StormJosh

Some of you may find this interesting. I took the GVT statistics from this year and compared them to last year. I equalized it to an 82 game season for both this season and last season. I also deleted and/or set to zero the players who's sample size was too small to make annualizing to an 82 game season reasonable. (i.e; Gionta's 1 game last season would have made him a 41 GVT player over an 82 game season).

I know this board has some issue with GVT and similar statistics. Yes, I know that GVT is hardly an end-all measure to calculate player performance. But, like +/-, it has its place when examined in context. This is not scientific at all so please chill out.

Also, I apologize for the formatting, its the best I could do without too much effort on the board.

Some interesting items (according to this measurement):

• Elias managed to have an even better season than last year, what a player.
• Andy Greene, Mark Fayne, and Adam Larsson had monster years; and...
• All of our defenseman are pretty good, even Salvador, despite his regression.
• Loktionov was the trade of the season for perhaps any NHL team
• Hedburg was the 4th worst player in the NHL (the bottom 10 were all goalies I think)
• Zajac actually got better??? - I think this is a small sample size issue for both years
• What is not included in this table is the breakdown of Offensive GVT and Defensive GVT. About 85% of GVT came from defensive play. I don't know how this compares to most teams in most seasons but it might be near historically high.

NHL Rank                          GVT/82  GVT/82(Last)   Difference

42        Patrik Elias                  23.7     19.4     4.3

68        Andy Greene               21.1     9.4       11.7

165      Ilya Kovalchuk             18.6     24.3     -5.7

256      Mark Fayne                 15.1     4.7       10.4

269      Adam Larsson             13.7     4.2       9.5

421      Dainius Zubrus            13.7     10.0     3.7

233      Adam Henrique           12.6     15.4     -2.8

231      Ryan Carter                 12.5     -1.3      13.8

203      David Clarkson            12.5     8.6       3.9

369      Andrei Loktionov         12.1     -0.8      12.9

393      Henrik Tallinder           12.1     0.4       11.7

219      Stephen Gionta           11.9     0.0       11.9

218      Marek Zidlicky              11.9     3.3       8.6

340      Anton Volchenkov        10.2     8.3       1.9

352      Steve Bernier               7.3       1.0       6.3

360      Travis Zajac                  7.1       6.6       0.5

413      Alexei Ponikarovsky     6.7       5.3       1.4

602      Stefan Matteau            4.3       0.0       4.3

570      Martin Brodeur            3.6       3.8       -0.2

618      Peter Harrold               3.5       3.0       0.5

523      Bryce Salvador            3.4       8.6       -5.2

680      Tom Kostopoulos         1.8       -1.5      3.3

630      Matt D'Agostini             1.8       4.3       -2.5

640      Steve Sullivan              1.1         5.3       -4.2

837      Jacob Josefson            -2.2      7.2       -9.4

899      Johan Hedberg            -27.0    18.8     -45.8

I'm not trying to start an advanced statistics debate which happens a lot on this board and I understand that a ton of other measures are not taken into account by GVT, but I think this is interesting and notable nonetheless.

According to: http://www.hockeypro...?articleid=1463, Patrick Elias is the 4th best non-goalie player in the NHL this season if you omit his failure in the shootout. His ability to contribute to special teams more than anything seems to be propelling his ranking.

If you were to take into account further Quality of Competition and Zone-Start statistics, I bet Elias might actually be slightly higher. Anyone have those numbers?

Came across this article from Yahoo Finance and wanted it to share it with you folks:

A few notable quotes from the article:

Only hockey among the four major pro sports was able to have greater attendance now than before the Great Recession, despite an overall 17 percent increase in ticket prices - nearly $10 from $48.72 to $57.10 for the average seat - over the same period, according to Reed.

In fact, NHL fans have the highest mean household income compared to MLB, NBA, and NFL fans, with an average household income of $104,000, compared to $96,200 for baseball fans, $96,000 for NBA fans, and $94,500 for NFL fans, according to league data.

 

They're younger, too. Thirty-three percent of hockey fans are young adults (ages 18-34), compared to 32 percent for the NBA, 30 percent for the NBA, and 29 percent for baseball.