Project time!

[sr edler]

Hellebuyck cracked me up a couple of years ago when he said the Jets were going to be a dynasty, this was when Byfuglien and Laine were still on the club. And now these past playoffs, he was apparently playing out of his mind while getting continuously shell-shocked on a game-to-game basis. You gotta love a healthy dose of delusion in a player.

 

[Professor What]

Goalies seems to be a popular option right now. Do we want to run with it? If so, how many do we want to have on the list? I'm going to recommend that we expand it to 60 and everybody sends in an initial list of 80.

 

[rmartin65]

Goalies seems to be a popular option right now. Do we want to run with it? If so, how many do we want to have on the list? I'm going to recommend that we expand it to 60 and everybody sends in an initial list of 80.

I support this

 

[Dr John Carlson]

I originally thought 80 could work for goalies, but looking at the aggregate list, that may be tough. 60 should be the minimum.

 

[Professor What]

I guess we need some screeners too. How has that been done in the past?

 

[seventieslord]

- I'll help with screening.

- Usually a couple of people either aside from, or in addition to, the admins will do the screening.

- If we're doing this then I'm in favour of making it the longest list possible. So whatever options are on the table, consider my vote for the longest list.

 

[jigglysquishy]

My "don't forget about this guy " list is at 70 if you include everyone I've already slotted together.

A top 60 (top 80 initial list) should be doable. I think going to top 75 (top 100 initial list) might be fun and we can do top 100 lists for skaters.

 

[The Pale King]

I'm very onboard for a goalies list, also in favour of the longest list option.

 

[Professor What]

My "don't forget about this guy " list is at 70 if you include everyone I've already slotted together.

A top 60 (top 80 initial list) should be doable. I think going to top 75 (top 100 initial list) might be fun and we can do top 100 lists for skaters.

Like are you talking about 70 guys that should just definitely be on a list? Because if we did an initial list of 80 (not set in stone), that doesn't leave a lot of wiggle room.

 

[jigglysquishy]

Like are you talking about 70 guys that should just definitely be on a list? Because if we did an initial list of 80 (not set in stone), that doesn't leave a lot of wiggle room.

I'm just including guys that I've written down on my own so I remember to research and include them. Not a screener list or anything. It's not exhaustive either.

If I can get to 70 without too much trouble then 100 is doable. I find it easier to write a bunch of names down then whittle it down and order them.

There were 94 goalies on the last project aggregate list. Add modern goalies and you're at 100.

 

[Hockey Outsider]

As Seymour Skinner once said - "Am I out of touch? No, its the HOH forum who's wrong".

I had the positional list #9 on my list. I've thought about posting why I'm less than enthusiastic about this option, but at this point, I think that would only be counterproductive. Ultimately, I'm glad that we're going to be moving ahead with another project.

@seventieslord 's comment about whether this locks us in for the next four years is a fair point. But we don't necessarily need to decide that right now.

I'll make every effort to participate. It very likely will be less than in the past, given my workload and travel schedule - but I promise that those are the reasons, as opposed to "sour grapes" over the project topic.

 

[ImporterExporter]

I guess this could be accurate for some, but I think you are overlooking a couple several less conspiracy-driven reasons why people don't want to do coaching-

1) Coaching doesn't interest (most) fans as much as players do. I don't buy a ticket to watch Mike Sullivan coach, I pay to watch Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin. That isn't to say coaching isn't important to hockey- it definitely plays a large role in teams winning and losing. But a coach simply doesn't capture the fans attention like the players on the ice do. And at the end of the day, we are all just fans here.

2) Ranking coaches seems more challenging than players, and challenging doesn't always equal fun. As I mentioned above, this is a hobby for all of us. My base-level knowledge for coaches throughout history is pretty low in comparison to players. Do I want to spend the hours and hours (and hours and hours and hours and hours) it would take to get a somewhat decent idea of who is who over the last 140 years and rank them? Not really, not right now at least. With players I already have a good baseline, and I imagine a lot of others feel the same.

Finally, I think you are also discounting the fact that a lot of the coaching project would still be numbers driven. Wins, Cups, PO appearances, team record changes pre/post-coach, etc. There are a lot of numbers there, and I'm guessing that a coaches project would be citing these numbers heavily, just as much as the player projects talk about goals/assists/points.

I'd (probably) participate in an eventual coaches project, for the record. But I don't think you are characterizing the opposition to it fairly here.

There is nothing conspiracy-driven in calling out people for redoing the same projects, which doesn't really move the needle much in the arena of discovery. There is nothing groundbreaking in using the same old metrics to move around slightly, already well established entities (players), while sprinkling in active or recently retired players who didn't qualify the last time positional lists were done. That's precisely what is going to unfold.

The shining beacon of light in the pre-consolidation project was the volume of written evidence, not just about goals and assists, but what people actually thought of the players. How were they viewed by fellow players? Coaches, fans, refs, writers, etc. That was mandatory because trying to go numbers heavy in that era is a tough sell, namely due to the split leagues, wildly changing rules, and depth of talent from one league to the next.

And that's the rub. Numbers were still tallied and used but non numerical factors played a larger role in determining value.

