Except this is heavily skewed by what those 5 years include. Were they on the same team? In the same situations? Same stages of development? A player can change a lot over 5 years, and the type of player they were 5 years ago does not indicate what type of player they are today. Not even close actually.
This is especially true for a young team like the Leafs, who haven't had the time to accumulate a 5-year average that is representative of their abilities today. In fact, most Leaf players either were not in the league 5 years ago, or were entirely different players.
And it is not just about the quality of players in a vacuum (and shooting percentages are far from the only value a player can add to a team). You can two players of the exact same quality and capabilities, and they would produce different results depending on the circumstances and their role on the team.
Only one team in recent history has been able to maintain a PDO over 1020 for multiple years, that's the Bruins from 07-08 through 08-09 with 1023 (Driven mainly by an insane 1041 in 08-09). The next highest 2 year stretch is 1018. The highest 3 year stretch is 1016.
Yes, obviously teams change players over the course of multiple seasons but given that it's so, so rare to be able to repeat high PDO performances, and that multiple really good teams (Pittsburgh, Vancouver, Boston) have maintained a very similar core of players and yet been unable to consistently crazy 1010, much less 1020, does it seem more likely that although PDO doesn't always regress right to 1000, that teams true talent levels aren't that far away from it?
Except that is not luck. It is physics and geometry. Theoretically you could replicate that shot if we had the capabilities to control that kind of accuracy and force.
Sure, and when players can begin to control their shot speed to levels approaching what would be needed to duplicate those goals then I'll agree. But the simple fact is that, right now, goals are scored that are fundamentally out of a players ability to control. He takes a shot from the point, it's .5 inches to the right of where he was aiming and because of that it ever so slightly ticks off another players stick, who hasn't even mentally processed the shot leaving the stick yet, much less had time to react to it, which causes it to hit off a shin pad, off the post, off the back of the goalie, and in. If, instead, that shot was .5 inches to the left it would have missed the first stick entirely, not hit the shinpad, not hit the post, not gone in and instead smacked the goalie in the chest.
Sure that might technically not be luck, but as I said, until players can begin to actually control the puck to that level (hint, they can't), luck is as good a thing to call it.
This is basically saying we should not be using such small samples.
And before somebody says that is all we have, well sorry, but that doesn't magically make the results better or more accurate.
It also makes the statement that Stanley Cups cant be won a different way untrue, since all you would need is 1 season.
Who said cups can't be won with bad possession? A rational follower of advanced stats won't tell you you *can't* merely that it's much rarer to do so. It's much harder to do it. The odds tell us it *likely* won't happen.
As MoD has shown, multiple times, at the half-season level, shot based metrics have more predictive power than goal based metrics and win based metrics. In addition, shot based metrics have strong correlation with playoff success.
No one (at least no one rational) is saying these are perfect predictors, or even "great" predictors in the pure statistical sense. Just that they're stronger predictors than anything else, including wins.
