[19Yzerman19]

Originally Posted by Red John

Advanced stats are helpful but there's a reason it's 99% basement bloggers that keep trumpeting them. They don't describe what actually happened on the ice, only the result of those actions.

This is not only wrong, it doesn't even make any sense. Of course stats describe what happened on the ice. Regardless of the stat, that's the case. The "goals" stat describes who scored how many goals. Plus / Minus describes who was on the ice for goals for their team and against their team.

The "watch the games" schtick has been so done to death by now it's absolutely laughable; those basement bloggers watch way, way more hockey than you do and pay much closer attention - these are the guys who re-watch every leafs game from last season holding a stop watch to see how much total time the Leafs had the puck compared to their opposition, or record every single Flyers zone entry as well as their opponents' to see how much more successful teams are when carrying the puck in as opposed to dumping and chasing.

So-called advanced stats are more predictive simply because goals themselves are a rare enough event that a certain amount of randomness plays into whether a goal is created, whereas shot totals create a larger sample size and as a result, you can discern a clearer pattern that has less randomness and noise. Which is why they're predictive of who's going to be successful at the end of the year - see quote from Kent below.

Originally Posted by SuperMatt18

There is no correlation to a team using advanced stats and being successful at this time.

There's certainly a correlation between being GOOD at "advanced stats" and being successful. From Kent Wilson of Flames Nation:

Since 2007-08 (not including last year), 75% (50/66) of teams with a possession ratio between 50-54.9% have made the playoffs, while 100% of clubs with a possession rate about 55% (8/8) have made the dance. On the other hand, just 31% of clubs with a corsi ratio below 50% made the playoffs over the same period (22/70), while no team below 44.9% made the dance.