Quote:
Originally Posted by Finger Cookin
Advanced stats in hockey need a makeover. My understanding (which could well be wrong) is that stats like Corsi and Fenwick are named as such after the trailblazers who devised those measurements and ways of combining numbers. Which is all well and good -- except that as far as names go, they do absolutely nothing for any newcomer to describe what they are or what they're measuring.
I'm a casual baseball fan. I didn't play close attention to the stats analysis revolution that happened there. But as a kid, I understood batting average, ERA, W-L, Saves, etc. So when I started watching telecasts and saw things like Slugging Percentage and WHIP and WAR, I was confused. What are these? Slugging Percentage isn't obvious, but is easily defined. WHIP is Walks and Hits per Inning Pitched? Got it, that makes sense. WAR is Wins Above Replacement player? OK -- I don't get how you calculate it, or how you define a replacement player, but I get the concept of the final number.
If advanced hockey stats were given some straight forward names (Shot Differential Per Shift, or Per Game, for one example), it would help people embrace them. Which is probably something the advanced stats gurus are against. I think they like the air of esoteric wisdom and opacity the current names have.
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I fully agree, like call Corsi shot differential or possession %. There are also all the different variants - relative, even strength, close,.... Pick one and make it the standard definition.
I like quality of competition and zone starts as a way to understand sheltering but again too many variations and could they be combined into a single sheltering stat?
The only way advanced stats will take off for the average fan is to standardize and simplify them. Come up with one or two numbers that are meaningful. The quants can still play with all the rest in the back room.
The advanced stat crowd should also stop emphasizing that goals are random events (I read that again in this thread) and therefore aren't a good stat. It my be true in a sense but some players seem to have a lot more random events than others regardless what their other stats say.
