sickbeast said:
He scored 45 points as a rookie. That's not "not even close" to 60.
Big Read: Mike Babcock will turn Nazem Kadri into a star
- Thread starter GhostofPotvin29
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He scored 45 points as a rookie. That's not "not even close" to 60.
Even with 45 points in his rookie season he was only a 0.5PPG player. Once he broke out in St. Louis he became a point per game player. That's a big difference. You guys just keep giving each other high fives and keep talking down everyone else though. Don't let me stop you.CarltonTheBear said:
sickbeast said:
You're really getting worked up over nothing man. Plenty of people have defended Steen's time as a Leaf and have criticized Fletcher's decision to trade him well before you made your opinion on the matter known.
Kin
New member
I did a quick work up of Steen's PPG through the years until his 33 goal season:
As you can see, it's a pretty steady career progression. The dips from his rookie year really more attributable to his PP time being cut in half.
(To add insult to injury, his last year before being traded is pretty remarkable. 42 points in 76 games despite only 131 PP minutes and 225 minutes killing penalties. His most common linemates that season were Matt Stajan and Boyd Devereaux)
What changed, then, in St. Louis? Well, aside from his first year there, the low on the above chart, they increased his PP/5v5 ice time by taking him off the PK(under a minute a game in 2010-2011) and put him back on a #1 PP unit.
Steen goes from being someone who doesn't score much to someone who, over the course of four years, scores at essentially a 60 points/82 games rate. That's it. No inexplicable growth. Just more PP/5v5 ice time.
But then we have the second jump, the "breakout year". What caused that? Again, it's really just a change in circumstances. In the four years I refer to above Steen's most common linemate is our old friend Jay McClement. So it's pretty fair to say that his point totals were being dragged down(he also saw a fair amount of time with guys like BJ Crombeen). Near the end of that stretch he started getting time with David Backes and things clicked. He got bumped up to the top line. McClement and Crombeen were replaced by Backes and Oshie, Polak and Carlo Colaiacovo replaced by Pietrangelo and Bouwmeester. His PPG jumped by about .2 a game.
So aside from what I posted above about a rookie scoring .6 ppg moving into the .73 range being a fairly normal progression, it looks like his career was a generally pretty straight shot upwards of what he was capable of, the only thing that changed were his circumstances.
Which, for the record, jives with my memories of the reaction to the trade here. People were upset about the trade because we knew how talented Steen was. There's nothing inexplicable or hard to forecast about his big PPG jump. He just finally got put in the right situation to flourish offensively.
As you can see, it's a pretty steady career progression. The dips from his rookie year really more attributable to his PP time being cut in half.
(To add insult to injury, his last year before being traded is pretty remarkable. 42 points in 76 games despite only 131 PP minutes and 225 minutes killing penalties. His most common linemates that season were Matt Stajan and Boyd Devereaux)
What changed, then, in St. Louis? Well, aside from his first year there, the low on the above chart, they increased his PP/5v5 ice time by taking him off the PK(under a minute a game in 2010-2011) and put him back on a #1 PP unit.
Steen goes from being someone who doesn't score much to someone who, over the course of four years, scores at essentially a 60 points/82 games rate. That's it. No inexplicable growth. Just more PP/5v5 ice time.
But then we have the second jump, the "breakout year". What caused that? Again, it's really just a change in circumstances. In the four years I refer to above Steen's most common linemate is our old friend Jay McClement. So it's pretty fair to say that his point totals were being dragged down(he also saw a fair amount of time with guys like BJ Crombeen). Near the end of that stretch he started getting time with David Backes and things clicked. He got bumped up to the top line. McClement and Crombeen were replaced by Backes and Oshie, Polak and Carlo Colaiacovo replaced by Pietrangelo and Bouwmeester. His PPG jumped by about .2 a game.
So aside from what I posted above about a rookie scoring .6 ppg moving into the .73 range being a fairly normal progression, it looks like his career was a generally pretty straight shot upwards of what he was capable of, the only thing that changed were his circumstances.
Which, for the record, jives with my memories of the reaction to the trade here. People were upset about the trade because we knew how talented Steen was. There's nothing inexplicable or hard to forecast about his big PPG jump. He just finally got put in the right situation to flourish offensively.
sickbeast said:
I always thought Steen had 20-25 G, 70 P potential. He visibly had a ton of skill and fantastic hockey IQ and vision. He's exceeded my expectations, but he was an excellent player in the making - he just had to put it all together. If I remember correctly, after his rookie season, he was used in a more defensive role with crappier linemates while Wellwood was given the offensive opportunities. The trade was the result of a desperate dumbass trying to do anything.
Edit to add: I don't see the same in Kadri and hope he is traded, along with everything on the roster not named Reilly.
