Comments for Are Star Forwards Worth the Money? at http://hockey.dobbersports.com , comment 1 to 5 out of 5 comments http://hockey.dobbersports.com Wed, 19 Jun 2013 17:03:54 +0100 FeedCreator 1.7.3 http://hockey.dobbersports.com/index.php/columnistsarticles-mainmenu-77/911-ryan-goddard/4966-are-star-forwards-worth-the-money#comment-22844 A few points to answer: 1) Yes that is Scott Gomez in the upper-left corner. 2) Coming out of the original draft the talent is going to be spread out and teams will have a star player or two. But as time goes on that is probably not the case (bad trades, failed rebuild projects, etc.), especially in a larger league which is becoming more and more common these days. You can have a team full of efficient players with tons of cap space but not enough points to win. Someone has to do the heavy lifting. The main point of this article was to see if there was a major drop-off in points vs cap hit as you move towards the elite. 3) I sampled all players because of the increasing number of huge leagues. I am in a 24-team league where only a couple dozen of NHL regulars are not owned. I can only imagine what a 30-team league would look like. If I had limited the sample to players projected to get over 50 points, then according to this data the trend would indicate that the stars are not worth their money. But in that case your waiver wire would be so rich in talent that you would be able to find cheap alternatives while sacrificing very little (or nothing at all) in production. As Ryan pointed out, finding cap bargains is huge and in this setup it would be easy to make it all work. So while the trend would have been different, I do not believe that the conclusion could be made that the elite are overpaid. 4) Yes I did look into this. The slope is significant within a 95% confidence interval. Thanks for pointing this out, because the slope is very small which is pretty close to actually being flat. I am at my limit for the evening (illness) but if you guys want to discuss more you can reply here or PM me and I'll get back to you by the end of the weekend. I am having fun doing these articles, but I am also looking to get better so every little bit helps. - ericdaoust Thu, 11 Oct 2012 20:02:12 +0100 http://hockey.dobbersports.com/index.php/columnistsarticles-mainmenu-77/911-ryan-goddard/4966-are-star-forwards-worth-the-money#comment-22843 Solid Article Eric, Only thing that I'd like to add is that "high priced' forwards aren't going to win you the championship... Every team, if they've drafted properly, is going to have a Crosby/Malkin/Ovechkin/Stamkos/Backstrom type... so every team probably is going to have their high priced forwards anyway. And generally speaking most will pretty much score around the same range anyways, so there probably isn't going to be a large discrepancy, where a high priced forward is going to be leaps and bounds better than another option. What is going to win you championships is being able to identify those more "efficient" options [b]year after year.[/b] They ones that will tally 60+ points, but cost you $1.5 mil... Generally speaking it's probably your young kids on ELCs... So to answer your question, are star forwards worth their money? Well the easy answer is of course they are. But will they be the ones that will garner you the championship, probably not... - Ryan Ma Thu, 11 Oct 2012 19:31:01 +0100 http://hockey.dobbersports.com/index.php/columnistsarticles-mainmenu-77/911-ryan-goddard/4966-are-star-forwards-worth-the-money#comment-22842 Even without names attached my gut tells me the ~$7.5M ~25 point player MUST be Scott Gomez haha. - lesouder Thu, 11 Oct 2012 16:53:46 +0100 http://hockey.dobbersports.com/index.php/columnistsarticles-mainmenu-77/911-ryan-goddard/4966-are-star-forwards-worth-the-money#comment-22841 Oops: "including them greatly [b][i]affects[/i][/b] the results. - Hey_Robbie Thu, 11 Oct 2012 10:18:50 +0100 http://hockey.dobbersports.com/index.php/columnistsarticles-mainmenu-77/911-ryan-goddard/4966-are-star-forwards-worth-the-money#comment-22839 Thanks for your work and presentation, Eric. I have two questions regarding your statement, "The results show that the star players are worth the money they are paid, even in fantasy hockey. There are obviously exceptions but the trend line shows that production efficiency actually increases as you move up the NHL ranks. It is important to know that your best players are not in fact hurting your team." First, looking at the small slope of the trend line on the cap hit vs. projected points relative to the spread of the data, is the slope significant, i.e. is a slope of zero within a 95% confidence interval? 90%? 80% even? A linear regression of any data set is unlikely to find a slope of exactly zero, but that doesn't mean the trend isn't actually zero. I have no idea whether you actually looked at this, and my sincere apologies if you did and I am calling it into question. I am just pointing out that not all regressions mean there is a trend that is any different than you are likely to see due to random error. Second, and much more importantly, I think, is the fact that your data set includes all forwards with projections. This seems to throw the phrase "even in fantasy hockey" especially into doubt. It is a vanishingly small percentage of leagues in which the forwards at the far left of the plot are fantasy-relevant*, and including them greatly effects the results. If you look at the relationship of only players projected to get more than, say, 25 points (very roughly it looks like the same would be true for 30 or 20 as well), you actually might find the exact opposite to be true, i.e. that points efficiency [i]decreases[/i]as you go up the ranks. At a minimum, the trend would be even less likely to be significant. *N.B. I'm not saying that none of these players is fantasy relevant, but if they are it is probably for multi-cat attributes, in which case points efficiency would not be a measure of whether these players are bargains or hurting your team. - Hey_Robbie Thu, 11 Oct 2012 10:12:06 +0100