GDT: Preseason Hockey! New Jersey Devils @ New York Islanders, 7:00 PM

[Triumph]

The overreactions are idiotic. Every young player is going to have up and down games and some inconsistency. Holtz has showed he made improvements where it was needed and he's been one of the best players on the ice in multiple preseason games. He's fine, and he's certainly not going to shoot 0% over a large sample size.

I'm happy he'll be due for regression to the mean when the regular season starts rather than shooting 28% in the preseason just to have it drop off when the games matter.

This is not a statement about regression to the mean, but is rather just saying the gambler's fallacy. Nobody is due for anything.

 

[MadDevil]

Keep hearing the "AHL Flyers" rhetoric but not buying it.

Hart is bound to bounce back if he is healthy and the team plays some semblance of a structure; something Tortorella will demand.

Top to bottom they have a pretty competent D corps and the forward group isn't as bad as some are saying. Can see guys like Hayes, Konecny and Atkinson could all having strong seasons.

DD, is that you?

 

[Unknown Caller]

This is not a statement about regression to the mean, but is rather just saying the gambler's fallacy. Nobody is due for anything.

No, it's very clearly a statement about regression. It has absolutely nothing to do with "the gambler's fallacy." He has 10 SOG in the preseason, good for a shooting percentage of 0%. Some of these opportunities were very high danger. The shot total also doesn't account for posts he's hit.

Holtz shot 15.6% in the AHL last season and NHL average is about 9.5%. We already know Holtz is a talented scorer, so you would expect him to come in above league average at an absolute minimum. We also know he's generated shots from high danger areas, so while we don't have his personal xG numbers for the preseason, this isn't a result of low danger shots from the perimeter.

Even if we played it conservative and said Holtz would shoot 10% over an NHL season (it will be higher in reality), he's obviously due for regression and the pucks are going to start going in.

 

[Devils731]

No, it's very clearly a statement about regression. It has absolutely nothing to do with "the gambler's fallacy." He has 10 SOG in the preseason, good for a shooting percentage of 0%. Some of these opportunities were very high danger. The shot total also doesn't account for posts he's hit.

Holtz shot 15.6% in the AHL last season and NHL average is about 9.5%. We already know Holtz is a talented scorer, so you would expect him to come in above league average at an absolute minimum. We also know he's generated shots from high danger areas, so while we don't have his personal xG numbers for the preseason, this isn't a result of low danger shots from the perimeter.

Even if we played it conservative and said Holtz would shoot 10% over an NHL season (it will be higher in reality), he's obviously due for regression and the pucks are going to start going in.

It’s more of a gamblers fallacy because you’re conflating his past shots as affecting his future shots.
His future shots don’t care about his past shots going in. He will naturally go towards his mean shooting percentage but the mean is indifferent towards what he has done in the past.

When you say

“I'm happy he'll be due for regression to the mean when the regular season starts rather than shooting 28% in the preseason just to have it drop off when the games matter.”

it appears you think his future shots will go in at a higher or lower frequency based on how often they went in for prior shots. That’s the gamblers fallacy.

 

[Unknown Caller]

It’s more of a gamblers fallacy because you’re conflating his past shots as affecting his future shots.
His future shots don’t care about his past shots going in. He will naturally go towards his mean shooting percentage but the mean is indifferent towards what he has done in the past.

When you say

“I'm happy he'll be due for regression to the mean when the regular season starts rather than shooting 28% in the preseason just to have it drop off when the games matter.”

it appears you think his future shots will go in at a higher or lower frequency based on how often they went in for prior shots. That’s the gamblers fallacy.

This is the entire purpose of projecting regression. We have data on a player's average shooting percentage and the league average shooting percentage. We have data on the number of shots he's generated. We can project that if he's generating a certain amount of SOG, he can be expected to score a certain amount of goals at an expected rate. He's clearly below that right now.

When Andreas Johnsson was shooting at a 37.5% rate last November, we knew he was going to regress and his scoring would dry up. It did. It's not that complicated.

Of course we could be even more accurate with underlying numbers, xGF%, etc., but just on a very simplistic level, it's clear that he's going to score more goals based on his current play.

 

[Devils731]

This is the entire purpose of projecting regression. We have data on a player's average shooting percentage and the league average shooting percentage. We have data on the number of shots he's generated. We can project that if he's generating a certain amount of SOG, he can be expected to score a certain amount of goals at an expected rate. He's clearly below that right now.

