Prospect Info: Welcome to Montréal, Jesperi Kotkaniemi (1st round pick, 3OA 2018 - signed ELC)

[Saxon]

And many people THINK a whole bunch of **** about kotkaniemi, and think a whole bunch of stuff for svechnikov, and think a whole bunch of stuff for every prospect until the end of time

we wont know anything until they get on the ice bud. and even then it will take time

but id love for people to stop bringing up Zadina's hypothetical "loads of goals" as if they have already happened or as if they are an absolute guarantee at the NHL level

Zadina has his fair share of concerns... Can't win board battles in the Q, scores from the same area most of the time, isn't good defensively, doesn't have good top end speed, didn't seem to continue an upward progression all year. He's a fantastic prospect no doubt but he's very overhyped because most people just watch the WJHC, and see that he feasted on Junior players. I actually would take Whalstrom ahead of him, but admittedly very close.

 

[Habs Halifax]

Hughes and Kotkaniemi were my picks at three.

I like Hughes upside but I worry about his size. My top 3 were Kotkaniemi, Dobson, and Zadina. I love that we picked Kotkaniemi. I had Hughes, Wahlstrom, Boqvist, Bouchard a tier behind them.

Hughes has tons of offensive ability but he can be targeted in his own end. This concerns me but I agree with your upside though

 

[Garbageyuk]

I know Zadina very well. I also saw how he looks when he goes up against a more physical team with a mature defense. He can be contained and he needs a solid center. Somppi was hurt for the Mooseheads in the playoffs and Zadina was limited. The Mooseheads lost 4 straight to the Islanders and Zadina was contained. Heck, Parent played better than Zadina when there was less time and space and more competition.

There is a big difference in skating between Zadina and Hischer. Hischer made the NHL as a 18 year old cause his skating is very very good. Zadina has good edge work but his skating is not as good. I don't think it's fair to crown Zadina and limit Kotkaniemi at this stage. There is also a reason why Zadina slipped a bit. He is a goal scoring winger with play making ability but he is not going to drive the play. His value is on the PP. Kotkaniemi has more upside. He can play on the PP, score goals with his shot, and he can also drive the play 5/5.

Funny you say that because a lot of scouts from what I've seen say he is a winger that does just that - that's supposed to be the main intrigue of his game along with his goal-scoring. I think the deficiencies he does have come from his rawness physically. He seems to be very weak and underdeveloped physically. If he is able to become stronger and faster he will be a scary player. He has a good enough frame.

 

[Saxon]

I like Hughes upside but I worry about his size. My top 3 were Kotkaniemi, Dobson, and Zadina. I love that we picked Kotkaniemi. I had Hughes, Wahlstrom, Boqvist, Bouchard a tier behind them.

All I could picture was a Hughes Weber pairing....

 

[Habs Halifax]

Funny you say that because a lot of scouts from what I've seen say he is a winger that does just that - that's supposed to be the main intrigue of his game along with his goal-scoring. I think the deficiencies he does have come from his rawness physically. He seems to be very weak and underdeveloped physically. If he is able to become stronger and faster he will be a scary player. He has a good enough frame.

Fair but both applies to each player equally. So if you like Zadina's upside, you should equally like Kotkaniemi's. And Kotkaniemi is a true center

 

[Garbageyuk]

Kohtkaniemi was anything but a save pick. He’s as risky as they come. Playing it save would have been taking Zadina, Tkachuk or one of the defenceman. Usually I’d say Bergevin and the scouting staff were complete fools to take a player like this with a #3 pick due to he didn’t enter top 10 consideration until later last season. But we really had no choice but to get one of the better centers in this draft with how bad the depth is/was at all levels of this organization for years. And to be honest, watching certain players drop and get picked all over the place the first 12 picks tells you that most teams had a lot of trouble separating everyone after the first 2.

This was a tough draft to evaluate outside of Svech and Dahlin, so I don't blame them too much for the pick I guess. Tbh, I wasn't too excited about anyone outside the top-2. Not like other years. But I still would have preferred some of the other prospects.

 

[Habs Halifax]

All I could picture was a Hughes Weber pairing....

