With The First Pick In The 2011 Entry Draft, The Oilers Are Proud To Select...

No its not about seeing. I have only watched Larsson/ Couturier play in the WJC. But my point is that Larsson plays in the second best league in the world and is an established top 4 defenseman and sometimes playing top minutes on the seemingly second best team in the SEL. That means that he is much ahead in development than the guys who are playing much inferior competition.
So at least purely in theory he is the BPA in the draft. He may not go 1st or 2nd or 3rd, but that only means that the teams are picking based on potential than maturity, readiness and playing ability

Sum’s right, you don’t need an account to vote.

and Derek is trying to pass it off as otherwise.

I did no such thing.

It’s odd that you’re taking a discussion about a draft pick so personally.

Eliminate the bias and poll ON (which has both strong Pro and Anti RNH writers) and you see that FANS actually do want RNH by a majority.

Copper & Blue readers are biased. OilersNation readers are completely impartial.

Excellent post db and great observataion:

I’m doubtful the Rebels were rolling lines 1-4 while the Voltigeurs were riding Couturier, especially considering the bottom 6 forwards on each team scored 128 points for the Volts and 135 for Red Deer.

IMO top shutdown pairing and 40+ points should be good enough for 1st overall.
Similarly 70+ points playing to competition should be good for 1st overall for forwards.

I think Larsson’s ceiling is a Larry Robinson type. Big, tough, a very good but not a remarkable offensive player, and plays the game smart.

I say again, ceiling. More likely we’re going to see a rich man’s Eric Brewer. That’s not an insult: I’d take a rich man’s Eric Brewer on my team any damned day.

Outside of size, minutes in the SEL, minutes in the playoffs, last year’s offense, this year’s qualcomp, everyone and their mother compares him favorably to Hedman. I’d take Hedman #1 overall.

yeah but Toews was feasting on easy competition if I am not wrong. At least he had a very favorable zone start. Staal on the other hand was still much less sheltered than Toews this season.

There’s one important thing that needs to be stated here. This is all based on the most recent year for Perry, one where he set a career high in goals and shooting %.

Is this the type of production you expect from Perry year in and year out or is this a case of a peak year?

Not that a typical Perry year of 30 goals and 75 points is bad, but it’s not 50 goals 95 points.

In terms of it not being proven, I don’t think there are any examples of it being brought up to be honest.

Rob Schremp might be the best example, he scored 63% of his points on the PP his draft year and I remember quite specifically discussions on his ability to generate offense at the NHL level as he continued his OHL career.

I think we can safely say that it hasn’t continued. This proves about as much as the Perry example, but it’s something that hasn’t really come up much before.

That being said, it’s nearly impossible to find a forward who had the potential to go 1st overall who scored at these kinds of rates.

I’m not suggesting that the extra 0.8 inches doesn’t matter at all, but the difference is small enough that we shouldn’t be calling it a major factor, especially when you factor in the weight difference being so little. In terms of a hockey player strength wise, I don’t think 1 inch and 2 lbs is a significant advantage/disadvantage.

I should also rephrase what I said above, scoring is not extremely close between the 2 years, but the difference in scoring has gotten tighter.

The long held belief that the WHL is significantly more defensive minded while the Q is wide open was certainly true when the Q was scoring 1.5 – 2 more goals per game but that gap has shrunk significantly.

It’s at the point where we can almost judge these leagues on their own merits, as opposed to trying to have to handicap them.

In terms of the shooting , they are interesting numbers but the only thing I worry about is they lack situational context (no fault of yours, the data just isn’t there). What is the forward sh vs defencemen? PP vs ES vs PK?

If we have an idea of to how those impact the overall number we can perhaps get a better idea of how those numbers impact how we evaluate the forwards.

For instance, if the average forward in both leagues shoot about the same, and the defencemen in the Q shoot at a higher % than their counterparts in the WHL, then you can possibly look at adding a multiplier on Q assists to sort of lower them for forwards.

The other thing to consider is that with the CHL, they don’t have the same checks and balances that the NHL does to ensure accurate stats (part of the reason they don’t have ice time numbers). The statisticians in the NHL will view a play from different angles to find out of the shot the goalie gloved was wide or if it was on net. The CHL doesn’t have that so that could impact the numbers.

We also don’t know who is getting the shots. The Q may be dominated because their top players generate most of their shots. A higher quality player shooting more will lead to a higher %.

Or there’s the flip side, maybe the teams do play better defence in the WHL and are better at preventing shots.

Without any sort of context on the sh% numbers it is tough to make any real sort of judgments on the numbers.

The Avalanche and its fans were very patient with Wolski. You guys are an inter-division rival and I wouldn’t wish Wolski on you. The Red Wings? Yes.