Quote:
Originally Posted by _Q_
I agree with this for the most part but I have to disagree that what's being quantified is accurate with regards to Corsi or Fenwick quantifying "possession". Those two stats quantify shot attempts and not possession, full stop. Sure, they can be used as a model to help understand possession, but they are not able to measure anything other than shot attempts. The only way to measure possession right now is to get a stop watch and time the number of minutes a team has possession of the puck during the game (and I'm sure some teams have employed that strategy).
For example, say you are trying to figure out how rich a group of 1000 people is, but for some reason, they don't want to tell you how much money they make. You find a correlation between wealth and the price of vehicle they drive. So you create a model in which you figure out what type of vehicle each one of those 1000 people drive and figure out where each one of them stands in terms of wealth. Sure it might make sense and it might be an accurate model for 95‰ of the population, but if one rich guy is happy driving a 1995 Accord or one not so rich guy puts all his money into a brand new Benz, then that throws everything out of whack.
Similarly, if a team employs a strategy in which they don't try to limit shot attempts, but try to limit scoring chances instead and instead of randomly firing pucks on net they hold on to the puck a bit longer in order to get into good scoring lanes, then it throws the whole corsi/Fenwick possession model out of whack as well.
In the vehicle wealth model, you can't say you're measuring wealth. By measuring the price of the vehicle you're measuring vehicle price and interpreting the data to figure figure out wealth.
Similarly, corsi/Fenwick aren't measuring possession no matter which way someone tries to spin it.
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That's his point. Corsi and Fenwick SHOULDN'T be used to measure possession. People using them incorrectly are saying "Corsi is high therefore they are a high possession team".
What Enoch is saying is both Corsi and Fenwick measure, for lack of a better team, "Shots AT goal" (one with blocked shots, one without).
Stats guys have managed to conclude that measuring Shots at goal is a pretty good proxy for possession (i.e. someone who has a lot of shots at goal is more likely to be controlling the play).
Presumably this is a lot easier to calculate than using a stop watch, which is why people use them.