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The "Mr. T" Man of the Match Thread, 2013 edition

ZBBM

ZBBM

Active member
Is everybody up for this again this season?  If people want to do it I'll honcho it again.  (I may need backup during the first couple of weeks of March because of work-related travel.)

I also am accepting suggestions for scoring system tweaks.  Last couple of years it's been:

* 3 points for MotM in a Leafs win
* 2 points for MotM in a Leafs loss
* 1 point for Honorable Mention

Open to other suggestions.

I personally feel strongly that each game should have a MotM, no matter how badly the Leafs may play.  In other words, I am against allowing NOTA (None of the Above) votes.  But if the consensus is that we want to allow NOTAs, I will yield to the community, consensus-building statesman that I am.

To remind you how things finished last year, with my analysis:

Final top-10 points standings:

Kessel 35
Grabovski 30
Gustavsson 30
Bozak 25
Lupul 25
Reimer 19
Gardiner 18
Phaneuf 11
Brown 9
Kulemin 9

This tells you a lot about the problems with the team.  You would expect your top line to dominate the points rankings, and they did.  Grabovski also performed well as 2C center.  But the big dropoff (among forwards) after Lupul and Bozak at 25 points shows how badly the rest of the forwards (Brown excepted) played.

Also, on a winning team you would want to see the goalies racking up more points than they did.

BIGGEST DISAPPOINTMENTS
Armstrong  -- completely invisible
Connolly -- had a few decent defensive games, but mostly a flop
Reimer --  hoping for real deal, now left to wonder if he's a flash in the pan
Kulemin -- didn't get it done, last season looking like a 1-hit wonder
Komisarek -- simply awful most nights
Liles -- was OK before injury, horrible afterward
Phaneuf -- you know how I feel about him, but objectively, he wasn't good
Schenn -- hockey IQ seriously in question at this point

MILDER DISAPPOINTMENTS
MacArthur -- he played better than most us gave him credit for, but pretty meh most mights
Kadri -- showed some flashes, but time is running out on him -- next year is do or die
Gustavsson -- way too inconsistent
Frattin -- ended up getting lots of ice for a rookie, but never really found scoring touch we would have liked

PERFORMED AS EXPECTED, BUT NOTHING SPECTACULAR
Boyce
Brown
Lombardi
Rosehill
Steckel
Gunnarsson
Franson

PLEASANT SURPRISES
Gardiner -- hands-down
Lupul -- we can only hope he keeps it up

MVP
To me, the only debate is whether it's Grabs or Kessel.  Grabs gets consideration only because he brings it every single game and plays somewhat better defense than Kessel.  But ... even though I don't like Phil (and still would like to see him dealt for a good return), I think it's pretty clear he's the MVP of this squad.  He scored almost as many goals as most people wanted (didn't quite make it to 40) but even more important showed he's a fine passer.  He definitely helped boost Lupul (and vice versa).

Finally, I propose to continue to honor Mr. T with the thread title.  He's apparently no longer posting, and I never did find out what happened to him with his health struggles.  But if through some chance he still lurks here occasionally, here's to you, Mr. T, with respect and thanks for all your past contributions to our collective enjoyment as TMLFans.
 
What cw said... And thanks ZBBM. I do have a suggestion though... It seems that this format is always somehow far too kind to the goalies. I mean, this year is a perfect example. There is now way that either Gus's or Reimer's ranking should be that high... Maybe take a half or full point off each time they're voted for an accolade?

What does the rest of the group think?

Edit: Case in point - both guys are listed as disappointments above.
 
Rob said:
What cw said... And thanks ZBBM. I do have a suggestion though... It seems that this format is always somehow far too kind to the goalies. I mean, this year is a perfect example. There is now way that either Gus's or Reimer's ranking should be that high... Maybe take a half or full point off each time they're voted for an accolade?

What does the rest of the group think?

Edit: Case in point - both guys are listed as disappointments above.
Click to expand...

You've got a point, Rob.  Goalies do tend to get more accolades than skaters; it's the nature of the game. 

Yes, would like to hear others' thoughts on this.
 
Zanzibar Buck-Buck McFate said:
Rob said:
What cw said... And thanks ZBBM. I do have a suggestion though... It seems that this format is always somehow far too kind to the goalies. I mean, this year is a perfect example. There is now way that either Gus's or Reimer's ranking should be that high... Maybe take a half or full point off each time they're voted for an accolade?

What does the rest of the group think?

Edit: Case in point - both guys are listed as disappointments above.
Click to expand...

