Top 20 Leagues?
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I think you've just fully demonstrated how using a stat out of its proper context can be very inaccurate and lead to some absurd results.
NHLe makes sense in context.
1. Comparisons between the same or adjacent seasons among seasoned professionals (as opposed to prospects).
2. Comparable expected or actual usages.
3. Comparable league scoring averages.
4. Full data set.
Some of these things you can adjust for instead of scrapping the stat altogether. But you're not doing that. You're just looking for a raw number. And when taken out of context. That number means nothing. A context where NHLe makes sense. An NHL team is deciding on hiring a player who A. played last season in the KHL. B. Not a prospect, so no extreme skill growth expected. C. Roughly comparable league scoring, this can be adjusted for. D. Similar expected usage, so this player would be expected to play on the powerplay on their new team just like they did on their previous team, if they were to be hired. And expected to play on roughly the same line, similar amount of ice time. This might be helpful deciding who to sign and considering what kind of contracts should be thrown around based on these projections.
There are no players which come straight from the NCAA to the EBEL, basically, who aren't themselves Austrian nationals or dual nations. So every American you're talking about, you're cutting out what is typically some 3-4, and often even more years of playing in other leagues and developing in other leagues. Roughly "someone played NCAA 6 years ago when they were 22, here's how their stats compare now to then." No. That's absurd. If you don't think it's absurd, I frankly can't help you. Chad Kolarik played in the NCAA 12 years ago, but I suppose that his EBEL PPG is lower than his NCAA PPG so EBEL>NCAA? No, that's absolutely absurd. The American who came to the EBEL from the NCAA doesn't even help your case because its Trevor Hamilton, ironically. And what happens is that you say "well I have all these data points." But none of them are good data points. None of these are data points that NHLe was intended to be invoked for, and by invoking it without the proper context, you think you're strengthening your argument, but you're just sullying the good name of the statistics you're using. Players change, they can improve, some even see their games deteriorate, especially at older ages.
You looked up some of the top americans in the EBEL and say "hey, this guy also played in the NCAA, so XYZ." Many counter-examples come to mind. Patrick Divjak, Curtis Loik, Emil Romig are just the ones off the top of my head. But that's the thing. You don't have the full data set. You just look up a couple names which are at the top of the scoring list and which you expect to fit into the bill. And there are some, but there are also other cases you're unaware of.
I don't think I'm going to convince you, but I honestly don't think you're going to convince anyone else. Which, if you want to stand firm, that's fine. You do you, in this regard.
I literally did the analysis on a piece of paper while on lunch break at work. I'm not going to waste countless hours on a scientifically rigid study on such a trivial matter.
League scoring averages are a minor variable and usage rates average out when discussing hundreds of players. It's really not that important.
And, frankly, you're exaggerating things in an intellectually dishonest way. 12 years between NCAA and EBEL? It is in no way representative of your average EBEL import and you know it.
Your best argument is that NCAA is not comparable to any other league due to the nature of collegiate hockey. OK, sure. That is partially true and there are limitations here, obviously, due to differences in age, usage rates (seniors get way more playing time) and the like.
But no one here has provided a valid argument in favor of EBEL being the better league.
We can go the other way around and compare bottom 6 forwards of all the EBEL teams. They are full of mediocre Austrian players with plenty of experience in AlpsHL. Plenty of Latvians have played in AlpsHL and the scoring rate is very similar between Latvia and AlpsHL. We have reference points there. Plenty of Latvians are playing in NCAA.
The results will prove my point once again. Those bottom 6 guys would be bad NCAA I players if they would even make NCAA I.
Anyways, if you don't like my arguments, you can stop dissecting them and start providing some of your own.
League scoring averages are a minor variable and usage rates average out when discussing hundreds of players. It's really not that important.
And, frankly, you're exaggerating things in an intellectually dishonest way. 12 years between NCAA and EBEL? It is in no way representative of your average EBEL import and you know it.
