I'm a huge proponent of advanced stats in games like baseball where even metric is trackable and each play is an isolated case where everything can be taken into account. But Hockey simply isn't.
I think the advanced group is as quick to dismiss that their formulas/stats may be lacking certain variables as the other crowd is of dismissing any notion that they might be getting lucky or playing over their heads. When teams like Anaheim defy the statistics with regularity it shows me that things are being neglected. And those things are pretty obvious - yes it's "supposed" to balance out, but goalie quality, shot location, shot quality, player quality (are we really going to say a shot from Perry is the same as a blue line shot from some random 4th liner)... none of these things are taken into account. It's great in theory to say that "over a full season it all balances out" but I'm not sure it does. I'd love to see someone go through the outliers and see if everything is within 2 standard deviations (in # of outliers and HOW far of an outlier they are).
One thing that has never made sense to me is that if these statistics are so volatile and randomness based that a team like the Avalanche can be a *huge* outlier over 82 games, why is it impossible for them to continue to be an outlier in a 7 game series? Why is an 82 game regular season insufficient to "validate" anything but a 7 game playoff series is? Undoubtedly if the Avalanche lose to the Hawks or blues this postseason it will be
VALIDATION!!!!!!! for the stats crew. But why is that any more important than the entirety of the regular season or the almost-as-long regular season series? If Colorado flew in the face of corsi in the regular season in a "cartoonish" way, why isn't that even POSSIBLE in a 7 game series? I'm a huge proponent of the advanced statistics in baseball but they are just so much more concrete. The hockey advanced statistics proponents seem very quick to throw numbers out for people so supposedly interested in the numbers.
The individual player corsi and fenwick ratings are just as concerning to me. I'm going to copy/paste a post I made earlier today -
"Was looking through the advanced statistics for the Avs when I found this little tid-bit.
According to iCorsi/60, in a sample size of over 750 minutes for each of them, Jamie McGinn was "better" than
RoR, Stastny, Mitchell, Talbot, PaP, Barrie, EJ, Holden, Benoit, Sarich, Guenin, and Hejda, in that order.
McGinn is considered the Avalanche's
fourth best player by iCorsi/60
According to iFenwick/60, in that same sample size, Jamie McGinn was "better" than
Landy, Stastny, RoR, PaP, Talbot, Mitchell, Barrie, EJ, Holden, Benoit, Sarich, Hejda, and Guenin in that order.
McGinn is considered the Avalanche's
third best player by iFenwick/60
Yet no one in their right mind would EVER pick McGinn over RoR or Stastny. Isn't this basis enough to say that Corsi and Fenwick are flawed?
Now, don't get me wrong here. I am a huge fan of advanced statistics in baseball because every minutia of every play is able to be taken into account. It's a slow, play by play game where everything can be accounted for. Hockey is so quick and advanced statistics are so new that I just frankly think they're dangerous to take too seriously. I hope they're improved as time goes on but I can't help but feel like massive, large sample size failures like this are indicative of variables not being taken into account more than they are outliers or simple luck. Teams like the Ducks defy the advanced statistics frequently and to me that screams inadequate information more than it does regression to the mean. Obviously, having a high Corsi/Fenwick/sustainable PDO are a good thing but I really believe there's stuff going on that we aren't taking into account that are accounting for a lot of the outliers.
Am I missing something here or are these stats as egregious as they appear?
http://stats.hockeyanalysis.com/rat...rs&minutes=750&disp=1&sort=HARTp&sortdir=DESC "
I'm not saying that advanced statistics are useless, or that the Avs WILL NOT take a step back next year. Obviously possession is great to have and more shots are great but aren't all those factors I've pointed out important as well? Isn't it at least
possible that there's more going on than the current advanced statistics are able to analyze? It isn't a show of weakness to admit that the rather crude advanced statistics do not CURRENTLY show the whole picture. It doesn't discount them as a whole just because we haven't figured out every little thing.
But when you've got sample sizes of 1000 minutes telling you that Jamie Mc-freaking-Ginn outperformed Ryan O'Reilly and Paul Stastny, isn't that a call to reevaluate these statistics? Would any of you with complete faith in the current statistics actually trust the numbers and choose McGinn over those two given the same salary? By the way, Fenwick and Corsi had McGinn at #2 on the avs last year, ahead of even Matt Duchene. Purely by the stats he's better than Duchene, Stastny, or O'Reilly. Do those of you who trust the stats trust them enough to pick McGinn over those 3? Because one thing I've learned as a baseball stat junkie is that you can't pick and choose to ignore certain stats. You take them as they are or you admit that there are flaws in the system and try to fix them. McGinn outperforming RoR and Stastny 3 seasons in a row, the entirety of his time with the avs, is beyond the point of "luck" or "outlier."