About half way point of the year, I was looking at the possibility of Hughes and Weber. But more with a 5-10 pick. As the season went along, I saw Hughes go up and down in rankings. I'm not sold on size don't matter in the NHL anymore. I don't mind having a few guys up front with lack of size but I am concerned with Mete in our own end. Look at the Caps... tons of players with skill, skating, AND SIZE. They were hard to beat cause they knew how to score and it was hard to take the puck away from them along the boards at both ends of the ice. They got rid of Alzner, cause he had no skill and he is not a good skater. They knew their weakness.

 

[Garbageyuk]

Fair but both applies to each player equally. So if you like Zadina's upside, you should equally like Kotkaniemi's. And Kotkaniemi is a true center

If that were true, then scouts wouldn't have lists.

 

[StanleyCH25]

That's not at all what the data is saying, actually. His icetime will increase, but it's actually surprising that you managed to miss the point that badly: the data is talking about what he'll do with the ice-time he's given, not that he'll produce more with more ice-time (duh). The data is a rate, and thus represents an average taken over many samples to begin with. Second, to establish the change in rate, you need not only 18 year olds who are playing in Liiga, they need to have played their 17 year old season in Liiga as well. That means there just aren't that many samples. That doesn't mean you can't do any inference, though.

A couple notes: not all inference tasks are the same. I'm not training a convolutive deep neural network to classify images, I'm estimating a single real valued parameter from a set of data in which almost everyone is between 0 and 1. There's an important concept to understand about data analysis before you go whipping your cock out over sample size: dimensionality. If your data exists in a small subset of all possible data, you can do surprising things with it. For example, there's such a thing as ''1 bit'' inference. In this case, we have almost the smallest imaginable dimensionality (a point). That means the average should converge very quickly and that the projected error is, moreover, relatively small. Let's say that Jesperi progresses only as much as Roope Hintz (almost no progression at all). His EVP estimate becomes 26. If he progresses as much as Tammela (one of the largest progressions) it becomes 34. Whooooaaaa bro I was so far off I should've used more samples bro! What would be different if I had a thousand samples? Are you saying that with more samples, I could totally eliminate being a handful of points off either way?

These are just the comparables that exist. It's worth noting that, of the 8 comparables that I found, all except for one progressed between seasons, and 5 recent examples exceeded the rate that I proposed for Jesperi. Moreover, the actual projected rate for Jesperi isn't wildly out of proportion. I can find many examples of players who produced at that rate at even strength this year. And finally, there's a physical explanation for the data. 18 year old players in their second year do better than 17 year old players in their first year because of ****ing course they do.

Sorry.. I didn't miss the point of the fact that he'll become more productive with the icetime he'll get but my reply did omit that fact and I put the emphasis on just the linearity between his icetime and production. You're completely right about that and I'll need to pay more attention to my responses in the future.

I also think that saying his progression should be between 26 and 34 pts is a lot more valid than just saying 30.

Your 30 number comes from using the average progression and 16mins of TOI at even strength. How many players hit a progression of .55 to .65? none. How many hit a progression of .5 to .7? One out of eight. How many hit a progression of .3 to .9? Two out of eight. It seems like using .5802 to be fairly arbitrary as only 25% of the players from your data hit a range between .3 and .9.

My guess is that progression number you should be using is technically higher than you project by using the average but as there are outliers in the data, your number is coming up lower than it should.

Also, where does the 16mins TOI at even strength come from? Is that the average icetime for 2nd year forwards in Liiga? If so, does that icetime have much variance? If it's the average icetime with little variance, then great!

Otherwise, what is the icetime variance for 2nd year forwards? If it's high, then the 16 mins number has very little value as well. Seeing as your stats classes are probably a lot fresher in your mind than my own, you can hopefully correct me where I'm wrong but I thought you needed approximately 80% probability for the number you provided in order for it to hold any value.

So if 80% of players get between 15 and 17 mins of even strength TOI, and 80% of players have a progression between .5 to .7 (I made this range up) then you'd be giving out Jesperi's pt progression for his 2nd year to be between 27 and 33 pts. However, seeing how most players seem to progress closer to .7 to .9 in D+1 then the range jumps to 29 to 36 pts.