Your best argument is that NCAA is not comparable to any other league due to the nature of collegiate hockey. OK, sure. That is partially true and there are limitations here, obviously, due to differences in age, usage rates (seniors get way more playing time) and the like.
But no one here has provided a valid argument in favor of EBEL being the better league.
We can go the other way around and compare bottom 6 forwards of all the EBEL teams. They are full of mediocre Austrian players with plenty of experience in AlpsHL. Plenty of Latvians have played in AlpsHL and the scoring rate is very similar between Latvia and AlpsHL. We have reference points there. Plenty of Latvians are playing in NCAA.
The results will prove my point once again. Those bottom 6 guys would be bad NCAA I players if they would even make NCAA I.
Anyways, if you don't like my arguments, you can stop dissecting them and start providing some of your own.
How does the EBEL compare to the ECHL?
I attend NCAA games regularly and catch an ECHL game every now and then and there's no chance a typical NCAA team beats a ECHL one. There's a noticeable difference in strength and maturity between the players in each league.
Don't forget the NCAA contains 60 teams. That's a boatload of players, the vast majority of whom only have the upside to be a ECHL player if they reach full potential.
SoundAndFury
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Those are pretty much the points we were making... EBEL is slightly better than the ECHL, top teams are mostly recruiting players from the AHL.
The disparity between players in ECHL is wayy smaller than in NCAA and the overall quality is higher as well, because clearly they are all minor pro players receiving a salary.
Bottom line players in NCAA wouldn't cut it. I've seen NCAA games as well, the speed and intensity at times makes it unwatchable. There are some really bad teams in NCAA. One of the Alaska ones has like 5 or 6 Latvian players on it and some of them barely were able to keep up in NAHL.
ECHL is a better league.
You keep on banging that AHL drum, but I already told you that only 1/5 of players in EBEL have any sort of experience in that league, and that's including guys with 2 or 3 games under their belt.
That equates to 5 players per team. The top line is ex-AHL and they only recorded 0.34 PPG while playing there. That's the reality.
Do you have any idea how many ECHL guys have played in the AHL? A slight majority.
There is no way in hell EBEL is better than ECHL.
And please don't tell me these Austrian 4th liners with almost no points would be able to play in ECHL.
This guy is a really good example: Brian Lebler at eliteprospects.com A little over 0.50 ppg in NCAA in his senior year, no chance in AHL, pretty bad in ECHL and a PPG guy in EBEL immediately.
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Conspiracy Theorist
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SoundAndFury
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Look at imports of teams like Salzburg, Klagenfurt, Vienna. Seriously. Let's look at Salzburg: Joslin, Mikkelson, Regner, Brickley, Holloway, Hughes, Kolarik. And guys like these, most of whom had one leg in the NHL at some point, don't make the league better than ECHL? Guys like Haugen, Petersen, Ticar, Zapolski, Starkbaum, Flood, Kichton, Holzapfel, Locke.. Who are easily KHL/AHL level players, most of whom have played in the KHL or SHL, they don't make the league better than ECHL? I don't know if you are so clueless or just want to push your agenda so much.
Salzburg made the CHL semis last year for all it's worth, I suppose ECHL team could have done that too.
You are out of your depth.
And yes, worse teams have worse players. But that applies to every frikin league in the world. Be it KHL, or ECHL, or NCAA.
But I guess you once again have your reasons like that time you tried to prove Girgensons should win Calder with a plethora of stats and numbers and nobody could prove otherwise no matter how stupid it was.
What? I'm pretty sure you're confusing me with someone else regarding Girgensons. I have been saying that he's not that good for years on these boards and in Latvia.
He is a really good puck possession guy. He kills the puck. But that's it. He's a borderline NHL player.
And you keep bringing up the top few % of EBEL and claiming they are representative of average skill. Is it really not painfully obvious to you that a dominating team with the most and best foreign imports is not indicative of the averaqe quality of EBEL?
