Quote:
Originally Posted by CorsiHockeyLeague
This just demonstrates that you don't understand what you're talking about.
HDSC isn't subjective at all. It's just shots from a particular area of the ice, where the highest proportion of goals are scored from. Nothing remotely subjective about it.
PDO isn't "garbage". It's just... math. NHL save percentage plus shooting percentage always equals an even 1.000. If your PDO is above 1.000, you're either saving goals at an above average rate, or scoring at an above average rate on your shots, or both. Nothing remotely controversial or subjective about that.
No, they weren't. You're deluding yourself. There's a reason they got absolutely crushed by the Ducks that season - they were a bad hockey team, the second worst team in the playoffs that year. They won a bunch of games by being the "comeback kids", and if you think that's a sustainable way to win hockey games, you're just... wrong. Comparing the Hartley Flames to the way they are now is totally night and day.
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PDO IS garbage, sorry. Yeah, I understand where the math part comes from, it is just a completely stupid rationale. It is using simple math to justify something that it shouldn't. No, it doesn't always equal 1.000. It SHOULD equal how good you are at both. For instance, a good team SHOULD be over 1.000, no? A bad team will be under 1.000, no? Just because your PDO >1.000 doesn't mean you should see regression to the 'mean', and vice-versa.
Better teams SHOULD have solid goaltending and defence, correct? Better teams should also have better offensive players as well, correct? Why should they equal 1.000 and we should think of them as 'lucky' and that they are due for a regression? That makes zero sense. How about we think of them as a GOOD team. Sure, regression will eventually hit that team, but probably due to injuries, poor outings in which they are tired, or even in the long-term as teams start ageing and replacement players are of a lower quality.
So yes, PDO to me is a completely garbage stat created to explain away.... luck? Never bought it, never will.
Also, I am not 'against' metrics, and you really don't have to talk down to me here. Please go and see any actuary and he will look at CORSI and will tell you that the confidence interval is WAY too low to trust. Most risk-based industries will fire you on the spot with confidence numbers that low. This isn't to say that CORSI and the rest of the advanced metrics that we are using right now is useless - on the contrary, it still does help to explain a lot. The issue I have (and I am going to guess many people have) is that they are NOT infallible enough that you can really trust them to the point where if I question them, you get a stern talking to.
No, these metrics that you are passionately defending are not infallible, and there are always outliers - that's the basis of why they are not trustworthy enough - their confidence interval is too low.
Part of it has to do with making too many inferences. Ok, so can we agree that part of your name is kind of garbage? CORSI - what is CORSI? What I mean is what is the measurement describing? In the end, it is attempting to describe possession, correct? By using total shots + missed shots + blocked shots, at even strength 5on5, minus the opposing teams total shots + missed shots + blocked shots. In this way, you can infer possession, right? Do I have this right?
Well, now you have to count on the people tallying up these numbers have it right. Some arenas are notorious for poor counting stats - just shots on goal. Less of them to count, but they often get it wrong. "Nah, that was just a dump-in". So your data set is a little unreliable at it stands, but not (hopefully) terribly so. And then you use these numbers to state that it is showing possession, but without any regard at all to 'more patient teams' that like to pass the puck around a bit more, or teams that are way more effective on the cycle and have tonnes of zone time but generate few shots on net, etc. That isn't captured, so the numbers are further skewed.
What percentage of actual possession time is accurately captured in CORSI, do you think? Probably lower than it is made out to be.
Still, you can't argue that 'more shots' is usually more conducive to winning. Being out-shot isn't a sustainable winning strategy. So regardless of actual time of possession correlating with CORSI, out-shooting (or attempting to out-shoot) the opposition usually correlates with winning the game, right?
Except when it doesn't. Like Hartley's Calgary Flames for 1.5 seasons (and other teams that unexpectedly didn't make the playoffs, or that made it 'un-deservingly' from an analytical perspective).
