I did some digging earlier and found a statistic that I don't think should be overlooked. I'm not sure how the MSM (or any of us, for that matter) hadn't taken the time to look into this yet, to my knowledge.
The Wings are 33-13-6 with Datsyuk in the lineup; that's good for 114 points over a whole season. Without him, they are 11-9-4, an 82-point pace.
For all you naysayers, what does this say about their playoff chances if Pavel (and all the others) stay relatively healthy?
Well obviously Pavel is a gamechanger. He gets utilized more in PP situations which presents a huge threat, especially if he gets paired with Helm. Speed + finish? yes please. The guy is so great defensively and his point production is great.
And we can see quite clearly from those "pace" stats, that the Wings are just all around better with him. We matchup better, we score more, win faceoffs, keep the other team on the defensive. Love that guy.
I see him as a top 3 forward in the league. He's incredible. This statistic doesn't surprise me very much. More than a game-changer; he's a game-winner.
edit: It definitely helps that he's going to be well rested and healthy for the playoffs this year. I think our team was pretty (as much as I hate to say it) out of gas last season because of the big push just to get into the playoffs toward the end of the season. I still feel we'll go far this year with a healthy team.
Pavel is just too important offensively and defensively for the Wings. If he doesn't play the entire team suffers dramatically. I am hoping that a very well rested Dat's can keep up his regular season pace in the playoffs.
well I guess this further proves my points in the other thread.
However, it's been a while Datsyuk has been healthy and the team played at high level. I don't know what you are really trying to say though. Are you saying Wings are the best team with Datsyuk? a contender? or a team that is good enough to make it through 1st round?
Mod: deleted.
Last edited by Fugu: 03-30-2011 at 06:38 AM.
Reason: a bit much
First, when you pull a 6.7 million dollar player off a roster in a salary capped league, that's what happens. Second, unless Datsyuk was the only guy hurt for those games the basis of comparison gets a little muddy.
Obviously a team is going to be worse without a star player and without his cap space than with him.
Although unprovable, what would Detroit's record have been sans Datsyuk... but with another player making 6-7 mil? A Sedin, Kovy, Marleau, Backstrom, Kane, Toews, Kopitar, Iginla-class player?
There's a stat in baseball called 'replacement value' or 'value over replacement player' (VORP). In baseball it talks about the value of a player over a replacement player of minimal cost or 'freely available talent'. I think a capped league needs a similar stat, something like Value over Salary Slot where it looks at what a player does, how much he costs, and how hard it might be to replace that with a UFA making roughly the same amount.
What if you were to compare how Pittsburgh has performed without their stars to how Detroit has performed? It seems like the Pens are plugging along but I don't know the actual numbers.
What if you were to compare how Pittsburgh has performed without their stars to how Detroit has performed? It seems like the Pens are plugging along but I don't know the actual numbers.
I have been disappointed at how good Pittsburgh is doing without Crosby and Malkin. But look at how their team is built, their two greatest attributes are center depth and defenseman depth.
Even with Orpik out, they have Martin, Michalek, and Letang. Pair that with Fleury's ability to stand on his head every other night, and they effectively transitioned from being a team reliant on Crosby and Malkin to a team that will play hard defense and outwork their opponent on offense.
I have been disappointed at how good Pittsburgh is doing without Crosby and Malkin. But look at how their team is built, their two greatest attributes are center depth and defenseman depth.
Even with Orpik out, they have Martin, Michalek, and Letang. Pair that with Fleury's ability to stand on his head every other night, and they effectively transitioned from being a team reliant on Crosby and Malkin to a team that will play hard defense and outwork their opponent on offense.
We've become accustomed in Detroit to underestimating the value an elite goalie has to a team's success. Maybe that's why Holland has that metric of only willing to pay one of the top 4-5 goalies top money, or just going in a different direction. If the Pens can batten down the hatches but have a guy who can bail them out when the mistakes are made, it probably shouldn't be too surprising that they're doing reasonably well.
I think its more mental than skill as the reason why the Pens are winning. They seem to understand that their top guys are our and thus their depth players are stepping up more and more. This was the case early on in the season with the Wings but right now it just seems like nobody really wants to work that much harder.
We've become accustomed in Detroit to underestimating the value an elite goalie has to a team's success. Maybe that's why Holland has that metric of only willing to pay one of the top 4-5 goalies top money, or just going in a different direction. If the Pens can batten down the hatches but have a guy who can bail them out when the mistakes are made, it probably shouldn't be too surprising that they're doing reasonably well.
So are Malkin and Crosby overpaid?
