Player Discussion Kirby Dach: Welcome to Montreal part 2

[Rapala]

Looking at his linemates then January 14th was the game Dach moved to center. He started the game as winger alongside Suzuki/Caufield and then a little over halfway into the 2nd he was moved to center between Dadonov and Armia. He's then been center for the next 10 games and has 9 points, another note is he's had 12 hits in those 10 games at center which is higher then his average this season. Although the inconsistency of the hits stat means we can't put too much faith in those numbers it matches the eye test for me.

What's interesting is his good play actually started with his move to the top line and only circumstance moved him back to center. Having tasted success and then moving back to his natural position with perhaps less expectation did wonders for him.

 

[417]

There are different reasons why a player might end up busting/disappointing after playing in the NHL as a teenager.

What about when they don’t “bust”?

One of them is that it's a lot harder to develop skills when you're in the nhl versus a lower league. Your minutes will be a lot lower, the competition will be a lot stronger, and you simply won't have the puck as much.

There’s more to development then the minutes played during a game.

Some players spend a whole lot of time developing at lower levels but it never translates to the NHL.

That’s because lower levels, is not the NHL, it doesn’t replicate the highest level.

Another reason is that confidence + the mental side of the game is pretty important and it's easy to lose it when you're a teenager playing in the nhl and going through struggles. The mental part of the game is often what separates star players to average, but skilled players (ex: Drouin, Galchenyuk, etc.).

A 20-year-old will handle adversity better than an 18-year-old.

Agreed, it not like I’m advocating for all 18-19 year olds to play in the NHL.

What you’re referring to here is a real thing and teams have to be careful managing that no doubt.

Dach lost his confidence playing with the hawks, and the habs were able to have him regain it and more. This season alone, we saw a major difference in his confidence and play with the puck between the start of the season and now. Producing points playing with Suzuki and Caufield who were red-hot helped out a lot with his confidence.

Agreed.

But being “rushed” is not what happened with Dach here, at least not IMO.

He was good as a rookie, hurt his wrist and then struggled as a result.

Youre just being purposely vague because you know youre wrong. Sigh.

This has nothing to do with being right or wrong and I’m not being vague either.

Development is not as cut and dry as you’re trying to make it, there’s no playbook for it.

We’re having a discussion here, no need to get nasty cause someone doesn’t agree with your take.

Grow up man…

 

[Mrb1p]

What about when they don’t “bust”?



There’s more to development then the minutes played during a game.

Some players spend a whole lot of time developing at lower levels but it never translates to the NHL.

That’s because lower levels, is not the NHL, it doesn’t replicate the highest level.



Agreed, it not like I’m advocating for all 18-19 year olds to play in the NHL.

What you’re referring to here is a real thing and teams have to be careful managing that no doubt.

Agreed.

But being “rushed” is not what happened with Dach here, at least not IMO.

He was good as a rookie, hurt his wrist and then struggled as a result.


This has nothing to do with being right or wrong and I’m not being vague either.

Development is not as cut and dry as you’re trying to make it, there’s no playbook for it.

We’re having a discussion here, no need to get nasty cause someone doesn’t agree with your take.

Theres no playbook for it because hockey doesnt believe in scientific knowledge.

 

[Rob Sense]

Anderson and Dvorak are still trying to figure things out.

Armia never will!

 

[417]

Theres no playbook for it because hockey doesnt believe in scientific knowledge.

There’s nothing scientific about saying a player was “rushed”.

It’s a shallow conclusion that lacks complete analysis.

Just my opinion.

Whenever an 18-19 year old struggles in the NHL it means he was rushed and it’s a cautionary tale that we shouldn’t rush teenagers.

Ok

But whenever an 18-19 year old has success in the NHL, does anyone come to the conclusion that we need to “rush” 18-19yr olds to the NHL?

Of course not, right? But how does that make sense, if the former is true, shouldn’t the latter be?

Again, I’m not advocating to have 18-19 year olds in the NHL (although with cap restrictions, it’s gonna become a lot more common), all I’m saying is we need to look deeper and re-adjust how we determine success for teenagers in the NHL.

 

[Mrb1p]

There’s nothing scientific about saying a player was “rushed”.

It’s a shallow conclusion that lacks complete analysis.

Just my opinion.

Whenever an 18-19 year old struggles in the NHL it means he was rushed and it’s a cautionary tale that we shouldn’t rush teenagers.

Ok

But whenever an 18-19 year old has success in the NHL, does anyone come to the conclusion that we need to “rush” 18-19yr olds to the NHL?

