from Nick Mendola's (WECK 1230)blog

http://www.nickmendola.com/reggie-in-fu ... kera-foul/

Reggie in Full Effect: Euro bias serves Sekera foul

(WECK 1230) — Look… I get it. Andrej Sekera doesn’t put a ton of forecheckers into the wall or blast his way through the neutral zone to certain goal-ridden glory. What he does do, however, is play consistent defense as he figures out an offensive side that continues to move toward certain productivity.

My old friend, WGR’s Jeremy White, made a post about Sekera on Facebook asking for people’s opinions on a player he has a lot of hope for, and the negative responses he got were varied and, in my opinion, wrong. Being Euro, clearly folks wanted to call Dmitri Kalinin or Alexei Zhitnik (the latter of whom was actually quite solid as long as you weren’t hoping to hit the net on the power play. Zhitnik was a three-time All-Star who averaged close to a point-per-game in the epic 1998-99 playoffs).

Like Kimmo Timonen and Karlis Skrastins before him, Sekera is bearing the plight of the European blueliner on a substandard or underachieving team in the National Hockey League. If you aren’t a Sergei Zubov or Nick Lidstrom putting up piles of points, odds are you’ll be considered soft and underperforming. You’ll be a magnet for blame when there’s a minus by your name and just a name on the list if you’re the second assist (I’m hockey’s Dr. Seuss, apparently).

Ouch

I’m a nerd for advanced stats, though I don’t swear by them, and I also think Andrej Sekera has been the best Sabre not named Derek Roy this season. Imagine my surprise and delight when “friend of the show” James Mirtle posted his first-half “Rod Langway Award” dedicated to NHL’s best defensive defenseman “using some of the advanced stats at Gabe Desjardins’ terrific Behind The Net site, I rank every defenceman who plays in defensive situations by the quality of players they face (QCMP) and how many goals they are on the ice for at even strength and while shorthanded.”

There was “Reggie” Sekera at No. 5.

Sekera was the Slovaks’ No. 1 performing blueliner at the Olympics last winter and luckily he’s quite young. Why lucky? Let’s just say Toni Lydman drew the ire of Sabres fans during bad team years despite averaging about 20 points per year as a stay-at-home defenseman, grinding out forwards along the wall and spending six-straight seasons — now seven — as a even or plus player. Lydman’s plus-25 is good for second in the NHL on a surging Anaheim squad.

Who’s in third? A Blackhawk who is a Sabre in many ways. Brian Campbell is a plus-23 trying to live up to his massive salary. He could be a plus-801 and Thomas Vanek could score 94 goals… both would still be pariahs to some Buffalo fans.

It seems we’re quick to dismiss foreign skaters going back to lackadaisical and underwhelming efforts of talented Europeans like Ales Kotalik, Kalinin, Maxim Afinogenov and others. The Sabres have subsequently built a more North American-based line-up, but of the players performing the best for the squad this year, I’d argue Thomas Vanek and Sekera have only been challenged by Derek Roy at the team’s top. Meanwhile, you could argue the player most representative of the soft, inconsistent reputation of the European has now been gone under fire for the same ailment in Atlanta and Toronto: Clarke MacArthur.

There have been heroic postseason performances by European stars like Lidstrom, Henrik Zetterberg and Teemu Selanne. There have been Euros donning the ‘C’, like Minnesota’s Mikko Koivu and Boston’s Zdeno Chara. Atlanta’s Toby Enstrom and Philadelphia’s Ville Leino are two of the league’s most unheralded young players. All European. All fine.

Hopefully one day we knock back that stereotype. Sekera should find himself on the right end of a contract extension this year, and be paired with No. 57 for years to come.

Email: [email protected]

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Proud LGBTQQ Individual

And the article he references:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/sports/h ... le1867013/

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Proud LGBTQQ Individual

sekera has been good this year. very good. hes becoming a VERY good defender.

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THANK YOU. Sekera needs a lot more love.

He has improved this season, but I don't see any bias in his situation at any point in his career. He's been inconsistent if not poor defensively, and has yet to gain or show the confidence in his offensive game to full extent. I see his potential as being a solid 2nd pairing d-man, but for now he still is a 3rd pair guy except for playing on a d-corps with no dominant minute hogs. If not for Morrisonn and Leopold both being passed up as Myers partner, he'd still be a 3rd pair guy (not that Myers is playing like a top pair d-man this season).

