster like Griffin Reinhart, Portland seems to have moved to carrying the puck in almost exclusively. While probably not directly related to exclusively carrying the puck in (adding Mat Dumba helps too), Portland has won 41 games and has just three losses in their past 44 games. They're crushing the WHL like they're playing NHL 14 on rookie difficulty.

So there you have two CHL teams - two really freaking good CHL teams - that have began to erase dump-and-chase hockey from their repertoire. Hopefully this is a sign of things to come soon, and maybe, just maybe, Hockey Canada will take note and stop screwing up the un-screw-uppable task of building a good U20 team from the best pool of U20 players in the world.

Also, Mike Johnston for Canucks coach.

***
One more thing: I was going through my Twitter archive today and found these. Ray Ferraro is the greatest and I wish he 1) still did radio in Vancouver, and 2) along with Botchford, had the primetime afternoon slot on the TEAM 1040. Maybe I'd start listening again:

The best "sound, defensive hockey" really is "blow their fucking doors off."
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Tuesday, 29 April 2014

Let's Give Erik Karlsson Some Norris Love


The 2013-2014 Norris Trophy finalists were announced yesterday, and they were, as you all know by now, Zdeno Chara, Duncan Keith, and Shea Weber. While all three guys are undoubtedly elite defenders and deserving of the recognition, the discussion I saw over Twitter centred largely around who was omitted from this list rather than how great these three guys are (as is tradition). And most of that discussion seemed to come to the consensus that Mark Giordano should at the very least be a nominee over Weber.

I'm not going to argue that Giordano didn't have a fantastic year. He did. His fancystats were insanely good. He was a standout on an awful Calgary team and probably the only thing that kept them from being Sabres-level awful. Be deserves to be considered among the very best defensemen in the game, for this year at least.

But for my money, he wasn't the biggest omission from Norris voting this year. As you can tell by the title, I think Erik Karlsson should not have just been one of the three nominees, but should have won the award in a landslide. The season he had this year was not only good, but it was one of the single best seasons that any defensemen has ever had, yet no one's talking about it. I think it's time we put just how freaking insanely good Karlsson is into perspective.

First off, we'll look at some work done by Travis Yost. If you don't know who he is, a) why not, b) change this immediately, and c) he's an excellent Sens blogger that Eugine Melnyk has personally tried to have erased from the internet. That's not a joke by the way. Look it up. Anyways, he's been looking at individual shot attempts the last couple of days, and has basically determined that Karlsson is the Ottawa Senators' entire attack:

It goes further. Yost also wrote this post detailing how dominant offensively Karlsson is. If you're too lazy to click on the link, this graph is the main takeaway:

Essentially, Erik Karlsson breaks hockey. He has outperformed his peers by so much since 2011 that it's unbelievable, and this despite getting his achilles severed which theoretically understates his production.

This makes it more ridiculous when you put Karlsson's production relative to his peers in a historical context. He beat Duncan Keith for the defenseman scoring title by 13 points. The last D to finish more than 10 points ahead of second place was also Erik Karlsson in 2011-2012 when he beat the second best guy by 25(!) points, so he's done it in back-to-back 82-game seasons. Before that, you have to go all the way back to the 1991-1992 season to find a guy who's done it once. That was Hockey Hall of Famer Brian Leetch, who beat Phil Housley by 16 points.

The last guy to finish more than 10 points ahead of second in back-to-back 82-game seasons was Hockey Hall of Famer Paul Coffey, who accomplished the feat on the 1988-89 and 1989-90 Pittsburgh Penguins. You'll notice that those teams also included a then 23 and 24 year old Mario Lemieux, who posted prorated 209 and 167 point seasons. Coffey was also the last guy to finish 25 or more points ahead of the 2nd highest scoring defenseman, and he accomplished this feat with the Oilers in 1985-86, during Wayne Gretzky's all-time record 215 point season (which may have actually been deflated by unlucky percentages).

