Only Florida has allowed more goals per game than the Flames

[SebC]

Originally Posted by EddyBeers

Your way is supported by absolutely nothing.

Stats. Post yours.

[Flames Draft Watcher]

I'd say pretty much everybody who watched the game or the highlights and then read your analysis of the goals knows how out to lunch your analysis is. I'd take some time to point out how flawed your analysis is but it would be a total waste of time. Stats are one thing, your attempt to blame every single goal on Kiprusoff when the majority of them were clearly not his fault is another.

I'd love to see Rinne or Lundqvist's stats playing behind these Flames, I suspect they'd take a severe hit. The Flames are giving away some prime, prime scoring chances.

Kiprusoff has definitely let in more softies this year than in years past. Tonight was not a night of softies though.

You lost all credibility when you blamed him in a previous year when he was one of our best players. You just don't seem to have a grasp on reality when it comes to goaltending.

[opendoor]

Originally Posted by SebC

That's really odd. You'd think ES SV% would persist, rather than ES GA.

Sorry, I should've been clearer. The 2 GA difference is the over a normal starter's workload in a season so it's still based on sv%. And that's 2 GA in addition to the normal random variation from year to year, not just 2 GA difference total.

[DeluxeMoustache]

Originally Posted by SebC

Stats. Post yours.

No. Don't start this again. Is this the guy who made a ham handed attempt at correlating shot distance and quality and determining that quality had no bearing on save percentage? Any model only as good as its assumptions and this guy can't derive significant enough inputs to get meaningful outputs.

Goodness. Step back, man. Think about what you are saying. Watch the Flames and think about what you are doing. Blaming Kipper for a deflection off a skate. Deflections go in all the time and saves are often a function of positioning. You are actually suggesting a backdoor tapin by a guy who breezed through the crease to establish position without Bouw flinching is on Kipper.

[SebC]

Originally Posted by Flames Draft Watcher

You lost all credibility when you blamed him in a previous year when he was one of our best players. You just don't seem to have a grasp on reality when it comes to goaltending.

Best player by fiat? Just because people said he was one of our best players doesn't make it true.

[SebC]

Originally Posted by DeluxeMoustache

No. Don't start this again. Is this the guy who made a ham handed attempt at correlating shot distance and quality and determining that quality had no bearing on save percentage? Any model only as good as its assumptions and this guy can't derive significant enough inputs to get meaningful outputs.

More stats! Post yours.

The ability of defensemen to affect shot quality against does exist in the population, but it is so small that we will never be able to sensibly apply it to any player in particular.

[puckluck2]

those aren't stats, those are opinions.

[SebC]

Originally Posted by puckluck2

those aren't stats, those are opinions.

The stats that support the conclusion are contained in the link.

[puckluck2]

Originally Posted by SebC

The stats that support the conclusion are contained in the link.

What's your point? In the end, they're still the opinion of the author.

It is literally impossible for there to be stats onto whether a goalie is effected by high quality shots or not.

[opendoor]

Originally Posted by puckluck2

I would love to see that article.

Here's the one I was referring to, though there are others:

http://vhockey.blogspot.ca/2009/07/s...y-fantasy.html

Why the sudden change in Bryzgalov's game? Did he really get that bad that fast? or did Phoenix play a better defensive game?

Bryzgalov's best sv% was under Gretzky (as was his worst while in Phoenix) so I don't think the correlation is abundantly clear. He did have 2 good years under Tippett, but he also played well under Carlye and Gretzky for periods as well.

Maybe he's crumbling under the pressure in Philadelphia? Or maybe the natural variation we've seen throughout his career is just at one of its low points? I don't think anyone who has watched him thinks he's playing as well in Philadelphia as he did in Phoenix, irrespective of defensive schemes. Most starters are generally pretty erratic year to year and he's a good example of that.

I mean, look at last year's flavors of the month that people were saying were simply products of good defensive systems. Despite playing behind the same coaches and largely the same team, Smith, Elliott, and Halak have seen 30, 90, and 45 point drops in their save percentages. Small samples to be sure, but if they were simply products of their system then why are they performing so poorly under the same systems this year?

[SebC]

Originally Posted by opendoor

http://vhockey.blogspot.ca/2009/07/s...y-fantasy.html

Ha!

You can't swing a cat on the internet without hitting a goaltender apologist.

[DeluxeMoustache]

Originally Posted by SebC

More stats! Post yours.

Part of the academic exercise is to read and understand in detail and to critically evaluate. You should find that these guys are unable to generate significant correlations and presuming that phenomena do not exist. The data required to reflect actual situations is not adequately measured, unfortunately, and these guys are unable to generate meaningful results. Garbage in, garbage out.

Just because someone can not generate a statistically significant result from limited data does not make their naturally limited opinions gospel.

So you go ahead and post your own validation of these guys' failures to make meaningful conclusions, relate them to Flames game situations, and generate meaningful results.

Tell you what. Gross simplification here. Go ahead and look at save percentages from shootouts vs games and decide whether the problem is the existence or measurement of shot quality.

[SebC]

Originally Posted by DeluxeMoustache

Part of the academic exercise is to read and understand in detail and to critically evaluate.

Fine. Post something and I'll evaluate it. Point is, I'm being criticized for having an argument "supported by absolutely nothing". That can't be true, as the opposing arguments are supported by even less.

