The Athletic’s Max Bultman lays into the “fancy stats” this morning, using Dom Luszczyszyn’s Game Score Value Added model to predict when Lucas Raymond and Moritz Seider become star players:
Again, it’s early — with incredible starts by both players playing a large role in the underlying calculations above — but Dom Luszczyszyn’s GSVA model projects that, as early as next season, both Seider and Raymond could be turning in star-level impact for the Red Wings. Seider is already on track for it this season.
And even while significant caveats are needed this early into their careers, that is a substantial development for Detroit’s big-picture trajectory. Because for all the Red Wings’ many needs during this rebuild, finding players of that “star” caliber has been by far the biggest.
Sure, Seider’s play over the past two seasons made clear that he was on track to be a key piece for Detroit, entering this season with a clear path toward becoming a top-pair blueliner. And Raymond’s skill, smarts and competitiveness have been evident since long before he was even drafted. But the difference between having high picks turn into good players and having them turn into great ones is significant for a rebuilding team.
The great ones are just so hard to obtain — and doing so is perhaps the most difficult variable in determining just how long the process might take.
We won’t know for some time yet, of course, whether Seider and Raymond are truly stars. They have a lot of proving yet to do, both this season and beyond.
But for the sake of projecting their potential importance to the Red Wings’ rebuild, let’s say for now that they do turn out approximately as Luszczyszyn’s model thinks they could. What would that mean for Detroit’s timeline?
Continued (paywall)
