And if you're taking out 2 months of the season, which is reasonable if you're ignoring outliers, you really should scale that given they only played 57 games in the other months of the year. If you pro-rate that -18 it for a whole season it comes out to -25.9.
That is pretty bad.
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So there are some players that have a lack of emotion. I would probably agree with this, and we have heard about this recently with the Smith comments (and what we witness on the ice all season).
So...
Under Hartley, I can't comment as of course I don't have insight there (and none of us do), but it sure seemed like a lack of emotion was basically the opposite of the Calgary Flames then. Maybe some players had a lack of emotion then, but as a fan watching the games, they sure seemed really engaged and full of emotion.
So the players approached the GM and said that Hartley was too much of a hard ass. Fair enough. Coaches like him usually have a shelf-life.
Treliving fires Hartley, and replaces him with an easy-going player's coach in Gulutzan. That didn't work. Players seem less engaged. Rumors are coming out that this team has a lack of emotion. Gulutzan called out the vets during his stick throwing incident. Smith made those comments - mostly trying to praise Glass - but revealing some insight into the team dynamics as well.
So what to do?
In my opinion, Gulutzan is finished either way. You allowed the vets the freedom to not be fully engaged. That's an indictment as far as I am concerned. I still recall one of Conroy's stories about a game when Conroy and Iginla were having a poor game, and Darryl benched them in the game and yelled out at them that 'you princesses don't have to worry about breaking a sweat out there. You can just sit on the bench and watch." (or something like that).
Under Gulutzan, he allowed these vets to dictate the play. I am going to assume this had a lot to do with the poor starts, and the overall... crapiness... that we witnessed, especially in the last month. Gulutzan SHOULD have been benching vets. Hartley did it, and he got that team to perform at an exceptional level relative to their ability. You don't need to be a hard ass to bench/scratch a player. You just need to identify poor play, lack of energy/focus, etc., especially when it becomes a theme, rather than an isolated shift or game.
So, in my opinion, Gulutzan HAS to go. He didn't show enough leadership there to nip it in the bud before it seemingly became a full-blown disease on this team again (AGAIN - as it was under Keenan and Brent Sutter - Feaster stated as much).
I hope that Treliving figures out which players were mailing it in. I don't want them in a Calgary Flames uniform, regardless of who it was. I don't care if it is a core player or just a declining vet. You didn't play hard for that jersey? You don't get to remain a Flame.
There was a lot of work put in under Hartley's tenure to make sure that the Flames get back to being a hard working team. To get rid of that 'disease' that they had for years and years. Now it seems it is back.
The coach and every player out there that felt he can just mail it in can GTFO.
No Treliving, you don't reward the players by getting rid of the coach. You get rid of the coach because he allowed that attitude to grab a firm hold of the team, and you get rid of the players that were responsible for it.
You do both.
Well said! I hope someone says the exact same thing in the season ticket holder's meeting
They middled for most of the season, but that number from March is clearly an outlier.
Quote:
Originally Posted by redforever
Take out both outliers and they are -18. Why take out only the bad outlier?
To me -25 is the only outlier here.
Using those numbers, up to the end of Feb the team was -6.
That's not great at all, but the -25 month comes with the team missing Monahan, Tkachuk, Brodie and even Gaudreau for a few games. A team that struggled to score enough goals even with those players, is completely sunk without them.
That's the outlier to me anyways.
With those players the Flames are below average.
Without them they are among the leagues worst.
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Using those numbers, up to the end of Feb the team was -6.
That's not great at all, but the -25 month comes with the team missing Monahan, Tkachuk, Brodie and even Gaudreau for a few games. A team that struggled to score enough goals even with those players, is completely sunk without them.
That's the outlier to me anyways.
With those players the Flames are below average.
Without them they are among the leagues worst.
Who cares? This can go on endlessly. He can turn around and say that the Flames had abnormally few injuries in the first part of the season, so -6 is abnormal too. Somewhere between -6 and -36 is fair and bad either way...
