If he can make a good first pass, and the guys he plays with are guys that can move the puck effectively up ice and get shots directed at net (like Brooks Laich, who sports the best Corsi Rel among forwards despite the highest QoC), then, where’s the disconnect? Why is there a disconnect?

The team might be able to get a bit more offense with Carlson-Poti (who were excellent together last year, when they were paired) and Alzner-Schultz. Both Alzner and Schultz (last year, at least) had that same thing going with underwhelming Corsi given circumstances. Put them together and there’s no sacrifice on defense, and no sacrifice of Carlson on offense (Green still doesn’t have an ideal partner, but oh well).

Harsh, but i agree.

JoePa will never retire. His body will be cryonically preserved, his brain transplanted into an animatronic device that resembles him, and he will continue to coach for another 126 years, or however long he’s been at PSU

Seriously. 6 Norris trophies (good bet for 7 after this year) 3 runner ups, a Conn Smythe, 4 Cups (at least) and a spot in the defenseman pantheon in the group immediately below Bobby Orr with Ray Bourque and Doug Harvey.

If that’s not first ballot, the selection committee needs to sequester itself and rethink its decision.

My original thinking was that first ballot HoFers were reserved for the Gretzkys and Lemiuexs, but after dusting off the cobwebs I realized that they simply moved up the coronation ceremony for those special players to the year after they retired. Do you think Lidstrom deserves to get the 3-year rule waived? I don’t, but it’s not because of his resume. He is about as decorated a defenseman as there is (Orr notwithstanding). What I think would hold him back from such special treatment is that he has never been the “face of hockey”.

If he was Canadian and outgoing….methinks it’s a different story.

Well Poti’s numbers were pretty bad last year, so that would negate the advantage he would have had by TOI. I do agree he was being relied upon, and that to some degree that is in his favor. It’s the results that aren’t. Relied upon is good, but relied upon with good results is better. (And it could also be seen as a strike against BB depending on how you might interpret the situation.)

Poti is worse relative to the team, that’s for sure. Whether he’s objectively worse (or worse relative to the league) is a tougher question, in part because he’s missed so much time.

I disagree that it removes the bias completely. Maybe to some degree in the larger samplings, but you still have an incredible amount of bias when you are comparing players to their teammates. Players on stronger teams aren’t on the same scale as players on weaker teams. If you are the top line on a weak team, you look like great competition even if you aren’t. If you’re a second line guy on a team with a dominant top line you look like weaker competition even if you aren’t. If you go back to the raw data, does the list of Relative Plus/Minus look even closely like what you think of as the “highest quality” players in the league? I haven’t looked this year, but last year both the plus/minus based and the corsi-based measures had glaring inaccuracies. And if those are accurate measures of a player’s quality, shouldn’t we just judge players by those metrics?