Now take that same type of calculation for his PP TOI and add that range on top of his EV TOI pt range and you end up with a number that you can reasonably expect him to hit and it probably gives you a decent floor and ceiling to use which is a lot more plausible to look at than just the straight number you gave out.

Again.. I'm not taking away from what you did.. it's a very good start. It just didn't seem too sound to me as the numbers you used seemed to have high variance within the data.

The tone in my last post probably came out as 'cock whipping' as you put it but that wasn't my intention. I just feel like the data doesn't seem very sound to me. It feels misleading but I could be very wrong.

I'd be curious to see what happens if you used your same method for another league. How likely would you be to have a sound projection by using that approach? My personal guess is that it wouldn't be very likely but I don't have the time to check on it and I wouldn't expect you to do it either.

 

[Garbageyuk]

About half way point of the year, I was looking at the possibility of Hughes and Weber. But more with a 5-10 pick. As the season went along, I saw Hughes go up and down in rankings. I'm not sold on size don't matter in the NHL anymore. I don't mind having a few guys up front with lack of size but I am concerned with Mete in our own end. Look at the Caps... tons of players with skill, skating, AND SIZE. They were hard to beat cause they knew how to score and it was hard to take the puck away from them along the boards at both ends of the ice. They got rid of Alzner, cause he had no skill and he is not a good skater. They knew their weakness.

I think Hughes will have a tough time in the playoffs, not just because of his size - he seems too 'nice'. Things get nasty in the playoffs, which usually isn't good for small, fancy-skating defenseman. Especially if they are a top producer. He will be targeted.

 

[Habs Halifax]

Kohtkaniemi was anything but a save pick. He’s as risky as they come. Playing it save would have been taking Zadina, Tkachuk or one of the defenceman. Usually I’d say Bergevin and the scouting staff were complete fools to take a player like this with a #3 pick due to he didn’t enter top 10 consideration until later last season. But we really had no choice but to get one of the better centers in this draft with how bad the depth is/was at all levels of this organization for years. And to be honest, watching certain players drop and get picked all over the place the first 12 picks tells you that most teams had a lot of trouble separating everyone after the first 2.

PLD, Heiskanen, Pettersson, Drai were all not safe picks. If you want the potential #1C, you got to draft them. We won't get too many top 3 picks in any draft year. Why? Well look at how bad our year was last year and we had to win the lottery to get the 3rd pick. I'd love to get Hughes next year but finishing in the bottom 5 and winning the lottery is not easy.

So... Kotkaniemi fit big time. Not a safe pick for sure but what are the risks? He turns into a 2nd line center? It's possible he turns into a bottom 2 center but were not talking about DLR and McCarron type prospect here. This kid has skill, has size, and is a true center. We made the smart pick

 

[Redux91]

Sorry.. I didn't miss the point of the fact that he'll become more productive with the icetime he'll get but my reply did omit that fact and I put the emphasis on just the linearity between his icetime and production. You're completely right about that and I'll need to pay more attention to my responses in the future.

I also think that saying his progression should be between 26 and 34 pts is a lot more valid than just saying 30.

Your 30 number comes from using the average progression and 16mins of TOI at even strength. How many players hit a progression of .55 to .65? none. How many hit a progression of .5 to .7? One out of eight. How many hit a progression of .3 to .9? Two out of eight. It seems like using .5802 to be fairly arbitrary as only 25% of the players from your data hit a range between .3 and .9.

My guess is that progression number you should be using is technically higher than you project by using the average but as there are outliers in the data, your number is coming up lower than it should.

Also, where does the 16mins TOI at even strength come from? Is that the average icetime for 2nd year forwards in Liiga? If so, does that icetime have much variance? If it's the average icetime with little variance, then great!

Otherwise, what is the icetime variance for 2nd year forwards? If it's high, then the 16 mins number has very little value as well. Seeing as your stats classes are probably a lot fresher in your mind than my own, you can hopefully correct me where I'm wrong but I thought you needed approximately 80% probability for the number you provided in order for it to hold any value.

