Quote:
Originally Posted by Resolute 14
The thing about PDO is that it tends to closely match the NHL standings. Most teams end up + or - three spots difference between their PDO rank and their overall rank. The significant exceptions last year were the Leafs (6th in PDO, 23rd overall), Washington (8th PDO, 17th overall), San Jose (16th PDO, 5th overall)
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This is why I really don't understand those people who claim that PDO is largely an indicator of luck. The people who are saying the Flames are due for a fall based on PDO are basically saying, 'This team isn't good enough to have a PDO that high, and the proof of it is how high their PDO is.' This is circular reasoning with epicycles and eccentrics. It
begins with the assumption that the PDO
should regress to 100 in all cases; whereas the fact is that it regresses to a value indicative of the team's overall quality.
Moreover, there seems to be an assumption that the one team you want to criticize is the only one whose PDO will regress. Just from eyeballing the data offered up at various points in the season (and from a little common-sense knowledge of basic statistics), it would seem that the standard deviation of PDO over a small number of games, league-wide, will naturally be larger than the standard deviation over a whole season. That being so, everyone's PDO can be expected to regress somewhat towards the league mean as the number of games increases. But that can happen even if there is no change at all in the relative rankings.
What I mean: A team could have a PDO of 103 at this point of the season, let us say, and be 8th in the league by that measure. By the end of the year, the team could have a PDO of 101.5 and still be ranked 8th, because the grouping is that much tighter due to the larger sample size. To say that the team can't sustain a PDO of 103 is quite correct; to infer from this that the team doesn't deserve to be 8th, and is doomed to fall down the standings, is unjustified.