When Andreas Johnsson was shooting at a 37.5% rate last November, we knew he was going to regress and his scoring would dry up. It did. It's not that complicated.

If Andreas Johnsson was a true 11% shooter and shot 37.5% through his first 30 games then you would expect him to shoot 11% through his next 52.

If Johnsson shot 4% through his first 30 games then you would expect him to shoot 11% through his next 52.

Regressing to the mean happens because your future production will match your true performance level and pulls your overall performance towards the true level through volume.

Regressing to the mean does not mean that your prior performance over or under performing your true talent level will affect future results. Future results do not react positively nor negatively based on past results to bring numbers in line with your true talent level. That is the gamblers fallacy.

Future shots have no idea what your past shots did. They don’t affect each other.

 

[Unknown Caller]

If Andreas Johnsson was a true 11% shooter and shot 37.5% through his first 30 games then you would expect him to shoot 11% through his next 52.

If Johnsson shot 4% through his first 30 games then you would expect him to shoot 11% through his next 52.

Regressing to the mean happens because your future production will match your true performance level and pulls your overall performance towards the true level through volume.

Regressing to the mean does not mean that your prior performance over or under performing your true talent level will affect future results. Future results do not react positively nor negatively based on past results to bring numbers in line with your true talent level. That is the gamblers fallacy.

Thank you for making my point. The argument is that Holtz has 0 goals and that's a concern. My point is we should expect him to shoot, at a minimum, around a 10% rate (which is conservative given his abilities). We shouldn't expect him to shoot 0% moving forward just because he's shot 0% over a small preseason sample size.

Given the number of shots he's generating, we can anticipate that he is going to score goals moving forward. If we had his xGF numbers and data on the number of high danger opportunities that he's had this preseason (including posts) that 10% number is probably even higher.

 

[My3Sons]

It’s more of a gamblers fallacy because you’re conflating his past shots as affecting his future shots.
His future shots don’t care about his past shots going in. He will naturally go towards his mean shooting percentage but the mean is indifferent towards what he has done in the past.

When you say

“I'm happy he'll be due for regression to the mean when the regular season starts rather than shooting 28% in the preseason just to have it drop off when the games matter.”

it appears you think his future shots will go in at a higher or lower frequency based on how often they went in for prior shots. That’s the gamblers fallacy.

That is true in theory but in practice, there's that old statement about a guy's numbers being what they are on the back of his trading card. It seems to apply to all pro-sports.

 

[Devils731]

Thank you for making my point. The argument is that Holtz has 0 goals and that's a concern. My point is we should expect him to shoot, at a minimum, around a 10% rate (which is conservative given his abilities). We shouldn't expect him to shoot 0% moving forward just because he's shot 0% over a small preseason sample size.

Given the number of shots he's generating, we can anticipate that he is going to score goals moving forward.

The point wasn’t that everyone agreed with you that Holtz would score and have a higher shooting percentage than 0% because I think we all do. It was about the confusion over 2 terms that are often confused.

I flipped a coin 10,000 times and they were somehow all heads.

Assuming the coin is a true 50/50, what is the odds the next flip is heads again?

Regression to the means guesses 50% because the coin doesn’t care about past flips.

Gamblers Fallacy guesses something like 20% because they know eventually the coin flip overall percentages should be 50/50 so tails must be coming up soon to start balancing the overall odds out.

—————-

Past shooting percentage is the 10,000 coin flips and so on.

 

[Mgd31]

The overreactions are idiotic. Every young player is going to have up and down games and some inconsistency. Holtz has showed he made improvements where it was needed and he's been one of the best players on the ice in multiple preseason games. He's fine, and he's certainly not going to shoot 0% over a large sample size.

I'm happy he'll be due for regression to the mean when the regular season starts rather than shooting 28% in the preseason just to have it drop off when the games matter.

Agreed, his underlyings are all strong and he would have more points if his on-ice shooting percentage wasn't 6 percent.

 

[Brooklyndevil]

Are we in for another shite season again?!

I think so. Everyone said we didn’t need a center. Unfortunately, Nico is made of clay so we certainly should have drafted Wright. The draft has been the dark cloud over this organization since the Golden era of Lou and Conte. Sure, we have a couple nice pieces, but the big picture sure looks glum. I’m betting we don’t make the playoffs and the way we draft what’s the sense in having a high pick. This losing is just getting old, just like me.

 

[Guttersniped]

The point wasn’t that everyone agreed with you that Holtz would score and have a higher shooting percentage than 0% because I think we all do. It was about the confusion over 2 terms that are often confused.

