GDT: A game of utmost importance: Islanders vs Hurricanes 2/16/18

Brock Anton

flames #badnwagon
Nov 8, 2009
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Westerly, RI
Can you give examples? Such as signing goalies, making necessary trades, etc? Don't include drafting Aho as an example. Canes should have been drafting higher in each of the last 8 drafts. What exactly has Francis done so well?

Signing Pesce and Slavin to long term, team friendly deals, taking advantage of Chicago's cap issues to get Teravainen, bringing Williams back into the fold, good asset management in the Versteeg and Staal deals. I know it's frustrating that he hasn't addressed the scoring issue, or found a true #1 goalie (he's tried, but w/o avail), but let's not act like he's done nothing.

Like I said, all that changes if he goes another offseason without addressing the scoring problem, and I'm not talking about adding a journeyman like Stempniak. A legit top line player.
 

Blueline Bomber

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I'm still mad.

How about you? You still mad bro?

Nah, to be mad, you had to have expected a different result. As I posted in the OP.

It took them 5 years to get into a playoff spot this late in the season (seriously. I believe the last time was 2013). If they give it up without so much as a fight...well, they'll be the team we kinda figured they were already.
 

Navin R Slavin

Fifth line center
Jan 1, 2011
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Durrm NC
I understand your frustration but don't think you understand fancystats and their value.

Spare me the lecture, junior. I understand fancy stats just fine. What I have zero patience for, at this point, is management that uses a reliance on fancy stats as an excuse for being cheap and shitty and unwatchable, year after year after year.

Here's an interesting stat: "dollars spent in the last nine years per playoff appearance." Hmm... click click click...

Hey guys, what does DIVIDE BY ZERO ERROR mean?
 

sabremike

Friend To All Giraffes
Aug 30, 2010
22,532
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Brewster, NY
Spare me the lecture, junior. I understand fancy stats just fine. What I have zero patience for, at this point, is management that uses a reliance on fancy stats as an excuse for being cheap and ****ty and unwatchable, year after year after year.

Here's an interesting stat: "dollars spent in the last nine years per playoff appearance." Hmm... click click click...

Hey guys, what does DIVIDE BY ZERO ERROR mean?
What does using fancystats have to do with the team being bad for the past 9 years? Do you think reliance on those stats (Which as I stated are common sense distilled into numbers) is why the team has failed? The team was cheap because they had a dishonest human anal wart as an owner who was far more interested in busting the players union than spending money, that was the problem.
 

Navin R Slavin

Fifth line center
Jan 1, 2011
16,175
63,350
Durrm NC
Also, while we're on the subject of "what mean fancystats", let's talk about the ultimate fancystat: PDO. It's Saturday afternoon and I've got nothing to do but BE ANGRY, so let's roll!

What is PDO? Well, according to Wikipedia, "PDO, called SPSV% by the NHL, is the sum of a team's shooting percentage and its save percentage. PDO is usually measured at even strength, and based on the theory that most teams will ultimately regress toward a sum of 100, is often viewed as a proxy for how lucky a team is. According to Wilson, a player or team with a PDO over 102 is "probably not as good as they seem", while a player or team below 98 likely is better than they appear." Thanks Wikipedia!

Incidentally, TIL that PDO is an acronym for nothing. So I'm going to create an acronym: Pretty Damned Obvious. As in, a bad PDO over a prolonged period of time makes it Pretty Damned Obvious that your team sucks.

Because as any Hurricanes fan knows, the notion that this stat is a proxy for "puck luck" is actually Complete f***ing Garbage (TM), as it rests on a fundamentally and deeply flawed assumption: that talent is evenly distributed. Hoo boy, that's such bullshit. And it's bullshit that people actually buy into! It allows idiot fans to wallow in their bad luck and say Gee Whiz, all the other fancystats are lining up perfectly, I guess we just have to wait for...

THE MAGIC OF REVERSION TO THE MEAN!

According to this hallowed Fancystats Theory, over the past ten years we should have a positive PDO about half the time, and all of our playoff woes should be related to some other stat, right? RIGHT? AM I UNDERSTANDING THE FANCY STATS CORRECTLY? Let's take a look!

https://www.hockey-reference.com/pl...8&year_max=2018&situation_id=all&order_by=pdo

In this list, we have the PDO of every team in hockey, for every season, over the past eleven years -- as long as hockey-reference.com has data for. And before we move on to Your! Carolina! HUUUUUURICAAAAANES! this seems curious:

The Capitals have a sub-100 PDO twice in eleven years.

(102.7+102.6+102.5+102.0+101.7+101.4+101.0+100.4+100.3+99.8+99.4)/11 = 101.25

The magic of PDO tells us that the Caps are the luckiest team in hockey. Those lucky guys, with their Ovechkins and their Backstroms and their Holtbys!

And we, on the other hand, are TRULY UNLUCKY:

(100.7+99.7+99.6+99.5+99.1+98.9+98.6+98.2+98.0+97.6+97.4)/11 = 98.85

How tremendously unlucky we are! We like our group! Lots of character guys, tryhard folks through and through, play the game the right way! We were just so unlucky, including that 97.6 which is THIS YEAR, that we've only had ONE year of positive PDO in the past ELEVEN YEARS. So unlucky!

