Quote:
Originally Posted by Kovaz
Good article. The only thing I'd disagree with is the use of the term "luck" for PDO. Sure, luck definitely influences your percentages, but IMO player execution is the bigger underlying factor. Kucherov's high PDO isn't because he's getting lucky - he's been absolutely in the zone for the last year. His shooting percentage is high because he's going bar-down every second shot. The coach can't just tell his players to be "in the zone", so I agree it's not fair to the coach to put too much weight on those numbers.
Save percentage is also far from random - it's subject to the same player execution fluctuations as shooting percentage, but because it's concentrated in one player it's more likely to be consistently high or low over a season. You don't get the averaging-out that shooting percentage gets due to the 18 skaters on the ice. So when I look at that LA Kings table, I think it's a little deceiving to see "Luck Look" and a high rank. It'd be easy to conclude at a glance that LA's been really lucky this year, when it's probably more accurate so say that Quick has been unreal.
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Absolutely and that's why I brought scoring chances into it.
A low shooting percentage from a team that shoots from a distant all the time would be meaningless. If the shooting percentage is high from a team that is highly ranked in scoring chances then you have another answer, and this is where luck enters into it.
Someone did an analysis on the Oilers start this season and they had something like 55% of their shots from the blueline compared to 35% last year. Corsi looked great, but their actual scoring chances weren't in line.
You bring up Tampa and Kucherov, they are just ahead of the Flames when it comes to share of scoring chances.