SKA and Dinamo Riga have an equal say in determining how good of a league the KHL is. A bunch of SKA players could play at the NHL, while a bunch of Riga players couldn't even cut it at the ECHL.
I think it's a pretty simple concept to understand. Somehow you painstakingly keep bringing up EBEL's best players to prove a point about average league level.
All of these teams are injected with a few leading players who do have AHL experience. But they are only a fraction of the entire roster. How hard it can be to understand that?
Alps Hockey League, Get-ligaen, EIHL and Metal Ligaen over Tisportliga. Are you kidding?
This is truly hilarious. Because I remember this exact conversation from like 3 or 4 years ago. You kept calling Lebler an "ECHL" guy. Ok. Let's play that game then. Lebler had .25 PPG in the ECHL. Then he went .53 PPG in the DEL. So the DEL is a weaker league than the ECHL, naturally. There's no other plausible explanation.
Even your use of the word "immediately", for the english language is just a ridiculous use. Because "immediately" is never defined as "the second season removed". There are more ludicrous examples. Peter Schneider had .39 PPG in the NCAA in his senior year. Now he has .63 PPG in the NLA. He also had .57 PPG in the ECHL in 2015-16. If we keep under the assumption that players don't change, and just keeping using our "NHLe" brains and cutting out entire years as we see fit then clearly NCAA>NLA. And also, ECHL>NLA. Clearly. No other possible explanation. Or take Siim Liivik. Siim Liivik scored a higher PPG in the SHL and Liiga than in the EBEL. So Siim Liivik proves that the EBEL is a higher league than the SHL and Liiga, lol.
Let's keep going, why not? Lauris Darzins. 2 points in Liiga in 13 games. He was a "bad Liiga guy", and then "immediately" after he became a top KHL guy. No, we don't allow for the consideration of other factors like usage, or how he could have improved, or performance in different systems. It's just objectively true that Liiga>KHL and Czech Extraleague>KHL. We could keep doing this for days. Roberts Bukarts shows that the Belorussian Extraleague > Czech Extraleague. Depending on which years you took you could make Ronalds Kenins out to show that the AHL>NHL, that AHL>NLA. Rodrigo Abols had a higher PPG in the SHL than in the AHL so clearly AHL > SHL. There are endless fun combinations we can make if we just play pick'em with the yearly stats for each different player and look for the combinations that demonstrate our ambitions the best.
Years later, I'm telling you man. You need to get over Brian Lebler. He's a good player. Not a great player, but he earned his DEL gig fair and square, and he didn't earn it by playing the same way he did in 2009. He would have returned to the DEL but he was outbid by a 600k euro contract back at Linz. So the constant hearkening back to stats from 2009, 2010, they can just about stop.
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SoundAndFury
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Some people have long memories:
When asked to elaborate:
Orginal conversation, the rest of it: Olympics: - 2014 — Latvia Roster Discussion (Released, post #1)
SoundAndFury
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And this is exactly THE reason why EBEL and ECHL are close but at the same time, not even close.
kudla
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kudla
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That's a lot of words about a whole lot of nothing. I don't care about Lebler or any individual player. You clearly don't understand the concept of NHLe or point equivalency in general.
The usage rate average out when all players are analyzed together. We're talking about the average stats of dozens or even 100+ players here, lol.
EBEL is clearly worse than ECHL. I understand that you're really invested in Austrian hockey, but try to turn off your cognitive biases for a second.
OK, so you're talking about his rookie season. In the first half of his rookie season he was one of the most productive rookies in the league, behind McKinnon. 14 points in 37 games or something like that. Local Buffalo fans thought they had a future 2nd or 3rd line C on their hands and people were mentioning the Calder trophy.
At no point did I ever believe that he would actually become the rookie of the year, the point was that he was amongst the best rookies (which he was in December), and still a junior player. Meaning lots of upside.
And the context of that discussion was Latvian chances in the Sochi Olympics. I claimed we had a very talented lineup, you claimed we were shit and didn't stand a chance.
