[Resolute 14]

Originally Posted by CorsiHockeyLeague

I actually strongly disagree with this. I think everyone was nearly as surprised that the Habs did what they did (Boston should have beaten them, they outplayed them over the course of the series). The reason Montreal's success was less expected than Colorado's was...

See, here is the difference. You are looking at other situational stats, and you are looking at basic stats, and you are looking at expectations based on the eyeball test and using that to form a more complete picture to form an understanding.

But the crowd I am talking about - and the ones that make up the majority of people pushing this argument, are looking only at CF% - or if they are marginally more interested in the stats, PDO. So they look at the Flames and say "OMG, 3rd worst Corsi, you're just lucky!" They looked at last year's Avs and said "OMG, 6th worst Corsi, you're just lucky!", but the 5th worst Corsi Habs? Dead silence. Why? Because their narrative said Montreal was a good team and Colorado was a bad team. Good team was good, so why look deeper? Bad team is good, so WTF?

But you do fall into their trap a little in your post by focusing on playoff success. That, most certainly was a post-facto rationalization. Because the fancystat guys needed to be right about the Avs, they just shifted the argument and pointed to Colorado's failure in a seven game series as justifying their original position. Funny how the dogma of sample size was tossed out the window when it became inconvenient, eh?

If people could look at it that way and hopefully are able to be rational and not emotional, they'd be better equipped to participate in these discussions without knee-jerk extreme reactions.

I agree entirely. I am, however, arguing that both sides are using emotion and knee-jerk reactions more than rational thought. As Darren Haynes mentioned last night, his timeline fills up with charts and graphs and Corsi numbers every time the Flames win. This happens because of the fancystats crowd's emotional need to be right.