4 Player Comparison

In hockey today it's very difficult to compare players. Who is better Sakic or Thornton? Pronger or Niedermeyer. Is Briere better than Drury? A lot of factors go into this. Since players play in different divisions, conferences, and opponents it is difficult to really gauge who's having a better season. When you start factoring that some players play on the powerplay a lot more than others, and some play short handed more than others. This makes some traditional statistics very questionable as a measure of performance. While there is some value to statistics like Points per game, and points in general, it doesn't tell the whole story.

Well I think a better (albeit not perfect) measurement of a person's offensive production would be a stat I am calling offensive efficiency. IT is basically points per game, but broken down into how well you score in like situations. For example a guy who scores 35 goals, with 30 on the powerplay isn't as valuable as someone who scores 35 goals with only 5 on the powerplay. while that's a bit extreme I think the point is, a better comparison of players is how well each one scores ES goals as compared to PP goals. So I have some stats that are Points/20min. this is points per 20 minutes of ice time, and is a measure of how each player scores at even strength.

The reason for using Even Strength. So I have taken the total even strength ice time for these players for the entire season and divided it by 20 minutes, mainly so we're working with approximately 1 games worth of ice time. Then I used their even strength points, goals and assists to basically see who is a more efficient scorer.

Player A B C D ES-Ice Time (Season) 994:31 866:45 1009:38 1004:50 ES-Points 30 27 45 46 ES-Goals 11 18 17 17 ES-Assists 19 9 27 30 ES-Points/20min 0.603 0.623 0.891 0.916 ES-Goals/20min 0.221 0.415 0.337 0.338 ES-Assists/20min 0.382 0.208 0.535 0.597

We can see from this that Player B is a better goal scorer than the other 3 players, however his assists efficiency is dreadful compared to the other 3. In the End Player D seems to be more efficient at even strength scoring than the other three players. He barely edges Player C in every category, and is securely more efficient than both Player A and B. He is tops in both assists and points, and second in goals/20min. The difference however is pretty close, so we can look at their power points to see if maybe one gets separated from the pack there.

Player	A	B	C	D
PP-Ice Time (season)	333:08	97:43	448:44	299:12
PP-Pts	29	6	40	31
PP-Goals	7	4	16	11
PP-Assists	22	2	24	20
PP-Pts/20min	1.74	1.23	1.78	2.07
PPGoals/20min	0.42	0.817	0.713	0.735
PP-Assists/20min	1.32	0.409	1.07	1.34

Well after looking at these numbers it looks like Player D is a more efficient on the Power Play as well. While Player B is still a better goal scorer (.817 goals/20min) and his power play assist efficiency is awful. On the powerplay it seems as if Player D is again a more efficient scorer.

So it looks as if Player D is a little bit better offensively than the other three players. Now it's time to compare their defensive abilities. ± is a terrible statistic because it is too dependant on a teams overall ability, not an individuals. The best way I can think of to measure is through objective coaches judgment, which can be measured in PK ice time per game.

Player	A	B	C	D
SH ice time	2:05	3:02	:27	2:16

From this I would take that Player B is a superior defensive player, but both A & D are at least solid. I would guess that player C is not very good at all defensively. B is a much better defensive player and easily outperforms the other three in SH scoring, so much so that it's not even worth looking at the points. B has better SH Offensive efficiency by a long shot.

So in conclusion based on these statistics I would rate the players seasons overall as D, B, C, A. B and C are pretty close for me but I think D stands out as the best player from this group.

Who are the players

A-Anze Kopitar
B-Jordan Staal
C-Evgeny Malkin
D- Paul Stastny.

Hmm who should win the Calder? Paul Stastny!