How many actually use the Dobber Prospects site?

[sasquatch]

Just saw this thread, I find it quite useful, I use it as a piece of the puzzle when evaluating a prospect almost always in conjunction with HockeysFuture and then hockeydb.com for a stats run down...

I like the ramblings when they're updated. Although I probably only hit up the site once or twice a month....

[roenick27]

This is my take on the prospect site. I stopped reading through the responses halfway so sorry if I miss something already stated
1. Agree that there needs to be a weekly ramblings or something scheduled so that the site gets checked once a week or whatever that timeline is
2. Reminders on the main site would be helpful at least in the beginning
3. Instead of letter grades what would you think about maybe going a bit further on it to kind of "match" the guides? Maybe something multi-pronged like:
A) best upside/time until reaching the NHL
B) likelihood of hitting 1st line/2nd line etc?

I think that would help to make it more comprehensive as well as more informative to the average fantasy reader.
Just my take on it. I visit the main site at least daily and sadly I only look at the prospect site a few times a year (normally only when a new ramblings is announced on the main site)
I hope this is taken as helpful and not critical as I think most do a great job on here in general, especially for a primarily free site (outside of guides etc)

[Pengwin7]

I hate researching prospects, because it is usually one person's opinion.
It makes the grades/rankings/reports very... um.. subjective.

Nature of the beast though - it's just probably going to be this way on any site.

For me, the only time I need to know about prospects is for my entry draft in my keeper league.
Then, I usually go to this one website that had draft rankings collected & compiled from 10-12 different websites.
A collection of rankings is the best way to weed out the odd out-of-place evaluation.

The hardest part is that a website really needs to quantify (put some numbers on) their player evaluations... track them... re-visit them.
That's really the only way I would invest my trust in any one site.

[SergeP]

I joined a new keeper league this year where we use farm teams and, for the first time, really delved into the Dobber Prospect's page. I have to say that I found it to be useful though I do prefer Hockey's Future. I agree with the criticisms levelled here in that I found a lot of the grades to be outdated, I also found it annoying that the format of each prospect report was somewhat different from the next.

I get the idea that grades are subjective and that you can get a better feel for a prospect by reading the write up, however if I'm doing research I don't want to have to read 50-60 write ups. The grades help to narrow the field a bit and allows the reader to then delve deeper into a smaller group.

Here are some suggestions which I feel would greatly improve the Prospects page:

Provide 2 scores/grades for each prospect: a first which would indicate that prospect's ceiling in terms of overall production and a second which would indicate how far away that prospect is from making an impact. Allowing site visitors to sort prospects on either value would also be great.

Provide an explanation of what prospect grades/scores mean. If a prospect is a B+, what exactly does that mean in terms of his upside, who are current "B+ players" in the NHL? Same deal with the number score, what does it mean if a prospect is a 57.8? This isn't clear enough at best and completely random at worst.

For each prospect, provide realistic comparisons to current NHL players.

Provide grades, comparisons and summary write up for each prospect at the top of that prospect's page instead of at the bottom. When doing research, I want to get all the important high level info upfront and then decide on whether I want to keep going for more detailed analysis, highlights, player history, mother's maiden name, elementary school report cards, favorite colour, etc.

Standardise the format used for each prospect write up

Review and update on a regular basis.

Better integrate the prospect site with Dobberhockey - the Prospect site should be a section of Dobber Hockey as opposed to a separate site