Quote:
Originally Posted by gvitaly
I don't think anyone is pretending it's simple, but there's definitely a correlation between certain things. It's difficult to simply say do X, Y, and Z and win the Stanley Cup in 5–10 years. Obviously, we're dealing with players, injuries, bounces, and referees, so there will always be random events that influence a playoff series, or help a team win the cup.
Dismissing something, or poking holes in something, is a lot easier than doing the work in an attempt to understand if there's a pattern in the data. Moreover, I don't think anyone here is attempting to draw a conclusion for you. It's an attempt to get a better picture than a cliché like: "make the playoffs, and anything can happen", which isn't wrong, but oversimplifies things.
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Let me be clear: I love stats, and I appreciate people doing the work.
What I am saying is that we actually haven't seen a lot of correlation so far. Look at the scatter plot above - not much correlation there. People are doing the work because they want to find the patterns and the correlations, and I am just saying, there aren't as many as we would have thought, going in.
There is no simple way to build a team: every team is limited by the cap, and by the 50-man roster. And every team can acquire assets via the draft, trades (a net zero sum game), and free agency. And the draft is self-correcting: if you do poorly, you get better draft picks.
As a result of all these things, most of the fish in this eco system, are roughly the same size, give or take.