Maybe I'm late here, but of course goal differential has an extremely high correlation to a team's position in the standings. Games are won on goals scored and goals allowed. Nothing else matters on the scoreboard. It's like saying the team that scores first in a game wins more than 50% of the time - of course they do.
Goals for and goals against are the result. Corsi and Fenwick are predictors of goal differential.
The thing with goals in the NHL is that there are so few of them, and with so few events, you typically don't see a trend until you are deeper into the season.
Shot attempts are much more frequent, which is why a lot of people use them to analyze game trends, and ultimately puck possession. Of course Corsi/Fenwick don't have as a high a correlation to goal differential when predicting the standings, but the correlation is significant, and can typically be analyzed with a smaller sample size.
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Who cares? This can go on endlessly. He can turn around and say that the Flames had abnormally few injuries in the first part of the season, so -6 is abnormal too. Somewhere between -6 and -36 is fair and bad either way...
I care lol.
One guy called -25 the outlier, the other guy said +8 was also an outlier but it's actually way more in line with the rest of the months than -25 is, especially when the -25 month happened with a huge chunk of key players missing and no quality depth to replace them with.
Last edited by Roof-Daddy; 04-06-2018 at 02:25 PM.
Halfway through the season, around the time when Bingo predicted we were ready to turn a corner because fancy stats I made my own analysis that went basically like this: the Flames, then a bubble playoff team, were alreay something like 15 goals under the water in comparison to the competition, halfway through the season, and that was with a record slightly better than 50/50. Obviously a team with a negative goal differential is going to lose more than win in the long term, so we had been overperforming so far.
In other words, they would have to start playing significantly better just to stay in the competition. Much more likely they would drop significantly behind by the end of the season. I also remember saying many times that they're projecting to be a below 90 point team.
The Flames were not close this season. The late season collapse was more likely than that January point streak, and ultimately the team is ending right around where they were projecting in the first third of the season.
This is what the primary stats predicted. It's why they're primary and corsi is secondary.
I also honestly now think corsi is likely worse than nothing, because in general I highly respect Bingos insight into the game, but predicting that the Flames would turn a corner should have been obviously foolish.
I mean no offense, sorry.
Last edited by Itse; 04-06-2018 at 02:31 PM.
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We're 20th in the NHL by record and 26th by goal differential. While it's not precise, I would say GD is providing a far greater indication of what this team was this year than most other stats.
But isn't that the point of goal differential, though?
What I mean, is if you outscore your opponent, you win, and your GD improves, great success. Women cheer, men rejoice, babies are created.
If you do the opposite, your GD worsens, you lose, you plummet off a cliff in the standings (hyperbole for both, but I'm sour right now).
It's a post event evaluation mechanism, not a predictor of the outcome.
Honestly, at this point when I look at the Flames I see a slow team. But its not the players that are slow, we actually have quite a few very fast and quick players. It's the system that makes us seem slow.
A few months ago, I saw an interview with Babcock, where he said something along the lines of "I'm not worried about that team, they go east-west with their d-zone passes; too slow".
Our system sucks. It allows the other team to too easily defend us.
Then heaven forbid the Flames get a powerplay so they can give the puck to Johnny on the left wing when he's a LH shot.
Wanna improve the powerplay? Put him in on the right side so he can get his shot off faster from the middle of the ice instead of taking a touch and then shooting a stupid slapshot high and wide once the goalie is in position.
BAH. (Sorry I devolved into angst as I typed and started to ramble, because......the last few months have been soul draining).
__________________
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"I am actually more excited for the Oilers game tomorrow than the Flames game. I am praying for multiple jersey tosses. The Oilers are my new favourite team for all the wrong reasons. I hate them so much I love them."
They got decent goaltending from Smith and exceptional years out of Gaudreau, Monahan and Tkachuk.
Before their amazing end of season capitulation this team was within touching distance of the playoffs despite having terrible special teams and having Ol' Gul actually cost the team points with his stunning level of incompetence.
Take the same group with a coach who actually knows what hes doing and I'd wager that yes, this exact same roster would make the playoffs.
They should have made the playoffs this season. It wasnt bad luck, it was poor execution.
