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Originally Posted by Jay Random
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.
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I don't think people who know PDO say it is "largely an indicator of luck", but rather that teams whose PDO deviates far from 100 can be said to be lucky or unlucky. And as I noted in an earlier reply the bias of the commentator will affect that 'luck' statement.
And not unfairly, I think. Lets look at the Flames. We were 26th in the NHL last year in PDO with a 99.0. Finished 27th in the standings. This year we are third in PDO at 102.7 and 8th in the standings. Key differences: we lost Mike Cammalleri and gained Jonas Hiller. Our goaltending at even strength has actually fallen to around league average (14th), but our shooting percentage is ungodly high - in Pittsburgh and Tampa territory. And lets face it, guys like Bouma, Hudler and Jooris are less likely to maintain ridiculous shooting percentages than guys like Crosby and Malkin and Stamkos are.
So when looking at teams likely to be a little 'lucky', it's hard to complain when Calgary is included in that list.
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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.
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Agreed. However, the regression to the mean works both ways. So while everything tightens up, that means Calgary is likely to go down, but Chicago, Vancouver, Colorado, Minnesota and Dallas are likely to come up. That will squeeze the Flames in the overall standings.
Taking PDO exclusively, the Flames are actually probably a little unlucky to be 8th as we have the third best PDO. But when one looks at how high some of the shooting percentages are, and how those are likely to regress, and how we aren't controlling the puck as much as we need to be (the last two games notwithstanding) and the fact that we are dead last in offensive zone faceoffs but face the third most defensive zone faceoffs, and the combination of factors makes an argument: If we do not improve in many of these areas, chances are we fall farther than some other teams.
And I find it hard to disagree with that. If nothing changes, the stats predict we tumble down a little. Fortunately, much can change. Even something as simple as getting a guy like Backlund back would be a major boon.