1) Yes. No player in the NHL is worth more than 7 mil, and it's not terribly hard to make a case that no player in the NHL is worth more than 6. Someday a team is going to try and build a team without a top-heavy cap allocation while still spending to the cap. The problem is the GMs of those richer teams just can't help themselves. If they are spending 58 mil on a roster they feel like they just HAVE to bay at least one or two guys 6+ mil.
2) They play in a weak conference. An argument can be made that there are at most 2 or 3 teams in the East who could make the playoffs in the West, based on their records against the West. Considering Pittsburgh, when healthy, is clearly the best team in that Conference, even losing two great players (although only Crosby was playing particularly well this year) won't knock them too far down the standings because the rest of the Conference is, quite simply, just that bad.
3) Fleury's not that good. The East only has 6 of the top 15 offenses. Brent Johnson is in a statistical dead heat with him, and Johnson is a journeyman at best.
4) Pittsburgh is playing well in their conference because they have a fantastic corps of dmen, and they are playing a trapping, tight style with them which has always been successful in the regular season for teams with limited scoring talent.
5) There is a reason elite goalies, and specifically highly paid elite goalies, are incredibly sparse among the population of teams who have gone deeply into the postseason since the onset of the cap. It is not remotely coincidental. That reason is the difference between a top 5 goalie and an average NHL goalie is as small as it has ever been, and there are more competent NHL goaltenders than ever before. Spending an extra 2-4 mil per year on a goalie almost always nets a far smaller net improvement than spending that same amount of skaters would.
24 games is not a great sample size, especially when there were so many other injuries here and there, plus it doesn't take into account which teams we played when. I almost hate to belittle the point, because I think it's obvious that DRW with Datsyuk is a significantly better team than DRW sans Datsyuk, but I just feel that this is not a particularly good way to make that point.
It feels like a gimmicky stat that gives you something to point at and say "look at what we already know".
There's a stat in baseball called 'replacement value' or 'value over replacement player' (VORP). In baseball it talks about the value of a player over a replacement player of minimal cost or 'freely available talent'. I think a capped league needs a similar stat, something like Value over Salary Slot where it looks at what a player does, how much he costs, and how hard it might be to replace that with a UFA making roughly the same amount.
Would be nice. I doubt it ever happens though, as baseball is structured to make it very easy to quantify such stats. Hockey is not. Too many factors in hockey are not easily measured in numbers.
Quote:
Originally Posted by HockeyinHD
1) Yes. No player in the NHL is worth more than 7 mil, and it's not terribly hard to make a case that no player in the NHL is worth more than 6. Someday a team is going to try and build a team without a top-heavy cap allocation while still spending to the cap. The problem is the GMs of those richer teams just can't help themselves. If they are spending 58 mil on a roster they feel like they just HAVE to bay at least one or two guys 6+ mil.
Just curious, what's the case that shows no player is worth more than $7M, or even $6M?
Someone may indeed ice a team that is near the cap but is not top heavy (the Wild?), but I don't think they'll be very good. You need go-to guys to be successful, and go-to guys cost coin. In fact, of the 13 teams with less than $1M of cap space, the Wild, imo, are the furthest thing from top-heavy, and they have the 2nd worst record, behind only the Devils, who have had a litany of other problems this year. I think being appropriately top-heavy (there is a limit somewhere, obviously) is a prerequisite for being successful.
For a hard cap system with 23 players allowed? I think a rough measure would be that no single player take more than 10-12% of the cap room. The guy who does get that kind of money had better be frickin' Lidstrom or Datsyuk.
In all seriousness, it's hard to justify anything close to 15% or the CBA mandated 20% of the cap for one guy. Hence all the massaging of cap space with innovative contracts & terms.
First, when you pull a 6.7 million dollar player off a roster in a salary capped league, that's what happens. Second, unless Datsyuk was the only guy hurt for those games the basis of comparison gets a little muddy.
Obviously a team is going to be worse without a star player and without his cap space than with him.
Although unprovable, what would Detroit's record have been sans Datsyuk... but with another player making 6-7 mil? A Sedin, Kovy, Marleau, Backstrom, Kane, Toews, Kopitar, Iginla-class player?
There's a stat in baseball called 'replacement value' or 'value over replacement player' (VORP). In baseball it talks about the value of a player over a replacement player of minimal cost or 'freely available talent'. I think a capped league needs a similar stat, something like Value over Salary Slot where it looks at what a player does, how much he costs, and how hard it might be to replace that with a UFA making roughly the same amount.
For my money, the only other center in the league that could do as well or better than Datsyuk is Crosby. Unless Daniel comes along with Henrik as a package deal I wouldn't even give Dats for Henrik Sedin.
Thornton - No
Richards - No
Backstrom - Debateable... but no.