And then there's this:
Add Leetch and Hockey Hall of Famer Ray Bourque to that list, and you get every NHL defenseman who's ever scored more than 70 points in a season twice before they're 23. You'll notice that these guys Karlsson is equaling with his performance this season aren't just good, they're generationally good. Erik Karlsson is walking on hallowed ground.

The knock against Karlsson is that the Norris Trophy is for "all-around" ability and not just offence, and he's not good defensively. The thing is, Duncan Keith isn't good defensively either, but that largely doesn't matter because his offensive game is so, so much better than the average NHL D. In fact, it's pretty easy to make an argument that Karlsson shouldered a heavier two-way burden than Duncan Keith did this season:
Both defenders have a similarly strong possession numbers, but Duncan Keith is also backed by a much stronger supporting cast.

(As an aside, I'll note that I think using CorsiRel to compare performances across players is not a smart thing to do since it unfairly punishes guys for playing on great teams while it overstates the contributions of guys on awful teams. It's true that if you compare on the basis of raw Corsi, you're not taking into account the strength of team, but by comparing on the basis of CorsiRel, you're assuming equal strength of team. 

 Mark Giordano's 53.3% Corsi on the year is more impressive given that he plays for Calgary, but let's not kid ourselves, he's not +10.3% better than his team on an average NHL team, and he certainly doesn't take Chicago to, say, nearly 65% Corsi if he played Duncan Keith's role. Part of the reason that his CorsiRel is so high is that the players that he never sees the ice with and have no material impact on him whatsoever like Shane O'Brien and Chris Butler probably aren't NHL-calibre players, and they get their teeth kicked in repeatedly. So while +10.3% CorsiRel looks gaudy, remember that Giordano has no control over the guys below him in the depth chart being insufferably awful.)

Erik Karlsson probably isn't an elite defensive defenseman. Ottawa hemorrhages shot attempts against like few other teams do, and having Karlsson on the ice improves them only marginally in that regard. At the same time, Duncan Keith will probably win the Norris this year and he actively and demonstrably makes his team worse defensively when he's on the ice. But, and I can't stress this enough, this doesn't matter. Keith, like Karlsson, is nitrous oxide to his team's attack and his offensive ability has by far a greater net benefit than any defensive deficiencies in his game.

The point of all this is that Erik Karlsson is a special talent that continues to do what no other NHL defenseman can: generate offense at a super-elite level. He did it in his last full season, earning a Norris trophy, and he did it again this year. He does have his defensive issues, but the point of hockey is to outscore the opposition, not to hold a 0-0 tie the longest. He proved once again in 2013-2014 that he's the only NHL D to have no equal in any critical aspect of the game, and for that he deserves recognition as one of the NHL's top-3 defensemen, if not the best in the world today.
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Sunday, 13 April 2014

Quick Hits: Shanahan Is Full Of Crap

I'm sure that most of these are going to start like this, but I was reading tonight's Provies when something caught my eye. It was this quote, from Brendan Shanahan, new overlord of the Toronto Maple Leafs:
I think it’s a complete cop-out that you can’t learn or be taught how to score at the NHL level. I hear coaches say all the time that you can teach defence, but you can’t teach offence. I don’t buy that. I’m an example of the opposite.
I bolded the important bit. This stuck out to me because I have this running theory (you know the one if you've read anything I've written about any Canucks prospect ever) that guys that turn into NHL scorers, in general, dominate their junior leagues. Shanahan scored nearly 1400 NHL points, so to hear him say "I had to be taught how to score" with the implication that he didn't know how to before hand is a bit curious. So I went to HockeyDB and looked at how a draft-year Brendan Shanahan performed in the OHL relative to his fellow 17 year olds. Here's how he did:

That is a list of every 17-year old forward who played at least 20 OHL games in Shanahan's draft year. As you can see, he wrecked them. He's on an entirely different level from the rest of those guys. So it's not as if Shanahan was a talentless hack coming in to the NHL. He dominated the OHL, so he dominated the NHL. For him to say that he had to be taught how to be a scorer is a crock of shit. He was always just way more talented than everyone else. The power was in you all along, Brendan!
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