Quote:
Originally Posted by edslunch
My gripe with PDO is the notion that everything must regress to the mean. Meaning if you played a long enough season every team should end up at 100%. And presumably every team then would be tied in the standings, every team would have an equal chance of winning the Cup.
That's patently ridiculous. Some goalies are elite, some aren't. Some players are more skilled scorers than others. Some teams have more talent, some teams have better systems, some teams have more injuries, etc., etc. Let's not assume the league is a bell curve.
Still, though, over time we can build up a pretty good idea of the normal range. If a team is putting up numbers that are unprecedented in NHL history then it's a fair bet they are over their heads. So while the idea that the Flames must drop back to 100 is BS, they are certainly outliers and may not be able to sustain it.
In short, I don't think the PDO crown is necessarily wrong, but they undermine any credibility by a) being too absolute about it, without considering other factors and b) expressing themselves very poorly.
|
While advanced stat guys can be dicks a lot of the time, I find it likewise unnecessary for people who hate advanced stats to be unnecessarily literal in a bid to disingenuously dismiss a stat.
The argument that teams will inevitably regress to the mean is not a literal statement. What it says is that people who track the stat believe teams will regress
toward the mean. Nowhere has it ever been suggested that every team would hit 100 exactly if the season was long enough. Also, no one has ever suggested there won't be outliers.
Likewise, people on both sides - depending on their belief or desire to dismiss the stat - take the "luck" comment far too literally. Take Josh Jorris. He has a shooting percentage of 27.4%. As much as some people hate the word, that simply is not sustainable. He's had good chances, and he's buried those chances. But at some point, his "luck" will change. A shot that is going in now hits the post instead. The goalie starts cheating to stop more of his shots. His teammates get fewer passes into prime areas through and he instead takes more shots from lower percentage areas. Numerous reasons why it will happen. Some the result of literal luck, some the result in a metaphorical sense.
Right now, we have a lot of rookies scoring a lot of points - the Flames lead the league in that regard by a ridiculous margin. There is no reason why people on the outside would not expect that the Flames will indeed regress toward the mean. And there is no reason why Flames fans should be upset by this. Otherwise, you all might as well get mad at yourselves and each other for predicting we'd finish near the bottom of the standings.