Comments for Do You Believe in Magic? (West 2011) at http://hockey.dobbersports.com , comment 1 to 15 out of 15 comments http://hockey.dobbersports.com Tue, 21 May 2013 20:01:15 +0100 FeedCreator 1.7.3 http://hockey.dobbersports.com/index.php/columnistsarticles-mainmenu-77/amato/3894-do-you-believe-in-magic-west-2011#comment-15901 [b]RE: Production vs Ice-time[/b] I definitely think that there's a strong correlation. If you've followed my articles then you're probably well aware of my beliefs of what drives a player's production. The key is to spot the players who are heading into their 4th years that will have the opportunity to average 20 mins a game. I don't see very many from out west that will have that opportunity, but out East I definitely could see a few Giroux and Stamkos. Comfort level and ice-time are definitely key features in determining the potential value of a player. - Ryan Ma Wed, 17 Aug 2011 22:11:23 +0100 http://hockey.dobbersports.com/index.php/columnistsarticles-mainmenu-77/amato/3894-do-you-believe-in-magic-west-2011#comment-15891 I love comfortable couches. - Pengwin7 Wed, 17 Aug 2011 08:38:53 +0100 http://hockey.dobbersports.com/index.php/columnistsarticles-mainmenu-77/amato/3894-do-you-believe-in-magic-west-2011#comment-15885 As you mention in your article, the big jump between years 1 and 2 is likely product of limited checking roll year one, while taking on more responsibility in year 2. I think you can probably extend that principle. I bet if you did the same analysis, put it on a graph, and then did analysis of how many minutes they played in a game that season, there would be a pretty close correlation. So it could have nothing to do with the player really and all about the comfort level of the couch. It could be that certain couches are more "comfortable" than others... - Ryan Lenethen Wed, 17 Aug 2011 06:28:37 +0100 http://hockey.dobbersports.com/index.php/columnistsarticles-mainmenu-77/amato/3894-do-you-believe-in-magic-west-2011#comment-15875 [b]RE: Mabus[/b] Definitely league scoring plays a massive role, obviously if every team scores 1 more goal well that's 3 more points the players get to spread around. The only thing that I can add is how do you predict a spike? It wasn't hard with the lockout, players got a year of rest... new rules... etc. But the trend has been going down ever since the lockout so do we assume that it goes down again, or at least remain relatively close to the totals of this year? You can only identify the league scoring trends [b]after the fact[/b], but when drafting players you don't draft after the fact, so you kinda have to assume that if the league scoring goes up, every player is adjusted accordingly and if it goes down, everyone in the league is adjusted as well. So I guess at the end of the day it's how you use the data to help you out in your leagues. I don't blame people for being sceptical about into it, cause as you say, there's just too many factors in play in order to draw a conclusive finale to the debate. But what I'm trying to do with it is to highlight the fact that there is a statistical anomaly during the 4th year in which players tend to have a slight boost in point production. With fantasy leagues, knowledge is power and any slight advantage needs to be picked up before your opponent uses it for their advantage. All I can really do is to highlight that anomaly, to help you Dobberities gain a slight edge over your competition. I can only show you the door, but you have to walk through it yourself. So green pill or red pill? - Ryan Ma Tue, 16 Aug 2011 12:26:59 +0100 http://hockey.dobbersports.com/index.php/columnistsarticles-mainmenu-77/amato/3894-do-you-believe-in-magic-west-2011#comment-15874 [b]RE: Stewart[/b] With him it's not about skill or talent, it's about depth charts, which is the same boat that all of the Blues are going to be in. They boast one of the most deep teams in the league, and when situations like that happen,it screams out offense by committee where teams will split the ice-time evenly across their players. I mean if you look at the list. McDonald, Oshie, Berglund, Stewart, D'Agostini, Arnott, Langenbrunner, Backes, Steen and possibly Perron as well. You kinda look at that line up and you're wondering who's going to get shafted? I mean not everyone can