Jordan Weal: 2018-19 season (Formerly: How many points for Weal in 2017-2018?)

[deadhead]

Yes, there is, and we saw it.
A fourth line player who lacks speed, doesn't check well and can't contribute on STs is pretty much a waste of roster space.
Which is why they gave Weal multiple shots at winning the 3C job.

Not that Varone was any better, but Knight at least had potential as a PK player, VdV was actually pretty good at it (EV, another story).

This will be the issue for both Vorobyev and Bunnaman, can they skate well enough to find a role on the 4th line.
Because it's doubtful they're pushing players like Farabee, Frost, Ratcliffe, Rubtsov, Kase, etc off the 3rd line.

 

[DrinkFightFlyers]

Yes, there is, and we saw it.
A fourth line player who lacks speed, doesn't check well and can't contribute on STs is pretty much a waste of roster space.
Which is why they gave Weal multiple shots at winning the 3C job.

Not that Varone was any better, but Knight at least had potential as a PK player, VdV was actually pretty good at it (EV, another story).

This will be the issue for both Vorobyev and Bunnaman, can they skate well enough to find a role on the 4th line.
Because it's doubtful they're pushing players like Farabee, Frost, Ratcliffe, Rubtsov, Kase, etc off the 3rd line.

Where is Vecchione in all this? I thought he was going to be a good 4th liner and IIRC did play some PK as well. Is he just out the door at this point?

 

[landsbergfan]

Yes, there is, and we saw it.
A fourth line player who lacks speed, doesn't check well and can't contribute on STs is pretty much a waste of roster space.
Which is why they gave Weal multiple shots at winning the 3C job.

Not that Varone was any better, but Knight at least had potential as a PK player, VdV was actually pretty good at it (EV, another story).

This will be the issue for both Vorobyev and Bunnaman, can they skate well enough to find a role on the 4th line.
Because it's doubtful they're pushing players like Farabee, Frost, Ratcliffe, Rubtsov, Kase, etc off the 3rd line.

takes like this get people put on the ignore list

Jordan Weal...not good enough for the 3rd line...too good for the 4th line.

 

[landsbergfan]

Where is Vecchione in all this? I thought he was going to be a good 4th liner and IIRC did play some PK as well. Is he just out the door at this point?

I always liked him more than Corban Knight. I think he has the offensive prowess to put up points in a 4th line role, but clearly they didn't trust him to keep it out of their net. I ultimately didn't care if he stayed in LHV or went to the Flyers because I liked him playing with some of the wingers down in LHV.

 

[Curufinwe]

The most interesting thing is how little he produced in Arizona, and how much he produced in Montreal, with his Philly production in the middle. With marginal players, the right situation can make all the difference.

And not many guys play 15+ games with three different teams in one season.

 

[Rebels57]

Where is Vecchione in all this? I thought he was going to be a good 4th liner and IIRC did play some PK as well. Is he just out the door at this point?

Vecchione is now a UFA so he might be out the door.

 

[Rebels57]

The most interesting thing is how little he produced in Arizona, and how much he produced in Montreal, with his Philly production in the middle. With marginal players, the right situation can make all the difference.

And not many guys play 15+ games with three different teams in one season.

Not dissimilar to how he produced for us late in the season after coming over for Lecavalier. Going forward, im not convinced he will produce anymore than the 20-30 points he paced for this season.

 

[DrinkFightFlyers]

Vecchione is now a UFA so he might be out the door.

Hopefully he resurfaces somewhere. Of all the 4th line garbage we've trotted out in recent years he may have been my favorite in his brief time here.

 

[Rich Nixon]

Weal is an advanced stats favorite, but he never seems to play up to his numbers.

In the same way some defensemen consistently give up fewer goals than their metrics would suggest, Weal consistently creates fewer net goals than his metrics would suggest.

Maybe it's because most of those advanced stats are rudimentary bullshit that aren't predictive enough to even bother looking at when it comes to a game with as much unquantifiable nuance and luck as NHL hockey does.

 

[JojoTheWhale]

Maybe it's because most of those advanced stats are rudimentary bull**** that aren't predictive enough to even bother looking at when it comes to a game with as much unquantifiable nuance and luck as NHL hockey does.

Have you read the papers behind the metrics you're broad-stroking here?

 

[The Madrigal]

Weal is the last type of player I want on a fourth line. He's a top 6 type of player who isn't good enough to be a top 6 player. I want my bottom 6 guys to be able to bring some intangibles to the table with some offense as well. Size, toughness, PK, face offs, speed, etc. Weal brings NONE of that. He's a scorer who doesn't produce enough to be on a team's top 6. There's a reason he's already been on several teams and two teams just last year moved on from him. The fact that we are still talking about this guy is baffling.

 

[Rich Nixon]

Have you read the papers behind the metrics you're broad-stroking here?

