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The Snepsts System, which has been featured on Hockey Prospectus (including our latest book), Flames Nation, and Arctic Ice Hockey (formerly Behind the Net) is a projection system that searches the NHL's long history for players with similar scoring-adjusted career statistics, and uses their future scoring to set expectations for today's players.
Without any ado, here are this year's leading scorers, according to Snepsts. Since the system requires at least two seasons of data (more is better), you won't find players like Jeff Skinner or Taylor Hall, and it will be less accurate for players like John Tavares and Matt Duchene. Players with expectations based on fewer than 10 historical matches will have an asterisk to highlight the potential unreliability.
Unlike the VUKOTA system, Snepsts doesn't estimate how many games a player will manage, so the data will be presented in terms of goals, assists, and points per game.
Top scorers
Player PTS/GP
Sidney Crosby 1.452
Alex Ovechkin 1.068
Henrik Sedin* 1.059
Corey Perry 1.057
Ryan Getzlaf 0.970
Steven Stamkos* 0.957
Patrick Kane 0.954
Daniel Sedin 0.950
Brad Richards 0.945
Evgeni Malkin 0.933
Just missed: Jonathan Toews, Martin St. Louis
Veterans Martin St. Louis (2nd), Jarome Iginla (6th), Teemu Selanne (8th), and Henrik Zetterberg (9th) are knocked off the top ten, replaced by youngsters Evgeni Malkin, Sidney Crosby, Ryan Getzlaf, and Patrick Kane.
Last season, only five of the top 10 made a return appearance, so it's not a stretch to see a similar overhaul this year.
Top goal-scorers
A 50-goal scorer would be at .610 (or higher, depending on games played), a 40-goal man at .488 and a 30-goal sniper at .366. Here's the list of this year's project 30-goal men. In reality, there will be far more 30-goal scorers, since there will be easily a half-dozen players that break out in a fashion that's impossible to predict.
Player G/GP
Sidney Crosby 0.600
Steven Stamkos* 0.490
Corey Perry 0.487
Alex Ovechkin 0.417
Daniel Sedin 0.393
Jarome Iginla 0.382
Alexander Semin 0.381
Evgeni Malkin 0.381
Jonathan Toews 0.377
Ilya Kovalchuk 0.374
Just missed: Patrick Kane, Eric Staal, Rick Nash and Chris Stewart
Corey Perry was rudely pushed down to third, while Ovechkin fights back up to fourth from 14th. Last year's 5-10 spots (Ryan Kesler, Patrick Marleau, Jeff Carter, Patrick Sharp, Bobby Ryan, and Michael Grabner) all drop right out of sight.
Top playmakers
Player A/GP
Sidney Crosby 0.852
Henrik Sedin* 0.818
Ryan Getzlaf 0.696
Alex Ovechkin 0.651
Brad Richards 0.610
Kris Letang* 0.587
Martin St. Louis* 0.587
Patrick Kane 0.581
Henrik Zetterberg 0.576
Corey Perry 0.570
Just missed: Pavel Datsyuk, Daniel Sedin, Evgeni Malkin, Ales Hemsky, Joe Thornton
Kris Letang makes an unusual appearance on the assist leaderboard, but then again, that was based on few historical matches. Players like Mike Ribeiro (7th) and Claude Giroux (8th) were rudely pushed out of sight, but were replaced with rather familiar names.
Top defensemen
The defensemen didn't have nearly as many historical matches, so assume that virtually all of the below have asterisks.
Defenseman PTS/GP
Ryan Suter 0.605
Nicklas Lidstrom 0.598
Kris Letang 0.587
Alexander Edler 0.578
James Wisniewski 0.576
Tyler Myers 0.575
Drew Doughty 0.557
Dan Boyle 0.554
Mike Green 0.541
Shea Weber 0.539
Wow. Ryan Suter made an unusual jump from 29th—behind Matt Carle—all the way to first. Great scorers like Lubomir Visnovsky and Keith Yandle are quite noticeable in their absence, especially when replaced with players like Alexander Edler and Tyler Myers.
When it comes to defensemen, either the Snepsts system is soon going to be seen as absolutely brilliant, or in need of some serious revisions.
That's it for this week, although I'm sure you'll hear more about Snepsts throughout the year. Email me for a complete list of Snepsts projections.
Robert Vollman is an author of Hockey Prospectus.
You can contact Robert by clicking here or click here to see Robert's other articles.
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From Daigle To Datsyuk (10/11)
5 comments have been left for this article. 
Any reason why Sidney is so far ahead of the pack in the scoring projections? Who are his top comps? Thanks
As I cover in the Penguins chapter of Hockey Prospectus 2011-12, Crosby was having a historic year, the best since Mario Lemieux, 15 or so years ago. And as I discuss in the Core Age essay, Sid's 24 years old, which is right around where you expect a player's scoring to peak.
And while Rob can speak for Snepsts, Crosby's season would have prorated to 34.8 GVT, the 23rd best all-time among skaters. The only names ahead of him on that (what if) list: Orr, Gretzky, Howe, Lemieux, Esposito, Lafleur.