[ChiTownPhilly]

Originally Posted by Richer

Say this with a straight face: "Grabovski is only slightly better than Crosby statistically."

I think THoR needs some work.

How does this happen?? I think I have an hypothesis...

Any reasonable system of competitive measurement needs to take into account strength of opposition, and do so in a manner that keeps from spiralling into the vortex of infinite regression. Now, particularly in the football world, Jeff Sagarin has come up with ideas that border on elegant- but really, my favorite (which doesn't necessarily mean best) solution(s) to this came from George Ignatin. Now Ignatin's work focused on the pros- and here, there are only 32 entities that call for measuring. Sagain's most famous work (BCS College Football Teams) is more challenging, by a factor of at least four. In the NHL, however, there are over 500 players that log meaningful ice-time, so answering a "strength of opposition" challenge here would be immense.

The intuitive hole in assigning parity to Grabovski (breath*) and Crosby is that perhaps strength of opposition was not sufficiently accounted for- or even ignored. One could reasonably anticipate that the former may draw the injury-fill-in/cold & flu season 7th defenseman, whereas the future Hall-of-Famer is getting a steady diet of the top pairing, continuously.

*[Salving my conscience by not mentioning them in the same breath.]