I flipped a coin 10,000 times and they were somehow all heads.

Assuming the coin is a true 50/50, what is the odds the next flip is heads again?

Regression to the means guesses 50% because the coin doesn’t care about past flips.

Gamblers Fallacy guesses something like 20% because they know eventually the coin flip overall percentages should be 50/50 so tails must be coming up soon to start balancing the overall odds out.

—————-

Past shooting percentage is the 10,000 coin flips and so on.

Finishing ability varies in hockey players so I don’t see how shooting % is a coin flip. Henrique still has a career average of 15.2%.

And people are discussing shot creation, which will often tell you more about future results then actual production. If a player can create more and/or better scoring chances in games he has a better chance to score goals.

It’s tough to say what will happen in regular games since pre-season games aren’t those. But if Holtz is creating scoring chances and getting shots on nets, yes, the goals will come.

The players who don’t create enough shots are the easy to pick out wash outs. Zacha (sigh, I guess I’m used to discussing this with him lol) struggled with shot production in earlier seasons and had some bad shooting % seasons as well.

Those are different problems. There are volume shooters and/or snipers who don’t struggle with one aspect and top elite shooters don’t struggle with either.

I think so. Everyone said we didn’t need a center. Unfortunately, Nico is made of clay so we certainly should have drafted Wright. The draft has been the dark cloud over this organization since the Golden era of Lou and Conte. Sure, we have a couple nice pieces, but the big picture sure looks glum. I’m betting we don’t make the playoffs and the way we draft what’s the sense in having a high pick. This losing is just getting old, just like me.

Good lord.

 

[Bleedred]

Preseason game results are utterly meaningless. Does anyone even remember our preseason records or individual game performances from seasons past? Lol.

I’m quite confident in saying that over the last ten putrid years of awful hockey…the team has had some preseasons that went well and some that didn’t. It’s an indicator of absolutely nothing as far as team performance goes once the real season starts.

That being said…I absolutely do not trust Blackwood to “bounce back”…what exactly is he bouncing back to? The guy has had way more mediocre showings than not over the last few years. The only way I see him passing off as a starter is if the Devils suddenly develop a Trotz-like defensive structure in front of him. In other words…it ain’t happening. I think we have to pin our hopes on Vitek, personally.

I said the same thing about Cory a few years (I said a lot of the same things, actually) that if Blackwood were a goalie on the Rangers right now and this was happening to them, a lot of this fanbase would be laughing hysterically over how much of a bust Blackwood is turning out to be. And I think a lot of people would be writing the Rangers off on making the playoffs and saying Vanecek is their only hope.

The truth is that even in Blackwood’s good years, he still had a - those first two years in goals saved above expected, which takes into account how the defense/team defense is playing. Not that it was that bad those two years in that stat, it was only around - half a goal both of those years. So just barely breaking below even.

But Blackwood never looked particularly great (I think he looked good, not great), he was never on the level of pre-decline Cory Schneider. Certainly better than Kinkaid, but that’s not saying much.

I do give him a better chance of bouncing back than Cory, just because he’s 25 and not 34, but I don’t even think Blackwood has “Declined” as much as he just might be any good.

I’m still very skeptical of the current goalie coach, but the only goalies that looked particularly well in the NHL in modern times that we’ve had since Rogalski has been goalie coach were Blackwood and Bernier who barely played.

The rest were either career AHL guys (Gillies) or goalies that had already hit their NHL shelf life (Dell, Hammond) or just hadn’t shown NHL ability prior (Wedgewood) to that.

So it’s more than possible that Rogalski also may not be a problem. If Vancek wildly underperforms here then I think Rogalski probably shouldn’t be here in 2023-2024.

Time is really running out for the Devils on Blackwood though. He’s a restricted free agent next year and due a $3 million qualifying offer. How do you justify paying him $3 million next year when we already have another goalie (Vanecek) under contract for over $3 million if Blackwood has anything less than a solid season? And now we’re at the salary cap, but you can’t waste these years paying too much for mediocre to bad goaltending.

 

[Bleedred]

Keep hearing the "AHL Flyers" rhetoric but not buying it.

Hart is bound to bounce back if he is healthy and the team plays some semblance of a structure; something Tortorella will demand.

Top to bottom they have a pretty competent D corps and the forward group isn't as bad as some are saying. Can see guys like Hayes, Konecny and Atkinson could all having strong seasons.

Yeah, Hart’s gonna bounce back. Just like Blackwood is. Sure he is.

