I had to come back to this post since I didn’t really address the bulk of it.
1) The tweet I posted was talking about ……. “We found back in the day that merely appearing in an SHL game indicated a much higher chance of success than similarly scoring players in SWE J20, especially for true U18s”.
And this……
“When prospects appear in elite-level pro in Sweden, where there aren’t mandates like in Czech league for example, there are selection biases at play that give you information on the player
That’s telling you that pro evaluators *already* believe they’re capable of playing pro”
He’s talking about how the SHL handles young players and what its meant in the past for their future. He’s also pointing out there are differences from league to league, like the Czech league having mandates. Not 100% sure what they are (ice time? Games played?) Since Bacon’s tweet was about all European leagues.
2) Kopitar had zero points in 15 games (10 playoff games). Its somewhat ironic that you’re trying to defend a data scientist’s model with a 5 game sample size from World juniors. That’s a meaningless sample size and the World Juniors itself is problematic as an example of anything.
3) To address your other post. There are players from various other leagues mentioned. Bacon made the point about production in any European league. It wasn’t specific to the SHL.
He wasn’t blowing off the data. He was giving it broader context. He wasn’t the only one taking issues with how Bacon did his work. Most were suggesting he should have used his U20 numbers.
My original message was poorly attributed let me try again:
Bacon asks for information on prospects who score very little in men's leagues but still go on to do well in the NHL. Rhys says that they've found an U18 playing at the top level is predictive of success even compared to prospects scoring at similar paces in the U20 league. [For the purposes of Rosen that would be SHL and U20 Superelit). Basically saying hockey guys know it when they see it; without actually giving any examples.
From there several other tweets included names of people who might be similar, like the Kovu brothers, Ek, Nylander, Kopitar. The problem with that comparison is that Rosen vastly underperformed those players in his limited appearance at the senior mens level; and generally also under performed them in SuperElit.
That was my general umbrage with Rhys' tweet. I thought it was answering a critique of the way "hockey guys" do business by saying "this is how hockey guys do business".
Your additions are all make a lot of sense, and I agree.
I'd add that Bacon does use U20 NHLe when he does his projections. They're rolled into the the NHLe number. He had 6.9 D-1, and 5.76 D. Only about 0.5 of that came from his 1 point in the SHL.
Bacon's tableau doesn't have numbers from before the 2007 draft class so Kopitar and the Kovu brothers aren't on there; frankly in the nearly 30 years since then the NHLe is likely changed. Nylander was the top prospect per his model from 2014 with a D-1 13.21 D 20.00. So these players are suspect comparables from an analytic standpoint.
Rosen might be a great pick; I certainly hope he is.
Just for fun, if Buffalo would have picked off Bacon's list since 2011 this is what the team would look like:
Buffalo's 1st round picks since 2012 here's what they'd have picked blindly going off Star %:
2012: Hertl, Girgensons
2013: Lehkonen, Taylor Cammarata
2014: Nylander (and Bradyen Point grr)
2015: Eichel
2016: Debrincat
2017: Suzuki
2018: Dahlin
2019: Kaliyev, Mikko Kokkonen
2020: Rossi (with Lundell right at his heels)