Dan Girardi Part II

[Hunter Gathers]

The most obvious thing is that after all the roundabout, which i found quite interesting to read, the obvious truth is that Girardi is a good hockey player that contributes to the Rangers success, and none of that granular to the nth degree analysis changes that.

Yep.

 

[Open Mind]

You're correct. I have biases as well, we all do. Except that I'm willing to admit that unlike most people in this thread.

I think most people, in right circumstances, can readily admit their biases. The problem with these types of debates is they generally rapidly slide into two sides digging their heels in, getting more and more entrenched in trying to make their given cases, and the middle ground tends to give way a bit to more extreme perspectives.

The reality of it is, at least right now, is that there are no amount of stats that can adequately cover the plethora of immeasurable phenomena in a team sport like hockey. Yet stats and metrics are still kind of a very necessary glue that pulls things together, indicates probable trends, and gives a somewhat helpful method of making things somewhat apples to apples comparable, even though there are immeasurable variables that make it impossible for any stat to truly be apples to apples.

In the end, we all will via our own given biases obviously lean on what makes sense to each of us. But regardless of how we feel, or what it is that does make sense, we have a coach who is using G in a lot of key situations, and this coach has one hell of a resume on him, including delivering two different teams to the SCF. A lot of people, on both sides of this Girardi debate, are making very excellent and viable points and there are some seriously knowledgeable posters here of all ilk. But the management and coaching staff in place keep counting on Girardi and keep getting excellent results with the team he's on. And regardless of how anyone tries to slice anything, it is difficult for anyone to argue against such consistent success.

 

[Cassano]

Interesting, never knew Methot was Girardi's partner with London.

Methot-Girardi is an absurd OHL shutdown pair. No surprise their team did so well.

Would've been cool for them to reunite in NY. I was very open to Methot coming to the Rangers before he signed that extension. Of course - I'm more than satisfied with Yandle however.

 

[silverfish]

Love it or hate it, I did some work to come up with a variable equation for expected corsi using the variables we've been discussing in this thread. I have just over 1600 data points using defenseman since the 08-09 season who have logged over 250 minutes total TOI.

My r-square was low at .38; however, my p-values were all wildly close to 0.

Much to my surprise, Girardi's eCF% comes out to 47.13% while he's currently at 46.41%, a discrepancy of .72%.

Certainly underperforming, no question; but to attack his CF% and call him a possession anchor when his expected CF% is just 0.72% higher than his actual? Well...

For the rest of the Rangers D...

For curiosity sake, Barret Jackman leads the way in differential, destroying his eCF% of 44.91 with a real CF% of 53.1. Flipside, Andrej Mezsaros is terrible, with an eCF% of 47.2 and an actual CF% of 37.95%. The worst non-Sabre of the bunch is Nate Guenin. eCF% of 47.59% and an actual CF% of 40.64%.

eCF% has a range of 41.88% (Gorges) to 57.88% (Kindl).

Just realized there are two more variables I could've used. I'll do that later or tomorrow.

Thanks to the Rangers not playing well enough to fully grasp my attention today, and wanting to put the game on in the background, I've gone ahead and added those variables...

I'm much more satisfied with this run than the previous one.

 

[Kel Varnsen]

And wasn't that with him matching up against Perry in the cup finals?

G shut down Perry the year before. The year he won the memorial cup and played with a broken bone no one knew about he locked up on Crosby.