He’s one of the few goalies that might actually be worse than Blackwood these last two years, although last year he wasn’t nearly as bad as Blackwood, but the year before he was worse than Blackwood’s ever been.

 

[ninetyeight]

so our ahl lineup loses to the islanders starting squad and i see half of this place is ready to jump of a cliff. jesus

This "ahl lineup" had our supposed starting goalie give up 5 goals. It also had our second d pair, our whole 4th line and bunch of guys who should have been fighting for a roster spot play their worst game of the preseason.

People are well aware that this wasn't the Devils A-team while the Islanders were, and at least I didn't expect them to win. That doesn't mean you can't expect players to play on their expected level. What this shows is that our AHL depth isn't as good as many (myself included) thought.

Yea what did anyone expect from this game lol.

I expected..
- MBW to give up less than 4 goals
- Boqvist to step up and show he deserves to be in the lineup
- Holtz to score a goal or atleast show he's an nhl caliber player without Hughes
- Okhotyuk to fight for that 3rd LD / 7th D spot.
- Wood to step up as one of the veterans and show he deserves a 3rd line slot

Everyone is free to think whatever about the team, but if you don't care for things like these, why are you even watching or being a fan of this team.

 

[Devils731]

Finishing ability varies in hockey players so I don’t see how shooting % is a coin flip. Henrique still has a career average of 15.2%.

A coin flip is used as an example because people understand a coin. This was a discussion of what regression to the mean vs gamblers fallacy is. They look similar on the outside but the latter is a fallacy while the former is reality.

Substitute in whatever percentage a players true shooting percentage is instead of a coin flip. Let’s say Henrique is a true 15.2%

Assuming these shots are equal, if Henrique scores on his first 4 shots of the season, how likely is he to score on his next shot?

Regression to mean says 15.2%, his true shooting percentage.

Gamblers Fallacy guesses something like 8% because his future shooting percentage has to be under his true shooting percentage to balance out his prior over shooting.

—————-

Baseball did a lot of work on this with batting averages. Players who start hot or cold for a good portion of the season tend to over or under perform their expected average for the year because the rest of their season they tended to hit their normal average. They didn’t hit better/worse because of their hot/cold start.

 

[Call Me Al]

This "ahl lineup" had our supposed starting goalie give up 5 goals. It also had our second d pair, our whole 4th line and bunch of guys who should have been fighting for a roster spot play their worst game of the preseason.

People are well aware that this wasn't the Devils A-team while the Islanders were, and at least I didn't expect them to win. That doesn't mean you can't expect players to play on their expected level. What this shows is that our AHL depth isn't as good as many (myself included) thought.



I expected..
- MBW to give up less than 4 goals
- Boqvist to step up and show he deserves to be in the lineup
- Holtz to score a goal or atleast show he's an nhl caliber player without Hughes
- Okhotyuk to fight for that 3rd LD / 7th D spot.
- Wood to step up as one of the veterans and show he deserves a 3rd line slot

Everyone is free to think whatever about the team, but if you don't care for things like these, why are you even watching or being a fan of this team.

it shows that our ahl depth isn't on par with a starting nhl lineup, big surprise.


the success of this team this year does not depend on any of the things you expected. it would have been nice but the fact that people are indicting the entire franchise over last night's game is lunacy

 

[Guttersniped]

A coin flip is used as an example because people understand a coin. This was a discussion of what regression to the mean vs gamblers fallacy is. They look similar on the outside but the latter is a fallacy while the former is reality.

Substitute in whatever percentage a players true shooting percentage is instead of a coin flip. Let’s say Henrique is a true 15.2%

Assuming these shots are equal, if Henrique scores on his first 4 shots of the season, how likely is he to score on his next shot?

Regression to mean says 15.2%, his true shooting percentage.

Gamblers Fallacy guesses something like 8% because his future shooting percentage has to be under his true shooting percentage to balance out his prior over shooting.

—————-

Baseball did a lot of work on this with batting averages. Players who start hot or cold for a good portion of the season tend to over or under perform their expected average for the year because the rest of their season they tended to hit their normal average. They didn’t hit better/worse because of their hot/cold start.

Did they base their analysis on a handful of games in Spring Training?

In the end, the improvement we needed (and still need) to see in Holtz is in shot creation, we’ll see how shooting % goes.

 

[ninetyeight]

it shows that our ahl depth isn't on par with a starting nhl lineup, big surprise.

