Thursday, June 21, 2012

2012 Top 30, and Some General Draft Thoughts

As I continue to make these lists, year after year, I get less comfortable with my final rankings. I haven't really decided if that's a good thing or a bad thing. I'm particularly uncomfortable with my list this year - I'm the guy that made it and I'm not sure how much weight I put behind it. This draft is defense heavy, which always makes me nervous; it can be difficult to differentiate between D based on the descriptions available. Additionally, there were numerous injuries and that never helps.

Making a list is an interesting process to me. Being tasked with creating the list doesn't require one to be a great scout - you don't really need to be a scout at all*. The list is all about compiling, evaluating, and assimilating information. As the quality of your information improves, hopefully the quality of your list will improve in turn. For the most part, I think the publicly available information gives us a fairly good picture of a player. The other information that teams gather can potentially be invaluable, and in those cases makes a big difference vs. the generally available information. There is no doubt that, lacking that information, the quality of this list suffers. At the same time, there is generally a tendency in life to overvalue bits of (assumed?) exclusive information. If a team thinks they have unearthed something about a player that no one else has, there may be a tendency to put more weight behind that tidbit than is truly warranted.

Sunday, June 10, 2012

Summarizing The Schultz Situation

If you're as interested in the technical, contractual side of hockey as I am, it's not uncommon to become a little exasperated in exploring some of the minutia surrounding the NHL's CBA. Justin Schultz's situation presents one such case where reading the relevant sections of the CBA doesn't fully explain Schultz's impending UFA status. There seems to be an understanding as to why Anaheim loses Schultz's rights, but it's less clear exactly why he avoids draft re-entry only to become a UFA on July 1st. I'll try to provide an overview of the issues involved, and if I'm missing some, feel free to help me flesh this out in the comments.