Of course not, right? But how does that make sense, if the former is true, shouldn’t the latter be?

Again, I’m not advocating to have 18-19 year olds in the NHL (although with cap restrictions, it’s gonna become a lot more common), all I’m saying is we need to look deeper and re-adjust how we determine success for teenagers in the NHL.

Plz cite 18-19 years old that had success in the NHL in the past century, Ill wait.

 

[417]

Armia never will!

And oddly enough…Joel Armia is the poster child for patience when it comes to how he was developed.

He played multiple years in Liiga and in the NHL but he’s 28 year old and still hasn’t quite figured things out yet and probably never will.

Why is it that a player who has obvious skill and physical attributes, can’t put things together despite him being over-ripened ?

 

[An0n]

There’s nothing scientific about saying a player was “rushed”.

It’s a shallow conclusion that lacks complete analysis.

Just my opinion.

Whenever an 18-19 year old struggles in the NHL it means he was rushed and it’s a cautionary tale that we shouldn’t rush teenagers.

Ok

But whenever an 18-19 year old has success in the NHL, does anyone come to the conclusion that we need to “rush” 18-19yr olds to the NHL?

Of course not, right? But how does that make sense, if the former is true, shouldn’t the latter be?

Again, I’m not advocating to have 18-19 year olds in the NHL (although with cap restrictions, it’s gonna become a lot more common), all I’m saying is we need to look deeper and re-adjust how we determine success for teenagers in the NHL.

A quick and simple analysis you can do is take the number of players that had success as 18-19 yo and divide that by the total number of players that has ever played in the NHL and that way you'll get the success rate of 18-19 yo players in the NHL.

Ex : 5 players had good 18-19 yo seasons, 1000 players played in the NHL

So, out of 1000 NHL players, 0,5% of players had NHL success at 18-19 yo which correlates to barely no player should play in the NHL at that age except the obvious exceptions of generational talents.

All those numbers are made up but I'm sure the real percent would be lower. Feel free to look it up and correct me.

 

[Rob Sense]

Interestingly I had recently been looking at top NHL centers production through their first 200 GP and thought I could add some colour to the recent conversation without opining on if Dach was rushed or not.

I've been trying to learn a bit more about statistics in sports and in doing so I recently read about an assignment someone had done as part of a university course. Apparently, this person sat down and tried to determine at which point an NHL player is most likely to have a breakout, as defined as an increase in production by 25%. That person used a database of historical produciton and determined a break-out is most likely to occur in the players 4th season. They later went back and tried to accomodate for things like missed time or half seasons and determined a breakout is most likely to start around 200 GP. I don't have the guys original data or understand any other limitations in the analysis that might be exist, but for all intents and purposes I'll just assume that the analysis was done correctly and the conclusion is reasonable.

Kirby Dach recently passed 200 GP. I wanted to see how his production stacks up vs. the first ~200GP of the leagues top-32 centers in terms of production. Many centers in the 20-32 range had a production rate between 0.4-0.66 ppg through their first ~200 games. Kirby Dach is on the lower end of that range at about ~0.45 ppg right now (Interestingly, Suzuki was at about ~0.68 ppg in his first 200 games). The average age of the top-32 centerman is 27 years old.

So what does this all mean? Well you can't predict the future, and there is definitely a flaw in thinking you can use historical production as a definitive predictor for future success. However, in terms of Dach, there's reason to be optimistic that what is happening is potentially the beginning of Kirby Dach's breakout. If this produciton continues for the rest of the year and is followed by a further increase in production next year, then I'd be pretty optimistic about him becoming a top-line centerman in the NHL by around 27.

Is this an outlandish prediction/hot take? I don't necessarily think so. As it stands right now in terms of ppg he's already at a lower end 2nd line center rate (currently 60th in the NHL for centers in terms of ppg). Only a couple of centers ahead of him in ppg this season are younger than him. So if you think of things in terms of cohorts, where the top-line centers of today at an average age of ~27 age out in a few years and are backfilled by the younger, productive centers of today, then I think this also suggests Dach is trending well towards being one of the top centers in the NHL when the current young crop reaches career maturity.

As it stands now Dach is the 48th center in scoring so he is mid-2C in the league. Based on his progression I think he will trend to close to a PPG center. Last game he only got one point but was key in scoring of 2 other goals. I have found that his effort has not translated to equivalent point production. That should change with wingers like Farrell and Roy instead of Hoffman and Dadonov.

