Quote:
Originally Posted by Erick Estrada
The only stat that matters in hockey is team winning percentage. If your team is winning more games than it loses, poor possession stats mean nothing just like if you are losing with great possession stats. I don't mind the stats as another tool in scouting but if you build a team on advance stats overachievers only I'm willing to bet you would be disappointed with the results more times than not as stats will never be able to quantify the difference between a player that's a winner and a player that's a good player but not a winner.
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Yeah, I pretty much think the exact opposite. Wins can be deceptive and stats have pointed to many teams with "inflated" winning percentages that were due to come back down to earth. I'd definitely rather have a GM that is active and looking to fix holes on our roster if we're being badly outperformed on possession and CORSI every game yet we're still managing to squeak out some wins. By no means do I think advanced stats are the be all end all, but to completely ignore them because winning percentage is all that matters is very short-sighted.
And you say that stats are useless cause they can't tell the difference between good players and winners - well, what makes someone a winner? That's not a trait you can build a team around as it's essentially meaningless. Is Tavares just a good player who's not a winner just because he doesn't have talented players around him? If Toews got traded to Florida and they missed the playoffs for the next 5 years, would you no longer consider him a winner? Yzerman and Sakic were losers for a very long time to start their careers before they were considered winners, just like many other great "winners". You make it sound like it's an intangible trait that someone is born with and can be identified. Winners are just a by-product of being on a winning team...and teams win based off their ability to create more scoring chances than the other team, outshoot their opponents, etc. And stats can HELP figure out how well a team is doing that...