Not only that, but the assumption that we know a player’s hustling, or that one player’s hustling significantly affects the game when they’re on the ice above another player…it really thrusts the argument into subjectivity. I’m sorry, I’m not going to engage speculation over whether Mike Richards had more heart than Evgeni Malkin.

I don’t recall mentioning “hustle” in the original piece.

In any case, I think my post has been misinterpreted as anti-statistics or anti-advanced-stats. It isn’t and I’m not. I’m all for advanced stats. I’ve just seen many people take statistics as prescriptive rather than descriptive and forget that people do change over time and make different decisions over time.

The best players in the league continue to be the best players in the league from season to season because they choose to work hard in the off-season, practising parts of their game that need work, and constantly attempting to improve. Too often, changes in shooting percentage or faceoff percentage are attributed solely to luck. Of course luck plays a big part of it, but sometimes a player actually improves his shot or works on his faceoff technique.

Ryan Kesler’s shooting percentage was 8.7, 8.4, and 6.8 in his first three seasons. It’s been 11.9, 14.5, 11.7, and 15.8 in the subsequent four seasons. Is that pure luck or do we attribute that to practising his shot as he claimed to do during those off-seasons?

Maybe this is something that mainly comes into play for prospects and younger players who are experiencing more dramatic development in their games rather than older players who have a more consistent off-season regimen that simply maintains their quality of play than improving it.

I’m not interested in saying player x has more heart than player y when their on-ice performance is equivalent, that’s not my point. I’m just interested in looking at how a player’s choices affect their performance and consistency. It may have explanatory power for high-end prospects who don’t pan out.

I’m also not interested in talking about intangibles as being more important than measurable tangibles. I am interested in seeing how those intangibles have tangible effects. One player scores 20 goals in a season because he has a great wristshot even though he keeps towards the outside while in the offensive zone while another player has more “heart” or “grit” and scores 20 goals because he barges his way towards the front of the net and chops in rebounds. Say that their advanced stats are equivalent: which player would you rather have?

At that point, maybe it comes down to personal choice. One GM prefers players with skill and thinks that the first player has a higher ceiling if only he would start going harder to the net. Another GM prefers “gritty” players who aren’t afraid to get their noses dirty and thinks the second player is preferable because he might be more likely to produce in high-pressure situations in the playoffs where the defence is structured to shutdown your top-end talent.

I’m not a statistician at all, though I’ve been characterized as a stat-head in the past. The article I wrote on Backhand Shelf isn’t meant to attack advanced stats, it’s meant to introduce something different into the discussion.