Quote:
Originally Posted by Bingo
Carolina had terrible goalending. They're an easy solve.
The Blackhawks lost their goaltender for most of the season.
The Habs had a down year from Carey Price.
The Flames stand alone as the hardest club to figure out.
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We've been talking about this stuff for years, if people still don't understand it it's because they're determined not to.
Possession correlates to success. Scoring chances correlate to success. There are a number of caveats that can change this:
- Goaltending performance - The biggest factor in team success isn't accounted for by these numbers.
- Shooting talent - Kucherov needs fewer shot attempts than Stajan to score.
- Special teams - Possession and scoring chance stats are even strength stats.
- Score effects - unless you control for them, out-corsiing someone when you're down 5-1 does not indicate a quality performance from your side.
- Puck luck - It's obvious that "the bounces" are a thing; I have no idea why people don't want to admit this is at least one of a number of factors.
And other intangible things. People are emotional creatures, so sure, leadership matters. But the thing that matters most to success in today's NHL is skill. Generating possession, generating scoring chances, these are skills that lead to goals, and goals lead to wins. That does not imply that they are the only things that lead to wins, or that you're guaranteed a win if you out-chance the other team. But if you do it consistently, you're going to put yourself in a better position than if you don't.
Just by way of example, NHL average shooting percentage in all situations was 9.3% this year. If you outshoot the other team consistently, and both sides score on about 9.3% of their shots, you're going to end up winning more often than not. If not because you're consistently scoring on less than 9% of your shots, the issue may be a lack of finishing talent - see Canadiens, Montreal. If you're not because the other team is consistently scoring on more than 9.3% of their shots, the issue may be goaltending - see Hurricanes, Carolina. That's not to say other factors aren't involved (power play proficiency, for example), but this is information you can use to start to diagnose what happened. And none of this is rocket science.