 

[Gaylord Q Tinkledink]

Jared Brook hated the Raphael Diaz trade give me a f***ing break. We couldn't move him fast enough after that suicide pass he gifted Eller with.

So did that idiot Berkshire. He wrote an article about it.

At that point everyone could see how bad Diaz was.

 

[417]

Plz cite 18-19 years old that had success in the NHL in the past century, Ill wait.

I guess we’d have to figure out how one defines success first.

But sure I’ll entertain this…

Sidney Crosby
Eric Lindrios
Jeff Skinner
Scott Gomez
Phil Housley
Steve Stamkos
Patrick Kane

Those are off the top of my head…but somehow I’ve got a feeling you’re going to find a way to dismiss these.

But you asked, I provided.

Edit #2

Connor McDavid
Pierre Turgeon
Jaromir Jagr
Joe Sakic
Jimmy Carson

Edit -#3

Anton Lundell
Dawson Mercer
Tim Stutzle
Brady Tkachuk
Seth Jarvis

 

[417]

A quick and simple analysis you can do is take the number of players that had success as 18-19 yo and divide that by the total number of players that has ever played in the NHL and that way you'll get the success rate of 18-19 yo players in the NHL.

Before doing any of this, which I don’t know why you would, with all due respect.

Is to first determine HOW you DEFINE success.

I.e. Jesperi Kotkaniemi, IMO, had a successful 18 year old season when you take into consideration all circumstances (ice time, quality of ice time and line mates, etc)

Ex : 5 players had good 18-19 yo seasons, 1000 players played in the NHL

So, out of 1000 NHL players, 0,5% of players had NHL success at 18-19 yo which correlates to barely no player should play in the NHL at that age except the obvious exceptions of generational talents.

All those numbers are made up but I'm sure the real percent would be lower. Feel free to look it up and correct me.

This is all well and good.

But teenagers in the NHL wasn’t very vogue until very recently and even then.

I don’t think this kind of study would prove all that valuable right now, maybe in 5-10 years when IMO, the number of teenagers who play in the NHL will increase.

 

[morhilane]

And oddly enough…Joel Armia is the poster child for patience when it comes to how he was developed.

He played multiple years in Liiga and in the NHL but he’s 28 year old and still hasn’t quite figured things out yet and probably never will.

Why is it that a player who has obvious skill and physical attributes, can’t put things together despite him being over-ripened ?

He puts things together once every 10-20 games...

I think the biggest problem is just the speed of the game. It's not that they don't understand what is going on, it's that they understand it too slowly to react to it.

 

[An0n]

Before doing any of this, which I don’t know why you would, with all due respect.

Is to first determine HOW you DEFINE success.

This is all well and good.

But teenagers in the NHL wasn’t very vogue until very recently and even then.

I don’t think this kind of study would prove all that valuable right now, maybe in 5-10 years when IMO, the number of teenagers who play in the NHL will increase.

Lmao, always moving goalposts to fit your narrative I see.

 

[MonkeyBusiness]

Jared Brook hated the Raphael Diaz trade give me a f***ing break. We couldn't move him fast enough after that suicide pass he gifted Eller with.

I have PTSD from the Diaz days. He was such a horrible skater for a small guy too, f*** am I glad never to witness Diaz play hockey again.

 

[417]

He puts things together once every 10-20 games...

I think the biggest problem is just the speed of the game. It's not that they don't understand what is going on, it's that they understand it too slowly to react to it.

But if Joel Armia had played in the NHL when he was 19 years old instead of 22 year old.

We’d all be here saying that he was rushed to the NHL and that’s why he never fulfilled his promise.

But since he wasn’t “rushed”, the reason why he’s never fulfilled his promise is something else…

I don’t know man….

Lmao, always moving goalposts to fit your narrative I see.

I didn’t move any goalposts. I’m not even sure what the purpose of your post was.

You want to do a study, do it

Why you asking me?wtf lol

This guy wants me to go chasing numbers which really don’t have anything to do with what I’m saying lol

Funny

 

[Tetragrammaton]

What a play he made for that 6th goal man, just incredible

he's gonna be a scary player for us moving forward, couldn't be happier to have him, I can barely contain my excitement with him to be quite honest lol

I keep thinking of how many problems his ceiling fixes for us as a team should he make it there

If I was forced to keep only one player on this roster I'm keeping Kirby. You can build a team around a 6'4 215 lbs heavily skilled #1C.

 

[An0n]

I didn’t move any goalposts. I’m not even sure what the purpose of your post was.