There's a difference between being on par, holding their own and getting dominated. Our best AHL guys were suppose to be capable bottom line guys, but the performance by some last game (Okhotyuk, Foote, Boqvist etc) showed they are still nowhere close to NHL level.

people are indicting the entire franchise over last night's game is lunacy

Whose doing that?

 

[Clam Jensen]

This "ahl lineup" had our supposed starting goalie give up 5 goals. It also had our second d pair, our whole 4th line and bunch of guys who should have been fighting for a roster spot play their worst game of the preseason.

People are well aware that this wasn't the Devils A-team while the Islanders were, and at least I didn't expect them to win. That doesn't mean you can't expect players to play on their expected level. What this shows is that our AHL depth isn't as good as many (myself included) thought.



I expected..
- MBW to give up less than 4 goals
- Boqvist to step up and show he deserves to be in the lineup
- Holtz to score a goal or atleast show he's an nhl caliber player without Hughes
- Okhotyuk to fight for that 3rd LD / 7th D spot.
- Wood to step up as one of the veterans and show he deserves a 3rd line slot

Everyone is free to think whatever about the team, but if you don't care for things like these, why are you even watching or being a fan of this team.

I’m a fan of the team because I love the devils and hockey as a whole. I’m not going to waste energy getting upset over the outcome of a preseason game when they iced and AHL lineup.

 

[Bleedred]

I just think Boqvist might not be any good or at least not all that good.

He was not looking all that salvageable until sometime after the start of the 2022 calendar year.

He definitely shouldn’t have been here to start 19-20, at least not for as long as he was. That’s another questionable decision of Shero’s at the very end of his tenure.

I’m okay if he’s waived, so long as it’s not to keep Geertsen up. There’s really no one I’d rather see Geertsen over.

 

[guitarguyvic]

Trolling? Because I have an opinion that differs from yours?

In the same manner that this group tends too overrate Devils players you seem to do the opposite with the Flyers.

We'll see next week but after last night if you think it will be a walkover I'm not sure how you reach that conclusion.

The idea that the Flyers are a good team is completely divorced from reality. This is one the worst takes/opinions on a team that I've ever seen.

 

[HBK27]

I think so. Everyone said we didn’t need a center. Unfortunately, Nico is made of clay so we certainly should have drafted Wright. The draft has been the dark cloud over this organization since the Golden era of Lou and Conte. Sure, we have a couple nice pieces, but the big picture sure looks glum. I’m betting we don’t make the playoffs and the way we draft what’s the sense in having a high pick. This losing is just getting old, just like me.

Clay is much better than glass as it's much, much more durable.

I really don't have the energy to debate who we should've drafted in the most recent draft. What's done is done and it's going to be quite a few years until we determine if it was the correct pick or not.

 

[Bleedred]

The only thing I’m really taking from last night’s game is Blackwood pretty much regressed to his mean on the preseason after the very good Rangers game and half of the Montreal game (where he allowed one goal, but it was also a weak one and another goal where he goes down way too early) that he played.

Goal 2 was so bad that Butch Goring hated it almost as much as I did and I didn’t think goal 5 was any good.

Most people see that as “Great shot! Incredible! Give the shooter credit!” I see that as a goalie with a weak ass glove hand that may as well have a cinder block for a trapper.

And the wraparound that wasn’t an actual goal that O saved……… that would have easily been weaker than the second goal had that actually gone in. In watching every goal around the league the last 4 years, wraparound goals are much less common than those bad angle short side goals that sneak in. I’m pretty sure Blackwood either allowed a wraparound goal in the season finale or it was another case where a skater had to save it.

 

[ninetyeight]

I’m not going to waste energy getting upset over the outcome of a preseason game when they iced and AHL lineup.

Did you even read my post? I don't care about the outcome, I care how the players perform. You can have a good game and show good things even in loss. In this game almost everyone was terrible and didn't play at their level/potential. Preseason games might not matter for regular season points, but they definitely matter for players trying to make the team or get more ice time. A lot of these AHL guys will be / are suppose to be future devils, so I think people should care whether they look good or not.

There's still one game left in the pre-season, but it's very likely the Devils will already ice a full "a-team" lineup similar to their opening lineup. Which means a lot of people will get waived and sent down based on this (and the past few) games. So instead of putting Johnsson on waivers and sending down Geertsen, Boqvist might get waived (possibly picked up), maybe even Zetterlund (I hope not), Holtz might be sent down, Wood's middle6 slot is now Tatar's and Blackwood is most likely our backup and we still don't know if he can be a consistant nhl goalie.