Karen/Greg Ambrose wrote:
> What Drury did last year, in one game, should have no relevance for this
> year's voting. It will, that's only human nature. I have watched Drury
> quite a bit over the years and he is as advertised. However, Krog has had
> two outstanding years in a row as well, he has improved tremendously on the
> defensive side of the game and, unlike Drury, has put up the numbers this
> year. While stats don't count for everything, they should count for
> something. He is the leading scorer, the leading point per game scorer, he
> is second in goals, leads in goals per game, has the most game winning
> goals and pairs with the leading shorthand goal scorer (Derek Bekar) in the
> country. This has to count for something!
I think you need to reread what I wrote. I said, "I have no idea whether he does
that on a regular basis, but
if he does, combined with the points he scores, it makes him an awfully tough
candidate to beat for the best player in Hockey East." I am NOT saying, "He played
defense so well in last year's Final Four that he should win the Hobey this year."
I am using his play last year, the most recent time I've seen him, as a guide to how
he might be playing this year. 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. 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.
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.
> 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. Very early in the season, he won a rotation that got him time against every
opponent. In fact, he pretty much won the job full-time, but went and injured
himself. This doesn't really come as a surprise to me; I was predicting two years
ago that he would be good and I couldn't believe he wasn't recruited out of high
school. Unless there were some academic problems, there have to be about 40 Div I
coaches kicking themselves right now. (The last is added more as a matter of "I
told you so" rather than because it has anything to do with the Hobey chase.)
> Never said he should be running and hiding. Only trying to get the guy a
> fair shake since the press, a lot of fans and, unbelievably, the HE
> commissioner, are pushing Drury. I only hope that the people who actually
> do the voting read this stuff.
This is largely why I long ago decided that individual honors in team sports were
overrated. I'm betting that Harlton has a good claim, too, but I don't hear anyone
pushing his name around, either. Curtis Murphy and Tom Poti are each second on
their first place team in scoring as defensemen. My gut hunch is that both are
awfully deserving of consideration as well. Maybe I'll start adding something like
this at the bottom of my posts.
J. Michael Neal
Tyler Harlton for Hobey Baker!
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