So if 80% of players get between 15 and 17 mins of even strength TOI, and 80% of players have a progression between .5 to .7 (I made this range up) then you'd be giving out Jesperi's pt progression for his 2nd year to be between 27 and 33 pts. However, seeing how most players seem to progress closer to .7 to .9 in D+1 then the range jumps to 29 to 36 pts.

Now take that same type of calculation for his PP TOI and add that range on top of his EV TOI pt range and you end up with a number that you can reasonably expect him to hit and it probably gives you a decent floor and ceiling to use which is a lot more plausible to look at than just the straight number you gave out.

Again.. I'm not taking away from what you did.. it's a very good start. It just didn't seem to sound to me as the numbers you used seemed to have high variance within the data.

The tone in my last post probably came out as 'cock whipping' as you put it but that wasn't my intention. I just feel like the data doesn't seem very sound to me. It feels misleading but I could be very wrong.

I'd be curious to see what happens if you used your same method for another league. How likely would you be to have a sound projection by using that approach? My personal guess is that it wouldn't be very likely but I don't have the time to check on it and I wouldn't expect you to do it either.

Lol, are you Bill Barnwell..?

 

[Habs Halifax]

If that were true, then scouts wouldn't have lists.

Not sure I understand. McKenzie's rankings is based on scouts opinions. He had Zadina 4th and Kotkaniemi 5th. Both have lots of upside and one is a center while the other is a winger and one is 8 or 9 months younger vs the other.

 

[Garbageyuk]

Zadina has his fair share of concerns... Can't win board battles in the Q, scores from the same area most of the time, isn't good defensively, doesn't have good top end speed, didn't seem to continue an upward progression all year. He's a fantastic prospect no doubt but he's very overhyped because most people just watch the WJHC, and see that he feasted on Junior players. I actually would take Whalstrom ahead of him, but admittedly very close.

I've heard repeatedly the exact opposite: that he generates his own chances and scores from everywhere. Funny, your description makes me think of Pacioretty.

 

[NotProkofievian]

Sorry.. I didn't miss the point of the fact that he'll become more productive with the icetime he'll get but my reply did omit that fact and I put the emphasis on just the linearity between his icetime and production. You're completely right about that and I'll need to pay more attention to my responses in the future.

I also think that saying his progression should be between 26 and 34 pts is a lot more valid than just saying 30.

Your 30 number comes from using the average progression and 16mins of TOI at even strength. How many players hit a progression of .55 to .65? none. How many hit a progression of .5 to .7? One out of eight. How many hit a progression of .3 to .9? Two out of eight. It seems like using .5802 to be fairly arbitrary as only 25% of the players from your data hit a range between .3 and .9.

My guess is that progression number you should be using is technically higher than you project by using the average but as there are outliers in the data, your number is coming up lower than it should.

Also, where does the 16mins TOI at even strength come from? Is that the average icetime for 2nd year forwards in Liiga? If so, does that icetime have much variance? If it's the average icetime with little variance, then great!

Otherwise, what is the icetime variance for 2nd year forwards? If it's high, then the 16 mins number has very little value as well. Seeing as your stats classes are probably a lot fresher in your mind than my own, you can hopefully correct me where I'm wrong but I thought you needed approximately 80% probability for the number you provided in order for it to hold any value.

So if 80% of players get between 15 and 17 mins of even strength TOI, and 80% of players have a progression between .5 to .7 (I made this range up) then you'd be giving out Jesperi's pt progression for his 2nd year to be between 27 and 33 pts. However, seeing how most players seem to progress closer to .7 to .9 in D+1 then the range jumps to 29 to 36 pts.

Now take that same type of calculation for his PP TOI and add that range on top of his EV TOI pt range and you end up with a number that you can reasonably expect him to hit and it probably gives you a decent floor and ceiling to use which is a lot more plausible to look at than just the straight number you gave out.

Again.. I'm not taking away from what you did.. it's a very good start. It just didn't seem to sound to me as the numbers you used seemed to have high variance within the data.

The tone in my last post probably came out as 'cock whipping' as you put it but that wasn't my intention. I just feel like the data doesn't seem very sound to me. It feels misleading but I could be very wrong.

