Renomitsu 932 Posted August 31, 2015 Share Posted August 31, 2015 (edited) A Discussion on “Greatness” and the VHL’s Elite [Part I] It’s a point that has been debated throughout the ages – is it better to have a solid core of respectable players, or to partially forego overall team quality and depth in order to stretch for a pure, unadulterated star player? Certainly, sports leagues around the world have drafts that attenuate team imparity – a lack of success is compensated for by higher picks. However, in a league that is balanced to begin with, and assuming GMs do not intentionally tank a season in order to acquire a draft pick, what is more valuable – the contributions of a superstar, or a higher quantity of decent role players? Defining “Superstar” Qualitatively, it’s simple enough to propose a personal definition for a star player – we can use an “eye test” to suggest who the best player on a given team is, or look at the best plus-minus, point-scoring, or defending performances when all twelve (or fewer!) players are on the ice. However, as is the case with any analysis (or any definition, really), it’s necessary to come up with a definition that is consistent between individuals – after all, how can we come to a consensus on who is a star is if we use different definitions? What criteria should we use to determine eliteness? Is observable level of play more important than accomplishments (e.g. trophies, all-star nominations, and statistical superiority)? Does having an excellent team around a player detract from their elite status? In fact, each of these criteria must be weighted in such a way that we can judge overall greatness based on measurable parameters. Ultimately, greatness and eliteness is a subjective area – if you want your opinion to have credence, you must be able to reasonably explain the merits of your perspective. The following are criteria that I believe play a significant role in determining excellence. Accomplishments & Tournament Success Immediately, accomplishments and success in important tournaments comes to mind as an important metric to judge players. A simple search in the articles available for each currently-inducted Hall of Fame player show that of the seventy-seven threads available, 74 have contended for the Continental Cup, 67 of them contain the word “finals” in them, and 59 contain the phrase “Victory Cup.” Although hockey is a team sport, and no team is hoists a trophy on the back of one player, individuals on a championship team irrefutably have a leg up on the competition with regards to greatness. The league itself has established a number of awards and accomplishments devoted to excellence in a given area – all-star teams, the Hall of Fame, World Cup victories, position-based trophies, and Most Valuable Player Awards are only a portion of the accolades available to a high-performing player. There’s a clear and obvious reason that the career awards are placed towards the beginning of a Hall of Fame player’s induction article – they're major milestones, indicating a player's or team's singular dominance over the course of a season. However, even the most astute historians of VHL legacies cannot recall and analyze seasons’ worth of data at will, and they should never be expected to. When we consider individuals for the Hall of Fame, our perception of their greatness might not come by crunching hundreds, if not thousands of numbers, but instead looking at the hardware they've amassed over their career. However, accomplishments should never be the be-all-end-all determinant for how a player’s excellence is perceived – if that were the case, some extremely dedicated and talented players would be lost to the mists of time, victims of happenstance. One needs to look no further than the Season 40 HoF inductees to this end – Kameron Taylor, a top-flight center, never captured the Continental or Victory Cups. He had some hardware in his trophy case (2x Grimm Jonsson, 1x Kevin Brooks Trophies), but large parts of his career, particularly in his first few seasons, were beset by negative plus-minuses and few game-winning goals. That brings us to our next criterion in… Natural Talent & Relative Success In the VHL, pundits and other statistic enthusiasts have the distinct advantage of looking directly at the input for how the game is played (sim values), as well as ready access to the total points earned (TPE) of every single player, whether they’re in the VHL, VHLM, or free agency. These utilities make the notion of player building and natural talent a simple one – players with more points earned tend to have more robust statistics. We can also point to “talent disparities” in teams on a whim – the player index itself provides an overall (OV) rating to a player, and it’s a fairly trivial task to determine which team should win a sim if there is a significant difference in these values on a team-wide basis. At the same time, however, it’s important to note that even the greatest players of all time, if placed on a distinctly below-average team, will likely lack the raw quantitative output of those on an obviously more talented team. In this sense, accomplishments (first- and second-place finishes) are incredibly important, but success should also be judged based on who a player of interest is playing with. Theoretically, being eliminated in the semi-finals or quarter-finals of the playoffs with one team could be as impressive as winning a title with another – and could speak more definitively to an individual player’s value to a team (and their overall quality). In a league where the draft should smooth out overwhelming talent differences between teams, it should be expected that teams exceed some floor for ability (for example, no current VHLM team should be able to reasonably compete with a VHL team) – but clearly, some teams possess more talent than others. That means that, over the course of a single player’s career, we should see up-and-down fluctuations in talent. Part of a player’s overall effectiveness should then be measured in terms of their staying power and ability to weather the storm, otherwise known as… Longevity One statistic probably comes to mind with the word longevity – seasons played. In the VHL, it can be rather difficult to differentiate athletes’ longevity, as there is a hard-set rule for ability decay due to aging – and yet this particular aspect is not the one that should be addressed. How long a player has been at their peak – not just “able to carry their own weight” or “effective enough” – should be the metric used for greatness or overall career excellence. Pundits often speak of “late bloomers” or “career slumps” – and a great player can weather nearly any change with relatively little diminishment in superiority. A perennial playoff contender likely has some degree of consistency in its roster – and those teams that make it to the final multiple years in a row (see S36-S39 Davos, S39-S41 New York) likely have a consistent core of excellent players, or a singular superstar player at the very least, that make their runs possible. A player that is considered elite should be in contention for the top two or three at their position for multiple seasons. Certainly, it’s logical to believe that a player will not be in the discussion while they are still in development (their VHLM year plus the first 1-2 seasons in the VHL), but it’s simply not enough to have one record-shattering season. A star forward, for example, should never be invisible in a playoff series – and they should have some high-level standing in the regular season. Do they need to win the Grimm Jonsson trophy every season? Absolutely not – but they should appear on the ballot for a significant portion of their career. These are just three facets by which we can judge players; while they potentially cover a lot of ground in the subject of greatness, there’s still plenty of discussion to be done regarding our definition and specific players that embody each of these characteristics. Whether you want further discussion of our definition or specific statistical analysis, we've got more coming your way in the upcoming weeks. Edited August 31, 2015 by Renomitsu eaglesfan036 and Molholt 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
eaglesfan036 4,585 Posted August 31, 2015 Share Posted August 31, 2015 well done, mag worthy tbh Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Head Moderator Baozi 1,638 Posted August 31, 2015 Head Moderator Share Posted August 31, 2015 Neat story bro Renomitsu 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Renomitsu 932 Posted August 31, 2015 Author Share Posted August 31, 2015 Neat story bro pls notice me tfong senpai What sort of things would you guys like to see me write about in the future? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Head Moderator Baozi 1,638 Posted September 2, 2015 Head Moderator Share Posted September 2, 2015 pls notice me tfong senpai What sort of things would you guys like to see me write about in the future? Lol I love your articles sofar. So whatever comes to mind I like advanced statistics Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kylrad 178 Posted September 4, 2015 Share Posted September 4, 2015 Content 3/3 Nice article, I look forward to part 2 Grammar 1/1 Nothing really to find despite its length Appearance 1/1 Looks good Overall 6/6 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CowboyinAmerica 2,741 Posted September 7, 2015 Share Posted September 7, 2015 Claimed Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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