Fringe opinions among armchair NHL coaches…..don’t mean jack except to like-minded people.
I take this with a grain of salt….many of the same people criticizing Wilson, called him ruined, a bust, and if you watch GDTs, they criticize him anytime anything physical happens.
Because fighting and hitting are bad for hockey... or something.Why have you hated Tom Wilson since he was drafted? It’s sad.
Are you even looking at these charts before you post them?Posting here since the Brouwer thread was rightfully closed:
Brouwer and Wilson were different players (Brouwer was a stronger PP player and Wilson stronger at ES) and certainly one is more adored by the fanbase than the other.
But in terms of on-ice impact as measured by GAR they were relatively equal. Here are their 3 year player cards for comparison. In the interest of fairness I’ll ignore Wilson’s 22-23 campaign because of his recovery from injury. Brouwer from 2012-13 to 2014-15 and Wilson from 2019-20 to 2021-22:
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And then Brouwer fell off a cliff:
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I fear this is the type of player card we’ll be seeing from Tom Wilson over the next 3 years. Even if it’s not quite this bad, a merely average Tom Wilson in 3 years signed to an 7-8 year contract could get really ugly really fast. And an ugly contract and missing out on significant trade value would be a disaster.
I hope MacLellan looks back on the Brouwer trade and how it helped the team when deciding what to do with Wilson. But I doubt he will. The path of least resistance by far is to just sign Wilson and make everyone happy for the time being.
Here's a venn diagram displaying people who pay attention to hockey and people who think Troy Brouwer and Tom Wilson have "relatively equal" impact to the game.Lawd! hahaha
I think if you took a poll of every NHL player who has played against Wilson since joining the league: All of them would rather play and take a hit from Brouwer vs Widowmaker Willy. This could be displayed in a bar graph, pie chart, heat map, regression line, or funny gif of my choosing which I know you love and cherish.
Are you even looking at these charts before you post them?
Wilson is a head and shoulders better player at even strength both offensively and defensively. The only place Brouwer matches up is in xGAR, but still managed to underperform his expected average over three years while Wilson far exceeds his and works out to "significantly better". He actually contributes on defense, and draws/takes penalties at roughly the same rate instead of just taking them like Brouwer does because he sucks and could never skate.
The only thing Brouwer did better, the thing that is buoying him here, is being the original powerplay bumper guy, but something tells me the system being unique at the time and a healthy Nick Backstrom did a lot of the lifting here and I really don't see how this model is going to adequately isolate Troy Brouwer's individual contribution to that powerplay. He took zero percent of that PP dominance with him, so it makes you think... usually even half-cooked players can still work a powerplay, so how did he get so bad so fast?
Even the numbers don't say these are similar players (except the big overall one at the top, and if you for real think that's a number you can just point to and go "see?" then, I don't know what else to say. Anybody with eyes would see Wilson is leaps and bounds better than Brouwer was and if your stat has them equal, it's a bad stat.
Are you even looking at these charts before you post them?
Wilson is a head and shoulders better player at even strength both offensively and defensively. The only place Brouwer matches up is in xGAR, but still managed to underperform his expected average over three years while Wilson far exceeds his and works out to "significantly better". He actually contributes on defense, and draws/takes penalties at roughly the same rate instead of just taking them like Brouwer does because he sucks and could never skate.
The only thing Brouwer did better, the thing that is buoying him here, is being the original powerplay bumper guy, but something tells me the system being unique at the time and a healthy Nick Backstrom did a lot of the lifting here and I really don't see how this model is going to adequately isolate Troy Brouwer's individual contribution to that powerplay. He took zero percent of that PP dominance with him, so it makes you think... usually even half-cooked players can still work a powerplay, so how did he get so bad so fast?
Even the numbers don't say these are similar players (except the big overall one at the top, and if you for real think that's a number you can just point to and go "see?" then, I don't know what else to say. Anybody with eyes would see Wilson is leaps and bounds better than Brouwer was and if your stat has them equal, it's a bad stat.
Really? What do you think the words "relatively equal impact" are supposed to convey in this context then?xGAR isn’t "expected GAR" despite the confusing name. It’s a completely separate model from GAR that uses a different regression technique, at least from my understanding.
I don't think these players are the same. But I do think that Brouwer is (yet another) warning sign that things have a good chance of going south for Wilson quickly given his age. It probably won't be the extreme drop that Brouwer had immediately as that's not what usually happens. But decline usually happens. I haven't really heard a convincing case to suggest that Wilson will buck this trend. Being able to skate well doesn't hold off a decline, especially since most of the league skates very well nowadays.
Lawd! hahaha
I think if you took a poll of every NHL player who has played against Wilson since joining the league: All of them would rather play and take a hit from Brouwer vs Widowmaker Willy. This could be displayed in a bar graph, pie chart, heat map, regression line, or funny gif of my choosing which I know you love and cherish.