play 17-18 minutes a game... So are they going to run with a 19-10 setup or is everyone going to get 15 mins each? Who do you shaft and who gets the benefit of the doubt? Your guess as as good as mine, which is why it's so unpredictable. Safest scenario is that you predict 45-50, if he gets 55 you've kinda covered your bases, if he gets 40 you're covered too. If you're heading into the season thinking he's a 60 pointer, and he ends up with 40 that could be your season right there. If you've read my projections article earlier in the season you can look at the numbers that he kinda needs to achieve in order to be a 60 point, 50 pointer and a top 10er, with that depth in StL the most likelyist scenario is that he ends up closer to a 50-pointer. - Ryan Ma Tue, 16 Aug 2011 12:15:16 +0100 http://hockey.dobbersports.com/index.php/columnistsarticles-mainmenu-77/amato/3894-do-you-believe-in-magic-west-2011#comment-15872 [b]RE: 5th vs 6th year breakouts[/b] For me a breakout is a [b]large[/b] improvement from 1 season to the next of at least 20 points, or when a player finally breaks that 80 point barrier. So when Daniel improves by 17 points to a season finish of 71 points. That 71 points in relation to everyone else was a ranking of 47th amongst all players that season. Is that a breakout? At the end of the day it's all relative as to what you consider a breakout and whether or not you consider it a breakout or not. - Ryan Ma Tue, 16 Aug 2011 12:07:05 +0100 http://hockey.dobbersports.com/index.php/columnistsarticles-mainmenu-77/amato/3894-do-you-believe-in-magic-west-2011#comment-15871 [b]RE: Most important contributing factor[/b] The increase from season 3 to season 4 was actually 0.07 points per game, not 0.01. So I think we need to clarify that. The thing for me is that it's the fourth year that the point-per-game totals finally break that 0.7 mark (pro-rated over 82 games that's around 57 points). That's kinda the line where I draw for fantasy relevance unless you're in a massive league where 40 point players make a major impact... But you are right, the increase is between 2nd and 3rd and 3rd and 4th is marginal, but it's that the difference between 0.58 to 0.64 compared to 0.64 to 0.71 that I'm most interested in. - Ryan Ma Tue, 16 Aug 2011 12:01:11 +0100 http://hockey.dobbersports.com/index.php/columnistsarticles-mainmenu-77/amato/3894-do-you-believe-in-magic-west-2011#comment-15870 [b]RE: Postive Comments[/b] The research took forever, so the positive comments are definitely appreciated. Thanks! - Ryan Ma Tue, 16 Aug 2011 11:56:28 +0100 http://hockey.dobbersports.com/index.php/columnistsarticles-mainmenu-77/amato/3894-do-you-believe-in-magic-west-2011#comment-15869 Although I've been aware of the "4th Year" thing for a while, I'm curious to know whether age plays any part of it. If you factor that in, does the picture become clearer or fuzzier? - Screaming Jawa Tue, 16 Aug 2011 11:42:31 +0100 http://hockey.dobbersports.com/index.php/columnistsarticles-mainmenu-77/amato/3894-do-you-believe-in-magic-west-2011#comment-15867 Very interesting topic. One I've been vocally against for a while, but very well presented Ryan. My biggest problem is that you can't use raw numbers without adjusting for league scoring. If you do that, you will find that almost everyone "broke out" the year after the lockout. That year league scoring went from 6317 goals before the lockout to 7442. Plus, every player had a season off to develop and get healthy. For people like Staal (31 to 100), you call him a 2nd year breakout. Spezza (55 to 90) and Zetterberg (43 to 85) are 3rd year breakouts. Heatley (25 to 103), Datsyuk and Kovalchuk (87 to 98) are 4th year guys. The Sedins (54 to 71 and 42 to 75) are 5th year breakouts. To me, every single one of those examples had to do with the lockout and increased league scoring, not their years of service. It just can't be seen that way unless you normalize the data. The biggest argument in favor of the 4th year breakout (and I assume the year we started mentioning this) is 2008-09. Staal was the only guy from the class of 2003 (arguably the strongest draft class over the last 20 years) to play in his rookie year. This meant that all of the strongest draft class started their first years after the lockout (their third year after being