I have no idea what you're attempting to measure and numbers in isolation mean nothing.
Good thing my entire argument is about contextualizing his performance. It's just not about doing so in relation to his peers.
They don't. Objectively. He's been at the bottom of the league for years in that stat. Do you know how GSAx is calculated? By adding his performance game-by-game.
And yet objectively, if Gibson and his awful total GSAx this season were replaced by a goalie who played to the xGA every game, the Ducks would've finished with a far worse record. You're absolutely correct, numbers in isolation mean nothing. And yet you're collapsing an entire data set into a single number and pretending there's no functional difference between the two.
How do you know he was "phoning it in" and how do you objectively measure that?
Your entire "statistical" argument hinges on "trust me bro, he just stopped trying."
Okay, seriously. You split a sentence in half to address its two components like they were unrelated, then you fundamentally misunderstood both of them.
My argument hinges on the statistical fact that based on game by game GSAx, Gibson was a net positive to his team this season despite his high negative total GSAx. Which is why I cited "game by game GSAx" and not "he's phoning it in" as the supporting fact in the statement, I don't believe it was ambiguous at all.
I'll try again, and I'll try to be painfully clear.
(I want to say up front first: in double checking my numbers, I found that somewhere in the process of note-taking I got mixed up and listed the same game as both a win and an OT loss. It was actually a win, thereby removing one OT point as compared to my original post. It doesn't change much overall, but nonetheless, I regret the error.)
The arguments in Gibson's favor often hinge on "watch the games," which isn't a statistical argument, and that's fair enough. But it is fundamentally an argument about overall numbers giving an incorrect picture of his impact, and that
can be discussed with statistics.
Individual game statistics reveal the following:
—In 9 wins, according to GSAx, Gibson was the difference between victory or defeat. If he'd performed in accordance with the xGA in those games, the Ducks' goals were not sufficient to win.
—9 stolen wins puts Gibson at 18 stolen points.
—In 4 OT losses, according to GSAx, Gibson was the difference between a loser point and no points. If he'd performed in accordance with the xGA in those games, the Ducks' goals were not sufficient to tie.
—Adding 4 stolen loser points puts Gibson up to 22 stolen points.
—(A quarter of his games played resulting in statistically stolen points probably has something to do with why Ducks fans think he steals a lot of points, despite people in these threads occasionally claiming there's "zero evidence" for it.)
—In 6 losses, according to GSAx, Gibson was the difference between defeat or victory. If he'd performed in accordance with the xGA in those games, the Ducks' goals were sufficient to win.
—Removing 12 cost points puts Gibson at a net total of 10 stolen points.
—Thus, based on the game by game GSAx, he personally accounted for 17.2% of the Ducks' 58 points.
—In the rest of the games, Gibson's GSAx was irrelevant to the result.
—In many of them, he had a significant negative GSAx, but it didn't matter because the Ducks didn't score enough to have won even if he'd played to his xGA, were not even close, and were bumbling around with xGF%s in the low 40s or 30s. These are the kind of games a lot of Gibson supporters believe, generally based on body language and "watch the games", he can be prone to giving up on.
—The crux of the hopeless game collapse theory is that it skews his overall numbers downwards because he racks up extra GA and negative GSAx in those games where it's just meaningless stat padding, while still leaving him with a net positive impact on the team overall. (Which is most certainly a flaw, but a more easily remedied one than him just being terrible across the board.)
—The collapse theory cannot be objectively measured or proven (nor disproven) and was not the primary point of my argument, but the numbers do line up with what one would expect to see if the theory were true. It is not the only explanation, but it is supported.
—If he just sucks outright, it's weird that he personally accounted for so many points on the worst team in the league while facing a historic workload. So I would argue that this deeper delve into the statistics argues for him not, in fact, sucking. But again, it's a statistical case, not a mathematical proof. I never claimed anything more.
I'll stress the main point again: if Gibson were replaced by a goalie who played to the xGA every game, the Ducks would have lost
significant points in the standings, despite his poor total GSAx. Objectively, he was a net positive versus that theoretical goalie who would have superior overall stats. And since overall stats can be proved not to tell the full story, there is statistical merit to Gibson supporters arguing "watch the games" in his defense.
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