Analytics & fancy stats thread

[InfinityIggy]

So I heard something pretty interesting.

Daymond Langkow was apparently the Backlund of his era. Drove possession. Tough match ups. Defensive stud. Still produced. I always thought he was vastly under-appreciated during his tenure as a Flame.

He got the Monahan/Backstrom treatment. Oh he plays with Gaudreau/Ovechkin/Iginla...

Yeah. People forget or maybe don't realize he was a top 5 pick. He had a 60 point and multiple 50 point seasons by the time he joined the Flames.

 

[Flames Fanatic]

So I heard something pretty interesting.

Daymond Langkow was apparently the Backlund of his era. Drove possession. Tough match ups. Defensive stud. Still produced. I always thought he was vastly under-appreciated during his tenure as a Flame.

He got the Monahan/Backstrom treatment. Oh he plays with Gaudreau/Ovechkin/Iginla...

Under appreciated? Sure. I'll give you that.

But he was never, ever, ever a line driver.

 

[Tkachuk Norris]

Under appreciated? Sure. I'll give you that.

But he was never, ever, ever a line driver.

That's not what the advanced stats say apparently.

Some guy named Ken from Flames-nation on the fan 960 yesterday.

I always just thought he was a good player.

 

[Flames Fanatic]

That's not what the advanced stats say apparently.

Some guy named Ken from Flames-nation on the fan 960 yesterday.

I always just thought he was a good player.

Eh. Agree to disagree as usual it seems then.

I like Lanks a lot, one of my favorite Flames from that time period. But no matter how many advanced stats you put in front of me, I'm never going to agree that he was the line driver.

 

[Volica]

So I heard something pretty interesting.

Daymond Langkow was apparently the Backlund of his era. Drove possession. Tough match ups. Defensive stud. Still produced. I always thought he was vastly under-appreciated during his tenure as a Flame.

He got the Monahan/Backstrom treatment. Oh he plays with Gaudreau/Ovechkin/Iginla...

He was an excellent player. I always loved the guy, and thought he was a warrior (didn't he play with a couple broken mitts one year?!).

He was that definition of the player whose body just caught up to him in a bad way.

 

[Johnny Hoxville]

Eh. Agree to disagree as usual it seems then.

I like Lanks a lot, one of my favorite Flames from that time period. But no matter how many advanced stats you put in front of me, I'm never going to agree that he was the line driver.

He kind of was though in his own way. He took a lot of defensive zone matches and had quite a bit of
success winning those. He wasn't a skilled guy like Backlund, but he always got the job done. Defensively and offensively he's pretty on par to Backs, their just different players and I'll also say they were capable 1C's but probably ideally slotted as a 2C.

 

[OvermanKingGainer]

Post I made on December 11th (right after the sixth win in our six game win streak...) about an unsustainable 3rd pair....

Since Nov 15:

Pair|PDO|CF%
Giordano-Hamilton|106.1|56.2
Brodie-Wideman|94.3 |45.5
Jokipakka-Engelland|110.3|41.3
Kulak-Engelland|95.0|50.7

Now Johnson's a huge part of the SV% part of that PDO, but overall there isn't a recipe for long term success being laid out by this stretch of successful play. I'll take it but there are roster tweaks that need to be made because the PDO is very likely to start slipping (Jokipakka-Engelland in fact have the single highest PDO in the entire NHL among any two players this season).

... we can't keep PDOing our way to wins.

That was before their PDO fell apart and two months later, Jokipakka was on waivers. Brodie's shot metrics actually recovered since then even with Wideman as his partner (but not the PDO part).

Now here are season stats for our possible pairs to date, all adjusted for score/zone:

Pair|PDO|CF%|SCA60
Giordano-Hamilton|101.90|57.67|6.48
Brodie-Stone|106.59|50.46|5.47
Bartkowski-Engelland| 110.58 |46.64|12.05
Kulak-Engelland|101.21 |50.83|6.33
Brodie-Wideman|94.57|50.26|8.38

If you think Bart has "turned this 3rd pair around" the underlyings suggest that we've already seen this story once this season during a win streak. Maybe he's an upgrade on Jokipakka, but the only defenseman who Engelland posts positive CF with is still Kulak and they don't even have a low PDO together.

Now the scoring chances stat will probably normalize with a bigger sample size, but the fact that we are bleeding chances with this pair on the ice so far is hardly encouraging for a pair people are claiming has "shored up" our bottom pair. It's pretty clear our top two pairs are carrying the team right now, the third pair is riding unsustainable percentages, and the fifth best defenseman on this team is sitting in the AHL for no real reason other than "people maybe don't maybe feel he's maybe not maybe ready".