I'd be curious to see what happens if you used your same method for another league. How likely would you be to have a sound projection by using that approach? My personal guess is that it wouldn't be very likely but I don't have the time to check on it and I wouldn't expect you to do it either.

Thanks for de-escalating after my last admittedly very snarky post. I'll write you a longer response later this evening with some more data.

Another way to do the projection is to analyze the deciles of D+1 players in Liiga and make the assumption that Jesperi will stay in his decile. There should be a lot more of them.

 

[montreal]

I'm getting a stronger feeling that Kotkaniemi will become a good one for the habs. I've only watched a few games, shift by shift videos and highlights, so take this lil scouting report for what it's worth haha.

well said, agree with all your points as I'm just starting to get a bit of a feel for him having never seen him before the draft outside a clip or two and I didn't follow much of what was said about him around here and I don't read any draft guides. I was watching him at the U-18's as a 16 year old and was shocked at how well he moved, his speed seems fine as you pointed out. I was also very impressed with his shot as well. No wonder he had one of the better seasons in liiga for a 17 year old. Very much looking forward to seeing what he does next year and beyond.

 

[NotProkofievian]

Sorry.. I didn't miss the point of the fact that he'll become more productive with the icetime he'll get but my reply did omit that fact and I put the emphasis on just the linearity between his icetime and production. You're completely right about that and I'll need to pay more attention to my responses in the future.

I also think that saying his progression should be between 26 and 34 pts is a lot more valid than just saying 30.

This is why I gave a range for the overall points production. Specifically, it's a bigger deal for PP production than even strength because PP numbers can be so high, while EV numbers are rather compressed. To use an example with the NHL, Connor McDavid is an outlier among outliers with his advanced stats. But even his EVP/60 is 3.5. With the man advantage it's possible to double or triple other people's rates. Taylor Hall, for example, had a 5v4 P/60 of 10. No less a player than Ovechkin was 5.39 this year. Over fairly large sample sizes, which both of those numbers represent, you can get 10s of points of difference. Hall had 6 more points in 120 minutes less PP ice-time, to be concrete.

Worse still is the fact that, year to year, 5v4 P/60 is pretty volatile. Last year Taylor Hall had 4.55. Nicklas Backstrom had 5.46 this year and 8.37 last year. It really is best to give a range, or perhaps quartiles, since the output can be so vastly different. Like I said, ''a bit of a disappointment'' to ''the next Elias Pettersson.''

Your 30 number comes from using the average progression and 16mins of TOI at even strength. How many players hit a progression of .55 to .65? none. How many hit a progression of .5 to .7? One out of eight. How many hit a progression of .3 to .9? Two out of eight. It seems like using .5802 to be fairly arbitrary as only 25% of the players from your data hit a range between .3 and .9.

My guess is that progression number you should be using is technically higher than you project by using the average but as there are outliers in the data, your number is coming up lower than it should.

There's one point that I want to make right away, and it's that we're not picking players out of a hat. We have a prior. This is relevant for both this point and the ice time point. Why this is relevant is because we know the player and his EV production this year. If a player didn't produce at all as a 17 year old, it's likely that his change will be larger than if he had played very well because, as we discussed, the range of possible EVP/60 is rather compressed. For example, it just wouldn't be reasonable to project Vesalainen's progression for Jesperi as that would have him outproducing Antti Suomela. Whereas for Vesalainen it was the difference between being awful and being reasonably productive. To take it further, it's quite possible for a young kid to get a cup of coffee in Liiga and produce nothing, while next year he produces fairly a fairly pedestrian 1.2 EVP/60. There's a real difference between going from an average top 6 player to the league leader, and a struggling kid to a competent bottom 6er.

The danger here, to me, is clearly overestimation.

Also, where does the 16mins TOI at even strength come from? Is that the average icetime for 2nd year forwards in Liiga? If so, does that icetime have much variance? If it's the average icetime with little variance, then great!

Otherwise, what is the icetime variance for 2nd year forwards? If it's high, then the 16 mins number has very little value as well. Seeing as your stats classes are probably a lot fresher in your mind than my own, you can hopefully correct me where I'm wrong but I thought you needed approximately 80% probability for the number you provided in order for it to hold any value.

