Devils 2017-18 team discussion (player news and notes) - season begins!

[MadDevil]

It is going to be interesting to see how he handles the trade deadline this year, assuming we don't completely bottom out between now and then.

 

[severian]

Someone pretend to be Ray Shero and explain to me how he is going to improve this team's defense corps during the season and next offseason.

 

[Emperoreddy]

If the Devils keep close to this same pace up for the next couple months, I think Shero might have to consider trading Henrique for a more veteran LD whose contract expires either after 18-19 or 19-20. Since we look to have a lot of talented prospects from Castron, I think it might be the best move for the team.

The only thing the Devils lack right now on the NHL team is a LD that can play a similar role to Greene. Would help to ease in Severson, Santini, Mueller, and Butcher a bit by having a second reliable partner in the top six.

Someone like Edler, Muzzin, or Martinez would be ideal. Gunnarsson or Coburn are a couple other candidates, but I feel as though they're a tier below what the Devils need. Bouwmeester is a bit too old but he could probably do the job. Johnson, Cole, and Hamhuis are all UFAs at years end so that could be another alternative.

More comparisons to the Yankees. There was huge debates on what Cashman should do st the deadline with the Yanks way ahead of schedule and this year supposed to be a rebuilding year.

His approach ended up being the right one IMO. Only buying players he felt could be hell in the short and long term, while also protecting the top prospects still in the system.

Same here. If we are still riding high, it shouldn’t be out of the question to go out and buy if the right deal for a piece that can be a long term solution is available and if we can protect most of our top assets.

 

[MadDevil]

Someone pretend to be Ray Shero and explain to me how he is going to improve this team's defense corps during the season and next offseason.

Tradewise, package somebody like Henrique, Johansson, or Zacha with a pick (or picks) to somebody with excess defensemen. Free agency wise, I don't know who's available. And the draft is supposed to be good for defensemen.

Theoretically let's say we draft a defenseman with our 1st rounder, then package our 2nd + 3rd (probably along with one of the forwards I mentioned above) for another defenseman. There's help both in the short term and hopefully long term. It won't be easy, but it can be done.

 

[Zippy316]

More comparisons to the Yankees. There was huge debates on what Cashman should do st the deadline with the Yanks way ahead of schedule and this year supposed to be a rebuilding year.

His approach ended up being the right one IMO. Only buying players he felt could be hell in the short and long term, while also protecting the top prospects still in the system.

Same here. If we are still riding high, it shouldn’t be out of the question to go out and buy if the right deal for a piece that can be a long term solution is available and if we can protect most of our top assets.

I think even if you trade Henrique for an older LD the Devils win in that trade. The Devils are slowly getting to the point where Henrique really isn't needed. Bratt and Hischier have pushed him out of the top six. Coleman, Gibbons, and Bratt have all shown to be valuable PK guys. Even if some of those four crash and burn, there's still JQ, Zacha, and Blandisi waiting for their chance and Johansson coming off IR.

The biggest hole right now on the team is the LD side behind Greene. Moore isn't good enough to be a 2LD and whatever kid is playing with him is forced to carry him a bit. We need the opposite so the kids can focus on their game. Even if you trade him for a guy like Edler and he walks after 2018-19, I think the year and a half of Edler will do more for the defense than Henrique will do for the forwards.

 

[NjDevsRR]

People forget how good prime Zubs was.

As Chico put it best, he was a ‘tractor’ that couldn’t be stopped!

 

[Emperoreddy]

I think even if you trade Henrique for an older LD the Devils win in that trade. The Devils are slowly getting to the point where Henrique really isn't needed. Bratt and Hischier have pushed him out of the top six. Coleman, Gibbons, and Bratt have all shown to be valuable PK guys. Even if some of those four crash and burn, there's still JQ, Zacha, and Blandisi waiting for their chance and Johansson coming off IR.

The biggest hole right now on the team is the LD side behind Greene. Moore isn't good enough to be a 2LD and whatever kid is playing with him is forced to carry him a bit. We need the opposite so the kids can focus on their game. Even if you trade him for a guy like Edler and he walks after 2018-19, I think the year and a half of Edler will do more for the defense than Henrique will do for the forwards.

