So I made a survey because I wanted to understand something, I wanted to know how fans looked at the intangibles when it comes to hockey players. The Blake Wheeler contract and subsequent analysis has really moved the needle in terms of debate over what a team should pay for, or has paid for when signing a new contract at a certain age.
Whether it be the national writers chiming in such as Tyler Dellow of the Athletic or local writers on the NHL beat here in Winnipeg, the Wheeler contract seems to have divided many and that is curious to me.
First, let me explain there’s no data science to this survey. I’m curious and wanted to find some way to quantify what people believed. If I was really looking to make an impact with this survey I would have paid a few and pushed this more and took more time with it. Thus there are far more than 100 responses but that’s all Survey Monkey let’s me see until I pay, so this is what we’re working with going forward.
Here are the questions.
Do you weight intangibles as part of a player's value to the team?
89% of respondents said they do weight intangibles compared to 11% who said they did not. I don’t find this surprising because there is value in things we cannot quantify. The point of that question was to see how many people see intangibles as part of a player’s value.
2. What Intangibles are important to a player's value?
This is how the choices ranked in order of importance
Competitiveness 85% Leadership 75% Character 68% Heart 61% Good in the room 52% Grit 48% Other 12%
The ‘Other’ category was available for people to present comments and for those you did not disappoint.
Face-offs “Intangibles should make up no more than 50% value… Talent Chemistry Tough/mean Ability to get under opponents skin Mental Fitness Hustle (How hard players is trying when team is not winning or appears out of the game) Relationship to fans/city He isn’t trying to bang anyone’s partner known playoff performer, some players disappear while others shine
3. What weighting do you put on each of the intangibles
Competitiveness Character Leadership Heart Good in room Grit Other …¨ So compared to the first survey when looking at importance of the intangibles only Leadership and Character have switched.
4. Do underlying/analytics numbers matter to you in a players value?
71% said yes 29% said no
5. What weighting in players value do you put intangibles on a scale of 0-100 (this value plus next question must equal 100)
The respondents weighted intangibles at 47%
6. What weighting of underlying numbers/analytics do you put on a players value? (this number plus previous question must equal 100
The respondents weighted analytics at 51% so you almost got it even!
7. Would you like an all encompassing number that determines a player's value like how EA does it for the NHL game?
Yes 51% No 49%
What I found fascinating about this rather hasty and highly unscientific survey was the final question. I think it’s because there is a certain aspect of the fan experience that does translate to numbers. Fans most likely want to have some sort of experience that does not need validation through quantification…or not.
The interesting things is that how many people weighted intangibles as important to a player’s value and some of the comments on what other things should have weight. Now when the survey moved away from the first question of ‘do you weight intangibles’ to then having the respondents do actual weighting of intangibles vs numbers/analytics things got a little funny.
89% of respondents said they weight intangibles but of those 100 respondents they only weighted them at 47% of the players value. The belief could be seen that they believe in the value of intangibles but are cautious as to how much they believe. But, doesn’t weighting a player’s value, based on intangibles, at 47% seem high?
Back to Blake Wheeler. If we apply that weighting to the value of his new contract the Jets just paid 3.877 million for leadership, competitiveness, grit, heart, character, being good in the room, other factors. Over five years that’s 19.4 million, yet many believe this is money that will be fairly spent if not a value.
Consider the converse then that 4.3725 million gets you 91 points. Seems like a bargain right? Then it’s probably fair to look at what the Jets could be buying for that amount with some simple data over the time of Wheeler’s career in Winnipeg. Again I’m not bashing Wheeler nor do I feel it’s abad deal as much as a risky one. But I can’t do anything with intangibles to explore them because well, they are intangible.
Let’s use a really basic stat, individual pts/60 and we’ll go by season, for RWs who played a minimum of 1000 5vs5 minutes.
2011-12 Wheeler 16th
2012-13 (500 mins due to lockout season) 14th
2013-14 7th
2014-15 10th
2015-16 3rd
2016-17 14th
2017-18 10th
Now that’s one of many stats and taken simply as an individual rate. I’m not going to get much deeper because of time and attention span for this and I cannot make the database I’m using (Natural Stat-trick) do what I want without downloading a huge .csv file. (Even then it’s debatable)
So take Corey Perry who is basically a year older than Wheeler and playing out a 8.65 AAV for 2 more years to end at age 35. Perry is 34 and he was first in points/60 in 2013-14 for RWs at age 29 and Wheeler at age 28 was seventh. The next season Perry did not even play 1000 mins at 5 vs 5. In 15-16 he was 15th, in 16-17 26th, and 11th last season right behind Wheeler.
How does one look at Perry as a player? Is he any different from Wheeler in terms of consistency with points? They seem to move around a lot in terms of individual production but follow the same sort of path but games played has affected numbers for Perry.
I’m not trying to compare the two as players more so the age and production by one measurement. It’s a way to see a bigger view looking at the rate. Now think about that these stats are at 5 vs 5 and to Tyler Dellow’s point players rack up points elsewhere too. Wheeler doubled his PP points from 21 to 40 the last two seasons-that’s a monumental jump. In 2014-15 Wheeler only had 12 PP points all season and 19 the year before. Again as Dellow points out so well, he makes a massive jump this past season.
The obvious difference is the Jets had a PP, and a damn good one last season, at 5th in league running at 23.4%. Wheeler, and others piled up points on it due to a few different factors. Now I’ll stop trying to regurgitate what he said, but again his article is the basis for some of the outrage around the Wheeler signing.
Whether or not you agree with how Dellow weights his data in the value of the upcoming deal for Wheeler it’s fair to agree that the data is enough to give pause and ask questions. I’m of the belief that many within the analytics community are committed to a process or view in the same way GMs and teams get ‘married to players’.
Take the criticism of the Wheeler deal that the team was ‘married to him’. That they could not let go of him due to how he was in the relationship and what it meant to the fans and organization and more. I believe that many in the analytics community might be married to the idea of timely divorces.
In this case the relationship between player and team is a finite amount of time and for the team, they hold a certain amount of control about a relationship because they have to manage 25 of them, if not more. They also have renewable source of people to have relations with. So for Wheeler, the argument would be that everything is great with us now but in the future we don’t see things being as great so we want to end this before our relationship arrives at that point.
To put in the most simple terms—teams need to stop signing guys before the mounting evidence says they will decline. That’s what those using data evaluation are perhaps hoping comes to fruition so they can see their theories tested?
So one thing about the intangibles I did not see mentioned in the survey was the business side away from the ice for players. When a team signs a player such as Wheeler for 8.25 million where else can they recoup that expense aside from the rink? Does a player, particularly a captain and top performer in the league have value in other ways that the team can capitalize on? Do they help with sponsors? Have teams found a way to capitalize on community relations with players so there is return on investment (ROI) the team needs?
The above is also intangible aspects that for fans and analysts is very difficult to quantify. For teams they may have some longterm data about what value players can bring to the team away from the rink.
So back to the beginning, people see value in the intangibles that players bring and they weight them nearly to 50% of a player’s value. So if you feel that 50% of a contract is to pay for the intangibles that a player brings does that feel like good value for the money?
There’s far more to explore here but it would take a much more diversified survey and data analysis, more than I am prepared to do. Now, about that Jets vs Canucks prospect game from last night….