In this article, I’ll identify the best players from the 2021 season. There are two ways to use Stapled To The Bench statistics to define “best players”, and they will both be used. Productivity Rating (PR) will show which players had the best 2021 season, while Value Rating (VR) will show which players had the most value after the 2021 season.
I won’t do much commenting on the players themselves, as the numbers speak for themselves and you can use a search engine as easily as I can.
Productivity Rating (PR) – Best Seasons
One of the main reasons PR was created was to have an objective way to identify the best players in a season. See the article Introduction to Productivity Rating for more details on how it works.
The top two categories in PR are PR-Elite and PR-Star. In 2021 there were 11 PR-Elites and 57 PR-Stars. They are listed below, with their “big 5” statistics: games played (GP), average time on ice per game (TOI), goals, assists, points.
PR-Elite
Eleven players were in the PR-Elite category. They are presented in PR-Score order, starting with the highest rated player.
PR-Star
57 players were PR-Stars, and that’s too many players for one table in Word (it wouldn’t elegantly fit on a printed 8.5”x11” page, a necessary consideration for the PDF version of articles). They will be presented in two tables, in PR-Score order. Kirill Kaprizov is the highest rated PR-Star, while Dylan Larkin is the lowest rated PR-Star.
Value Rating (VR) – Best Players
Many people want to know who the better player is, not which ones had the better season. VR addresses that desire: it cobbles together statistics from the previous three seasons and makes an adjustment for games the player didn’t play. See the article Introduction to Value Rating for more details.
VR and PR have the same scoring scale and the same categories. In 2021 there were 8 VR-Elites and 54 VR-Stars. They are listed below, with their “big 5” statistics from their 2021 season: games played (GP), average time on ice per game (TOI), goals, assists, points.
VR-Elite
Cale Makar and Adam Fox had great seasons in 2021, but their VR-Score is weighed down by their 2019/2020 statistics. If they have their normal season next year, they will be VR-Elites.
VR-Star
