There are too many posts to quote from the last 3 or 4 pages...
But the fact that I'm seeing so many people point to goal differential as a better statistic than those useless advanced stats tells me that a lot of people either don't understand what advanced stats are or are so biased against the current Flames coaching staff that they do understand and are intentionally mischaracterizing what advanced stats are and how the Flames organization uses them.
Goal differential is a great stat for showing which teams have good results. Just like wins, points, GF, GA etc all do. But they aren't a predictor on a smaller scale. You can't use goal diff during a game because the result of each game is solely determined by goal differential. So if a game is tied 0-0 after 1 period, goal diff is useless. However other advanced stats may paint a better picture of which team is carrying the play and is likely to win the game.
Advanced stats are typically used to show underlying trends that may suggest how a team is currently and should perform going forward. Goal diff can't do that. Now, advanced stats are certainly far from perfect but no one, not on CP, the media or the Flames organization and especially the coaching staff have suggested that this is the case. And yet I see post after post after post claiming this is the case.
Just because Bingo et al have repeatedly pointed to advanced stats as an indication that the Flames underlying metrics don't add up with the result based stats (wins/goal diff etc) doesn't make them Flames schills or on the Flames payroll or condescending aholes.
It just means that there's a bit of a statistical anomaly in terms of how the Flames have performed to date.
I would assume that the Flames coaches and their statisticians and the rest of the organizations uses advanced stats similarly to how Bingo uses them. To help support the eye test, to use as another method of evaluating. The idea that they are playing for advanced stats, instead of just using them as supporting data is asinine.
The other thing is that we don't know with 100% certainty exactly what advanced stats the Flames are using. As if they just use corsi and fenwick and ignore the fact that the results based stats are poor but think we're amazing.
Otherwise, yeah definitely, you want a stat that is a good indication of the standings and Goal Diff is definitely it.
And this doesn't even scratch the surface of player motivation, intangibles, luck, special teams, momentum etc. Even if we knew that having a good advanced stat x led to wins, you don't play just for that stat. You understand how good teams who win get good stats in that category and I think everyone, including the Flames, knows that.
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