You want to do a study, do it

Why you asking me?wtf lol

This guy wants me to go chasing numbers which really don’t have anything to do with what I’m saying lol

Funny

You're the one requiring studies to understand that weak, young and inexperienced men shouldn't play with older, stronger and experienced players and yet I'm the funny one.

It's good though, your lack of comprehension, or should I say lack of self introspection to know when to say you might be wrong, helps me know who to avoid interracting with on this site.

 

[Frank Drebin]

You're the one requiring studies to understand that weak, young and inexperienced men shouldn't play with older, stronger and experienced players and yet I'm the funny one.

It's good though, your lack of comprehension, or should I say lack of self introspection to know when to say you might be wrong, helps me know who to avoid interracting with on this site.

There is a difference between saying that 18 year old boys are at a disadvantage playing against men and saying those 2-3 difficult seasons change their career trajectory.

 

[417]

You're the one requiring studies to understand that weak, young and inexperienced men shouldn't play with older, stronger and experienced players and yet I'm the funny one.

Actually you’re the one who came here talking about how one could quickly and easily figure out how to determine how many 18-19 year olds have had success in the NHL by just grabbing the number of teenagers that has ever played in the NHL and dividing it by the total of number of players that have ever played in the NHL

Go do it yourself man lol

F**k I look like? Lol

It's good though, your lack of comprehension, or should I say lack of self introspection to know when to say you might be wrong, helps me know who to avoid interracting with on this site.

This is not a question of right or wrong so save me the psycho babble.

 

[Mrb1p]

I guess we’d have to figure out how one defines success first.

But sure I’ll entertain this…

Sidney Crosby
Eric Lindrios
Jeff Skinner
Scott Gomez
Phil Housley
Steve Stamkos
Patrick Kane

Those are off the top of my head…but somehow I’ve got a feeling you’re going to find a way to dismiss these.

But you asked, I provided.

Edit #2

Connor McDavid
Pierre Turgeon
Jaromir Jagr
Joe Sakic
Jimmy Carson

Edit -#3

Anton Lundell
Dawson Mercer
Tim Stutzle
Brady Tkachuk
Seth Jarvis

Keeping psychological or physiological science aside, does the statistical evidence not tell you anything here?

 

[417]

Keeping psychological or physiological science aside, does the statistical evidence not tell you anything here?

You asked me to provide names, as though it was somehow going to be challenging.

I answered your question, didn’t take very long either.

You’re free to reach whatever conclusion you want from the names I provided, which again, were at YOUR request.

All I’m saying and all I’ve said, which for some reason upset you, was that saying player A was “rushed” is a shallow analysis.

Are there players who started out in the NHL before they were ready?

No doubt there was, I’d never argue otherwise.

But there were also a lot of teenagers who struggled initially but then became better players as they matured. The NHL is a difficult league even for players who were over-ripened in junior/AHL…

Why would it be different for teenagers?

 

[417]

This place sometimes lol

Just because I don’t subscribe to the “rushed player” theory, it upsets guys like @bcv and @Mrb1p, you’d think I insulted them personally.

Such is life I suppose.

 

[ReHabs]

There is a difference between saying that 18 year old boys are at a disadvantage playing against men and saying those 2-3 difficult seasons change their career trajectory.

If playing at such a disadvantage for multiple years had net good outcomes, we would be seeing a whole lot more of it.

Surely being rushed affects the player and how they play and adapt to the pro game.
Surely it is inconceivable to think there are only net neutral and positive outcomes from being rushed to the NHL.
Surely, therefore, there will be players who have a net negative outcome from being rushed.

Not rushing a play may ensure his future success but it can be one way to eliminate a potential source of failure.

 

[417]

If playing at such a disadvantage for multiple years had net good outcomes, we would be seeing a whole lot more of it.

Good post.

Question for you though, with the salary cap squeezing GMs when it comes to roster flexibility.

Do you think we’re going to be seeing more teenagers in the coming years?

Imo, yes…

Surely being rushed affects the player and how they play and adapt to the pro game.
Surely it is inconceivable to think there are only net neutral and positive outcomes from being rushed to the NHL.
Surely, therefore, there will be players who have a net negative outcome from being rushed

There can certainly be negative outcomes from being rushed and we’ve seen this over the years.

Kirby Dach is a good example of a player who after initially struggling has started to find his footing.

Is it not a fair conclusion to reach that perhaps, there’s more to it then simply when a player reaches the NHL?

.

Not rushing a play may ensure his future success but it can be one way to eliminate a potential source of failure.

But we’ve seen players who were not rushed but were never able to translate their lower league success to the NHL.