Eeyore writes, re: Chris Drury:
 
.  I will say again, IF HE IS PLAYING DEFENSE ON A
>CONSISTENT BASIS LIKE HE DID AGAINST MICHIGAN, THEN I REALLY DOUBT THAT
>JASON KROG,
>OR ANYONE ELSE IN HOCKEY EAST IS A BETTER PLAYER.
 
I didn't realize that Drury was a defenseman.  Just kidding.  Drury is a
tenacious back checker, he is very solid defensively.  But . . . does this
offset his lack of point production this year?  There are many guys in HE
who are solid defensive forwards but will not get a sniff for the Hobey, or
anything else for that matter.  Voting for the award should be based on a
player's all around abilities and contribution to the team for the season
in question and its relationship to those who he is competing against for
the award.  Based on this criteria, and feel free to disagree, Drury just
does not measure up to Krog this year.  In fact, he doesn't measure up to
Mark Mowers either.
 
 
>That's despite the point
>diferential between the two.  As it happens, I have since managed to track
>down +/-
>ratings for BU (unlike UNH, I'll get to that in a bit) and found that
>Drury is only
>(in this context, it is "only") +12 for the season.  So I doubt that he plays
>defense that well night in and night out.  Based just on the numbers I can
>find,
>yes, Jason Krog appears to be a better Hobey candidate than Chris Drury.
>
>> You lost me on this.  I guess there are statistics and then . . . Well,
>> all I'll say is that Krog is +27.  He only has 4 PPG among his 27, his
>> strength is transition, creating odd man rushes and short hand situations.
>> Perhaps Muckalt, et al are better scorers than the Hockey East crew but
>> since CCHA and WCHA hardly play outside conference during the season, how
>> do we know.
>
>I'm not sure exactly where I lost you, so I'll go through the whole thing.  My
>assumption is that not all of the difference in league scoring is due to
>the players
>in HE simply being better scorers.  I was saying the same thing last year
>about some
>of the amazing numbers ECAC goalies were putting up.  Some of it is due to a
>combination of better goalies in other leagues, better defensemen, rink
>conditions,
>sheer luck and (probably the largest factor) coaching strategies putting a
>greater
>emphasis on defense.  So, I discounted Krog's scoring numbers (actually, I
>went the
>other way, but multiplication is commutative) by the difference in league
>scoring.
>This may discount too heavily (HE may actually have better scorers overall
>than the
>other leagues), but I think it's closer to the truth than the raw numbers.
>When
>looking at +/-, this still needs to be taken into consideration; higher overall
>scoring will lead to wider absolute +/- margins with the same relationship
>to actual
>performance.  The part that I'm just not going to take the trouble to do is to
>adjust these league numbers for PPGs; to properly norm each player's +/-
>rating, I
>need the ratio of even-strength goals scored in each conference as well as
>by each
>player, not total goals.  If you have those numbers handy, I'll be happy
>to figure
>the calculations.
 
I'll pass,I'm going to assume that you don't have to be a math major to be
on the Hobey Committee
>
>The other thing you may be complaining about is that I got Krog's +/-
>rating wrong.
>I'll most likely have to plead guilty to that.  I looked all over the
>place (USCHO,
>ESPN, USA Today, conferences' official sites, teams' official sites, teams'
>unofficial sites with links listed at USCHO) for the stats I used to
>compile my last
>post.  In none of these was I able to find +/- ratings for UNH players.  I
>did find
>a +19 for Jason Krog on the HE site where it posted info on Hobey
>candidates.  After
>reading your post, I went back and realized that the info posted there is
>completely
>out of date.  If you say Krog is +27, I'll believe you; I don't have any better
>source.  Still, a couple of Spartan defensemen will end up ahead of him in
>this stat
>with any sort league correction.  This would then get us into the debate of
>defensemen vs. forwards since Tyler Harlton doesn't have anything like the
>point
>production Krog does.  Justifiably or not, the forwards are always going
>to have an
>advantage in this game since they have scoring numbers to point at, as you
>do for
>Krog.  I'll shrug my shoulders and say that the blue-liners in E. Lansing are
>getting even less of the credit they deserve than Krog is.
 
So are the ones in Durham, but this is,I think, a debate of Drury vs. Krog.
>
>> This guy's numbers have to be deceptive.  Who has he played against?
>> Someone  who only plays half a team's games should not be considered.
>> Period.
>
>Again, if you read my post, I agree with you about that limited games
>part.  But you
>also seem to be allowing your desire to give Krog the award overshadow others'
>information.  Goehring's numbers aren't inflated by anything other than
>perhaps by
>limited game time; he's played a perfectly representative sample of the Siuox's
>games.
 
I didn't say his numbers were inflated, although I doubt that they would be
so gaudy if he played the minutes of guys like Matile and Turco.
 
 
Greg Ambrose
JASON KROG FOR HOBEY!!!
 
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