L K
Active member
sickbeast said:
I'm fine with people having differing opinions but come on. You are complaining about people disagreeing with you and declaring everything other than your own voice as bullshit. If you want to talk about the quality of a discussion on a website, how is this appropriate?
Nik the Trik said:I did a quick work up of Steen's PPG through the years until his 33 goal season:
As you can see, it's a pretty steady career progression. The dips from his rookie year really more attributable to his PP time being cut in half.
(To add insult to injury, his last year before being traded is pretty remarkable. 42 points in 76 games despite only 131 PP minutes and 225 minutes killing penalties. His most common linemates that season were Matt Stajan and Boyd Devereaux)
What changed, then, in St. Louis? Well, aside from his first year there, the low on the above chart, they increased his PP/5v5 ice time by taking him off the PK(under a minute a game in 2010-2011) and put him back on a #1 PP unit.
Steen goes from being someone who doesn't score much to someone who, over the course of four years, scores at essentially a 60 points/82 games rate. That's it. No inexplicable growth. Just more PP/5v5 ice time.
But then we have the second jump, the "breakout year". What caused that? Again, it's really just a change in circumstances. In the four years I refer to above Steen's most common linemate is our old friend Jay McClement. So it's pretty fair to say that his point totals were being dragged down(he also saw a fair amount of time with guys like BJ Crombeen). Near the end of that stretch he started getting time with David Backes and things clicked. He got bumped up to the top line. McClement and Crombeen were replaced by Backes and Oshie, Polak and Carlo Colaiacovo replaced by Pietrangelo and Bouwmeester. His PPG jumped by about .2 a game.
So aside from what I posted above about a rookie scoring .6 ppg moving into the .73 range being a fairly normal progression, it looks like his career was a generally pretty straight shot upwards of what he was capable of, the only thing that changed were his circumstances.
Which, for the record, jives with my memories of the reaction to the trade here. People were upset about the trade because we knew how talented Steen was. There's nothing inexplicable or hard to forecast about his big PPG jump. He just finally got put in the right situation to flourish offensively.
i agree number one the stats show the truth. good job
Kin
New member
sickbeast said:
I did look at the stats. I even made a graph. And, because there's no need to speak in generalities, it was 62 points in 68 games for a .91 ppg. Which, as I detail above, is roughly a .2 increase from where he was for his first four years with the Blues. He got put on a top line with Backes and Oshie, got to play more with the #1 defense pairing and his PPG increased.
But what you're quoting isn't referencing that. It's referencing busta's contention that most people assumed that Alex Steen would blossom from a .6 ppg player, which he was in his rookie season, to a .73 ppg player or thereabouts. That's he's jumped higher than that(although never to a point per game) is a bit of a kick in the pants, sure, but Steen becoming a very good two-way, 60+ point player isn't that much of a surprise given how good he was to begin his career.
B
brothert
Guest
http://www.sportsnet.ca/hockey/nhl/leafs-trade-2/
General media commentary at the time was that Coli was often injured and the Steen had not met expectations in his 3 yrs as a leaf. That fourth year when he was traded he played 20 games for the leafs at a .2 ppg pace where management had to decide if he was worth keeping or use to get a player that they thought would get them a playoff appearance. In hindsight they were clearly wrong but at the time most of the howling was about how they gave up TWO developing roster players for stempniak, not necessarily that it was steen that we gave up. At the time Steen was a 0.5 ppg player who had regressed to a .2 ppg player. Bust? Maybe at the time, but history shows otherwise.
General media commentary at the time was that Coli was often injured and the Steen had not met expectations in his 3 yrs as a leaf. That fourth year when he was traded he played 20 games for the leafs at a .2 ppg pace where management had to decide if he was worth keeping or use to get a player that they thought would get them a playoff appearance. In hindsight they were clearly wrong but at the time most of the howling was about how they gave up TWO developing roster players for stempniak, not necessarily that it was steen that we gave up. At the time Steen was a 0.5 ppg player who had regressed to a .2 ppg player. Bust? Maybe at the time, but history shows otherwise.
bustaheims
Active member
sickbeast said:
If you post an opinion on a message-board, expect to have some people disagree with it - and expect some of those people to be able to back up their disagreement with things like stats and other facts. This isn't a place where people are mindlessly going to parrot your opinion back to you. If you don't want your opinion to be challenged by those who disagree with it, and/or you don't want people pointing out when you're either stating an opinion as fact or using an incorrect fact . . . well, I don't know what to tell you.
Kin
New member
JohnK's Revenge said:
At the time Steen was, as I mentioned, coming off a 42 point season while playing mainly pretty crummy linemates and getting 2nd unit PP time while killing a ton of penalties. That's a really good season for a young player.
He, and the rest of the team, had a slow start to the next year for a number of reasons. The new coach didn't like him much and essentially relegated him to 3rd line duties.
