Analytics be damned!!

[Warden of the North]

What I find funny is guys who preach advanced stats but ignore more mundane stats like, I dont know, PK%. Possession is great if you can capitalize. We all know of players who skated circles around the opposition and did squat with the puck. They usually just turned it over.

Another thing, and this is more Leafs specific, is that I think people underestimate just how good our player are. Even advanced stats folks admit star players have better stats. So when Leafs player have a high rating they declare surely that something is wrong and surely we'll decline. Maybe our players are actually good?

 

[Vexed]

Economists everywhere disagree with Smif.

When you poll a large amount of economists you get very similar responses as you would here.

You get a group that takes some stats and makes a thesis. You then get another group that refutes that conclusion and yet another group that refutes the stats that the whole discussion was based off of.

 

[Vexed]

What I find funny is guys who preach advanced stats but ignore more mundane stats like, I dont know, PK%. Possession is great if you can capitalize. We all know of players who skated circles around the opposition and did squat with the puck. They usually just turned it over.

Another thing, and this is more Leafs specific, is that I think people underestimate just how good our player are. Even advanced stats folks admit star players have better stats. So when Leafs player have a high rating they declare surely that something is wrong and surely we'll decline. Maybe our players are actually good?

Right!

The stats aren't wrong per-say. Its the people that think they are qualified to analyse them and then believe that they are justified in their points without any chance of being wrong.

Reading stats is serious business and hobbyist fans and news people don't qualify as pros in this regard.

 

[SmoggyTwinkles]

Stat %: Leafs are gonna kick your ass 100%

 

[saint2e]

I did some analysis on one of the advanced stats, Fensi. Basically I took the numbers from last year's season of the teams and ranked every team by their Fensi stat.

Looking at just Fensi ranking alone, it had 12 out of the 16 playoff participants named. There were 4 that should've been in that didn't make the playoffs, and 4 that shouldn't have been in that DID make the playoffs.

Conversely, I took the +/- rankings and that stat also "predicted" 12 out of the 16 playoff participants.

So at least with last year's season, the Fensi stat is as efficient in predicting playoff participants as a basic stat, team +/-.

I wanna do something similar with Corsi to see how accurate it is.

 

[mix1home]

So how are the Leafs doing so far in these PDO and whatever else stats?

And I don't mean this in a condescending way, it's a genuine question. Just wondering if they have improved as opposed to last year (for now).

No stats available yet.

AS are VERY important though. Colborne and Seguin were traded solely because of advanced stats.

 

[mix1home]

Yes, some of the stats are disconcerting. But I believe we saw a different style of play from the Leafs last season. Carlyle's defensive system reduces the threat posed by yielding possession of the puck to the opposing team, and offensively more emphasis has been placed on getting in close, establishing net presence, cashing in on fortuitous rebounds, crashing the net, etc. You don't need to maintain possession once net presence has been established... it would be a waste of time.

Yes. Agreed. Why would we keep the puck? All we need to do is go into the zone, create traffic, shoot and score. Than we can happily go back to the center ice. Rinse-repeat.

 

[Lebanese Leaf]

I find advanced stats the epitome of tedium. Talk about taking the soul out of hockey.

You can take anything in life and dissect it to the nth-degree, and for something like cancer research, okay, but that degree of analytics isn't a fit for a free-flowing, emotional, game like hockey. It robs it of its passion and mystery and magic -- the very reasons we watch it.

There are some things we don't need to know. In fact, not knowing them allows us to enjoy life more. If I'm enjoying watching two distant birds soaring amongst the clouds at sunset I don't need to know their exact speed, their relative resistance to gravity, or the unfulfilled potential of their wingspan. I will just enjoy the moment, live in the moment, and move on, fulfilled. And it's the same when it comes to watching hockey.

One final example: Beethoven.

You lose something, the soul of something, when you eviscerate and analyze it too much. Imagine going to a live Beethoven concert in his time, or to Furtwangler conducting a Beethoven symphony. One person sits back, closes their eyes, and allows the music to transport them into the ineffable realms of the composer's mind when he wrote it. Pure magic!

Then there's the person beside him -- probably an art critic -- who is frantically and furiously jotting down all the C's, and C-sharps, and key changes, and tempo changes, and attempts to formalize it.

No thank you.

Why would you want to deprive yourself of the magical experience of enjoying your favorite team in a life and death battle of athleticism, passion, tradition and emotion with thoughts like, "Oh, that will probably drop his relative-Corsi by half a percentage point"?

I am going to remain happily content with my goals, assists, points, penalty minutes, plus-minus, and face-off percentage... and, as always, focus on the only statistic that truly matters to me: did the team with the maple leaf on their sweater win or lose? Simple.

If someone else wants to devour the soul of hockey, chew it up and spit it out, fine. But I want no part of such folly.

 

[mix1home]

I know what this thread needs badly. You know, that clip when Alex Ovechkin cycles around the Leafs zone 3 times with the puck and then passes it to nobody and puck goes into the corner.

 

[Bravid Nonahan]

EPIC post by Palmateer. Thank you so much.

