The NHL season is finally over. Congrats to all the Hockey research and development people (on teams, companies, or just hobbying like me) working behind the scenes during this amazing season and all the progress you all have made. I had a really weird curve of interest of the 2022 NHL Playoffs. I watched the 1st round with a lot of “passion” (please laugh) and I gradually lost interest until I ended up watching a total of 30 minutes of the Stanley Cup Final. In terms of Championships, I like it more when it is short like 1 or 2 games to go to the next rounds… I still have lots of trouble to stay focussed in a 4 of 7 series.
While I was busy not watching the playoffs, I had the chance to contribute on different 2022 NHL Draft projects with some super smart people. First, my hockey analytics mentor Mikael Nahabedian (@hunterofstats) has asked me if he could use my NHLe model for his 2022 NHL Draft related articles and he also asked me to write some words about the the conclusions we can find after we see the NHL equivalency production for different prospects. Here are the 2 articles in question if you missed them.
I was also glad to share my NHLe model with the master Joshua Khalfin (@Josh_Khalfin) on his 2022 NHL Draft Supertool. Here’s a screenshot I took from one of the numerous pages of his project. It is big, and it gives us a lot of insights on the prospects you want to know about ahead of the Draft that happens to be next week.
As many know, I am not a big prospect person, but I still did a couple of hours of work on a variety of projects. Unfortunately, I lacked of time and motivation to build a prospect projection model, but it will be for next year. As I said earlier, I built an NHLe model that allows us to compare all prospects point production in the same unit of measure NHL points.
“Generally, a player who is a significantly better point/game producer than his peers is more likely to turn into an NHLer and become a star in the NHL.”
- Me in some article
So, NHLe is not the lottery numbers that will tell you if a player will be a star in the NHL or not with a high level of confidence, but it is an indicator among many of future success. Many of you readers are Habs fans, so you probably want to know if Shane Wright or Juraj Slafkovský has the best NHLe of the Draft class and I am happy to tell you that… JOAKIM KEMELL is actually the leading the pack. He is followed by Shane Wright and projected 2nd-3rd round pick Jordan Dumais. My model does not take international competitions into consideration (yet), so unfortunately for Slafkovský who is known for stellar performances against the national team of Kazakhstan, my model only sees him as the big young player who struggled to put up points in a men’s league. Just based on vibes and by the fact that Shane Wright got the exceptional player status from the CHL, I would pick Wright with the 1st overall pick. But let's not take my opinion as something that has a lot of value since I am not a prospect person and I have done no researches myself about it. For this one I will let the people who know their thing voice their opinion on that Draft thing.
On the defensemen’s side, the pack is led by the almost unanimous two best defensmen of the Draft in David Jiříček and Šimon Nemec. Small offensive defenseman Lane Hutson completes the top-3.
You can find all NHLe values and a couple of graphs on my Tableau page and it gives you the opportunity to play with different features.
This is where my NHL Draft part ends. I do not have much to say because I do not know much and I feel there are things to be said about the NHL Draft. First, you do not need to know everything about everyone. Teams assign different people to different place (regional scouts) to do different type of scouting assignments, so you, full-time employee or student, is not expected to be able to write a full essay on the 225 players that are going to be Drafted next week in Montréal. Secondly, be open to discuss… because at the end of the day, it is a question of probabilities and it is not a big deal at all. Some people have different opinions for different reasons, and especially in the context of the Draft, it is normal to have people disagreeing with general consensus. Last thing, most of the players don’t turn into what they are expected to turn into (usually stars or top-6 forwards or top-4 D’s or busts) NHL until 3-5 years after they are being drafted (this is why I hated doing prospects coverage in the past), so be patient.
Another use of the NHLe is to see a player’s progress over the time. This is why I started making NHLe cards.
My NHLe model only takes 130 leagues into considerations, so some leagues are being left out. This is why, I am adding the league where the conversions are made to the card. I am glad to see that Byron Bader is now doing the same. NHLe is also fun to use when it is time to compare players.
Before I finally stop with Draft content, here is a Viz showing MTL’s Draft picks. Remember that the Canadiens have a league-high 14 picks for the NHL Draft that will happen in their arena.
Josh and her son
If you follow the Canadiens really closely, you might be aware that the Canadiens are dealing with with a lot of problems right now. They need new personnel because a lot of the people who were hired under the Bergevin-era are leaving, some really important player is potentially having a career-threatening injury, etc. Also, despite being one of the worst teams of the league, they are close to the salary cap upper limit. The biggest issue here? They only have 19 players under contract. They have Alexander Romanov to sign this summer (if they do not trade him), and Cole Caufield to sign next summer.
According to numerous reports, new GM Kent Hughes is open to a variety of solutions to fix his salary cap problems. One of the most controversial suggestion among Habs fans is : Trading Josh Anderson.
Josh Anderson’s game can be summarized in one sentence : he a big, scoring winger who is at his best when he’s out-skating defensemen and out-muscling defensemen on the rush to generate a potential shot attempt. He is a fast big player, so he is good at putting pressure on the opposing players when they have the puck. He is forcing them to play fast because he will hit them with a lot of force. Other than that, he is apparently a good leader, but it’s not in the things I can verify. He also has flaws. When he does not carry the puck to create a scoring chance for himself, he is usually difficult to notice. He has bad playmaking abilities, he struggles to make himself valuable on power-play (because PP is rarely rushes) and he turns the puck over a lot. Also, I know that hockey analytics hate points a lot but, he does not produce like the top-6 winger he is expected to be. Knowing that the player is basically average offensively at evens, bad defensively, bad on PP, does not play on PK, but might have leadership… we can come up to the conclusion that he is not living up to the contract Marc Bergevin gave him as soon as he was acquired from the Blue Jackets.
Since NHL teams like his type of player and a lot of team could see him as a player that his worth the contract he earned, he would be a valuable asset to trade in order to create cap space for the Canadiens. It could also help a rebuild to get draft picks and prospects for the canadian winger.
Current and future projects
So feel free to have your own opinion on what I just said. In the meantime, let me flex something I have been working on in the last couple of days. Since I have started to gain interest in hockey research and development, I have been trying to replicate everything I have been seeing for the simple purpose of learning how it is done (and not making money). I have learned how make Dashboards in sheets when I spent a full month replicating player cards like @JFreshHockey, I have built an NHLe model after Patrick Bacon and CJ Turturo built theirs, etc. This time, I have attempted to replicate the Viz from one of the biggest Visualizer in hockey : @IneffectiveMath.
I do not know if Micah would be proud of me for this, but since imitation if the biggest form of flattery, I have big hopes that he is not not mad for me trying to imitate his work.
As I said earlier, I have lacked of motivation to complete a Prospect Projection model, but it is probably a project I will try to do next season as I am currently proud of my NHLe model and I want to improve it in the future and I want to build a bunch of different tools for the NHL Draft. I also learned I was let go of the internship opportunity and I am now a free agent, so I am open to collaborate with anyone who wishes to team up with me. While I am waiting for upcoming opportunities, I am also working on an expected goal model (basic stuff) and on improving things I have already done in the past.
Thank you for keeping up with me and encouraging me to be better. I am grateful. Have a nice weekend and I wish you to enjoy Draft week!
Nice article max! I enjoy reading your work and look forward to seeing you improve. Hope you can get another internship soon bro good luck on your journey and maybe you can work for the habs one day :)