Quote:
Originally Posted by Bingo
OK ... how do you focus on shooting percentage.
Hartley's 14-15 team was off the charts because they played a counter attack style that was unsustainable long term.
Get out played badly, but catch the other team with a Rocky Balboa right hook out of nowhere.
Not a plan for success.
Possession isn't a bad word. It's good to have the puck, generate more shots and scoring chances than the opposition. If these chances aren't as dangerous as other teams than you have to question the system.
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Was it unsustainable though?
After experiencing both systems, I am not sure that you can call Hartley's system unsustainable.
For one, that was a team with less talent, and their best players were less experienced. You are bound to have growing pains under those conditions regardless of what system you play.
I think this thread actually addresses (or comes close to addressing) how we feel about the advanced metrics that were being thrown around saying that Hartley's system was unsustainable, while under Gulutzan they were telling us that the Flames are poised to break out.
I would actually love to see someone with a lot of time and inclination actually go through the Hartley teams and then go through the past two Gulutzan years and see if in fact the Flames were being out-played regularly and it was unsustainable, and if Gulutzan's system was any more sustainable and they ACTUALLY out-played the opposing team.
I don't think that a system that relies on shot blocking and clogging up shooting lanes (and passing lanes) is NECESSARILY unsustainable. Why should it be? Why should systems that try and guard against attempts on net that are actual highly probably of creating goals, while allowing teams to have lower percentage opportunities to the outside?
I think this is where CORSI and all the high danger chances kind of fail, and where this thread actually seems to start pulling everything together. I would have been biased against Hartley's system too - get out-shot most nights? That doesn't sound like a legitimate sustainable strategy to winning!
Yet there are international football teams that are much better at the counter-attack. Yet their are boxers that win championships by being masters at the counter (as your were referencing).
I know that you really believe in the present collection of advanced metrics (and honestly not criticizing you for it). I think they help to describe the game, and provides additional information that is always valuable. I just think that what can be derived from them is not what they are being used for, and that there HAS to be another layer of statistical information that seems missing. Confidence intervals are too low still. There are still outliers that fall TOO FAR from the expected outcome.
Deluxe is, I believe, onto something here, and it may show that Hartley's system was unsustainable, and Gulutzan's system was sustainable, but when the current statistical body of work is only touching on certain areas that are probably much more important than what we realize, I can't claim that either way is in fact any more sustainable than the other.
When shots are being recorded without attention to the context that they are coming from (like moving side to side), and even when CORSI is being measured and possession is inferred from it... it leaves the door wide open to misleading interpretations.
I really believe that when it comes to advanced metrics in hockey, we are still very much in its' infancy.