Advanced stats bother me in baseball too. Whenever I'm like "hey, that player is pretty good", all I hear is "blah blah blah his XFIP and SIERA are outliers and he will regress to the mean"...honestly, I don't care.

 

[The Winter Soldier]

I think guys like Cam Charron and James Mirtle push the analytics to the point of forgetting about watching the game.

Possession stats are misleading when you don't know how to play without the puck. What stat measures hockey IQ

What I have found is, if someone has an agenda to prop up a player, analytics could probably absolve them the way like guys like Charron manipulate stats/analytics.

There is a place for them in the game, but only when you factor in common sense, which comes in the form of observation, and not reading charts or graphs to twist an agenda.

When someone mentions analytics, I think of Charletons.

 

[n1ck13]

What I have always found quite funny about advanced stats and "advanced stats people/supporters" are that they always forget THE FIRST RULE that is taught if they studied statistics or a field that used statistics... The rule is simple...there is no objective analysis, because like it or not, there are no objective people, we all have an opinion and it leaks into what we look at, the way we perceive what we view, and our conclusions drawn from data. I have a master's degree and honestly, I prefer baseball to hockey, however, there is one huge difference... Baseball had their revolution and now they use a combination of advanced and traditional stats, in hockey, it seems most "advanced stats people/supporters" think that traditionalists are stupid. This is not true, ignoring any data is what is truly stupid.

 

[The Winter Soldier]

What I find funny is guys who preach advanced stats but ignore more mundane stats like, I dont know, PK%. Possession is great if you can capitalize. We all know of players who skated circles around the opposition and did squat with the puck. They usually just turned it over.

Another thing, and this is more Leafs specific, is that I think people underestimate just how good our player are. Even advanced stats folks admit star players have better stats. So when Leafs player have a high rating they declare surely that something is wrong and surely we'll decline. Maybe our players are actually good?

Agreed! Or Plus-Minus. Like I said they select and choose what is important for their agenda. I am happy the analytics like Charron and Mirtle are getting called out now.

Great discussion!

 

[Leafs at Knight]

Palmateer just won the thread . Close er up

 

[mpolo]

I'm fine with advanced stats (some people just need to be able to explain everything), but if the models and assumptions on which they are built cannot explain all cases, then they are incomplete.

Forget about sample size, if the leafs by the stats should not have won, well guess what, they did, so what is wrong... the model or history?

Perhaps there are multiple ways to win a game (gasp!), and there should be a more comprehensive model being worked on. Why have I never heard of any being proposed?

I'm just spouting off some quick ideas, but maybe a model that factors in winning puck battles, scoring attempts off turnovers, and that sort of thing?

 

[MastuhNinks]

I find advanced stats the epitome of tedium. Talk about taking the soul out of hockey.

You can take anything in life and dissect it to the nth-degree, and for something like cancer research, okay, but that degree of analytics isn't a fit for a free-flowing, emotional, game like hockey. It robs it of its passion and mystery and magic -- the very reasons we watch it.

There are some things we don't need to know. In fact, not knowing them allows us to enjoy life more. If I'm enjoying watching two distant birds soaring amongst the clouds at sunset I don't need to know their exact speed, their relative resistance to gravity, or the unfulfilled potential of their wingspan. I will just enjoy the moment, live in the moment, and move on, fulfilled. And it's the same when it comes to watching hockey.

One final example: Beethoven.

You lose something, the soul of something, when you eviscerate and analyze it too much. Imagine going to a live Beethoven concert in his time, or to Furtwangler conducting a Beethoven symphony. One person sits back, closes their eyes, and allows the music to transport them into the ineffable realms of the composer's mind when he wrote it. Pure magic!

Then there's the person beside him -- probably an art critic -- who is frantically and furiously jotting down all the C's, and C-sharps, and key changes, and tempo changes, and attempts to formalize it.

No thank you.

Why would you want to deprive yourself of the magical experience of enjoying your favorite team in a life and death battle of athleticism, passion, tradition and emotion with thoughts like, "Oh, that will probably drop his relative-Corsi by half a percentage point"?

I am going to remain happily content with my goals, assists, points, penalty minutes, plus-minus, and face-off percentage... and, as always, focus on the only statistic that truly matters to me: did the team with the maple leaf on their sweater win or lose? Simple.

If someone else wants to devour the soul of hockey, chew it up and spit it out, fine. But I want no part of such folly.

This is all just a bunch of conjecture with very little content. You could've just said, "I don't like advanced stats."

The big thing you're missing in your melodramatic speech is that people who are into advanced stats are fans of hockey too. Of course they watch the games, watching and enjoying hockey is what sparks people to want to try to understand more about it, at least from a different frame of reference. If that doesn't interest you then that's fine, but scoffing at something and saying that it's 'devouring the soul of hockey' just because you don't understand/care is incredibly childish.

