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04-24-2007, 01:02 AM
I Bleed Blue
rumrokh's Avatar
Join Date: Mar 2006
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Originally Posted by Checker View Post
I mean seriously, can we quit doing to hockey what Pitchfork does to music around here because that would be super?
Haha. Excellent.

It seems to me like some folks, PocketNines in particular, are overly obsessed with numerical rating systems. Most posters around here disagree with a lot of the HF rankings, so using that system in an argument is nearly pointless.

Err, um, ah, this is, ah, Hockey's Future afterall, therefore, it only stands to reason that operating within the heretofore established evaluative methodology is a recommended course of action!
For the record, that junk isn't logical. It's based on assumptions and cobbling evidence together. That's inductive. When everybody is drawing from the same pile of evidence and the only real argument is over a particular pick in a trade or a particular prospect projecting higher or lower on the depth chart, good luck determining who has the stronger argument. Criticizing methodology isn't going to get you very far. Using any kind of numeric ranking for developing players and picks will inevitably fail because it requires trust of the sources. Giving your judgement up to an unknown or not universally (or at least generally) accepted source blows away your whole goal of objectivity.


My thought is that if the holders of those top five picks truly are looking to trade them, the Blues will be in line with 25 other teams with offers. A handful could be lame offers that have no chance of proceeding. But you can bet that each team will hear at least ten different offers that they'll seriously consider. Assuming or somehow concluding out of all those offers, that Backman will be the key piece, that's some kind of clairvoyance I don't have.

Backman really does seem like the piece that has the most value to other teams with the least value to the Blues. He is inarguably an asset. But before you go play fantasy GM, it helps to consider Jarmo's position. He has said that he thinks he can pick players at 20+ who are just as good as ones taken much earlier. That doesn't necessarily mean anything, but it's at least some suggestion that the Blues might not fight too hard to move up to the very top. So if Backman is on the move, why not trade him for, GASP, a current player instead of a pick? Because the season is over and everybody has a boner over the draft. Plus, it's a lot easier to say "the Blues are going to shoot for the number five pick!" than to say "the Blues are going to trade these specific players for these other specific players." It isn't just fantasy GM, it's no-risk fantasy GM with an automatic transmission.

You'll stop taking yourself so seriously once you realize that you're playing a vaguely defined game about another game. And then you'll realize how little those numbers mean and how they don't help your argument or make either game more fun.

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