Scoring pace & production trajectory

Scoring pace percentile

We don't average a player's last few seasons equally. We lean toward the recent past and toward the minutes that carried weight. His latest season counts for more than the one before it. Ice time decides how much any season contributes. A heavy workload speaks louder than a short cameo. The result is one current rate of impact, in GAR per 60 minutes. We then rank it as a percentile within position: forwards against forwards and defensemen against defensemen. The pool is every skater rated since 2010-11, each on his own most recent seasons. It is not only the players in this season. So a current player's percentile places him among everyone who has played since then. The projection sums up recent seasons with the latest weighted most. It needs a minimum recent workload to qualify. It is attached only to a player's latest qualifying season.

We have not yet scored this projection against what happened next on today's numbers. Until we have, read it as a summary of recent seasons. It is not a call on the next one.

Production trajectory

Alongside the projection sits a plain-language label: developing, stable or declining. It follows how a player's skill score changes from one season to the next, seen through his age. The skill score is the part of his 5v5 results he drives himself. A clear rise from a young player reads as developing. A clear drop from an older player who is already below average reads as declining. Everything else is stable. The label keys off that score rather than raw point totals. Luck can prop up points long after the underlying game has started to slip. The label is retired and no longer shown on any page. It is described here because the sell-high flag still uses it.

How the label feeds the flags

The trajectory label is one input into the sell-high flag. For a player under 30, a 'developing' label switches that flag off. Its companion is the buy-low flag, which works differently. It is driven by finishing against the player's own earlier seasons and by injury context alone. It fires when a player finishes well below his own baseline with no recorded injury to explain the dip. A player with no injury record counts as healthy. The finishing methodology page shows how it is built. It does not use the trajectory label at all. The sell-high flag marks strong finishing seasons, when a player finishes well above his own baseline. Both flags fire only on seasons with enough shots behind them. So a thin sample never triggers them.

How often each flag has been right is being re-measured against a fair comparison. Until then, this page prints no record for either one. Goaltenders get no trajectory label at all.