Forwards and NHLE - 2011 Draft
Scott Reynolds
July 29 2012 05:13PM
Yesterday, I looked at all of the forwards drafted in 2012 using NHL equivalencies. There were some interesting questions raised about methodology (and what multiplier to use for each league), but we'll continue for the next three days using the same multipliers before re-evaluating what changes might be appropriate to use in the future. That said, today, we move on to tracking the progress of those forwards drafted in 2011.
Forwards and NHLE - 2012 Draft
Scott Reynolds
July 28 2012 04:41PM
One of my favourite tools in evaluating prospects is Gabriel Desjardins' NHL equivalencies. The basic premise is that we can expect each player to bring only a portion of his offense from the league he played in last year were he to make the jump to the NHL. By observing how much offense other players brought from these other leagues in the past, we can estimate how much offense (on average) to expect from players from those leagues in the future.
It's an imperfect assessment of skill for sure -- we're just measuring offense after all -- and I think it generally works better for forwards than defenders (and goalies!), but it's one indicator for whether or not a player might one day find success in the NHL. It also gives us a tool to compare players in different leagues (although with young players it makes sense to cut the guys playing in the professional leagues some extra slack). After the jump I'll explain the system in a bit more depth and look at the performance of each of the forwards drafted in 2012 (in the days, we'll look at the forwards drafted in 2011, 2010, and 2009 over the next few days).