I haven't, but I understand how they work, and have a decent familiarity with predictive analytics quality via previous employment. Things like xGF don't really pass muster. They basically will confirm themselves with good players, but vary widely with worse ones. "Rudimentary" might be an unfair word for something like xGF, since it's well thought-out and more or less complex, but it's still sloppy to the point of discredit, from the reliability/consistency of its data sources to its actual outcomes.

I know hockey fans want so badly for analytics to work with the sport, but we're not there yet. Soon, though, with the real-time puck/player tracking and all that, we're gonna have some incredible tools to look at for player evaluation. Might take a bit of time to get the minds together and learn how to map everything, and decide what to look for, but you'll have an AI-generated concept of like "high-danger" vs "low-danger" shots based on puck speed/trajectory/location/where it just was (as in, not just "one-timer" but how far the puck travelled to be one-timed) rather than just location/shot type, that sort of thing. Once all that's built you can start re-applying the same concepts and you'll end up with some real accurate shit, until then the foundations aren't going to be good enough.

 

[deadhead]

It's not "sloppy," it's that left out variable error is ubiquitous in most studies where you can't run controlled experiments, you can only work with the data you have, and hope you capture unobservable variables through proxies.

So for example xGF/xGA capture a general sense of scoring probabilities, but can't account for scoring skill (though this is likely to even out for xGA, xGF will depend on the scoring skills of the player and the teammates on ice with him).

 

[JojoTheWhale]

I haven't, but I understand how they work, and have a decent familiarity with predictive analytics quality via previous employment. Things like xGF don't really pass muster. They basically will confirm themselves with good players, but vary widely with worse ones. "Rudimentary" might be an unfair word for something like xGF, since it's well thought-out and more or less complex, but it's still sloppy to the point of discredit, from the reliability/consistency of its data sources to its actual outcomes.

I know hockey fans want so badly for analytics to work with the sport, but we're not there yet. Soon, though, with the real-time puck/player tracking and all that, we're gonna have some incredible tools to look at for player evaluation. Might take a bit of time to get the minds together and learn how to map everything, and decide what to look for, but you'll have an AI-generated concept of like "high-danger" vs "low-danger" shots based on puck speed/trajectory/location/where it just was (as in, not just "one-timer" but how far the puck travelled to be one-timed) rather than just location/shot type, that sort of thing. Once all that's built you can start re-applying the same concepts and you'll end up with some real accurate ****, until then the foundations aren't going to be good enough.

Got it. When terms like unquantifiable nuance and luck are used, the approach is not usually this. I’m happy to see you didn’t go down a certain useless road.

I wouldn’t argue we’re in a particularly great predictive place, just that we’re significantly ahead of where we were even in the CorsiREL era let alone Raw CF%. We’re not at the one number player value stage, but we’re finally getting to the point where we have building blocks to forming a complete picture. Getting that far with public manual tracking is not something I thought I would ever see.

As you said, tracking is going to open up entirely new avenues of attack. What I’m personally most interested in is Defensive Zone breakouts since that’s where open ice is most easily created. We have no real way to quantify degree of difficulty on chances with respect to creation — everything is based on the degree of difficulty of stopping X from Y spot.

 

[Johnk0728]

Got it. When terms like unquantifiable nuance and luck are used, the approach is not usually this. I’m happy to see you didn’t go down a certain useless road.

I wouldn’t argue we’re in a particularly great predictive place, just that we’re significantly ahead of where we were even in the CorsiREL era let alone Raw CF%. We’re not at the one number player value stage, but we’re finally getting to the point where we have building blocks to forming a complete picture. Getting that far with public manual tracking is not something I thought I would ever see.

As you said, tracking is going to open up entirely new avenues of attack. What I’m personally most interested in is Defensive Zone breakouts since that’s where open ice is most easily created. We have no real way to quantify degree of difficulty on chances with respect to creation — everything is based on the degree of difficulty of stopping X from Y spot.

This is a great post and I agree that tracking has a chance to change analytics but what it really proves to me is the undying and often blind allegiance to the previously-used analytics up to now just for the sake of the stat being called advanced analytics. If you have an advance stat that says the Jordan Weal is a legit NHL player; than you have flawed metric. No way around it.....

 

[The Madrigal]

Weal just duped another team into a contract with a late season surge. Two years, 2.8 million from the Habs. Same thing that happened when he first came to the Flyers. They will regret it by mid-season.

 

[JojoTheWhale]

This is a great post and I agree that tracking has a chance to change analytics but what it really proves to me is the undying and often blind allegiance to the previously-used analytics up to now just for the sake of the stat being called advanced analytics. If you have an advance stat that says the Jordan Weal is a legit NHL player; than you have flawed metric. No way around it.....

This is the useless track we avoided that I mentioned above. Oh well.