A d-corps that is worth a legit Cup run would not have Sekera starting, but he still has the same potential that Campbell had.

Did you read the referenced article?

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Proud LGBTQQ Individual

Yeah, it was hardly an article, but it used a convoluted stat method to come up with a list of best d-men. Some really good players are there along with some pretty average players. Sekera is one of the average players.

So you ignore advanced statistical analysis in favor of your own opinion. Awesome.

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Proud LGBTQQ Individual

So you want to be a smart ass as usual...cool.

Advanced statistical analysis is not always the end all be all of player evaluation.

EDIT: Especially when they're working off 'average relative plus/minus' as a core stat for their player comparisons.

Besides, that whole article is about defensive d-men, or those doing the best job defensively only. Sekera may be doing a good job defensively so far...I agree with that. He still isn't becoming an offensive threat, still not becoming a PP QB, and still not good enough overall to be considered a top four d-man on a Cup worthy team.

No, but attempting to discredit such analysis with the implication that it's merely a random list and that one's own opinions trump such analysis is annoying. I guess I can agree in part with the "convoluted" assessment. Without a bit of extra reading (and clicking) it's difficult to understand what the analysis is actually saying.

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Proud LGBTQQ Individual

I'll pick this apart even further.

If you assume QCMP is a meaningful number, which I would dispute, but for the sake of discussion work with, his list is not based on numbers at all. There's no apparent rhyme or reason to how he ranks his players when you compare the numbers shown.

The more complicated the alleged statistical comparison is, the less value it holds as a comparative metric.

You assume that I'm just casting off the analysis for my own opinion, but the list shows Hamrlik, Spacek, and Robidas as top five defensive d-men. It's not total crap, but there's quite obviously some room for error. FWIW, my opinion is formed in part from watching most players in action, since I'm lucky enough to have Center Ice. Now Sekera is unlucky to play on a mediocre team that makes it harder for any of his talents to shine, but I see plenty of better players making more of an impact on other teams that aren't real good either.

Yeah the presentation was pretty shitty, there needed to be a little bit more explanation of what the categories mean rather than hoping people would click their way through to behindthenet's statistical FAQ. He definitely needed to explain the basis for the rankings

In short, QCMP is based on an average of a player's opponent's relative +/-.

I thought the players were ranked in each category, and then listed by the sum of those rankings. (i.e. someone who placed 3rd, 1st, and 7th (11) would be ranked above someone who placed 4th, 6th, and 6th (16)). However further analysis shows this to be close, but ultimately incorrect, at least when constrained to that list. For example, Lidstrom should be around 20th (1st, 30th, 21st) and Bieksa should be last (21st, 24th, 20th). However this method could hold true if applied to NHL defensemen as a whole. While someone like Lidstrom might be 30th in EV60 on this list, he might be 60th in the NHL thus causing his summation to suffer.

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Proud LGBTQQ Individual

I said a few years ago that Andrej Sekera will turn into our next Brian Campbell...I won't be wrong. It will happen by 12-13. He's already a beautiful skater and carries the puck into the offensive zone with ease.

Stats can be used to support anything. I mean I saw some stat last week about Stafford and how he's in the the top...whatever in terms of points per minute or something ridiculous. First off, he's no top ten player and secondly.....he never will be....but damn them stats is tasty! So when I see a bunch of cherry picked numbers, pulled away from the bigger picture and used to support something that we all know from watching this guy play day in and day out to be false...well.....excuse me while I roll my eyes. Has he improved? Well yes he has. Is he the second best player on our team? Are you fucking high?

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So we have RPM, which is an derived calculation based on an assumption (expected goal differential), and that's being used to create QCMP, which is a a derived calculation of a derived calculation.

It's all garbage.

The same problems exist in Sabremetrics. When you start with an arbitrary derived statistic, then derive other stats from that , the results hold almost no meaning.

For there to be any value in the stat, you should be able to work it backwards through historical data to see if it holds meaning. That's not really possible here since the root calculation relies on an assumption.

Sekera doesn't deserve to be blasted for his play this year. Whether you come at it from a statistical standpoint, or just from a gut feeling based on observing games, it seems pretty clear to me he's been one of the best defensemen on this team. I would say Montador has been the best on the blueline, with either Sekera or Leopold as the second best. No doubt in my mind Sekera has been better than Myers, Morrison, Rivet, and any of the other AHL/NHL D-men.