You've got a point, Rob.  Goalies do tend to get more accolades than skaters; it's the nature of the game. 

Yes, would like to hear others' thoughts on this.
Click to expand...

There is no way Gustavsson was good enough to earn that much. No way.
 
Personally, I think it should be 2.5, 1.5, 0.5 for a goalie as opposed to 3, 2, 1 for anyone else. Even then, I think we should operate with the understanding that it still probably favors the goalies a bit. - Just my two cents.
 
Rob said:
What cw said... And thanks ZBBM. I do have a suggestion though... It seems that this format is always somehow far too kind to the goalies. I mean, this year is a perfect example. There is now way that either Gus's or Reimer's ranking should be that high... Maybe take a half or full point off each time they're voted for an accolade?

What does the rest of the group think?

Edit: Case in point - both guys are listed as disappointments above.
Click to expand...

I was going to make a similar comment.

As some will recall, the Molson Cup award points to players of Canadian franchises for the three stars.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molson_Cup
Goalies tended to win it a disproportionate amount. For example, Vesa Toskala won it twice in 2007-08 and 2008-09.  Or in the last 10 seasons recorded for each Canadian team, goalies, representing less than 10% of the roster, have won it 55% of the time.

Maybe if goalies only earn half the points skaters do - or something like that, that might level the playing field.
 
We could score the goaltending slightly lower and supplement that with a specific gk rating each game, it could either be a rating out of 10 or grades (such as Atrocious-Poor-Unsatisfactory-Average-Above Average-Good-Excellent - something like that).

So basically any MoTM vote post would look like this:

MoTM: Kessel HM: Reimer, Phaneuf (gk still can be nominated for MoTM or HM with reduced points)

GK rating (Reimer): 8/10

 
If I could make a few counter arguments for keeping the system as is:

1) This is all for fun, so particularly accurate results are not an imperative.

2) Because this is all in fun, it's probably best to keep the system as simple as possible.

3) Goalies will have a disproportionately high representation here but that's because goalies have a disproportionate impact on the outcome of games. It's not a great stat, but there's a reason goalies get wins and losses.

4) The Leafs, as a whole, stunk so it's not that big a stretch that their relatively lousy goalie finished high in comparison to the rest of the team. cw points out that Toskala won the three star trophy in 08-09 but that was a year where the Leafs three top scorers were Blake, Poni and Stajan so I don't think there was a palatable alternative.

5) Mike Brown, rated by this system, was the team's 5th best forward last year. Bozak tied Lupul. Inconsistencies abound. Despite that, Phil Kessel, who deserved to finish on top, did finish on top. So the system seems to be largely effective.
 
I agree with Nik that you don't want to overcomplicate it, since it's all in fun. 

Yet I also agree that the goalies dominate a bit.  Again, as Nik said, goalies have the greatest individual impact on a game, so their names will come up more often. 

So another way to balance that would be to give out points to more than only two players per game.  What if we have a MotM, a Runner-Up, and then Honourable Mention(s)?  Runner-up would be second-most votes.  But Honourable Mentions would be any and all players who got at least X votes (where X is some agreed-upon threshold, either a raw number or a % of votes cast).

I always felt a bit bad for players who were constantly coming in third or fourth place and never getting any points to show for it (not that the players themselves even know about all this, but still).

With this system you could do either:
MotM (win) = 3 pts
MotM (loss) = 2 pts
RunnerUp = 1 pt
Honourable Mention(s) = 0.2 or even 0.1

Or scale the whole thing up:
MotM (win/loss) = 5/4 pts
Runnerup (win/loss) = 3/2 pts
HM = 1 pt

Is that too crazy?  :-)
 
00motm_zps5f49f2b6.jpg


Don't have numbers for a lot of these guys yet.

Also, I think we'll try Rob's suggestion: shave 0.5 points off the goalies' scores.  Let's see how that works.
 
I'm throwing out another word of approval to Mr.T.  Probably my favorite poster on these boards.  I hope he's still reading and finding enjoyment out of this stuff.
 
princedpw said:
I'm throwing out another word of approval to Mr.T.  Probably my favorite poster on these boards.  I hope he's still reading and finding enjoyment out of this stuff.
Click to expand...

Well said.
 
LittleHockeyFan said:
MotM: Kadri  HM Kostka
Click to expand...

Make it a double.  But I almost gave Komisarek the HM.

EDIT: Kessel was good too.  Kadri, Kostka, Komisarek, Kessel, Komarov were good.  Kulemin was bad.  Kaneuf was up and down.
 
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