 

[YourAverageFan*]

I think it's been pretty clear to anyone who watches the Flames regularly that Bartkowski hasn't been nearly as good as some Flames fans make him out to be

 

[Flames Fanatic]

I think it's been pretty clear to anyone who watches the Flames regularly that Bartkowski hasn't been nearly as good as some Flames fans make him out to be

Is it that some fans are over hyping him, or people are misunderstanding people calling him good relative to Jokipakka/Wideman. I think there is much more of the latter than the former.

Bart is what he is. A mobile bottom pairing guy at best. I just don't think we've seen much of him at his worst yet.

 

[OvermanKingGainer]

Is it that some fans are over hyping him, or people are misunderstanding people calling him good relative to Jokipakka/Wideman. I think there is much more of the latter than the former.

Anyone calling him an upgrade on Kulak is overhyping him. Or anyone saying getting Kulak out of the lineup helped this team (it's something I've read a few times).

I do think Bart is an upgrade on Jokipakka, and I also think that Kulak was never part of the "plan" for the top six this season because Gulutzan doesn't trust a young D (hence the Grossmann experiment when Kulak outplayed him, the Jokipakka experiment when Kulak outplayed him, Wideman on the PK ahead of Hamilton, etc).

 

[Anglesmith]

Yes, our bottom pair is still our bottom pair. The big difference has been in the second pairing, because of Wideman being out of it.

 

[Anglesmith]

Anyone calling him an upgrade on Kulak is overhyping him. Or anyone saying getting Kulak out of the lineup helped this team (it's something I've read a few times).

I would say the difference there is that Kulak was exploited a few times on breakdowns like getting beaten like a rented mule on a net-front battle or otherwise leaving a guy alone for a goal. Bartkowski made two horrendous turnovers in his first two games leading to grade-A chances, but since then I think his problems are turnovers which lead to zone time rather than mistakes/failures that lead to goals against.

Kulak was great for possession, but his mistakes generally were goals against. From memory. And we have but a very small sample to judge based on, but I think that's why he's in the minors.

I feel like Jokipakka was the worst of both. Bad for possession, and he got taken advantage of for goals.

 

[OvermanKingGainer]

I would say the difference there is that Kulak was exploited a few times on breakdowns like getting beaten like a rented mule on a net-front battle or otherwise leaving a guy alone for a goal. Bartkowski made two horrendous turnovers in his first two games leading to grade-A chances, but since then I think his problems are turnovers which lead to zone time rather than mistakes/failures that lead to goals against.

Kulak was great for possession, but his mistakes generally were goals against. From memory. And we have but a very small sample to judge based on, but I think that's why he's in the minors.

Yes, these kind of "visibly bad" mistakes are killer for a coach's trust even if they are just once every four games. I don't disagree with you at all.

We've seen over the course of time that guys with strong underlyings - like Kulak, and Muzzin, and Gardiner, and Justin Schultz, even Giordano once upon a time will make plays that stay on the mind of fans and coaches. Even Brodie will have some killer Pizzas. Being able to forget that is a double standard in this league when you're only playing 9 minutes a game and you're not 28 years old.

I will say that Kulak can stand to add a few more pounds of leg muscle this off-season though.

 

[Anglesmith]

Yes, these kind of "visibly bad" mistakes are killer for a coach's trust even if they are just once every four games. I don't disagree with you at all.

We've seen over the course of time that guys with strong underlyings - like Kulak, and Muzzin, and Gardiner, and Justin Schultz, even Giordano once upon a time will make plays that stay on the mind of fans and coaches. Even Brodie will have some killer Pizzas. Being able to forget that is a double standard in this league when you're only playing 9 minutes a game and you're not 28 years old.

I will say that Kulak can stand to add a few more pounds of leg muscle this off-season though.

That's really all he needs. And hey, maybe those mistakes and the optics of the Flames not trusting him are what keeps him in the Flames organization as opposed to Vegas over the course of this summer.

I like Kulak in a lot of situations. I don't like him defending the front of the net away from the puck, though. I like Bartkowski there, and I really like his ability to get to pucks first and not get beaten because of his skating. I don't like his ability to make a first pass or relieve pressure, which I guess is more of a long-term unfixable problem.

TJ Brodie when he first came into the league was a lot like Kulak. Definitely there were some issues with him defending the front of the net, but he was dynamic as hell in all the other facets of his game. He was able to add the defensive dimension and that turned him into a beast. Hopefully Kulak goes the same way.

 

[YourAverageFan*]

Is it that some fans are over hyping him, or people are misunderstanding people calling him good relative to Jokipakka/Wideman. I think there is much more of the latter than the former.

Bart is what he is. A mobile bottom pairing guy at best. I just don't think we've seen much of him at his worst yet.