Or maaaaaaybe...

Maaaaaaybe...

PDO is actually not a proxy for Luck, but instead a proxy for Talent. Specifically: talent at SHOOTING INTO THE NET and talent at STOPPING OTHER PEOPLE FROM SHOOTING INTO THE NET. Maybe those aren't luck! Maybe that's not just the capricious fates!

Maybe, @sabermike, you're right -- maybe fancystats ARE just a way of backing up your common sense with numbers! Because under *that* hypothesis, all the times we've said "jesus a beer leaguer could have stopped that f***ing shot" and "could you please maybe not shoot directly at the logo on the goalie's chest", maybe all those times... we were right!

Unfortunately, that would mean that our ownership has been knowingly putting a shitty product on the ice for more than a decade. And THAT hypothesis would be too hard to take, I guess.
 
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sabremike

Friend To All Giraffes
Aug 30, 2010
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Brewster, NY
There is some validity in a quality shot argument. Take for example my Sabres, who are on pace to set a league record for worst shooting percentage by a team ever recorded. Regression would say this will correct itself, but another fact is that the team is at the bottom when it comes to dangerous scoring chances created. Therefore the correction probably won't be as drastic as one would think.
 

Navin R Slavin

Fifth line center
Jan 1, 2011
16,175
63,350
Durrm NC
If you think I'm arguing the validity of fancystats, you're missing the point completely.

I don't give a shit if fancystats are valid or not. I. Do. Not. Give. A. Shit.

The only thing I give a shit about is, is the money I'm spending to watch this shit making me happy? And the answer is no. And it's been no for a f***ing decade, and I DON'T CARE WHAT THE f***ING EXCUSES ARE.
 

Joe McGrath

Registered User
Oct 29, 2009
18,055
37,805
Wait a sec, we're giving GMs points for effort now? He was hopelessly, indefensibly wrong about about Scott Darling, Marcus Kruger and Josh Jooris. That counts. A lot.

Being wrong about the 4th line center and 13th forward counts a lot? Really?

Darling obviously I get, but you won’t find many people that thought that was a bad idea league wide so I don’t know how you could call it indefensible.
 

Dishface

Registered Jerk
Sep 27, 2013
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Kenosha, WI
Also someone on another board did an overview of the remaining schedules of the teams in the hunt for the last 2 playoff spots. The Devils have the toughest schedule, care to take a guess which team has the most favorable one?
It doesn't matter, even if we played arizona every time. Us having Darling in net and making every back up goalies look like hasek isn't gonna get the job done.
 

My Special Purpose

Registered User
Apr 8, 2008
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Being wrong about the 4th line center and 13th forward counts a lot? Really?

Darling obviously I get, but you won’t find many people that thought that was a bad idea league wide so I don’t know how you could call it indefensible.

C'mon man. I was responding to a guy who thinks we need to give Francis credit for trying despite all but one of his moves blowing up in his face. I'm just saying that part of a GMs job is to be "right" and not just "actively trying."
 

Canes

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Oct 31, 2017
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Being wrong about the 4th line center and 13th forward counts a lot? Really?

Darling obviously I get, but you won’t find many people that thought that was a bad idea league wide so I don’t know how you could call it indefensible.
If that was the only thing Francis was wrong about, we would be so lucky.

There's also Rask, some of his draft picks, and I don't know how you can say no one league wide thought that Darling was a bad idea based off what some media members and forum posters said. We have no idea how the signing was regarded by other teams. So far Francis is 0/2 on bringing in goalies regardless of what anyone thought about the moves at the time. GMs are judged on results.
 

My Special Purpose

Registered User
Apr 8, 2008
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Signing Pesce and Slavin to long term, team friendly deals

Also, I'm going to debate that these deals are "fair" and not at all "team-friendly." I'm glad to get them both signed long-term, but it's not like they took a huge hometown discount. Or any hometown discount, for that matter. Again, it's another middling move by Francis. Nothing any GM couldn't do.
 

Blueline Bomber

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C'mon man. I was responding to a guy who thinks we need to give Francis credit for trying despite all but one of his moves blowing up in his face. I'm just saying that part of a GMs job is to be "right" and not just "actively trying."

Unless you believe GMs have the power to predict the future, "actively trying" to fix the issues on the team is about all you can hope for. "Right or wrong" comes after the damage is already done.

What he COULD have done was not throw all the eggs into the Darling basket before seeing him play a game in the uniform, especially given how the previous two goaltenders before him had fallen off a cliff.

He deserves criticism for not hedging his bets, not for go after Darling in the first place
 

Stickpucker

Playmaka
Jan 18, 2014
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36,137
It doesn't matter, even if we played arizona every time. Us having Darling in net and making every back up goalies look like hasek isn't gonna get the job done.

Yeah. I heard all the complaining about Kinkaid....and he's at least 7 tiers above Darling.

People on their AHL 3rd tier callup goalies sound like rich kids whining their parents only got them a Maserati when we're driving the 15 year old Tercel we bought ourselves.
 

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