Sam Gagner's Rank Among Under-21 Players

Because of era effects, the pts/game doesn’t really have a ton of meaning. I don’t think the total points has meaning, but when bouncing the idea off of a friend, he said I had to have points on there.

Your annoyances with “hockey ages” are well noted.

I agree that Gagner’s offensive progression has been less than what was hoped for, but I think that’s owing, at least partially, to inflated numbers in his rookie year. I expect that his point totals will improve going forward. I also think that point totals represent only a small part of measuring a player’s skills, and that Gagner has improved his play substantially from his rookie season.

If Gagner had in fact "improved his play substantially since his rookie season" wouldn’t it reflect in his point totals?

Not necessarily. I’m surprised you would say that since you seem to like Andrew Cogliano, if I remember correctly. Personally, I think Cogliano is improving, but you wouldn’t know it by his yearly point totals. Although I may be mistaken about your position on Cogs. Do you think he’s improving, or do you think he’s regressed (much more!) as well?

Back to Gagner, all of the percentages were sky high in his first season, and they were likely to come down. I haven’t really been surprised by his “stagnation” in terms of points for that reason. I certainly would have liked for him to cover any regression with improved play, and that hasn’t totally happened, which is disappointing, but there’s some distance between “not as much improvement as I’d hoped” and “no improvement at all”.

What have I liked better about Gagner? Indeed, his possession metrics (Corsi, ZoneShift) are improving. I’m not sure why you’d call that useless other than just to be inflammatory. It’s not the be-all end-all, but Corsi is in fact a good reflection of zone time, and I know I prefer it when the Oilers are in the OZ rather than the DZ. ZoneShift tells us where the puck’s moving, and it’s nice to see Sam’s group getting the puck moving the right way more often than he had earlier. It’s a reflection of what I’ve seen on the ice too, observations similar to Derek’s in the article: fewer drop passes to no one, more success winning loose pucks, better DZ coverage, that kind of thing.

Gagner has received all the best opportunities. When he goes up to bat the bases are always loaded. Cogliano on the other hand has played with Moreau and Stortini the past 2 years.

I’ll take this to mean that you believe Cogliano has not significantly regressed since his rookie year. I agree with your reasoning for this too. It’s tough to produce when you play mostly with two players who aren’t worth much in the OZ, and one that is just plain awful (you know it’s bad when this isn’t a reference to Stortini). Are Gagner’s issues the same? No sir. But there are other reasons (mentioned above) why Gagner’s point totals might have regressed (much less than Cogliano’s) even though his play hasn’t. The comparison was just to note that progression as a player does not always mean point totals going up.

Does Sam Gagner push the puck in the right direction or does he play with Dustin Penner?

An interesting question. I think both can be true, and in this case are. If we look simply at how players did with Gagner, you’ll notice that the vast majority do better than they do overall, including Dustin Penner (although I should acknowledge that Vic’s script misses a game here or there). The following list is the name of each player with at least 200 Corsi events w/Gagner, Corsi% w/ Gagner, and Corsi% overall:

Smid – 48.3%, 46.1%
Nilsson – 46.0%, 46.8%
Cogliano – 48.7%, 45.8%
O’Sullivan – 51.6%, 43.8%
Staios – 46.7%, 44.2%
Penner – 50.4%, 50.0%
Grebeshkov – 48.8%, 45.0%
Chorney – 44.3%, 38.8%
Strudwick – 45.1%, 39.6%
Souray – 54.2%, 51.0%
Brule – 51.9%, 46.7%
Visnovsky – 54.4%, 50.9%
Gilbert – 52.8%, 47.5%

Only Nilsson does marginally worse; every other player improves. The disparity would be even greater if we did with vs. without instead of with vs. overall. Some of this is the role he played (often with Gagner meant with Penner too), but with such uniformity in the results, including a slight improvement from Penner, I’m inclined to think that Gagner is a plus in terms of pushing the puck the right way.

Corsi is indeed useless when looking at individual players.

I think this is an unfortunate overstatement. Corsi is limited for sure, but not moreso than many other statistics. The limitations (i.e. who is truly responsible for the on-ice stats) are, in fact, very similar to the “gfga60 diff” statistic you seemed to think had value not three hours ago. Why do you think one is “useless” and the other worth citing?

Jim Corsi said so himself to David Staples.

He did not. You demonstrate yourself a poor reader if you think he did. Here is what he actually said:

Desjardins is very kind to have credited me for the initial concept, that I used strictly to find out about goaltending. He has ultimately developed it even further. He’s the guy that has ultimately made it into a rating that is also valuable for players. So basically creating a number that allows him or anyone that is interested to see if this player is creating offence, or is he creating the negative side of offence, chances, and too much time in his (own defensive) zone. It gives you an idea of how much puck possession is created on an individual basis…. It’s quite an interesting indicator.

The emphasis is mine. How exactly do you get “useless” from “a rating that is also valuable”?