Quote:
Originally Posted by opendoor
A team's record actually is often a poor indicator of their overall strength and level of play because winning or losing close games often comes down to luck. While W/L are probably the most important metric, shot and goal differential are probably better at predicting future performance. One needs to look no further than a team like Minnesota last year. Everyone was marveling at their hot start but their underlying numbers made it pretty clear that they were in for a correction and many correctly predicted their fall in the standings. Conversely, LA finished 13th in the league last year but in terms of team Fenwick (basically 5 on 5 shot differential including missed shots) in close games they were 4th in the league and 1st in the league over the last couple of months.
Right now Calgary is top 10 in the league in Fenwick so that would suggest that their play is much better than their place in the standings. That doesn't necessarily mean they'll actually see a big jump in their position, but given their play so far they should easily be in 8th-10th place right now.
That said, 3 years of playoff misses with essentially the same team should give pause to any analysis of their start. I'd say it's just as likely that the Flames play dips to match their record as it is their record jumps up to match their play, especially given that 5 of the first 6 were at home. And that last point is key even when talking about shot differential. Virtually every team in the league maintained a positive shot differential at home whereas only a few were able to do that on the road so the positive numbers we're seeing right now could be largely due to the effect of the Flames' favorable schedule to start the year.
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This is the key here. The Flames underlying numbers are excellent so far and it's easy to say that it's just an unlucky start. But when you consider we've played 5 of 6 at home, have had 3 games against opponents coming off back-to-backs (two of which were the 3rd game in 4 nights), and have had two very long breaks (allowing them to integrate their systems better with the limited training camp) it'd be pretty bad if we didn't have good underlying numbers.
This road trip is the real key here. If the Flames can keep outshooting teams (regardless of results) then they might be onto something. The problem is that we're already behind the eight ball here and the Flames are going to have one of the best records in the league to get a sniff at the playoffs from here on in. That's a big test for a team that was a bubble playoff team at best going into the season.