An interesting statistical look at the 2011 draft's top prospects

If you aren't familiar with the Bluechip Bulletin blog, you ought to head over there and check it out.

Author BCB knows his stuff. He's based in the heart of Plymouth Whalers country and sees a lot of high-level hockey from the OHL to the U.S. NTDP and everything in between.

He's done a statistical analysis that is worth looking at by projecting player production over the course of 82 games based on their point-per-game numbers. His findings/conclusions about Sean Couturier are eye-opening to say the least, so be sure to check it out.

It's the kind of thing that we don't spend a lot of time doing here at B2011DW, but are very happy to see on the web because it's one more solid analysis and food for thought that gets away from a lot of the conventional wisdom and accepted "knowns" about the top players.

We applaud BCB and his work. We know he's got some other posts and studies in the hopper, so give his site and visit. Whether you agree with the conclusions or not isn't the point. In getting to know him over the past few months, he doesn't give a fig about what everyone else thinks. He's got some strong opinions but defends them well.

At the end of the day, we'll always welcome engaged and hard-hitting draft analysis. He gets to the heart of the matter right here when he says:

I don’t claim to be a statistics expert, and I certainly wouldn’t go so far as to suggest that teams base their selections solely on statistics. While there are some concepts within Moneyball that are applicable to hockey, anyone who has ever looked at Ramzi Abid’s numbers his draft year and then seen him in person knows that there’s more to a player than his statistics. Still, there are some things about a player that you can only learn by looking at his statistics.

In an age where the internet has plenty of venues through which to explore the hockey draft, Bluechip Bulletin is a thinking man's blog.