zeke's Official Top-20 Center Rankings
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The bump is great. Seeing this terrible thread again, is not.
b in vancouver
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- Jul 28, 2005
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Zeke, I was a bit confused by the offensive centres as I was looking at the PPG if you just kinda wanted to know whom was the best when they were out there. I got...
McDavid
MacKinnon
Malkin
Giroux * (a lot of time on wing)
Crosby
Stamkos
Matthews
Scheifele
Bergeron (!)
Tavares
Eichel
Kuznetsov
----- ppg cut-off
Monahan
Barzal
Barkov
Kopitar
Aho
Backstrom
Getzlaf
Couturier
Petrersson hasn't played enough while Draisatl is mostly a winger
So am not quite sure how you came up with your list.
McDavid
MacKinnon
Malkin
Giroux * (a lot of time on wing)
Crosby
Stamkos
Matthews
Scheifele
Bergeron (!)
Tavares
Eichel
Kuznetsov
----- ppg cut-off
Monahan
Barzal
Barkov
Kopitar
Aho
Backstrom
Getzlaf
Couturier
Petrersson hasn't played enough while Draisatl is mostly a winger
So am not quite sure how you came up with your list.
Where is Leon Draisaitl?
Seriously. How doesn't he get the respect he deserves to get? He is an absolute beast. Enough of McDavid makes him better. It is the other way around. He makes McDavid better. Draisaitl is one of the best center players in the NHL. Much better than Barkov or Bergeron. He is a beast. Far above PPG. He is a monster. No one respects him because everyone think that McDavid makes him better. Truth is, it goes the opposite way. Drai makes McDavid better.
Seriously. How doesn't he get the respect he deserves to get? He is an absolute beast. Enough of McDavid makes him better. It is the other way around. He makes McDavid better. Draisaitl is one of the best center players in the NHL. Much better than Barkov or Bergeron. He is a beast. Far above PPG. He is a monster. No one respects him because everyone think that McDavid makes him better. Truth is, it goes the opposite way. Drai makes McDavid better.
Thread was started before the season. And he was using a combination of P/60 5v5 and P1/60 5v5 to generate the list.
viceroy
Registered User
Nice. 3 Leafses in the Top 18 league-wide...
Look, next time zeke makes a Best Winger in the NHL thread I'm sure Draisaitl will show up.
Look, next time zeke makes a Best Winger in the NHL thread I'm sure Draisaitl will show up.
b in vancouver
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TheDoldrums
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CantLoseWithMatthews
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He literally said this wasnt meant to be a prediction in his opening post? I'm not sure using new information overrules history like you seem to think
The biggest problem with pure statistical lists like this is that it's putting every player under the same restrictions with no context. Kadri is a really good player, and despite the mocking of the thread, he's producing a solid amount given he's now 3rd on the depth chart.
The thing is, he had a really great, peak season in '17, where he held his won against top competition with mediocre wings, and produced like a top 20 center. He was legitimately a top 20 center in that season. Then last year, he started strong in the same position, then slumped, before finishing well after a PPG Marner was put on his wing. His goals held, but his points fell in a higher scoring year, and he didn't do as well against his competition. He was a borderline top line center last year.
So, Kadri has a career season at age 26 after never scoring more than 50, and follows it up with his 2nd best season at age 27. Pretty standard seasons to play your best hockey, and over those two seasons combined, given injuries and down years to other players, there's probably a case for him around 20th or so in terms of overall performance.
The problem with this though is that there's no context for how he should be expected to perform going forward. Given he was better in '17 than '18, and given that his peak year came at an age for a standard peak year, it seems reasonable to assume that he wasn't going to keep performing at that level, and that it was likely a spike in his career. Meanwhile, for other more established players, you can see how a down year in a small sample would make them look worse than they are, and over a larger sample you can spot the outliers. While players do improve and regress, and this is often the reason for cutting a sample short, I don't think any one formula is going to put every outlier, good or bad in context. Sometimes it's obvious a player is in decline or has reached a new level, and sometimes it's obvious there were other reasons for it, like linemates, or a coach or a lingering injury, or unsustainable underlying numbers, etc.
While these types of things are subjective, I think they're also necessary if you want to predict how someone is going to play in the near future, rather than just analyze what they did in the past. For someone like Kadri, the reasonable assumption should have been that '17 was likely a career year, and, given his play in '18, he would probably play more like a borderline 1st line center/high end 2nd line center the next couple years.
The thing is, he had a really great, peak season in '17, where he held his won against top competition with mediocre wings, and produced like a top 20 center. He was legitimately a top 20 center in that season. Then last year, he started strong in the same position, then slumped, before finishing well after a PPG Marner was put on his wing. His goals held, but his points fell in a higher scoring year, and he didn't do as well against his competition. He was a borderline top line center last year.