Chiefly, though, the "expectations" you're talking about Steen not meeting were the result of the media and team unfairly looking to Steen as someone to fill the gap left by Sundin leaving. The team's interim GM overreacted and made yet another in his lengthy list of terrible decisions.
And people on this very board said so at the time.
Kin
New member
Anyways, in an attempt to push things back on topic, I would say that there's a pretty good parallel here between the way Steen was judged based on "expectations" and the way Kadri has largely been judged unfairly for the same reason. There are a lot of people who simply won't be satisfied with a 1st round pick's performance if it isn't at a certain level by a certain point but I think history has shown, whether it be Steen or Antro or Tlusty or...shoot, Kenny Jonsson, that the team tends to make bad decisions when trading from that vantage point.
Regardless of how we define "star" I think the article makes a really compelling point about the play we've seen from Kadri this year. Is it enough to keep Naz around for the long haul? I don't know but I feel better about him being around than I did last year.
Regardless of how we define "star" I think the article makes a really compelling point about the play we've seen from Kadri this year. Is it enough to keep Naz around for the long haul? I don't know but I feel better about him being around than I did last year.
GhostofPotvin29
New member
Nik the Trik said:
This is one of the reasons I'm so glad there are sites now tracking things like who a player's most common linemates are, zone starts, etc. While you may have been able to figure it out in the past by only watching the games and tracking this stuff yourself, it's so helpful to provide more definitive context to a player's raw totals.
herman
Well-known member
Nik the Trik said:
Agreed. In the offseason, I was pretty sure Kadri would be a good bet to be traded for high value picks and prospects due to his contract status and flashes of brilliance.
This article revealed a bit of the behind the scenes with Kadri and his dealings with previous coaches/management and how he wasn't quite able to keep it out of his game and subsequent lifestyle choices.
He's rounding out nicely and Kadri has plenty of value going forward for the Leafs. He brings a more diverse skillset to the table now than what they hyped him up to be in 2009 (goal scoring savant, savior of the team) -- driving possession in the right direction, better faceoffs, capable of nullifying the opposing top lines on most nights, drawing a ton of penalties, makes his linemates better, all the while still capable of nifty moves whenever the opportunity is generated.
I'd be pretty comfortable with him sticking around for 5M over 5 years.
B
brothert
Guest
Great on the stats thing. Basically my use Nik's awesome stats (yeah good job number 1) is that I don't have enough stats. riiiiiggghht?!?.
But part of the reason that stats are what they are is because of how steen played. The beefs i had with Steen and Stajan in those days were that the scheme was to play the puck to the wingers high on the boards at the point, but both of these players had hard times holding off pinching defensemen and also chipping the puck off the boards into center ice. Their ability or lack of, contributes to the overall team performance statistically as well.
Rather, than using the stats for your argument how about you bring up all this gumption you claim you had back then. Surely you must have kept all of your insightful commentary on a separate hard drive to share with future generations.
But part of the reason that stats are what they are is because of how steen played. The beefs i had with Steen and Stajan in those days were that the scheme was to play the puck to the wingers high on the boards at the point, but both of these players had hard times holding off pinching defensemen and also chipping the puck off the boards into center ice. Their ability or lack of, contributes to the overall team performance statistically as well.
Rather, than using the stats for your argument how about you bring up all this gumption you claim you had back then. Surely you must have kept all of your insightful commentary on a separate hard drive to share with future generations.
Kin
New member
Just to be clear, when I say that "people" didn't like the Stempniak trade at the time I'm consciously leaving myself out of that equation. The truth is I don't remember what I thought about the trade at the time or what I said.
I do remember that in general it wasn't very popular but that a larger issue was that Burke being set to become the GM was the worst kept secret in sports and a lot of people argued that regardless of what people thought about Steen or Carlo that trading them, or not trading them, should have been a decision left up to Burke.
I do remember that in general it wasn't very popular but that a larger issue was that Burke being set to become the GM was the worst kept secret in sports and a lot of people argued that regardless of what people thought about Steen or Carlo that trading them, or not trading them, should have been a decision left up to Burke.
JohnK's Revenge said:
Wouldn't that suggest that it was probably more of a coaching issue than anything? I mean, Steen played pretty well in his first 3 seasons as a Leaf under 2 different coaches. He's played pretty well under 3 different coaches in St. Louis. Maybe it was just a Ron Wilson issue?
Just a random tidbit that I found after re-reading my last post, Steen actually played for 6 different head coaches in his first 8 years in the NHL (Quinn, Maurice, Wilson, Murray, Payne, Hitchcock). Seems like he played his best hockey once St. Louis finally got some consistency in Hitchcock.
Pretty easy to spot the parallels there with Kadri too.
Pretty easy to spot the parallels there with Kadri too.