Wahlstrom?

Photo by Justin Berl/Getty Images

So I know we already did this, and I kind of made my point, but Manny, who runs Corsica and is probably one of the best math minds in hockey right now, recently released NHL point equivalency coefficients for 173 different leagues (basically every league listed on Elite Prospects). Although the debate has settled down, I’m an indefatigable pedant, and just have to have the last word on the matter of Kravtsov vs Wahlstrom. I’ll keep this quick, since it’s really just a brief statistical calculation and then you can all go about your days.

So to start, below is the thread that begins the list of NHLe coefficients. For full transparency, what I’m going to do is calculate each of Kravtsov and Wahlstrom’s points per game in the leagues they played, based on their data from Elite Prospects, and then use Manny’s coefficients to convert it to NHL points per game. From there, just so we have a more concrete, intuitive idea of what’s what, I’ll then convert the NHLe to a full 82 games worth of points. Let’s have at it.

Starting with Wahlstrom, because it’s more fun that way, his point total for the USA Hockey development team program in the USHL last season was 45 points in 26 games, and his point total for the US U18 team in the USDP league was 94 points in 62 games – this comes out to 1.73 points per game for the former and 1.51 points per game for the latter. Manny’s conversion factor for the USHL is 0.0813 and for the USDP its 0.0717. That comes out to a NHLe point per game rate of 0.140 and 0.108, respectively. Drawing that out over 82 games would be 11.48 NHL points for his USHL production and 8.856 for his USDP production.

OK, now let’s see Kravtsov. His point conversion is a little bit more complicated because he played in three different leagues last season: the KHL and its lower divisions, the VHL and MHL. All of these involve super small sample sizes, which makes things a bit more fraught, but as I mentioned in my initial post regarding this matter this whole venture is fraught, so a gigantic grain of salt should be lugged around at all times, in case of emergency. His KHL point totals (a 0.7461 NHLe coefficient) were 7 points in 35 regular season games and 11 points in 16 playoff games; that comes out to 0.2 points per game for the regular season and 0.6875 points per game for the playoffs. Using Manny’s magical coefficient that comes out to a whopping 0.14922 points per game for the regular and 0.5129 for the playoffs (!). Carry that out over 82 games and we’ve got 12.236 points for his regular season production and 42.0578 points for his playoff production levels. Now, again, we’re working with small sample sizes, but uh, that’s great.

His minor league production matters less, but let’s go for it anyways. His VHL point totals and points per game were 7 points in 9 games or 0.778 PPG. That, with the NHLe conversion factor 0.3419, comes out to 0.2670 points per game in NHL speak or 21.81 points total for a full season. His MHL numbers, regular season and playoffs, were 3 points in a totally indicative 1 game in the regular season (3.00 points per game, for those of you keeping track at home) and 4 points in 2 playoff games (2 flat, if again, you’ve been doing the math yourself). The MHL conversion factor is pretty low, but still better than the USHL or USDP ones: 0.1664. That means he played to a 0.4992 pace in the regular season and 0.3328 pace in the playoffs. For 82 NHL games that’s 40.09344 total NHL points and 27.2896 NHL points, respectively.

So there it is, lots of math that you probably won’t take seriously, but if you do, it’s good news. While all of this comes with a ton of caveats and qualifiers, mostly that these kids are extremely young and anything can happen, I think it’s safe to say that at the very least the comparison is not so clear cut as the initial outrage may have made it seem. Kravtsov is at least as good, if not better, than Wahlstrom. This is PK, signing off. Happy 4th everyone.

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