Are we going to be introducing anything new in the numbers department for these projects? Or will we basically be counting VsX (and other advanced studies), trophy shares, AS shares, with the occasional spat about something between the lines?

Will we be learning anything new about the players? Very little. That's not a bold statement.

Beyond adding new faces (mainly active players), will there be anything at all that is actually fresh?

Players have already been analyzed to death. The vast majority of the folks we're talking about at this level are well documented. Interest, to me, is borne out of the quest for knowledge and understanding. I'm personally more interested in learning about something in which I know less about, not more. Doing the same thing over and over is bleeping boring.

Coaching would absolutely require more reading and juggling of non statistical factors. That scares people because they're not definitive like an equation. It's more perception is reality and I don't look at that as a problem, seemingly, like most do. Debate is healthy. With enough material and discussion, you can certainly end up with a thoughtful analysis of an entity that doesn't center around numbers. There truly is no perfect solution or right/wrong way. I feel there is far more to learn and more rewarding conclusions to end up at by branching away from players.

It's just a bit of a bummer to see almost no desire beyond maybe 3-4 people. Maybe it'll change in the years to come, but the voting and written opposition make that seem unlikely. considering it's coming from the most prominent names.

 

[ImporterExporter]

I had builders as my number one option, and coaches/teams somewhere near the bottom, so I'm in half-agreement with this, but only half.

For me the problem is this - with players, they make an on-ice impact and thus can be measured using on-ice metrics (this can be numbers, film, newspaper reports, etc.). Builders have an off-ice impact and thus can be measured using off-ice metrics (outside the box stuff... rule changes, league growth, player base growth, technological advancements, just to list a few of potentially many). Coaches are in a weird gray area where they make an on-ice impact that can't really be properly measured by on-ice metrics because there's too many variables that just aren't available for us to examine. We can look through ATD bios and see what each man did for his team, but how do you measure and compare that against others? Using numbers like wins and Cups doesn't do much for me, because is it the coach or is it the players? You'd need film to make that call, but that's where things start to come undone when there's so little of it for the first half of hockey history. And when you do have the film, can you trust that you're analyzing it correctly?

So, I totally agree on seeking out a challenge but I don't think coaches would be a meaningful challenge. Builders would be IMO, and a women's project definitely would be. I don't know if we have enough info to do a women's project at the moment though which is why I had it around the middle of my ballot.

Anyway, since the positional lists won, I agree that goalies should come first. I think there's a greater chance you learn more about the defensemen playing in front of a goalie in a goalie project than you learn about the goalies playing behind the defensemen in a defensemen project, so the goalie project ought to come first - I don't know if that makes sense in text but it does in my head.

My offer to run the project also still stands, so if @Professor What wants to work together then that's totally fine with me. I agree that a rundown from a previous admin on the backend work would be needed.

If people read, they'll discover enormous amounts of information on people who weren't players. I'm just stating facts my friend. The problem isn't quality or quantity of information. It's the TYPE that seemingly bothers people. Words (like contemporary accounts) mean less than numbers. I'd wager significantly less so on this board.

To each their own.

 

[rmartin65]

I can also help with screening lists.

Once we decide on a length for the project (and for the initial lists), I think we should close this thread up and start the sign-up/pre-discussion thread.

 

[bobholly39]

I'm really excited about the prospect of getting started. And although positional lists wasn't my #1, I was confident it would win and I think it's one that will garner top participation, which is great.

Any tweaks or improvements we should make on the process - in regards to votes, lists, etc? And if not - at least posting an in-depth refresher of rules and such would be helpful - since it's been a while since we've done a project.

A few comments/observations/questions I think would be valuable:

1. Sharing preliminary lists. A lot of knowledgeable people here - and some less so. Also - forgetting names is bound to happen. This will definitely be the longest list we've ever done - 80 goalies, or 100? In none of the other projects have 100 goalies ever come up for discussion.

I'll admit - when I participated in the top 100 project it was my first such experience, and I used pre-existing lists as a huge resource. I had 40 goalies, and 60 of each centers/wingers/defenseman to come up with 100 names total. This time - nothing but your own memory/knowledge to use.

So - I think it'll help the project a ton if people post all of their names on the list before we have to submit. This is a bad example - but we don't want...Tuuka Rask left off because half the voters simply forgot about him, and so he comes up for voting in round 20 vs round ~10. I mention this because I know sometimes people tend to be secretive about preliminary lists, which is why I bring it up.

2. 80 goalies/100 prelim list seems a popular number so far - I agree with it. How does that work for each voting round? In round 1 we'd have.....10 names eligible, and top 5 make it? More/less? Any threshold to use where you include 4 or 6 if it's too close, or is that simply to the admin's discretion?

3. I assume we're keeping the standard 1 week per voting round - discussion from mon to fri, and voting over weekend/results posted sunday? That generally works really well.

4. We should define who is eligible, and if there are any restrictions. NHL years count of course - but do you consider everything, even outside NHL? So does Hasek get credit for all of his pre-NHL success? Is there any reason in a goalie ranking to exclude certain leagues (junior, KHL, etc) or to only go back to a certain year of eligibility - or do we just consider everything?

