RMPS Player Rankings

[veritas]

There's not a whole lot to do during the NHL offseason at the moment and recently there's been some "friendly" discussion between media and stats people in the hockey community about different ways to rank players. Here's an example of one of the more civil and productive discussions:

http://www.thehockeynews.com/news/article/star-power-in-the-nhl-which-teams-have-it-and-how-much-does-it-take-to-win-the-cup

A thoughtful critique:
https://oilersnation.com/2017/07/17/what-is-best-way-to-evaluate-nhl-players/

And a thoughtful reply:

We also had an interesting Pastrnak/Eichel discussion in a thread last week. I'm perfectly fine with this also turning into a discussion about the value of different stats relative to each other and also compared to scouting/watching games, but I really think it would be interesting to see who people here think are the best NHL players. I know there are a bunch of really smart hockey people here who understand a lot of the current advanced stats and also "watch the games". And you're smart enough to weigh all factors however you think appropriate.

So that being said, throw out your top 5 at each position, in order. Or 10 if people would prefer. I'll go ahead and start things:

Centers:
Crosby
McDavid
Malkin
Bergeron
(cliff)
Matthews
Honorable mention to Tavares, Stamkos, and Scheifele. Because they're all probably better than most of the wingers.

Wingers:
Kucherov
Kane
Tarasenko
Pastrnak
Wheeler

Defenseman:
Karlsson
Hedman
Burns
Lindholm
Subban

 

[cshea]

This was tough to do.

Centers:

1. Connor McDavid
2. Sidney Crosby
3. Evgeni Malkin
4. Patrice Bergeron
5. Steven Stamkos
6. John Tavares
7. Auston Matthews
8. Anze Kopitar
9. Tyler Seguin
10. Mark Schiefele

McDavid over Crosby maybe a hot take but I think he's the best player in hockey already. The first 3 are obvious, then it gets a tad murky. Bergeron's 2-way impact gives him the nod at 4.

Wingers

1. Patrick Kane
2. Vlad Tarasenko
3. Nikita Kucherov
4. Brad Marchand
5. Johnny Gaudreau
6. David Pastrnak
7. Blake Wheeler
8. Taylor Hall
9. Jamie Benn
10. Alex Ovechkin

Kane's the best winger in hockey. I actually originally had Benn second, but his numbers away from Seguin aren't all that great. I had Marchand 4 based on his 2-way play. Pastrnak isn't quite there yet. Ovi is still a premier goal scorer.

Defense

1. Charlie McAvoy

Ah, I kid

1. Erik Karlsson
2. Victor Hedman
3. PK Subban
4. Brent Burns
5. Colton Parayko
6. Hampus Lindholm
7. Drew Doughty
8. Alex Pietrangelo
9. Dougie Hamilton
10. Ryan Suter

This was probably the hardest group. Karlsson is the best defenseman in the league by a long shot, but it was really tough ordering the next 9. There's no one good metric to use to evaluate defenseman, particularly on the defensive side.

 

[BoSoxFink]

I would be terrible at this, but one person I'm kind of shocked was missing from both of your top 10 centers would be Jonathan Toews. Maybe he has dropped off a little but he has always been considered in the same class as Bergeron and Kopitar.

 

[Red Right Ankle]

I would be terrible at this, but one person I'm kind of shocked was missing from both of your top 10 centers would be Jonathan Toews. Maybe he has dropped off a little but he has always been considered in the same class as Bergeron and Kopitar.

So, I was like, "Yeah!"

Then I looked.

Toews and Kopitar aren't that dissimilar from David Krejci from a CF%, DZS% or point production standpoint.

Is David Krejci a top ten center?

 

[TheRealness]

Is David Krejci a top ten center?

Certainly not to Haggs, who was advocating trading him so Ryan Fucking Spooner (!!!!!!!!!) could be our 2nd line center. For someone that is decent with the development camp, he is so fucking awful at everything else he does. That article was pure shit.

Any who, it's McDavid and Crosby (BIG GAP).... Malkin, Bergeron, Tavares, Matthews in some order on centers. Will have to look at the others if I have more time tonight.

 

[veritas]

Really nothing at all to argue with cshea's rankings. I think my Crosby > McDavid is more of a hot take than the reverse. I will say Marchand was the hardest for me to rank. Partially because of my own biases and partially because he's a very unconventional player. I think there are non-insane arguments for him anywhere from 1-8.

Is he the best winger in the league because at his position he has far and away the best 5v5 shot differential over the past few seasons despite ridiculous QoC, was 3rd in scoring last year, is an elite penalty killer, and the reason Bergeron is going to the hall of fame and not just a few Selkes and all star games? Or has he just been a very good wingman to Bergeron, is useless on the powerplay except for last season's anomaly, and penalty killing is really hard to value for forwards? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I agree defensemen in general are the toughest to evaluate. They can do so much to positively affect the game and not get points and vice versa. And pure shot metrics can be much less meaningful of a measuring stick for them, because they generally have more input into the quality of the shot than the shooter. With some exceptions, hockey is more of a weak link game (like soccer as opposed to basketball), in my opinion.

Lindholm for me is someone who is wildly underrated the more I dig deeper into stats and watch him play, and Roman Josi is someone I think falls on the other end of that spectrum. Tyler Dellow was on a podcast recently talking about how Josi and some other high point total defensemen put up large point numbers without actually making the team that much better overall. And a large part of that is because they are allowed to get into dangerous areas and just get some points that the forwards end up not getting without actually doing disruptive things and creating chances (like Karlsson and Burns). And meanwhile there's a forward hanging out at the point and having to defend odd man rushes the other way.

That being said, I think Krug is at worst a top 30 defenseman despite not being someone who should ever sniff "top pair" matchups. He is great on the PP, and when facing ordinary NHL opposition can be downright destructive 5v5. He's someone I was skeptical of for a long time. I kept seeing his name pop up very positively in various hockey analytics charts and started watching him more closely last year (his worst statistically, but facing very good competition while dragging McQuaid around). He doesn't often make highlight reel plays, and is occasionally the victim of those, but in general, he's always making small to medium good things happen to advance the play when he's on the ice.

 

[veritas]

Really interesting "points above replacement" rating system: https://hockey-graphs.com/2017/08/01/introducing-weighted-points-above-replacement-part-1/

The article goes very deep into the statistical methodology and addresses the shortcomings (most importantly, the lack of QoC and QoT as features in the model).

Some familiar names on the top 30 F and D charts, taken from the author's twitter: https://twitter.com/EvolvingWild :

And the bottom 30 defenseman:

Spoiler: Caution: potentially disturbing content