So, Kadri has a career season at age 26 after never scoring more than 50, and follows it up with his 2nd best season at age 27. Pretty standard seasons to play your best hockey, and over those two seasons combined, given injuries and down years to other players, there's probably a case for him around 20th or so in terms of overall performance.
The problem with this though is that there's no context for how he should be expected to perform going forward. Given he was better in '17 than '18, and given that his peak year came at an age for a standard peak year, it seems reasonable to assume that he wasn't going to keep performing at that level, and that it was likely a spike in his career. Meanwhile, for other more established players, you can see how a down year in a small sample would make them look worse than they are, and over a larger sample you can spot the outliers. While players do improve and regress, and this is often the reason for cutting a sample short, I don't think any one formula is going to put every outlier, good or bad in context. Sometimes it's obvious a player is in decline or has reached a new level, and sometimes it's obvious there were other reasons for it, like linemates, or a coach or a lingering injury, or unsustainable underlying numbers, etc.
While these types of things are subjective, I think they're also necessary if you want to predict how someone is going to play in the near future, rather than just analyze what they did in the past. For someone like Kadri, the reasonable assumption should have been that '17 was likely a career year, and, given his play in '18, he would probably play more like a borderline 1st line center/high end 2nd line center the next couple years.
If you're calling it a current ranking, it should probably reflect what players are likely to do in the following season though, shouldn't it?
SI90
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I’m shocked at Barzals possession ranking. I could have sworn he was top 3 in possession last year with McDavid and Kane
Sidney the Kidney
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Yeah, if you're going to present a "Top 20 centers in the league" list, but then say that it wasn't meant to be reflective of how they'd play this season, then what is the point in the first place?
I thought the entire point of zeke doing it was (paraphrasing) him mentioning that since there's been a bunch of lists about who are the Top 10, Top 20 centers going into the season, he's putting his own list out. So if that's the case, then how is his list *not* supposed to be based on who the Top 20 centers for the upcoming season will be?
CantLoseWithMatthews
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he did say pretty clearly it wasn't meant to be ranking going forward. Pretty sure it was supposed to be a ranking of these players over the last two years as of that precise moment, which is perfectly reasonable
I remember when Bozak was ranked highly on these lists as well based on these type of statistics.
Agreed. It’s a list highly correlated to past performance. It doesn’t appear to be very relevant in forecasting future results. Which is what I’ve always argued with him in the past.
CantLoseWithMatthews
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I just don't see the need to rub it in his face months later over future results when he never claimed his list was meant to be predictive. in fact, he specifies the exact opposite. there's still value in ranking the top players over a certain time period, even if you disagree
anytime you have kadri ahead of eichel on your "objective" offensive center list, you may want to rethink your criteria.
Sidney the Kidney
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CantLoseWithMatthews
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yes, I would call bumping a thread months later to mock someone for being wrong counts as trying to rub it in someone's face. the problem is, he never claimed it to be a ranking for future results so I don't quite understand the point of it
Rob Brown
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- Dec 17, 2009
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Not that I really care because I agree that Kadri isn't a top 20 C, but the guy bumped a thread from six months ago with the sole intention of calling out his Kadri ranking and nothing else. I would constitute that as rubbing it in.
I'm happy Barkov being 4th best center in the NHL. People would be crazy if he would play in Canada.
Guided by Veseys
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Kadri was moved down the depth chart to third C. Why would anybody be stupid enough to think this list meant Kadri was supposed to produce like a top C this season. It’s all pretty obvious that it was an interpretation of the last couple of seasons.
Sidney the Kidney
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Again, what was the point of the ranking then? If there's a dozen "who are the top 10 players in hockey" threads, and then I come up with my own calling it the definitive ranking of the Top 10 players in hockey, the assumption/expectation is that I'm coming up with my own list to go along with those other lists.
Otherwise, if his intent wasn't to say "This is who the top 20 centers in hockey now and going forward are", then what is the point?
It almost seems like you're retroactively defending his rankings by saying "it wasn't meant to predict the future", but yet if Kadri had a Brayden Point-like season this year, you or some other Leaf fans (or zeke himself) would be bumping this thread to say "see, told you Kadri was a top 20 center".
How else is one supposed to point out someone being wrong without waiting to see how certain players perform this season? The OP insisted on Kadri's ranking, so no one could say "you're wrong" at the time of original posting because the season hadn't started yet.
Now that we're 50+ games in, there's more evidence of whether he was right or wrong with his ranking (and insistence of him being right to rank him that highly).
If I'd made a thread of the Top 5 wingers in hockey and included Jake Guentzel on it because of his playoffs, someone would be well within their right to bump that thread at this point when he wasn't producing like a Top 5 winger.
I have never seen a person more obsessed with a more useless stat before then that guy with his P/60 ramblings.I guess probably because of the way it sheds a light on Matthews.
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