5. Can we add a post-project ranking from each member? I think it would be a pretty cool extra step we've never done. So every voting member submits his updated top 80 goalie list at the end of the project, to show what they've learned/how they've changed their mind. That way as a finished product we'd have:

- Aggregate top ~100 goalie list off of preliminary lists
- Finished top 80 goalie list producted from project
- Agregate top ~100 goalie list from final post-project lists submited by voters


Really excited for this.

 

[bobholly39]

Also - 17 voters is a good number, but I really hope we can grow to closer to 30 when we start project.

If there's anyway to contact some of the old members who don't post here anymore - either via e-mail or facebook, to see if they'd be interrested to participate, that would be great.

Also looking forward to see the 17 voters identified and the sign-up sheet to the project once new thread is created - because there are way more than 17 active members in this forum who would be great additions. I'm hoping we can ask more people to participate.

 

[tony d]

This sounds like fun. I like the idea of an initial list of 100 goalies sent in by voters and a final list of 80.

 

[Michael Farkas]

100 goalies? There's guys on the last top 40 list who weren't even full time starters and/or lost their jobs for extended periods of time...

Who is goalie 98 even? Freakin'...Cam Ward? I'll be gosh-darned if there were 100 goalies that mattered...

 

[Yozhik v tumane]

I guess I had this same thought the last time you were discussing another HoH project…

Why don’t the people aching to have their favorite project — whether it be coaches, builders, intangibles, facial hair — try and get the ball rolling with a project on their own? I get that the big projects with many participants are kind of canonized here and that it would be different if the project consisted of 1-5 participants… It just seems like if you can’t convince people, you’re better off doing it alone (or with the 3-4 others who agree it’s worthwhile).

It wouldn’t be trash for me at least as a glorified HoH lurker to follow a coaches project of smaller scope conducted by 3-4 HoH regulars, or even by IE himself. I also think the discussions following something like that could help springboard a grander project in the future, where complaining about the boards’ priorities doesn’t seem to move the needle as much.

 

[ImporterExporter]

I guess I had this same thought the last time you were discussing another HoH project…

Why don’t the people aching to have their favorite project — whether it be coaches, builders, intangibles, facial hair — try and get the ball rolling with a project on their own? I get that the big projects with many participants are kind of canonized here and that it would be different if the project consisted of 1-5 participants… It just seems like if you can’t convince people, you’re better off doing it alone (or with the 3-4 others who agree it’s worthwhile).

It wouldn’t be trash for me at least as a glorified HoH lurker to follow a coaches project of smaller scope conducted by 3-4 HoH regulars, or even by IE himself. I also think the discussions following something like that could help springboard a grander project in the future, where complaining about the boards’ priorities doesn’t seem to move the needle as much.

I agree with everything you're saying and came to this conclusion once a few pages of this thread materialized.

Although it certainly won't get a spot in the canonized section, I feel fully confident my work will be thoughtful and honestly give the reader much more to chew on. Maybe that inspires a future project. One can only hope.

 

[Professor What]

I'm not trying to discourage a longer list. Honestly, I like the idea of a longer list. But I do want to point out one thing to those who are concerned about locking us into positional lists. If we have a top 60 everything else, and a top 80 goalies of all things, that length of the goalies list is going to stick out like a sore thumb and scream that the other positions be done.

 

[Michael Farkas]

The length of the list can be a detriment. I think this is a shallow position overall. Being a 1st teamer in net can be like being the top LWer in the game - being the best at the most empty position requires context because not all the bests are equal.

There are probably years where the 5th best center in the league is better than the 1st or 2nd LW. That's the danger of binary world, among many.

With goaltending in particular, I think the lack of understanding of the position means we should spend time doing a deeper evaluation and a shorter list.

I don't want to rely on the previous top 40 list and then add a bunch of dumb **** to the end of that. If we want to end up with another 40, or even a 50...fine. But beyond that, I think we're chasing a number.

If it were forwards, I'd be way less hesitant. But I think we can learn a lot about a very blurry part of the game here...but if you water it down by trying to get rubbish goalies on there because they had one great season - say in 1987 or 2010 - I think we're gonna lose out on goalies that actually should be there but were dealt a bad hand team wise...

 

[ImporterExporter]

If you all want a project that isn't going to flame out, please do yourselves a favor and stick to a smaller # of goalies. Trying to stretch it to 50+ players is going to peter out based on trends from the most recent projects.

I have no dog in this fight but Michael Farkas is spot on.

 

[jigglysquishy]

I am partial to the idea of not doing four years of positions in a row.

There are lots of areas to explore. Women and coaches. Alternating between postions and other is neat. Or doing a mid position break of something else.

 

[Dr John Carlson]

I can throw up a preliminary discussion thread tomorrow with a poll on the list size so that we aren't just going back and forth in here. It'd probably be useful to get started on lists to gauge how deep we want to go anyway. I do think 60 is a better number due to interest tending to peter out at the end.

One other important thing: the deadline for list submissions. Start of September is too early, but is the start of October too far away? I was thinking mid to late September would give us a month and change, and I think that's fair. Objections?