Seemingly we bestow expectations on players like it is arbitrary or an exact science. The reality is this. It is the furthest thing from it. Attend any fantasy sports conference and you will see information pooled around and tossed and chewed and spit out. Hypotheses and theories are debated and carved up like Thanksgiving turkey all in a blink of an eye.
The question begs to almost ask itself. How high is too high? Sure we love heaping an upside on players that we notice or praise but sometimes is there harm in saying there are some players that we can go as high as the moon if we want to? That answer is oddly enough yes. Too many players in the NHL fail expectation wise for a variety of reasons. Some just are not wired like we want them to be. One such case was Alexei Kovalev. Everything had to be perfect for Kovalev’s skills to shine and even then it did not always work. He had three point per game seasons in his 18 year NHL career but think about the other guys who had similar expectations that were just too damn high.
Look at all the draft picks that were not total busts but were expected to excel in the NHL. Some made a pretty good career out of the sport and some even won and contributed well. However because they did not have a certain amount of 80 point seasons or 30 win seasons (say as a goalie), they were considered “busts”. At the same time their expectations were probably several 100 point years or 400-500 wins as a goalie in the NHL.
For fantasy hockey purposes, that is partially why there has been an increased movement to “hedge” projections. It is so easy to sit there and just take a three year average, divide it around and go bang, here is a number. Projections should be thought about seriously especially if you ultimately go to more of a tiered system when ranking players.
Now those who says there is never too high of a ceiling, they can be so very wrong. So many variables go into predictions and expectations. Sometimes we never quantify the measure of the drive of the individual player. Too often, we look at pure talent as opposed to what actually makes the player tick not just in normal situations but also when everything is on the line (the last month of the regular season and the playoffs).
It is why this year with some players we are going to look around for projections that are too high and even call out some of our own that are as such. Our question to every reader is this. If you take a player such as Steven Stamkos, what would be too high of a projection as far as goals and assists? The answer is really harder than it looks. Give it some food for thought ladies and gentlemen. We will be back.
You can find a bit more on this on tomorrow night’s show as well. Thanks again.
