Quote:
Originally Posted by 19Yzerman19
That's not the point. The point is that the results are clear: being good at puck possession, building your team so that the roster you ice has a high Corsi%, is something that GMs should strive for, because teams that have a high Corsi% are more successful than others. Good possession teams make the playoffs, bad ones tend not to, so if you're running a team, you should probably try as hard as possible to fall into the former category.
I agree with this. For example, Justin Williams is consitently one of the best possession players in the league, but I'd still rather have Phil Kessel. However, it certainly is a strong attribute to have, and since there are only so many Phil Kessel level talents in the league, it's absolutely an important factor to consider when making personnel decisions.
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Here's the thing... how do you build a team with high corsi? In theory would you not build the Oilers? A bunch of puck possession guys who can dangle and hold the puck?
Baseball... which kicked off the advanced stat brigade (moneyball, etc) is a series of one on one events so you can easily pull data and make decisions that way. It was also created by a bunch of true mathematical/statisical minds. Now you've got every two bit internet guy screaming... you need possession! That's great... but is it actually a skill a player can possess?
You look at Calgary's CORSI here -
http://www.behindthenet.ca/nhl_stati...34+45+46+63+67 - TJ Galiardi is one of the best guys, Jiri Hudler is in the bottom tier. That is a small example... but its why using the current advanced stats out there on an individual player basis is stupid. I'm sure Iginla and Bouwmeester's CORSI/FENwick or whatever else went from bad to good as soon as they left the Flames and were on better teams last year. Its way too dependent on your teammates.
I will close with this... Corsi and these advanced stats are clearly good for telling what happened and can predict on a team level what may happen. But until they can tell you how to fix it... they are useless for a GM beyond saying 'well we are being really lucky or unlucky right now and we might want to make a move to based on that'