The strategy that Calgary employed through most of the season was active sticks, clogging lanes, collapsing down low - essentially they wanted to keep as many HDSC from happening, and when they did happen, they wanted to contest as many of them as possible. They were also intent on creating as many HDSC (unchallenged) events as possible with trying to have a very quick transition. Them having success never contradicted the analytical community, but somehow it sure seemed like it and they were targetted as being "unsustainable". In my argument, it wasn't unsustainable. That's exactly the rationale there - limiting/challenging as many HDSC chances as possible, while trying to create more of them.
They weren't too interested in shots from the perimeter (which annoyed me to some extent because I felt they weren't aggressive enough defensively, and the odd accidental redirection of skates and so on was always a danger).
As for deluding myself - that's quite the jump to a conclusion. I never said that they were a good team - I said that style was sustainable to winning at that rate. That in NO WAY means that they should (or even could have) beat Anaheim - a bigger, more talented team throughout the line-up. Flames didn't stand a chance against them, no matter how much I 'wanted' them to. Anaheim was a damn good team with few holes to be exploited, and Calgary couldn't match them regardless of what the metrics were. You didn't need metrics to see it. You don't have to play Anaheim (or one of the top teams in the NHL) 82 games in a season. There is also effort level and off-game that explain-away some of those wins as well against good teams.
That's one of the places where HDSC falls short - some of the metrics are too subjective, some of them are not subjective enough (and it is pretty damn difficult to differentiate them into categories).
Because the analytics community does not differentiate in HDSC, it won't account for a system or structure that is focused more on limiting these challenges but allowing more outside chances. That's what Calgary's system was all about - I bet you can go back once you figure out what boxes to differentiate the HDSC for and against and see that Calgary usually got a few more solid chances for than they got against in most games for those 1.5 seasons. It was probably measurable, but because the data was not broken down enough, it didn't appear to be.
That's where the disconnect came from with people watching the games and analysts who didn't but just looked at the metrics instead. They didn't agree, and it got ugly, but it didn't agree BECAUSE it wasn't broken down enough. That's why analysts kept saying that "Calgary was lucky" and their playstyle is unsustainable, while people watching the games kept saying: "Calgary was the more dangerous team. The other team sure did a whole lot of nothing on the outside, but they aren't going to score from there".
So am I deluding myself in thinking that Calgary was the better team than Anaheim and should have beat Anaheim that year? Absolutely I would be deluding myself, but that has ZERO to do with the fact that Calgary's winning for that 1.5 seasons was in fact fairly sustainable given what they were trying to accomplish. Changing the conversation to me somehow expecting Calgary to beat Anaheim is off-topic and 'changing the goal posts', and is just distracting from the argument.
Calgary was not the best team in the NHL. They were one of the worst teams on paper, actually, but if not for their system (which is explained away as 'lucky' and unsustainable) which consisted of just trying to limit and interfere with as many high danger chances as possible, while trying to create as many as possible for themselves without caring too much about outside shots, they would have finished in the bottom 3 that year. It wasn't a pretty system, but I argue it was sustainable. The metrics just didn't differentiate enough. Doesn't imply that they should have been President's Cup winners and Stanley Cup champs, but I bet if you further analyze their data, you can see why they experienced better than anticipated success that year, especially when you factor in all the adversity they faced with injuries throughout the year. Their 'comebacks' were 'lucky' for sure, and shouldn't be counted on, but it was also a product of their system, and probably evened out somewhat with their 'bad luck' in regards to injuries. I don't know how to explain away comebacks to be honest, but as tracking increases and more metrics are fine-tuned (or better metrics are created), comebacks can be rationalized more down the road.
You can explain it away as 'luck', but IMO, luck is just a word you use when you don't have solid enough metrics to have a high enough confidence interval. The new tech and better tracking that the NHL is implementing will result in way better metrics (and better confidence in the existing ones), and will make all of this even more interesting.
For now, the metrics that we as fans are privy to are interesting and they correlate enough to have discussions on and are worth paying attention to, but they are far from infallible and do little to explain results that don't fit into the predictive narrative and people start bickering about it as "luck" and people say "metrics are stupid". That's what should happen through the evolution of metrics anyway. Will just take some more time.
But PDO is stupid, no matter how they track it.