drafted), so their fourth year in the league was 2008-09. That year scoring spiked by over 300 goals. Regardless of the why - I'll agree that a lot of the class of 2003 broke out in their fourth year (and includes Carter, Parise, Getzlaf and Perry). I assume the next year someone was saying - what's the common trend here among last year's breakouts - and noticed the 4th year thing. I'm just arguing that the lockout pushed a disproportionate number of people's rookie years to a single year - and four years later league scoring spiked. That's enough stats for now - I need to start studying for fantasy football season for a couple of weeks. While I disagree on the premise, I must concede that you are one of the strongest minds around here. Keep up the great work Ryan. Even when I disagree, I love the work. Mabus - Mabus Tue, 16 Aug 2011 10:51:29 +0100 http://hockey.dobbersports.com/index.php/columnistsarticles-mainmenu-77/amato/3894-do-you-believe-in-magic-west-2011#comment-15866 Fantastic article Ma, thanks for the great read. Personally I think you're a bit low on your Stewart projections, unless he misses significant time due to injury. He scored 52 points in 62 games last year, and scored 64 points the year before. With what the Blues gave up for him, I think he's got a top 6 job and top PP duties locked up, and anything less than 60 points would be a huge, huge disappointment. I really don't see anyone challenging Backes and Stewart for the top two RW spots, and I would peg Stewart for 60-70 points. Also, I don't think it's going out on a limb to say that EJ will hit 40+ points this year. He is going to be given every opportunity to succeed, the Avs are a way better team than the second half of last season. Plus, with Liles gone the only guy whom I could see stealing any of EJ's top PP time is Elliott (and he has to make the team first). I might be too high on EJ, but I'd be very surprised if he didn't reach 40 points. Anyway, didn't mean to nitpick but those two guys (especially Stewart) stood out to me as being a little low-balled. Thanks again for the great article! Well written and very informative! - Brian Tue, 16 Aug 2011 10:15:12 +0100 http://hockey.dobbersports.com/index.php/columnistsarticles-mainmenu-77/amato/3894-do-you-believe-in-magic-west-2011#comment-15863 that was awesome, Ma. I look forward to the second part. Thanks for doing this. - SeaDawg Tue, 16 Aug 2011 07:57:38 +0100 http://hockey.dobbersports.com/index.php/columnistsarticles-mainmenu-77/amato/3894-do-you-believe-in-magic-west-2011#comment-15862 Excellent article Ma. That must have taken you a ton of time to complete. Good analysis. One question: In the "Sixth Year Breakout" Charts, don't you see the increases in year 5 by Daniel Sedin (17points), Henrik Sedin (32 points) and Scott Gomez (15 points) as 5th year breakouts. To me, those are increases that should have these guys placed in the 5th year breakout chart not the 6th year breakout. Very good job. - Dean Youngblood Tue, 16 Aug 2011 07:56:23 +0100 http://hockey.dobbersports.com/index.php/columnistsarticles-mainmenu-77/amato/3894-do-you-believe-in-magic-west-2011#comment-15861 This was amazing. Great, great, great statistics & explanation. (You continue to be one of my favourite fantasy hockey contributors!!!) - Pengwin7 Tue, 16 Aug 2011 07:31:23 +0100 http://hockey.dobbersports.com/index.php/columnistsarticles-mainmenu-77/amato/3894-do-you-believe-in-magic-west-2011#comment-15860 As always, an interesting read... The first two tables (thanks very much for taking the time to compile these) might suggest that the most important contributing factor to an increase in points is an increase in number of games played (and not a "magical 4th year") as points per game only rose by 0.01 from year 3 to 4. I guess one might argue that it takes the AVERAGE player 3 years to prove himself as an every day NHLer. What does this mean to us poolies? Most players on our fantasy radar poised for a 4th year breakout are not "average players" and tend to have already established themselves as every day players by year 3, thus should not see a dramatic increase in games played from year 3 to 4. It would be very interesting to see a "points per minute" stat for each year played to further the analysis. - Marc Nimigon Tue, 16 Aug 2011 07:02:29 +0100