I definitely agree he's much better than Jokipakka and Wideman and in that case, I would say he's looked fantastic relative to them. However, it seems many Flames fans are acting as if he's this awesome top 6 D-man who doesn't look out of place at all and solidifies our 3rd pairing, which is not the case

 

[Flames Fanatic]

Anyone calling him an upgrade on Kulak is overhyping him. Or anyone saying getting Kulak out of the lineup helped this team (it's something I've read a few times).

I do think Bart is an upgrade on Jokipakka, and I also think that Kulak was never part of the "plan" for the top six this season because Gulutzan doesn't trust a young D (hence the Grossmann experiment when Kulak outplayed him, the Jokipakka experiment when Kulak outplayed him, Wideman on the PK ahead of Hamilton, etc).

I must have missed that one personally. It's not a statement I would have agreed with personally, even if I'm not nearly as high on Kulak as you or some others may be.

 

[Flames Fanatic]

I definitely agree he's much better than Jokipakka and Wideman and in that case, I would say he's looked fantastic relative to them. However, it seems many Flames fans are acting as if he's this awesome top 6 D-man who doesn't look out of place at all and solidifies our 3rd pairing, which is not the case

Everything is relative I guess. With the Brodie pairing being stabilized, and the bottom pairing at least being adequate instead of a tire fire, I'm sure it's probably being overrated a bit.

 

[Anglesmith]

I definitely agree he's much better than Jokipakka and Wideman and in that case, I would say he's looked fantastic relative to them. However, it seems many Flames fans are acting as if he's this awesome top 6 D-man who doesn't look out of place at all and solidifies our 3rd pairing, which is not the case

He solidifies the pairing like time and cold temperature solidifies Jello. It's still not solid, but it's not liquid anymore.

 

[YourAverageFan*]

He solidifies the pairing like time and cold temperature solidifies Jello. It's still not solid, but it's not liquid anymore.

I guess that's a fair way to look at it

 

[SmellOfVictory]

Under appreciated? Sure. I'll give you that.

But he was never, ever, ever a line driver.

Yeah he was; he was the best centre the Iginla era Flames ever had (Conroy a close second). There were two major complaints about him at the time: 1) he didn't produce enough (he still produced quite a bit, but not "legit 1st line C" levels at that time, 2) he wasn't very good at faceoffs.

His game was stylistically similar to Backlund, he had the same primary drawbacks (scoring ability and faceoffs), etc. He may not have been quiiiiiiiite as good as Backs defensively, because I don't think he was ever a legitimate threat to be a Selke finalist, but he was pretty close.

 

[Flameshomer]

I'm sorry OKG- this is one of those times that you're focusing entirely too much on the underlying stats. I think advanced stats are useful, and hate the term "eye-test", but I do think that proper player assessment lies in a happy medium between the two. Kulak has just never passed the eye test to me, his gaffs are crippling.

 

[Flameshomer]

That's really all he needs. And hey, maybe those mistakes and the optics of the Flames not trusting him are what keeps him in the Flames organization as opposed to Vegas over the course of this summer.

I like Kulak in a lot of situations. I don't like him defending the front of the net away from the puck, though. I like Bartkowski there, and I really like his ability to get to pucks first and not get beaten because of his skating. I don't like his ability to make a first pass or relieve pressure, which I guess is more of a long-term unfixable problem.

TJ Brodie when he first came into the league was a lot like Kulak. Definitely there were some issues with him defending the front of the net, but he was dynamic as hell in all the other facets of his game. He was able to add the defensive dimension and that turned him into a beast. Hopefully Kulak goes the same way.

I've never seen a smidge of the dynamic abilities in Kulak that young brodie had.

 

[OvermanKingGainer]

I'm sorry OKG- this is one of those times that you're focusing entirely too much on the underlying stats. I think advanced stats are useful, and hate the term "eye-test", but I do think that proper player assessment lies in a happy medium between the two. Kulak has just never passed the eye test to me, his gaffs are crippling.

Funny, Kulak was passing the eye test for me long before we had any "underlying stats" for me to judge him by.

Maybe your eye test is looking for the wrong things if you think his gaffs are "crippling".

 

[OvermanKingGainer]

It's nothing that hasn't been visually observed by those of us paying attention, but it's really cool to see Sam Bennett's defensive progress throughout the season in chart form:

As the season has gone along, he has been allowing less-and-less unblocked shot attempts in the direction of his goalie, and you can almost pinpoint the part of the season where the Flames' real hot-streak kicks off. He's quickly trending towards an elite defensive center, although generating offense is still on his docket.

 

[Flames Fanatic]

Sorry OKG, elite defensive center is not even something I would remotely tag Bennett with. Is he playing better defensively? Sure. But he's slightly above average on best. If he was elite defensively, even with anchors on his wings his line wouldn't be one of the most frequently trapped in our own zone.