Who would win a 7 game playoff series, Tampa or Washington

[VoluntaryDom]

Those 100 games include games vs teams like Ottawa, Detroit, etc which Tampa gets to feast on in the regular season. So the 7 game head to head means more. And you've been proven wrong anyway so whatever.

in no way is a 7 game sample more meaningful than a 100-150 game one. ever.

 

[TRASHCAT]

in no way is a 7 game sample more meaningful than a 100-150 game one. ever.

Except for you know the playoffs

 

[VoluntaryDom]

Except for you know the playoffs

In terms of prediction, no not really. Obviously for that specific season yes it’s more important.

 

[kuzy92]

Listen I think Tampa is a phenomenal team and they should definitely be considered the favorite at this point in the season.. They should be a huge favorite against anyone in the east except Pittsburgh and Washington. The Caps proved to me last year that they have the ability to suffocate the Lightning attack. My gut tells me they will match up again so we will see..

 

[Kalopsia]

yeah xg hasnt been shown to be predictive (though do note the use of the word yet, there just hasnt been a long enough study period on it)

I think there's still a lot of inputs that need to be added before something like this can work well. How fast the shot is, how long the shooter had had the puck, how fast they're moving, if they were passed the puck where did that pass come from, etc. How soon we'll have tracking data with that sort of specificity is way beyond my area of expertise. What xG might be in the future isn't really relevant to whether or not it's a useful stat for this conversation, though.

and i do feel that some teams xg are system related and not too indicative of the talent on the roster (WSH COL and BUF being so low, and CAR being so high) but i dont think washington is a better 5v5 team than tampa bay in general. for the small sample of this season they are doing better goals wise but a lot of that can be attributed to goaltending (or lack thereof for tampa). in both GF and when extending the sample to last season GD favor tampa. i do wish there was a shot quality model that factored in teams that make their living on the counter-attack like washington though. washington is a very good team but at this point i think tampa bay is the best 5v5 team in hockey and has shown to be just that over a large sample. and tampa i do not think is a team where xg isnt indicative of play. tampa is a very good team at clearing the crease defensively which shows up strongly in xg but thats mainly due to clearing out all the rebounds our goalies generate (especially domingue). tampa isnt amazing at defending the slot but does very well at defending around the net. and offensively, they are very good at getting shots from the slot.

if you can make any sense of what i just typed go on ahead.

I'll defer to your assessment of how the Lightning play, but I will say that as a lifelong Caps fan, I'm intimately familiar with how an offensive system and individual players can succeed under regular season conditions but wilt in the playoffs when teams play harder and adjust to systems over the course of a series. I can't pretend that I know hockey well enough to identify what translates to the playoffs and what doesn't (I first got into advanced stats because I've never been good at seeing the bigger picture while watching the games), but the 15-8 margin at 5 on 5 in last year's playoff series is obviously a point in the Caps favor in that regard. My guess is that the Caps' size/speed combo and defensive system allowed them to wear down the opposition over the course of the series. They were a combined 7-1 and outscored opponents 19-12 at 5 on 5 in the games 5-7 of their various series (+0.88/game), compared to going 9-7 and holding only a 33-27 margin at 5 on 5 in games 1-4 (+0.38/game). Yeah, it's a small sample size to draw a conclusion from, but it's better to make conclusions from small samples than from larger ones that might not be representative of what you're trying to assess.

 

[VoluntaryDom]

I think there's still a lot of inputs that need to be added before something like this can work well. How fast the shot is, how long the shooter had had the puck, how fast they're moving, if they were passed the puck where did that pass come from, etc. How soon we'll have tracking data with that sort of specificity is way beyond my area of expertise. What xG might be in the future isn't really relevant to whether or not it's a useful stat for this conversation, though.



