Quote:
Originally Posted by Tinordi
I don't know anyone who's saying that we should use stats over observation. I haven't read a single basement blogger who's saying to fire your scouting department and buy my spreadsheet.
What I am seeing though are people saying that you need to start looking in this to help make decisions and alot of pushback from people saying that those tools are useless. Especially in some mainstream hockey circles.
So I think you're making my point, we knew that the Kotalik trade didn't pass the smell test? So why did it happen? Would using more advanced metrics have helped kibosh that deal? Maybe not. But you're going to find that GMs who are using these tools will be signing better value contracts for production and making better trades against GMs who don't use them.
Philadelphia and Toronto are good cautionary tales of ignoring these stats. They've made decisions that the stats wouldn't have supported and they look like bad decisions. In the zero-sum world that is the NHL that's all the difference.
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Calgary under Feaster was one of the first teams to have a 'stats guy' and they made ridiculous moves left and right.
When it boils down to it - the anti-stat arguement is this - use your stats and tell me something that is going to happen before it happens (and preferably something less obvious than Toronto is going to fall in the standings because they get outshot by 20 shots every game). Tell me the guy contenders should be targeting that is going to make a difference (and isn't super obvious).
People just want some kind of bold prediction to prove these matter. We already saw the Kings win the Stanley Cup so telling us after the fact that the stats saw this coming doesn't impress anyone.