Quote:
Originally Posted by Tinordi
I think one of the reasons there's so much antipathy to "advanced stats" is that they refute long held tropes, biases and stories we tell ourselves about team X or player Y. We don't like that, we like the story of "heart" and a player being "clutch." It creates a causal and hence relatable nature to the game. Watching the game and drawing conclusions is available to anyone who wants to do it whereas those who want and are able to evaluate data is a much smaller segment of the population. That's seen as an attack by many, that somehow there knkowledge of the game isn't as valuable as new knowledge, of course there would be almost a visceral pushback.
But that's the precise value of the stats, they provide a way to 'ground-truth' your biases and assumptions. Are they perfect, no but should that preclude them from being used? Are they any less perfect that Joe fan sitting on the couch complaining about how terrible Phaneuf is?
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I can't speak for everyone - but I don't care about heart or clutch... they are just attributes that get applied to players on winning teams (i.e. Iginla's reputation here when the team won in the mid-2000s versus when they lost at the end of his run here).
These stats are not advanced. Added together save percentage and shooting percentage is not advanced. Tracking shots on net is not advanced. They are just taking what we know already and putting numbers on it.
There are advanced stats out there that make a difference - dump-ins versus carrying the puck in, which players work best together, match-ups, etc.
At this point you are using an 19 game sample and trying to draw conclusions from it.
The Flames have been better of late. Which is the real Flames - the team at the beginning of the year that getting outshot widely or the team now that is playing better? We don't yet know.