May I remind you that we almost drew Canada in the quarter finals in Sochi and that Canadians were sweating buckets when it was 1-1?
Context matters.
Do you know how ridiculous your methodology is? I could take your exact method and prove that the OHL was a stronger league when one player was a 16 year old than the same OHL when the same player in the same league was a 19 year old. I could take the entire OHL at age 16 and then the entire OHL at 19, and have hundreds of data points, say "that causes all variables to average out" and prove conclusively that the OHL was weaker in say 2016 than in 2019. You're not doing point equivalency. You're not doing NHLe, which is a method specifically for projecting NHL performance by pitting leagues against a 3rd neutral standard league, the NHL. You're making a joke. You're saying "some player at X time had Y PPG, and the same player at A time had B ppg in a different league, therefore XYZ conclusion." And then you try to hide behind saying "you have a cognitive bias." No. You have a ridiculous method.
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SoundAndFury
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Yes, I was talking about the rookie season, obviously Calder is the trophy given to the rookie of the year.
And yet anyone with a pair of eyeballs knew how ridiculous it was and how absolutely bonkers was to even mention he has more P/60 than Ovechkin, even if that's true. Just like in this case. You can say it's all hindsight but it isn't, you can see from the reaction of ALL the other people in the thread back then. Just like in this case, you are arguing against absolutely everyone. Even with people who visit NCAA/ECHL games regularly and definitely have no interest in pumping EBEL up.
You are prepared to deflect reasoning dictated by both common sense, eye test and the stats you don't like in favor of a couple selected stats you do like and form your agenda. None of the factors we mentioned seemed to matter to you. Salary level, sporting achievements of EBEL teams or dozens of clearly very high-level players playing there, none of that matters to you because NHLe. God help you.
I looked up 65 EBEL players and cross-referenced their productivity between their time in EBEL and AHL. NHLe is a reference point. The NHLe for AHL has the most data points out of all the leagues on the planet, so there is no better reference point imaginable.
Your comparisons of 16 year old and 19 year old OHL players are infantile, absurd and have absolutely nothing to do with anything.
The difference between a 16 year old and a 19 year old is huge.
The difference between a 20 year old, a 25 year old and a 30 year old is negligible.
barabas21
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I have always wondered how the Senior teams here in Saskatchewan would do in some of the lower level European leagues. Senior teams are littered with ex Junior, semi-pro and European league players. Not to mention they pay some players some good cash to play part time. Years ago the team I was on lost to Rosetown in the Provincial finals. That Rosetown team went on to the Allen Cup, their goalie was Kelly Guard and there were rumors that they were paying him nine hundo per game.
So you took the AHLe of EBEL players and then applied the NHLe of the given value? Does that sound even to you like great analysis? The NHLe is designed for one thing. It's designed to predict prospect performance in the NHL. It's tailored to that end. Take the OHL NHLe for example. It's about .3. An OHL player who scored 30 points in 60 games should score 13 points in the NHL. We both know that wouldn't happen. Ever. But the number takes into account players like say Kirby Dach, who go straight from the CHL to the NHL, so it's skewed towards the improvement curves of these higher end prospects. A 19 year old with .5 PPG would not even get 13 points in the NHL, the body of evidence suggests they likely wouldn't even get that many points in the AHL. But that's fine. Because that highlights the purpose of NHLe. NHLe is meant to project NHL prospects and their performance in the NHL. NHLe is a model meant to predict the performance of a guy like Kirby Dach, or a guy like Pierre Luc Dubois. It's not meant to predict the performance of just any 19 year old in the CHL. Furthermore, you're not doing principled statistical work. You haven't, to this point, mentioned the EBEL NHLe value. You haven't mentioned the ECHL NHLe value, and you haven't mentioned any of the NHLe values of the various D1 Conferences. Now you say you took the AHLe (more like the EBELe actually) of 65 players, with year skipping, with zero regards for the modalities surrounding such statistics, and you came up with a number that you're not providing. Neither have you mentioned the ECHL AHLe or the NCAA AHLe. So you say you're using statistics but the one thing you haven't provided is statistics. That's not principled application of statistics.