Kopitar - No
For a hard cap system with 23 players allowed? I think a rough measure would be that no single player take more than 10-12% of the cap room. The guy who does get that kind of money had better be frickin' Lidstrom or Datsyuk.
In all seriousness, it's hard to justify anything close to 15% or the CBA mandated 20% of the cap for one guy. Hence all the massaging of cap space with innovative contracts & terms.
I've said this before, but no goalies in the league right now are worth more than 4.5m. And the only goalie I'd want on the Wings at 4m or more is Lundqvist. The position is too fragile to spend a ton of cap space on it. It's the one position that can literally destroy a teams season.
Winning with goaltending is too much of a reactive approach. If you rely on your skaters, that's proactive (because you're attack the other end as opposed to taking it and hoping you survive). Obviously, you need good goaltending, but no one is going to bring it game-in game-out (see Patrick Roy vs Red Wings, we've laid some real doozies on him in his career). That's just the nature of goaltending. So it isn't wise to hitch your wagon onto a hit or miss method.
I've said this before, but no goalies in the league right now are worth more than 4.5m. And the only goalie I'd want on the Wings at 4m or more is Lundqvist. The position is too fragile to spend a ton of cap space on it. It's the one position that can literally destroy a teams season.
seriously? you don't think the season Tim Thomas is having is worth over 4.5m? he is putting up historic numbers
seriously? you don't think the season Tim Thomas is having is worth over 4.5m? he is putting up historic numbers
And last year he lost his job to Rask (mind you, Boston couldn't score, Thomas still put up good numbers). I wonder if Boston might be better off with another top 4 defensemen or forward.
I lost a little interest in this team once Datsyuk was injured. It didn't help that they haven't really been playing hard since December, but Datsyuk is such an amazing player, and it's now obvious that he makes this team tick.
On a different note, I was going to post about Detroit's brutal defensive numbers. Other than Anaheim they're the worst defensive team in the top 8 in the West.
Would be nice. I doubt it ever happens though, as baseball is structured to make it very easy to quantify such stats. Hockey is not. Too many factors in hockey are not easily measured in numbers.
I agree. It would be nice, though.
Quote:
Just curious, what's the case that shows no player is worth more than $7M, or even $6M?
Without going whole-hog with it, when you look at the production of people who make 6+ mil and compare that to the people who make 5-6 mil there doesn't tend to be a very substantive difference, and if you look at something like a 'replacement value' it's almost universally easier to get more production out of two slots where the salary is split 4-6 mil and 2-4 mil than it is to get that production when the split is 6-8 mil and 0-2 mil for skaters, and I've already touched on the high-paid vs lower-paid goalie stuff.
There are a very, very few exceptions to this rule. Maybe four or five at most. And all forwards.
Quote:
Someone may indeed ice a team that is near the cap but is not top heavy (the Wild?), but I don't think they'll be very good. You need go-to guys to be successful, and go-to guys cost coin. In fact, of the 13 teams with less than $1M of cap space, the Wild, imo, are the furthest thing from top-heavy, and they have the 2nd worst record, behind only the Devils, who have had a litany of other problems this year. I think being appropriately top-heavy (there is a limit somewhere, obviously) is a prerequisite for being successful.
The problem with the Wild is that they dumped 6 mil on a goalie, and that's cost them depth up front which has led to outrages like Andrew Brunette being 5th among forwards in TOI/g and Matt Cullen 3rd. Also, signing Havlat to that deal was really, really stupid.
I mean, look at the Preds. They are consistently successful, haven't spent more than 4.5 mil a year on anybody, and they've left 8+ mil of cap space on the table every year. If they were actually able to use that space and pick up those last two 4 million dollar skaters... I think that makes the difference for them between being a yearly 1st and out team and something much more dangerous. If those were dmen like Brad Stuart and an offensive guy like a Yandle or a Burns...?
For my money, the only other center in the league that could do as well or better than Datsyuk is Crosby. Unless Daniel comes along with Henrik as a package deal I wouldn't even give Dats for Henrik Sedin.
Thornton - No
Richards - No
Backstrom - Debateable... but no.
Kopitar - No
I tend to agree with that, but what Rice was pointing out was the spread between the Wings with Datsyuk and the Wings without him being significant... and it is, of course... but how many games worse would it be with him replaced at cost as opposed to missing entirely? Instead of going 11-9-4 would the team go 15-6-3? 16-6-2?
That's the kind of spread I'm interested in seeing (as if it was possible). What does Datsyuk, specifically, bring to the Wings that they couldn't have gotten from spending that 6.7 mil on someone else, or a couple someone elses? I'm not saying that to imply Datsyuk's a hack or anything, far from it, I'm just curious about it.