 

[Daisy Jane]

Seriously, if you can't watch a game, and see if a team/player is playing well, and you need to do math to see if he is making a positive or negative effect.... then just stop watching.

there is so much truth in this.
I personally feel Hockey is one of those few games that you can't advance stat it, becuase you never get the whole story. (I mean it's been like that for years, all the little things that never show up on the score sheet, so when people are like SO AND SO IS CRAP! you can clearly tell they didn't watch the game.)

just watch and enjoy
or watch and be frustrated
(since we're leaf fans, we can do both at the same time)!

What I find funny is guys who preach advanced stats but ignore more mundane stats like, I dont know, PK%. Possession is great if you can capitalize. We all know of players who skated circles around the opposition and did squat with the puck. They usually just turned it over.

Another thing, and this is more Leafs specific, is that I think people underestimate just how good our player are. Even advanced stats folks admit star players have better stats. So when Leafs player have a high rating they declare surely that something is wrong and surely we'll decline. Maybe our players are actually good?

this is so true. they are so loathe to admit it, and even if they DO say it, they quickly come out with "Oh BUT!!"

Stat %: Leafs are gonna kick your ass 100%

yeup!

I know what this thread needs badly. You know, that clip when Alex Ovechkin cycles around the Leafs zone 3 times with the puck and then passes it to nobody and puck goes into the corner.

:big laugh: that was so awesome. (I tried to find it but I can't remember what game it was) but it was just awesome

 

[leafs in five]

the idea that people who track or are invested in "advanced stats" don't love the game as much as you is kind of ridiculous. if you have the type of mind, why not take stats/opportunities to track stats that are pretty uniquely available to you as sports_fan2013 and see if you can form a better understanding of what actually goes on in a game/what type of plays and players are actually valuable.

also i think even the most invested corsi/whatever bloggers and writers, if they're any good, will usually present their work as incomplete and something to supplement discussion. i know there are others who post a bar graph and say end of story. but it's the internet. i'm really interested to see what happens with the Leafs this year.

 

[leafs in five]

just watch and enjoy

how come you can't do both?

also maybe i don't want to go to the symphony with the guy who can see musical notes as they're played and even transcribe them in real time but i am glad that such people exist. actually i think i do want to go to the symphony with him.

 

[Frelimo]

The most important game stat for a team is goals for vs. goals against. The most important multiple game stat for a team is wins for vs. wins against. I thought this was basic, but some of these 'advanced stats' guys tend to forget that.

 

[Warden of the North]

how come you can't do both?

also maybe i don't want to go to the symphony with the guy who can see musical notes as they're played and even transcribe them in real time but i am glad that such people exist. actually i think i do want to go to the symphony with him.

But thats not the advanced stats guy. The advanced stats guy would be telling you that technically the music sucks even though your ears like it.

 

[blueberrie]

How long have they been taking these stats anyway? 5-10 years? Hardly a big enough sample to draw conclusions from. I think we're due for a regression but people seem to forget we were a top team in the east last year. A small regression would put us near the 8th spot and in a battle to make the post season. I think most people would agree were a bubble team.

 

[Stephen]

Analytics are a nice supplement to your hockey knowledge, but it shouldn't be used by people like they've cracked the code to the sport. I find it off putting that they use a very simplistic roundabout way to measure possession and whatnot when possession can actually be measured with things like transponders in an accurate and scientific way.

The Leafs are a team with a lot of footspeed and scoring ability on the wings and defensemen who are good at starting the transition, making them a good counter attacking team. They score a lot off the rush and aren't necessarily a good heavy cycling team. Watching a period of their games should make this fairly obvious, but then the CORSI crowd gets all obtuse on these obvious things.

 

[Killion]

But thats not the advanced stats guy. The advanced stats guy would be telling you that technically the music sucks even though your ears like it.

Indeed. One of the problems we have over on the History of Hockey Board with All Time Draft selections. Eye-witness accounts claimed "unreliable" and all but drowned out by Puckmetricians building Paper Tigers based on nothing but statistics. The numbers are important sure but theres a whole lot more to it than that. Some guys have just dreadful numbers, be it +/- or whatever yet the intangibles, be it leadership or grit, whatever, pushes them well into the stratospheres of all time great & or MVP material, clobbering guys with superior numbers.

 

[Stephen]

How long have they been taking these stats anyway? 5-10 years? Hardly a big enough sample to draw conclusions from. I think we're due for a regression but people seem to forget we were a top team in the east last year. A small regression would put us near the 8th spot and in a battle to make the post season. I think most people would agree were a bubble team.

I don't like the way advanced stats changes the way people talk the game. Instead of focusing on something like a high shooting percentage total as the basis for why the Leafs will likely be due for some "regression", why not actually say that to a man, every Leaf is in their prime age or about to enter their prime age as a reason for why the Leafs might take a giant leap forward and actually make some real waves this year?

Seriously, regression? You mean to tell me the majority of Kessel, Kadri, JVR, Phaneuf, Franson, Reimer, Gardiner, Lupul, etc etc. have already reached a career peak and are going to get worse?

There's stats logic and there's all the complexities and great things about the game we're already aware of. I haven't felt this optimistic about the Leafs in a decade and I think we'll lay a hurting on the league this year.