So if 80% of players get between 15 and 17 mins of even strength TOI, and 80% of players have a progression between .5 to .7 (I made this range up) then you'd be giving out Jesperi's pt progression for his 2nd year to be between 27 and 33 pts. However, seeing how most players seem to progress closer to .7 to .9 in D+1 then the range jumps to 29 to 36 pts.

I estimated 16 minutes of even strength ice time based on Jesperi's team conditions. They are losing their top line center from last year, and that's about what he played. Again, if we were picking players out of a hat, we'd do exactly as you say, but we have a prior. We know what roles are up for grabs and who is a candidate to fill them.

Now take that same type of calculation for his PP TOI and add that range on top of his EV TOI pt range and you end up with a number that you can reasonably expect him to hit and it probably gives you a decent floor and ceiling to use which is a lot more plausible to look at than just the straight number you gave out.

Again.. I'm not taking away from what you did.. it's a very good start. It just didn't seem to sound to me as the numbers you used seemed to have high variance within the data.

I elucidated the problem that I have with projecting PP TOI exactly earlier.

The tone in my last post probably came out as 'cock whipping' as you put it but that wasn't my intention. I just feel like the data doesn't seem very sound to me. It feels misleading but I could be very wrong.

I'd be curious to see what happens if you used your same method for another league. How likely would you be to have a sound projection by using that approach? My personal guess is that it wouldn't be very likely but I don't have the time to check on it and I wouldn't expect you to do it either.

The biggest problem is just organizing the data. If I could have one skill in my toolbox right now it would be the ability to scrape data and organize databases. Just doing that takes 99% of the time. Doing the analysis is actually quite fun.

 

[Razamanaz]

Kotka you choose him Montreal.

And listen 'ere: You got to live with him and like him. Like it or not.

And as a first rounder he'll get all the chances there is.

Montreal, Montreal you could be way off worse ...

 

[jaffy27]

I think Hughes has higher upside than anyone outside of Svech and Dahlin. But I also think he carries the highest bust risk. I wouldn't have picked him. I think the others have higher upside than Kots.

Upside as in point production or effectiveness on the ice??

 

[Garbageyuk]

Upside as in point production or effectiveness on the ice??

I would say more point production once you really think about it right? I think his size and style will limit him in terms of effectiveness - he'll never be that all-around D that can do it all, and log big minutes in all situations in the playoffs type of player. Don't most people say his upside similar to Torey Krug? I haven't watched Krug all that much, tbh. He's kind of obscure, and I never notice him when the Habs play the Bruins.

 

[Habs]

Zadina has his fair share of concerns... Can't win board battles in the Q, scores from the same area most of the time, isn't good defensively, doesn't have good top end speed, didn't seem to continue an upward progression all year. He's a fantastic prospect no doubt but he's very overhyped because most people just watch the WJHC, and see that he feasted on Junior players. I actually would take Whalstrom ahead of him, but admittedly very close.

I would take Wahlstrom over Zadina 10 times out of 10, not even a discussion. I would have no issues if they took him at 3.

 

[StanleyCH25]

Thanks for de-escalating after my last admittedly very snarky post. I'll write you a longer response later this evening with some more data.

Another way to do the projection is to analyze the deciles of D+1 players in Liiga and make the assumption that Jesperi will stay in his decile. There should be a lot more of them.

Yeah.. I saw your response and then reread my post and realized I had gone about it the wrong way. It was looking more like an attack when it was meant to be about questioning the process and ensuring we had the right information to look at. I like statistics. I enjoy working with numbers but looking at the numbers you had provided felt like I wasn't getting a proper picture.

This is why I gave a range for the overall points production. Specifically, it's a bigger deal for PP production than even strength because PP numbers can be so high, while EV numbers are rather compressed. To use an example with the NHL, Connor McDavid is an outlier among outliers with his advanced stats. But even his EVP/60 is 3.5. With the man advantage it's possible to double or triple other people's rates. Taylor Hall, for example, had a 5v4 P/60 of 10. No less a player than Ovechkin was 5.39 this year. Over fairly large sample sizes, which both of those numbers represent, you can get 10s of points of difference. Hall had 6 more points in 120 minutes less PP ice-time, to be concrete.