I'll defer to your assessment of how the Lightning play, but I will say that as a lifelong Caps fan, I'm intimately familiar with how an offensive system and individual players can succeed under regular season conditions but wilt in the playoffs when teams play harder and adjust to systems over the course of a series. I can't pretend that I know hockey well enough to identify what translates to the playoffs and what doesn't (I first got into advanced stats because I've never been good at seeing the bigger picture while watching the games), but the 15-8 margin at 5 on 5 in last year's playoff series is obviously a point in the Caps favor in that regard. My guess is that the Caps' size/speed combo and defensive system allowed them to wear down the opposition over the course of the series. They were a combined 7-1 and outscored opponents 19-12 at 5 on 5 in the games 5-7 of their various series (+0.88/game), compared to going 9-7 and holding only a 33-27 margin at 5 on 5 in games 1-4 (+0.38/game). Yeah, it's a small sample size to draw a conclusion from, but it's better to make conclusions from small samples than from larger ones that might not be representative of what you're trying to assess.

agree with most of your post but definitely not with the bolded. id definitely take a regular season large sample over a small playoff one (though a small playoff sample over a small regular season one even if the regular season one is marginally larger). and yes xG does very much underrate the capitals defensive system which is very sound. but the caps have been a worse goals team 5v5 than tampa bay since the start of last year by a non insignificant margin.

 

[Kalopsia]

agree with most of your post but definitely not with the bolded. id definitely take a regular season large sample over a small playoff one (though a small playoff sample over a small regular season one even if the regular season one is marginally larger). and yes xG does very much underrate the capitals defensive system which is very sound. but the caps have been a worse goals team 5v5 than tampa bay since the start of last year by a non insignificant margin.

I just don't think regular season play is appropriately representative of playoff play. There's a concept in study design called selection bias, where error is introduced because the study population doesn't match the target population. I think that error is always going to be there in any attempt to use regular season data to predict playoff outcomes. In the regular season you're never playing a team more than twice in a row so the tactics are different, teams are conserving energy while refs call the game more strictly so speed and skill have more of a relative advantage over size and physicality, and teams can change systems over the course of a season so that looking at whole-season data becomes misleading. The Caps are a great example of that last point. They changed their defensive system late last season at the behest of some of the players (I made a comment about that here with more details if you're curious), and it seems to have been the catalyst for their improved 5 on 5 play in the playoffs which has carried over into this season. With that in mind, including their 5 on 5 stats from before that system isn't particularly relevant to judging their capabilities now.

 

[VoluntaryDom]

I just don't think regular season play is appropriately representative of playoff play. There's a concept in study design called selection bias, where error is introduced because the study population doesn't match the target population. I think that error is always going to be there in any attempt to use regular season data to predict playoff outcomes. In the regular season you're never playing a team more than twice in a row so the tactics are different, teams are conserving energy while refs call the game more strictly so speed and skill have more of a relative advantage over size and physicality, and teams can change systems over the course of a season so that looking at whole-season data becomes misleading. The Caps are a great example of that last point. They changed their defensive system late last season at the behest of some of the players (I made a comment about that here with more details if you're curious), and it seems to have been the catalyst for their improved 5 on 5 play in the playoffs which has carried over into this season. With that in mind, including their 5 on 5 stats from before that system isn't particularly relevant to judging their capabilities now.

in general i disagree that regular season and playoffs are so different, but i did not hear about the capitals defensive system change (which makes sense and explains how good they were 5v5 in the playoffs). that explains a lot about their apparent 5v5 improvement this season.

 

[Cursed Lemon]

If Tom Wilson concusses Kucherov, the Caps have a chance.

 

[Mikeaveli]

Homer voted Tampa but this is as close as it gets. Hopefully we will see this matchup in the ECF again

 

[bobbyking]

Tampa, dgaf about past results, extropolations from them are not linear either.

Vassy, Sergachev, Point and others can improve and be the difference, the teams are pretty equal in terms of talent with Tampa having the edge, Washington has a lot more experience, but I'm still taking Tampa.

Imo The real difference is iif stamkos gets back to prime form

 

[Hivemind]

It's a 7 game series, so I'll go with whoever has the hotter goalie.