Actually, it's extremely pertinent and has many of the relevant modalities. Your only argument against is basically assertion, which can be dismissed by hitchen's razor. A 19 year old is more likely to receive prominent usage, as is a paid import who is both a financial asset and takes up points in the point cap system. A 16 year old is less likely to receive prominent usage, as is a rookie in say the ECHL, or an unpaid NCAA player who isn't an asset. Individuals exceptions may exist but with large numbers these truths will bear themselves out. The 19 year old and the paid asset will have more player time over a large sample than the 16 year old and the rookie. The same is true of improvement. You have to realize that no one comes straight from the NCAA to the EBEL. You obviously don't care because you have no problems with year skipping. The ones who come are selected by their drastic improvements. Players who have comes straight from the NCAA to the EBEL have typically not done well. The players who are in the NCAA at some point and eventually make it to the EBEL are those who show drastic improvements in the ECHL and/or the AHL or other European leagues such that they are hired as imports. That's a systematic bias. So even if it was the case that the improvement level for a player in the AHL or ECHL at a certain age was generally not very high, we are selecting in this case specifically players who did improve a lot, such that they went from having X stats in the NCAA to dominating the ECHL or doing well enough in the AHL. So this situation is actually far more like a 16 year old and a 19 year old in the OHL than even say a 26 year old and a 27 year old going from the KHL to the NHL, a more typical NHLe context.
Again, you just assert things, no evidence offered or required. The difference even between a 20 year old and a 23 year old is huge, much less a 25 year old. Even an excellent 20 year old will likely do better at 21, and then at 22, etc, until they reach a scoring plateau. So you could run the exact same experiment and find that the AHL was a stronger league when a kid is 20 than when he is 22. Again, exceptions exist. Some players regress. But over a large sample, the older versions of the same players will score more, and by your "model", the league will be proven weaker. And again, as with any import hiring, there is an intentional selection factor built in hiring players who improve the most. Just like KHL imports but to a lower scale, the players are hired most who show the most improvement to the point that they are strong candidates for hire. It would be so incredibly disingenuous if I took a player like Brian O'Neill and referenced his 2012-13 totals in the AHL and his KHL totals and said "the difference between a 20 year old, a 25 year old, and a 30 year old is negligible, so the AHL is stronger than the KHL." No it's not. Precisely because KHL teams hired him BECAUSE he improved. They hired him BECAUSE he was not the same player at 20 that he was at 25 or 30. If he had remained the same player that he was in 2012, they never would have hired him. The same is true of the EBEL. The EBEL hires NCAA players who played pro and improved in professional play such that they proved that they were capable of being valuable assets in the EBEL. So even if the general body of 20-25-30 year olds do not improve, which is not the case, but even if we granted this non-truth, it is not true of the sample size in question. Which is why we do not skip years. And by the way, NHLe statisticians do not skip years either. No NHL statistician is going over their team's prospect's NHLes from 3 years ago. They're crunching the recent numbers. Because only the most recent numbers reflect the improvement that has or has not taken place over time.
Literally no one in this thread has provided a single valid argument in favor or EBEL being a better league.
Money plays no role in this. 0. ECHL has way more higher caliber players. It's only a matter of looking it up, it takes about a minute and has nothing to do with NHLe, it's just obvious. You're the only one claiming otherwise.
Kabidjan hasn't provided a single counter-point, both of you are just dissecting (or trying to) what I've said earlier.
What makes EBEL a better league? The floor is yours. Money has nothing to do with skill. ECHL has more ex-AHL/NHL guys. The leading team beating some other European teams is meaningless. It doesn't gauge the level of your average EBEL player in any way, shape or form.
