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Entries with the tag: Worst+Player
Calculating The Worst Player
by Mike Chen on 01/21/09 at 12:37 PM ET
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On XM Home Ice this morning, there was a discussion about the league’s worst player. People called and emailed in, and one of the common themes was being the guy who turned over the puck most. There were also discussions of wasted talent (Maxim Afinogenov was tossed around).
What makes up the worst player in the league? Is it something you could tackle statistically? I got to thinking about this and I came up with a little formula. The key statistics here are ice time, giveaways, and +/-, but there’s a little bit of math involved. First, some explanations.
It’s important to note that statistics are relative. Wayne Gretzky was always near the top of the giveaway column, but that’s cause he had the puck so damn much and he tried to set up so many plays. There’s a difference between a soft defenseman turning over the puck and The Great One behind the opponent’s net sending out a pass that was intercepted. With +/-, it’s a reasonable tracker of effectiveness but it’s kind of tainted by overall team abilities. A guy on a kick-ass team will simply have a better +/- through roster osmosis.
So what can we do to break this down? I think you can look put some statistics in a different context to get a better sense of their weight. I only took one stats class in college so I don’t know all the technical terms for this, but it seems reasonably logical to me. Here are some breakdowns:
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Tags: Statistics, Worst+Player,