Same idea. Just trading away superfluous assets for something that helps in the short and long.

Basically avoiding rentals and trading the top assets for said rentals.

 

[severian]

I think even if you trade Henrique for an older LD the Devils win in that trade. The Devils are slowly getting to the point where Henrique really isn't needed. Bratt and Hischier have pushed him out of the top six. Coleman, Gibbons, and Bratt have all shown to be valuable PK guys. Even if some of those four crash and burn, there's still JQ, Zacha, and Blandisi waiting for their chance and Johansson coming off IR.

The biggest hole right now on the team is the LD side behind Greene. Moore isn't good enough to be a 2LD and whatever kid is playing with him is forced to carry him a bit. We need the opposite so the kids can focus on their game. Even if you trade him for a guy like Edler and he walks after 2018-19, I think the year and a half of Edler will do more for the defense than Henrique will do for the forwards.

I'm so glad personnel moves aren't made by fans. Say what you will about Henrique, but I'm not ready to say that Hischier and Bratt make him completely irrelevant. I WANT to believe that Bratt is the real deal, but the guy is still a 6th round pick with only 17 games experience in the NHL. I'm still not ready to proclaim him the next Daniel Alfredsson.

 

[Feed Me A Stray Cat]

I'm one of the people who "bash" several of the "advanced" (love that term BTW, lol) stats, not because it challenges my hockey world, but because I have quite a bit of experience breaking down research and statistics, and I genuinely don't think most of them are very useful. Way to many dependent variables come into play in such a manner that I believe there's far more randomness than significance than most people generally understand, and Corsi, IMO, is the worst of them all.

It reminds me of scientific research that gets underway, and only after 17 months of work does someone realize the methodology was flawed from the start. I believe Corsi is the answer to a question that isn't particularly useful to ask in the first place, relying on multiple "iffy" assumptions.

Moreover, anyone who knows anything about statistics knows that more input is better than less input. Whenever a commonly known crappy player is pointed out as having a great Corsi, or a commonly known solid player is pointed out as having a crappy Corsi, these are just dismissed as odd outliers. Ummmm...Okay. Well then, if Corsi really is critical, TEAM Corsi should be a FAR greater indicator of statistical correlation to achievement than ANY lone individual player's Corsi is correlated to a given Team's achievement. Yet here again, I can (every year) provide examples of team's with the better records having mediocre Corsi, or celler dwellers with very good Corsi. The metric is flawed, in no small part due to the fact that as I began by saying, there are just too many dependent variables at play, and not all of them which are captured as positive/negative are actually positive or negative (i.e. blocking shots is a GOOD thing (captured in Corsi as a negative thing), forcing opponents to take numerous shots from the outside is a GOOD thing
(captured in Corsi as a negative thing), often weakly lofting shots on goal from the blueline is a BAD thing (captured in Corsi as a positive thing), etc.....

If you wanted to critque Corsi, you would know not to simply look at a team's record, because Corsi is generally looked at only for even strength play. Special teams performance hugely impacts a team's record and that isn't captured in Corsi. Moreover, Corsi does not account for a team's goaltending, another massive variable in a team's success. And if you were skilled in statistical analysis, you would know that producing anecdotal examples of outliers does not prove or disprove anything.

It seems like you don't really understand Corsi's application.

 

[MadDevil]

As Chico put it best, he was a ‘tractor’ that couldn’t be stopped!

So would Zacha be the Zachasaurus or the Pavelsaurus? Also, what's his music selection like?

 

[Zippy316]

I'm so glad personnel moves aren't made by fans. Say what you will about Henrique, but I'm not ready to say that Hischier and Bratt make him completely irrelevant. I WANT to believe that Bratt is the real deal, but the guy is still a 6th round pick with only 17 games experience in the NHL. I'm still not ready to proclaim him the next Daniel Alfredsson.

I didn't say right now. Just that it has seriously be considered. But like I said, there are still several back-up options at LW if we move Henrique -- Johansson, Blandisi, Quenneville, and Zacha.

