Top 25 North American Players of 2022: Introduction

The long awaited return of the top 25 players in North America is finally here! As we wanted to make the launch of 6sIQ as smooth as it could be, the project ended up being pushed back to fully accommodate it with the new site features. With the project coming at a later date, the top players list will now have a full year scope, so the events featured will be in a January to December format, rather than a game’s calendar year (roughly October - September).

With the introduction of 6sIQ into the ecosystem, it allows us to integrate even more depth into our process of selecting the standout players in a year. With things like game by game ratings, easy to access event history, as well as easier opponent analysis to get better results from our process. Here’s what you can expect from a selection criteria this year:

Games Played/Event Minimum

In order to qualify for the list, you must've played a signifcant amount of games in at least 4/6 events of the year. A player playing in a couple of games, either regular season or playoffs, does not count for the event played. Given that events are open entry and free to everyone, there really isn't any barrier of playing at least a large chunk of games. 

Average Placement

This one is pretty self explanatory, the better you do in tournaments the higher your stock is going to rise. With only a handful of tournaments to generate data from, it’s important to not only give credit to those who had great playoff runs, but also to balance between top placements and standout individuals. 

Regular Season and Playoff Stats + Ratings

The bread and butter of my analysis, specifically designed to highlight top individual performances both offensively and defensively. While some things will remain team success dependant, players who have performances that exceed their teammates, it’s much easier to highlight strong individual performances. These ratings will include both regular season and playoff, although playoff ratings will be weighted more than regular season. With the way the current event formats are created, there will always be skewed numbers based on schedules, but for the most part it all works for the best. Playoff ratings simply allow for a rating against top teams in crucial situations. This along with a new addition looks to find who performs the best against the top level of competition. These numbers include not only basic stats and ratings, but also winning percentage is important to factor in as well.

Rating Against Top Teams

This can go hand in hand with what was said above, but a constant challenge in the current competitive environment is understanding the relationship between strength of schedule and high ratings. It’s one thing to perform extremely well against teams below your skill level, but the ability to replicate these top performances against the very best in North America is important to highlight for players. This is something that isn’t perfect for this year, but we hope that the tools 6sIQ brings to the table can help make this relationship more transparent in the future. It’s one thing to be well above average against good teams, but the ability to do the same against excellent teams separates good players and great players.

Conclusion

All of these parts of the criteria make up the rankings. There will always be bias or opinions on how a player performs amongst peers, but ultimately the system is in place to keep it as bias free as possible. With the innovations 6sIQ brings to the equation, the system and criteria will continue to develop and evolve, with even more storylines to follow over the course of a year.

First up will be the top 5 goalies, followed by the top 25 skaters of 2022. Here’s to the best of the best, as well as the future! The coverage starts this Friday, see you then!