[DeluxeMoustache]

Originally Posted by SebC

Fine. Post something and I'll evaluate it. Point is, I'm being criticized for having "an argument based on nothing". That can't be true, as the opposing arguments are based on even less.

Can't be bothered. I have read all of this stuff. I know what data I would like to see available as inputs for a model and I know that nobody has measured it adequately. Again, garbage in garbage out, and these guys generally conclude that phenomena are not statistically significant, based on the wrong input data.

Consider the 2 on 1 where Bouw pinches and Brodie overplays. All these guys have to go on is shot location. No two shots from the same location are alike. And the attempt to correlate to available data means stuff like game situations such as score muddy the issue and add further noise. No wonder these guys never calculate that anything really has influence. It is incredibly limited and flawed.

Reality is that to propose a model you would have to watch way more hockey to compile your own data because nobody measures data that captures situations well enough. There are always multiple layers and inferences.

So no. Given the data available is unsuitable to generate a meaningful model I'm not writing a thesis for you.

[BigBrodieFan]

Originally Posted by SebC

Fine. Post something and I'll evaluate it. Point is, I'm being criticized for having an argument "supported by absolutely nothing". That can't be true, as the opposing arguments are supported by even less.

[Flames Draft Watcher]

Originally Posted by SebC

Fine. Post something and I'll evaluate it. Point is, I'm being criticized for having an argument "supported by absolutely nothing". That can't be true, as the opposing arguments are supported by even less.

Incorrect. Watching hockey and noticing that a goalie had no chance on a goal is not "supported by even less" than your garbage statistical theories. It is in fact much more firmly grounded in reality. Of course you seem to have let these statistical arguments cloud your ability to analyze hockey to the point that you blame goalies for goals that clearly were not their fault.

But whatever. I don't think you'll be convinced. And I'm skeptical that you are convincing anyone else with your ludicrous analysis. Tipped point shots are one of the most common types of goals, obviously every goalie struggles to react once they are already moving in a particular direction with their slide and their hands. To suggest that a tipped shot is saveable because it slowed it down slightly and went in the corner of the net is a preposterous suggestion. Do you re-watch the goals at frame by frame speed or something? You can't seriously watch that goal at normal speed and think Kipper has to stop it? Or maybe you are that delusional.

W/E. I'm done with you. Not sure why I clicked to see your ignored posts anyways, waste of time.

[Flames Draft Watcher]

Never thought I'd agree so strongly with DeluxeMoostasche They are bang on, a lot of the attempts at statistical analysis are flawed to begin with and end up generating horribly flawed conclusions.

What is funny is that it is so obvious and so easy to see that the quality of a scoring chance affects the ability to stop it. Flames give up a lot of high quality scoring chances this year. Giveaways, failure to cover guys in the slot, failure to prevent guy from redirecting, etc. As I said this hasn't been Kiprusoff's best year by any stretch but SebC's analysis of those Nashville goals was good for nothing but a laugh and a head shake.

[SebC]

Originally Posted by Flames Draft Watcher

What is funny is that it is so obvious and so easy to see that the quality of a scoring chance affects the ability to stop it.

There was a time when a flat earth was "obvious" and "easy to see" too.

It is not merely a question of whether shot quality exists for a particular shot, but of whether teams influence their aggregate opponent average shot quality to the extent that a supposedly good goalie could have a bottom-3 save percentage.

[Mathgod]

I think the truth may be somewhere in the middle.

Take Scott Clemmensen as an example. http://panthers.nhl.com/club/player.htm?id=8466339

In Jersey when Brodeur went down - he came in and posted a .917 sv% on a team that was very defensively sound. Then he went to the Panthers - a team that is nowhere near as good defensively - and posted sv%s of .912, .911, and .913. A minor drop off, but not huge. Obviously he's doing much worse this year, but whether that's due to the players in front of him or whether he's just playing lousy, or a combination of the two - can't really be determined in black and white.

I'm sure you guys can find other examples of goalies going from a team with strong defense to a team with lousy defense (or vice versa). Vesa Toskala maybe?

[fredr123]

NHLNumbers.com has a reference library section which compiles articles from around the internet on various advanced stats topics. The goalie section is here: http://nhlnumbers.com/2012/11/2/refe...ltending-stats

I think it's problematic to rely solely on only fancy stats or watching the game to describe the results on the ice. I don't think very many proponents of advanced statistics will tell you that the math is perfect and there is no need to watch the game any more. There is still a lot of variance in the numbers that is attributed to "luck" or some other stuff that hasn't been defined yet.

On the other hand, there does seem to be a lot of people in the "Do you even watch the game?" camp that are willing to disregard advanced stats, especially when the numbers contradict what we think we see on the ice. I was in this group until recently and gleefully made fun of guys like mudcrutch79 for attempting to explain hockey with regression analysis.

Advanced statistics in hockey is really only in its infancy. They are useful tools with obvious limitations. There is much work to be done and there are a lot of smart people out there making fantastic progress. Even smart people in the media are starting to introduce these concepts into their work. This is good. There are still plenty of traditionalists in hockey (Brian Burke, for example) that eschew the maths so people that laugh at the nerds in the stands with their pocket protectors and slide rules are in good company.

Edit: Here's an article from James Mirtle about how Pittsburgh used advanced statistics prepared by a consultancy firm to pull the trigger on the James Neal deal a couple years ago. Mirtle notes that the work of the consultant is based on shot quality data which, as has been noted, is a bit of a hot-button topic for fancy stats advocates: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/sport...ticle10122427/