Los Angeles Kings GM Dean Lombardi was finished explaining why his defenseman, Drew Doughty, is better than any of the other young defensemen on Neil Greenberg's annual list of the Top 25 players under 25.
Doughty is ranked No. 8 on the list this season, with four defensemen ahead of him: Erik Karlsson, P.K. Subban, Alex Pietrangelo and Oliver Ekman-Larsson. Lombardi made a strong case for Doughty, which we'll get to in a second, and then wondered how the list was compiled.
When he found out it was determined by statistical analysis and not just a subjective Top 25, his interest perked up.
"That's good. That's interesting," he said during a chat on Monday evening. "It's the classic case between ... what I can see and what I can calculate."
Lombardi has an open mind when it comes to advanced statistics in hockey. In fact, he's good friends with a few baseball executives who are known for embracing stats. In his estimation, there is one advanced stat in hockey that has a strong correlation to success on the ice, but he's not going to divulge his secret.
"I'm not going to tell you," he said when asked what it was, pointing out that Billy Beane's willingness to share his process didn't exactly help him.
But in the case of Doughty, it's the things that can't be measured that make him great, and that's why he stands out as being too low on Greenberg's list during an audit. And it's not just the general manager who drafted him who thinks so.
When Greenberg's list was passed around among scouts and hockey execs, Doughty's name came up outside Los Angeles.