Nothing here is an exact science. Here’s one way to put it, I suppose – Imagine the 7-year exercise to be a way of judging what a player was like at their best. But over the course of an ATD season, a player is not always at their best. You could consider pre-and post-prime play (or longevity) as a way of approximating how much the dropoff is going to be from their best games to their off-games and how consistently they’ll play game-to-game.
I can see this line of thought, though I sort of think that a player's best season should be considered his best and the 7/10 year periods should be considered his prime. Now, I totally agree with rewarding players with extended primes. But I dislike rewarding lesser players based solely on the fact that they played more games. That's how people end up overrating Andreychuk and Gartner.
We are drafting players for their whole careers, and I think that the larger sample we have on a player, the more sure we are about what we are getting. Two players with an identical “best 7 years” are only equal in that regard, but it says nothing about their whole careers. If one player only played 7 seasons in total and another had 7 more seasons as a useful player, I’m much more confident in his ability to deliver a consistent performance.
I agree, and I disagree. First- I get that we are drafting the whole career. I am not expecting everyone to just look at Marchand's last two years and think "Wow! This guy should be a 2nd liner!". What I expect (or rather, expected) is that people look at his whole career and realize that, for the balance of his 7 years in the NHL, he has been a very good player. He PKs (not as much as I had thought, though), agitates, and scores at a good rate at ES.
You mentioned Sandford later on, and I don’t recall calling him a “top notch 4th liner”. Someone else may have, I don’t remember. I have my own concerns about his career length too. But one thing I’ll say is that career length standards are different from era to era. 7 years is often used as a judge of a player’s prime (as it’s the length of time we can expect most good players from most eras to have achieved), but it’s also not the magic mark where a player has finally played enough for consideration. Sometimes it’s more, sometimes less.
It wasn't you, I was looking at some old draft threads. I think TDMM spoke pretty highly of Sandford, but I would have to double check.
I get that there is no threshold where a player is finally worthy, and I dont look for one. I look for when I think a player is worthy... and I think Marchand is. As a 4th liner and PKer, nothing more.
I think I had that issue at first, but I changed the extension and it opened. If you have excel, it should work. Want me to resend it?
That would be great! Thank you.
That’s a little too subjective. Just about any player selected at this time is still “remembered” by a segment of hockey fans. You could say as of the summer of 2011 that Marchand will be “remembered” and you’d be right, but at that point he’d clearly be a bad ATD pick. That aspect shouldn’t be considered a reason to draft a player on its own. There’s still got to be a point where a player’s significance for their skill set is properly backed up by a sample of on-ice play to make this draft.
Backed up? Like, leading a playoffs in ES goals? Having a 69.4 ESVsX through 7 years? Consistently being top 5 in SHG? Being a proven agitator?
I’m more of a fan of GMs timidly bumping players up 100 picks at a time and seeing how well-received they are as they go, and how they compare to the players selected around them. I looked forward to that opportunity over the next 4 years with Marchand in the lower drafts. He shouldn’t have skipped the MLD outright.
This sounds an awful lot like you are looking for a "magic mark" to make a player worthy of being in the ATD. Why should a player have to work their way up the ladder? I think Marchand is comparable to 4th liners right now, and I don't think I am alone. And in assassinations/a bio/the playoffs, I will certainly compare him to other 4th line LWers.
I know you like the MLD and lower drafts, but there is no logical reason why a player should have to hit each level before the ATD. Real life players go from Juniors/NCAA to the NHL, skipping the AHL; I dont see this as any different.
This was another guy I was strongly considering when I took Rolston. If I could have found PK quotes about him, I might have taken him.
Yeah, I am hoping I can find something... but I dont have terribly high hopes.
