TSN: Standings projection: Leafs ranked 4th in Atlantic

[Mess]

I don't think it's as one sided as you're suggesting, but to pile on, 30 goal scorer Milan Michalek missed most of last season too.

True, but so did Lupul for the Leafs so I considered that a wash goal wise as both players when healthy can reach 30 potentially.

Michalek
2011-12 - Ottawa Senators - 77 games 35 goals 25 assists 60 points

Lupul
2011-12 - Toronto Maple Leafs - 66 games 25 goals 42 assists 67 points

 

[Quares27]

I would love to see how the great teams in the 70s, 80s and 90s (Habs, Flyers, Bruins, Islanders, Oilers, Penguins, Red Wings) fared in Corsi/Fenwick. I suppose that's impossible now though?

Someone could dig their game videos up and track it but aint nobody got time for that

 

[Mess]

Sportsnet preview show has the Leafs finishing 5th and in a battle for the last wild card spot this year.

 

[Cap'n Flavour]

Leafs making playoffs last year. Bam there's your proof. Need more?

Proof of what? Who predicted everything that happened last season with their gut?

If you think it's proof that advanced stats don't work or are inferior to ~just watching the game~, you're going to have to try harder and read up on statistics again. Just because something is improbable doesn't mean it literally will never happen, ever. Sports have statistical outliers, just like everything else.. However, the larger your sample size, the more likely outliers will eventually regress to the mean. Yes, the very few best at something can consistently remain better than the competition, but there's very little evidence that the Leafs' elevated sh% is one of those things, or that it's because of some superior shot selection system than only Randy Carlyle is capable of implementing.

 

[hockeywiz542]

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/spor...luck-may-run-out-this-season/article14623017/

It’s a paragraph sure to draw the ire of any fan of the Toronto Maple Leafs, especially after a long-awaited playoff berth appears to have the team headed in the right direction after seven seasons in the rebuild-on-the-fly wilderness.

But Rob Vollman only cares what the numbers say.

And in the case of the Leafs breakthrough 48-game season, in his opinion, the news isn’t very good on that front.

“Even if the season had continued to 82 games, the Toronto Maple Leafs may still have finished among the top five luckiest teams [in the last five years],†Vollman writes in Hockey Abstract, a statistical tome released this year that is meant to mimic what Bill James’s various Baseball Abstracts were to that sport in the 1980s.

“They finished in the top five in the Eastern Conference standings despite being outshot 1543 to 1264. There was not a single Leaf [player] with whom Toronto outshot their opponents throughout the course of the season. They started the lowest percentage of shifts in the offensive zone in the entire league, the second most in the defensive zone, and their puck possession rate was also second lowest in the league.â€

Vollman, who has been providing NHL-related commentary for Hockey Prospectus and ESPN for years, is hardly alone in his analysis, either.

 

[Patty Lee]

I'm sorta curious as to why Tampa sent down Drouin .

He, with Stamkos and MSL would've been an unreal line for them.

With time running out with St Louis, and Stamkos hitting FA in 3 years, they REALLY need to do something. This whole stuck in less then mediocrity level is a bit worrisome.

Buffalo, who need to deal Vanek and Miller sooner rather then later could be set up nicely for the future, however it all depends on the deals they get for their players.

Flordia... Who knows. Barkov, Gudbranson, Huberdeau, Markstrom, Kulikov etc they have good pieces, they need to start to come together.

glad they did; I'll see him tonight

 

[Damisoph]

Someone could dig their game videos up and track it but aint nobody got time for that

Thought so. Another reason for me to basically dismiss those stats completely. Offensive zone starts seem to be more important to a player's value on this forum than goals and assists.

I'm sure the stats have some analytical value, I just hate how the stats are cherry picked to fit the writer's agenda.

 

[Dangles McGavin]

Can someone give a quick prayer to the hockey gods?

 

[Patty Lee]

3 of the last 4 Stanley Cup winners have come from the Western Conference, so the East wouldn't be considered the superior conference to me when the Champs are crowned in the West.

it's funny when I made the same type of comment about the QMJHL vs OHL and WHL and it was shot down quite quickly and harshly

 

[Patty Lee]

Anyway, this whole thing is over your "vastly superior" comment, which after this runaround you can probably admit isn't completely accurate.

why do you have to continue to pick at it? all that nonsense over one word....

 

[Raptactics29]

Interesting. I believe Detroit's not going to be as good as people think but they'll still be a solid team. Weiss and Alfredsson are solid additions but they're not good enough to make them 2nd place teams. Also I believe Ottawa isn't better then us neither. Boston and Toronto, IMHO will battle it out for top spot. If we get very good goaltending and can stay relatively healthy we will be a very very tough team to beat. We're still a young team at all positions but we're really good at all positions too. Having two 25 year old goaltenders with elite potential is an amazing thing to have but if we're contending it's a little nerve racking because who knows how well they'll play in the playoffs. I have complete faith in them as Bernier's a beast who got to watch Quick for a bunch of years and Reimer's experience from last year should help him even though it ended about as horribly as it could have. I dunno, I just really like this team and the potential this season. The future looks bright and the cupboards look stocked as well. Go Leafs Go!

 

[ULF_55]

How did TSN do?

TSN was projecting this year's playoff teams earlier today. Here are their projections.

Summary: TSN had four Canadian teams missing playoffs. Calgary, Edmonton, Winnipeg and Montreal. Here are the projection for west:
Central:
1. Chicago
2. St.Louis
3. Minnesota
4. Dallas -w
5. Nashville
6. Winnipeg
7. Colorado

Pacific:
1. Los Angeles
2. San Jose
3. Anaheim
4. Vancouver -w
5. Edmonton
6. Phoenix
7. Calgary

 

[Liminality]

How did TSN do?

They did pretty bad lol

 

[LeafHatred]

Lol , thread is hillarious.

 

[Leafs at Knight]

Dat mod bump.

 

[Peasy]

Colorado last LOL!

 

[hockeyes]

To be fair, a wild card spot is about where the Leafs should have finished.. if you know, they didn't crumple like a wet blanket.

 

[cup67]

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/spor...luck-may-run-out-this-season/article14623017/

One metric often used in this regard is called Fenwick Close, which is essentially attempted shots, for and against, in situations where the score in the game is close.

According to behindthenet.ca, the leading source for these types of stats, the Leafs were second last in the NHL in Fenwick Close, with a mark of 44 per cent that was better than only the Buffalo Sabres.

But possession wasn’t the only trouble spot for Toronto.

In one section of Hockey Abstract, Vollman examines the previous five NHL seasons and picks out the “luckiest” teams involved, with the 2012-13 Leafs eventually finishing No. 1 out of the 150 teams analyzed.

To do so, he looked at five key areas where team success is often very volatile and tends to regress to the mean year over year: shooting and save percentage, special teams, injuries, overtime and shootouts, and one-goal games.

The better teams did in all five areas, the more likely that their success that season was “luck” driven.