We finally have some depth there. We don't have a reliable LD behind Greene which we desperately need.

 

[Feed Me A Stray Cat]

I would agree that plenty of people misuse Corsi. They lazily look at a player's Corsi Rel in a small sample size and with no context and then draw sweeping conclusions. That's not appropriate.

But generally speaking Corsi, especially at the team level, is very indicative of a team's overall quality of play at even strength. It correlates very highly with scoring chance and high-danger scoring chance data, as well as future goal differential. Certain types of players, and to a lesser extent teams, might defy their Corsi because they are especially good at creating high quality chances or converting those chances.

But let's not forget that before Corsi and PDO, people had very little insight into which teams were for real. We have a pretty good idea that the Devils, unless they change their player at even strength, are going to start losing soon. Conversely, we know Edmonton will start winning games. That analysis sounds simple, and it is, but until five or six years ago people didn't really think in those terms. Analysis was purely related to a team's W/L record.

Corsi, Fenwick and PDO are good for analysis at a high level. Is this team whose top three in the league after 20 games over-performing? Is this player getting unlucky? But it's not good for saying this team ranked 14th is better than this team ranked 20th, or this player on team A is better than this player on team B, which is what people unfortunately try to do.

 

[devilsblood]

Everyone needs to buy a ticket in regards to Zacha

Ha, the fine print makes it funny.

 

[devilsblood]

I think that's what he's saying. Team corsi is valuable but individual corsi less so.

I think his argument is: The Kings were the top Corsi team last year and did not make the playoffs. Thus Corsi is useless.

And that premise is a good one if your looking to knock possession stats. That example does say that Corsi is not the end all be all.

On the individual level there were some that said Stamkos is not that great, because, despite the impressive scoring, he does not have a good Corsi. But when guys can finish like he can, it not only lessons the need to have a good corsi, but it also hurts your corsi in that there will be less multi shot possessions.

So Gomez is the polar opposite of the guy who says "Corsi is the best thing ever". But I think the Corsi guy is more right then Gomez is here. Corsi is a good stat but he seems to want to completely disregard it.

 

[JimEIV]

Someone pretend to be Ray Shero and explain to me how he is going to improve this team's defense corps during the season and next offseason.

Buy high, sell low?

 

[EliasFTW]

Someone pretend to be Ray Shero and explain to me how he is going to improve this team's defense corps during the season and next offseason.

Buy all the pucks. Teams can't score if we possess all the pucks.

 

[devilsblood]

Someone pretend to be Ray Shero and explain to me how he is going to improve this team's defense corps during the season and next offseason.

I'm going to roll with what he have for the time being. But I have been attacking the issue with #'s. From Mueller, to Butcher, to Rykov, to Sissons, to Walsh, to Chainey. This upcoming draft I will look to add more talent as well. Then we will need to let these young D men develop.

And if I can land a big fish via trade or UFA in the offseason, then I will, but those deals are not always available.

 

[Zippy316]

The biggest part of this season is going to be how the Devils do in interdivisional games.

The Metro looks like it's going to absolutely dominate the league at this rate. Once the Metro starts playing each other it should help to normalize the current imbalance in the East.

Right now, Washington and Islanders hold the two WC spots. Rangers are 9th in the conference, Hurricanes are 11th, and Flyers are 12th. That's just insane.

 

[My3Sons]

Someone pretend to be Ray Shero and explain to me how he is going to improve this team's defense corps during the season and next offseason.

Don’t worry Severian I am working on extensions for Lovejoy and Prout as we speak.

 

[Blackjack]

If you wanted to critque Corsi, you would know not to simply look at a team's record, because Corsi is generally looked at only for even strength play. Special teams performance hugely impacts a team's record and that isn't captured in Corsi. Moreover, Corsi does not account for a team's goaltending, another massive variable in a team's success. And if you were skilled in statistical analysis, you would know that producing anecdotal examples of outliers does not prove or disprove anything.

It seems like you don't really understand Corsi's application.

