Podcast 10: Legalese

i remember that, it was a nice touch. one of the few times the ACC music didn’t make me want to punch the guy next to me.

but do they have 11 on their amps?

or legal man by belle and sebastian.

Good point, but I can just ignore that and use what he said.

Tyler liked the Kessel deal more strongly before we started recording.

that argues against the value of draft picks going down is… the draft is shorter than it used to be, so the number of opportunities to select players for your organization without an attached cost (of signing them as UFA’s after the fact) is reduced… that increases draft pick value… marginally, but it goes up nonetheless.

In 1985 there were 252 draft picks… in the 1990’s it went up to over 270… now it’s back down around 210 or so.

That means roughly 60 picks out of 270 or 22% of the selection pool for a given year has been shaved off. That’s relatively significant I would think.

Also, while the value of a first may be declining in terms of the amount of money it saves you on that players lifetime of contracts, and how much control you have over payments, surely the salary cap makes them MORE valuable by making whatever meager amount of cost control you CAn get way more valuable. Maybe this is so more for big market teams, but if the Hawks could have thrown as much money as they wanted at Versteeg and Toews and co, then it wouldn’t have mattered if they were outperforming anything. It would just matter how much raw talent they could get their hands on, and whether they would be able to get enough money into their pockets to pay for it all.

No.

But to offset the amount of cap space tied up in those fine fellows, I think Washington needs tertiary players who can make contributions that outweigh their contract hits. Could be cheap UFAs, could be guys on ELCs, but I don’t think they’ll succeed without it.

I think the oilers try to break MPS, Hall and Eberle in all at once to build chemistry through youth

our second round pick that Boston took (don’t know his name)

Jared Knight. He was Kadri’s linemate for the London Knights.

of why you don’t expect Kessel to outperform Seguin over the long haul, but your basis assumes Burke SHOULD have anticipated his team finishing in one of the last 2 spots in the NHL standings.

To me that wasn’t a reasonable expectation entering last season. I don’t think most experts were predicting the Leafs finishing 29th overall… and I really don’t think Burke was, despite what he keeps saying about making the trade even if they finished dead last.

There is something about the deal though that we are forgetting. Burke has personal opinions about players, and he obviously really likes Kessel. My point being, he may have decided to take Kessel 1st or 2nd overall in 2006, and Kessel may yet develop into a player who is averaging almost a point per game.

There are issues around the team a player plays for, and the prominence they are given on their team when they are taken that early in the draft. If you look at that list of players you posted, every player in recent history that averages over 0.8 ppg on that list was basically given a 1st line job right out of the gate as a rookie at the age of 19, along with top PP minutes.

The ones who are lower (Jordan Staal, Bobby Ryan) had to work their way into the NHL or started below the top line. That has a LOT to do with production levels. My point is, Kessel and Seguin start being compared on the basis of their totals over the life of the trade, which means really Kessel has produced 55 points for the Leafs in 70 games.

I think if you break that chart down by ES point per 15 minutes of ice time, and PP points per 5 minutes of PP ice time, you might get slightly different versions of skill level.

If you compare Kessel to Bobby Ryan, Patrick Kane, and Steven Stamkos, his production is lower for sure on a TOI basis, but not by as much as you might think. At evens he’s very close to their pace, but on the PP he suffers greatly (likely from his inability to use his speed and his shot selection from the half boards). On a per 15 minute of ES ice time basis, they produce the following: Stamkos (0.575 pp15), Kane (0.567 pp15), Ryan (0.551 pp15), Kessel (0.524 pp15). On a per 5 minute basis of PP ice time, Kessel has been scoring at slightly over HALF the pace of the other players. Some of that will be due to line-mates he gets on the PP so far in his career, but a lot of it is his own weaknesses… their numbers are as follows: Ryan (0.52 PPpp5), Kane (0.50 PPpp5), Stamkos (0.48 PPpp5), and Kessel (0.28 PPpp5).

On the basis of those numbers, if you gave each of them so far in their careers around 1200 minutes of ES ice time, and 350 minutes on the PP you could expect the following numbers for a given season: Ryan (44 ESP, 37 PPP – 81 points), Kane (45 ESP, 35 PPP – 80 points), Stamkos (46 ESP, 34 PPP – 80 points), Kessel (42 ESP, 19 PPP – 71 points).

Kessel has produced at a notch below the level of a top 2 draft pick, and he may well continue to do so. Does that guarantee anything in regards to Seguin? Probably not, and I’m guessing he’ll produce at a level below Steven Stamkos did in his rookie year, which means Kessel will likely end up ahead of him either way.

It will be interesting to see how Boston utilizes Seguin, and what sort of ice time he gets. I’m not sure how much they’ll rush him along given their depth at C. He might get sheltered minutes at Even Strength, and big PP minutes… which would give him some weird totals.

Have you factored in Colby Armstong’s “Limit Seguin to Eating Christmas Dinner Though a Tube” bonus incentive?

if kessel’s draft class is poor, then the comparison isn’t really relevant. but it’s a strong draft class, and if he’s one of the top performers of that draft class, it’s a reasonable thing to point out.

seguin may very well be a 90-point producer, but what if it takes 6 or 7 years before he is? does that factor in at all? maybe boston would have been better off with a 40-goal scorer for the next 5 years than with seguin potentially only putting up 30 pts a year over the next few years before hitting his stride?

I never said you shouldn’t gamble. Never said you should either. I said that you have to JUDGE a gamble based on how smart it was at the time it was taken. Judging a gamble based on what comes up on the dice is beyond stupid, because you are attributing the outcome to skill where you KNOW beyond a shadow of a doubt, that it’s just luck.

If you flip a coin and call heads and it IS a heads then that doesn’t make you smart, and if it comes up tails, that doesn’t make you dumb. Making a bet where heads means you get a free house, and tails means you lose 50 bucks is an awesome gamble. Even if you lose it. Making a bet where heads means you win 50 bucks, and tails means you have a blindfold put on and then the snot kicked out of you by Matt Carckner is just a dumb gamble. Even if you win.

So to repeat, you judge a gamble based on how happy you would be with a win, how sad you would be about a loss, and what the probability is of the one versus the other. Everything else is monday morning quarterbacking inanity. It’s the literal equivalent of “can you believe that bonehead picked tails? I can’t believe he picked tails! What a loser”.

To ammend the prior post yet again, for “>>>>>>>>>” please read an infinite loop.