Those numbers make it sound like we should be mostly focusing on EV/60 to get proper progression analysis. I would also expect that the data from 5v4 P/60 mostly serves as ensuring that players are hitting a certain range to show their effectiveness on the powerplay. If you take the 5v4 P/60 of the entire league, you could likely determine what range shows effective PP players versus ineffective PP players. Seeing as the variance is so high, I wouldn't use it too much to project growth in a player.


Worse still is the fact that, year to year, 5v4 P/60 is pretty volatile. Last year Taylor Hall had 4.55. Nicklas Backstrom had 5.46 this year and 8.37 last year. It really is best to give a range, or perhaps quartiles, since the output can be so vastly different. Like I said, ''a bit of a disappointment'' to ''the next Elias Pettersson.''

There's one point that I want to make right away, and it's that we're not picking players out of a hat. We have a prior. This is relevant for both this point and the ice time point. Why this is relevant is because we know the player and his EV production this year. If a player didn't produce at all as a 17 year old, it's likely that his change will be larger than if he had played very well because, as we discussed, the range of possible EVP/60 is rather compressed. For example, it just wouldn't be reasonable to project Vesalainen's progression for Jesperi as that would have him outproducing Antti Suomela. Whereas for Vesalainen it was the difference between being awful and being reasonably productive. To take it further, it's quite possible for a young kid to get a cup of coffee in Liiga and produce nothing, while next year he produces fairly a fairly pedestrian 1.2 EVP/60. There's a real difference between going from an average top 6 player to the league leader, and a struggling kid to a competent bottom 6er.

The danger here, to me, is clearly overestimation.

That makes a lot more sense. Most players regress towards the league's EV/60 mean during their first few years in the league so you can likely find some sort of progression parameter from that data.

I'm still unsure how taking the average of the sample points for players at that age gives you a proper EV/60 progression for Kotkaniemi since as you pointed out, some had a horrible year to begin and then simply regressed to the league average the following year which made the jump look drastic. Others started off great and simply had a much smaller improvement the following year since they were closer to the league average to begin with. My guess as to the best approach would likely be to compare other players who had a similar EV/60 to Jesperi's at age 16 and chart their progression. You could then use the average from that data as your parameter for Jesperi's potential growth.

I estimated 16 minutes of even strength ice time based on Jesperi's team conditions. They are losing their top line center from last year, and that's about what he played. Again, if we were picking players out of a hat, we'd do exactly as you say, but we have a prior. We know what roles are up for grabs and who is a candidate to fill them.

That helps clear up the average icetime you expect. I'm not sure how solid of an indicator it is but at least it's not an arbitrary number like I thought it was when I first read it.

The biggest problem is just organizing the data. If I could have one skill in my toolbox right now it would be the ability to scrape data and organize databases. Just doing that takes 99% of the time. Doing the analysis is actually quite fun.

100% agree. Like I said earlier, I appreciated the effort. It just seems like we could work on ironing out some of the details to make the projections feel more useful for determining prospect growth.

 

[Kriss E]

Timmins is actually right, going by most valuable asset should be how you take players. If Kotkaniemi becomes a 50ish point centerman(really doubt he will be just that) and Zadina a 60 point winger, the centerman is more valuable even if the winger puts up more points.

TT has been incapable of drafting us a top center for how many years? And now he's saying how to go with the more valuable players?
Also, I think that is silly. Every single player is different in the draft and what determines value is skill+demand+offer.
Eller and Shaw are both depth players. One is a center, one is a winger, both yielded two 2nd rd picks.

You pick who you think will become the best NHLer. If it's a winger, so be it.

On a side note, the NHL should move the draft age up. I think it's completely stupid to have teams drafting players that are so far away from making the NHL.

 

[Kriss E]

So, basically every single prospect is the same

No..
Did I say Kotkaniemi was going to fail or something..?
My initial post was suggesting to stop overhyping, let the kid develop and let's see what he turns into.
That's it.

 

[Kriss E]

Was he though?

Definitely for me. Maybe Kotka would have looked way better too if he played in North America junior leagues, alas that didn't happen. So impossible to say. Will be interesting to see him play next year.