Okay, so then, what exactly is it telling us? I hear over and over again that it's a proxy for possession. Okay... what's possession worth? The Kings are a good example, possession is just one part of the game.. The problems that I have with Corsi and Fenwick is that I don't know if it's really been established that they're reliable measures of possession, and even if it is, I don't know that we really understand how much of a role possession plays in determining who wins.

 

[Zippy316]

Okay, so then, what exactly is it telling us? I hear over and over again that it's a proxy for possession. Okay... what's possession worth? The Kings are a good example, possession is just one part of the game.. The problems that I have with Corsi and Fenwick is that I don't know if it's really been established that they're reliable measures of possession, and even if it is, I don't know that we really understand how much of a role possession plays in determining who wins.

The Kings are the outlier in this instance and the Devils in the lockout-shortened season were another.

It's quite simple. CF% is simply just a broad way of measuring possession because if you're directing more shots towards your opponents net than your own, you're generally dictating the play 5-on-5. If you dominate the game 5-on-5 (i.e. have possession or positive CF%), you will win most games. 5-on-5 is where the majority of the game is played.

In single game or small sample sizes, teams can get lucky and ride a hot PP or an unreasonable PDO (shooting % + save %) but those will usually fall back down to earth over larger sample sizes. I can't find the stats, but almost every team in the top 10-15 in CF% makes the playoffs each year and a large portion of Stanley Cup finalists come from the top 5 and top 10 of the stat each year.

 

[BenedictGomez]

Okay, so then, what exactly is it telling us? I hear over and over again that it's a proxy for possession. Okay... what's possession worth? The Kings are a good example, possession is just one part of the game..

Very little.

As I mentioned before, Corsi is the answer to a question that I believe was never well thought out. It truly reminds me of scientific research studies I've seen that were started with flawed methodology.

Here's yet another example I'll leave everyone with before retiring for the night.

We have 11 years of NHL data to pull from, including this season to date, for 30 teams (31 this year), representing 331 individual Team Corsi data points. That's a pretty healthy sample.

The 4th highest TEAM CORSI ever recorded belonged to the 2012-2013 New Jersey Devils at a whopping 56.2 CF%.

That #4 of 331 Corsi is better than 99.9% (literally) of all NHL teams in over a decade of existing data.

The 2012-2013 New Jersey Devils finished 10 games under .500, missed the playoffs, and were one of the worst teams in the NHL (#23/30).

The problems that I have with Corsi and Fenwick is that I don't know if it's really been established that they're reliable measures of possession, and even if it is, I don't know that we really understand how much of a role possession plays in determining who wins.

Someone has found the entrance to the rabbit hole!

 

[BenedictGomez]

The Kings are the outlier in this instance and the Devils in the lockout-shortened season were another.

If I had a dollar for every time I heard someone dismiss scientific or mathematical results they disagreed with as, "surely being an outlier", I'd have enough money to lure Kovalchuk back to New Jersey.

 

[R8Devs]

but why don't you list the other teams and where they finished in the standings?

anyway the analytics teams use are way more advanced than corsi. all corsi is is shots directed at net. i don't even understand how there can be such uproar over it -- all players and coaches say ad nauseam is 'get puck towards the net' and corsi is one way to measure how successfully a team is able to do it. it's not perfect obviously but you can find necessary context yourself.

 

[BenedictGomez]

Okay, one more example before bed, because math is fun.

The 15th worth TEAM CORSI ever recorded in history belongs to your 2017-2018 New Jersey Devils at a horrendous 45.7 CF%.

That #317 of 331 Corsi means 96% (literally) of all NHL teams over the last decade of existing data have better Corsi than the current Devils.

The 2017-2018 New Jersey Devils currently have the 3rd best record in the entire NHL.

But Corsi suggests the Devils should be a terrible lottery team.

And in case you're curious, Arizona is pacing for the worst record in the 100 year history of the NHL (thousands of data points), and their Corsi is much better than the Devils' Corsi.

And remember, if you believe this has value, Team Corsi should be FAR more statistically accurate in pointing towards success than any individual player's Corsi, which is worth noting given Corsi is almost always used with players, rather than with teams.