Ol' Gul should run for Political office. He'd be a great NDP'er where ideology trumps reality.
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If you thought this season would have a happy ending, you haven't been paying attention.
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On the topic of Hartley vs. Gulutzan, I am convinced that Hartley is way more qualified to coach in the NHL than Gulutzan.
Hartley took a team with an aging core and then a team that started a rebuild, and got what I consider respectable results given the circumstances. Since Hartley left, the young core has started entering its prime and improvements were made to the roster and the team has not gotten better (worse IMO). I know people say that Hartley is still out of the NHL and use that as an indication of his worth, but I am not convinced that he has even thrown his hat into the ring again. It seemed like he came back to the NHL just as a favour to Feaster.
One can argue that Hartley isn't a good coach, I personally disagree. But removing him in favour of Gulutzan was still a bad move. I recall last year a lot of people saying that it would take Gulutzan time to "undo" what Hartley did, but the more that has been undone, the worse the team has become.
Firing Hartley at least in part because the young players thought he was too mean did nothing but re-instill the "country club" atmosphere that has plagued thing franchise for most of the last 25 years. The inmates run the asylum here now and nothing short of hard coach can change that.
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Last edited by FlamesAddiction; 04-06-2018 at 03:09 PM.
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Johnny would certainly be terrible on the PP right side
Too creative. Too outside the system. Trust the system. The system is the process. Trust the process.
Hey Dave Cameron. Any adjustments you'd like to make? No? Ok. Carry on.
Top ten player in league scoring and you stifle his creativity on the powerplay by making him ridiculously easy to defend.
Let Johnny skate around a bit, let him open up lanes. Guaranteed success, he's too talented for it not to work.
__________________
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"I am actually more excited for the Oilers game tomorrow than the Flames game. I am praying for multiple jersey tosses. The Oilers are my new favourite team for all the wrong reasons. I hate them so much I love them."
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I personally think these are the 3 biggest issues facing this team that need to be addressed and the causes of these issues:
1. Team is emotionally fragile
A) Inconsistent/poor goaltending going back several years now. The young core of this team has been developed since the start of the rebuild playing in front of emotional goalies who give up terrible goals at terrible times. Even smith this year. He had a good start to the season but goaltending became this team’s biggest weakness for the last half of the year. The emotional fragility of this team is seen in how poorly they play with the lead. We all feel it’s inevitable that the goalie will give up a softy sooner or later so the players must feel the same way. They’re play gets scrambly trying to prevent any kind of shot getting through to their net and they stop pushing for offence... it’s probably a big reason why this team seems to struggle to build on any lead in a game and why the goal differential is so bad. When this team wins, it’s only by 1 goal. And when it loses, it’s by 2+ goals.
B) The crowd is virtually a non-factor at home games. The crowd feels nervous no matter the score. And deathly quiet to start games. It used to be a huge strength of the flames from 2004-2009... now I consider the tension from the crowd to be a weakness. Hopefully the team winning more will fix this but it’s been an issue for years even when the team is winning. I feel like the crowd needs to take it upon themselves to try to encourage the team early in the game rather than wait for the team to do something to get them going. Not trying to give the players a break or anything since they’re the ones on the ice but I feel like we as fans aren’t doing the best we can either and every little bit helps.
2. Poor powerplay
A) Lacks a goal-scoring right-handed winger who specializes in one-timers on the off-wing. Definitely would have taken a chance on Iginla earlier this season for this reason and because he would have helped bring some emotion to the team and the crowd at home.
B) After years of a poor powerplay, the coach that’s in charge of it needs to be changed. At this point, the players themselves would have to have lost confidence in his systems.
3. Lack of focus on scoring from majority of the line up
A) Having the majority of your forwards being players that contribute very little offensively - guys like stajan, Brouwer, frolik, Hathaway. They play safe hockey that coaches love but get lots of minutes while only generating low-quality shots on goal. I feel frolik is the biggest example of this. I like him as a 3rd/4th line player but not playing the number of minutes he gets. There are countless times where backlund and tkachuk are generating a play off the rush or on a cycle and frolik‘s go-to move when he gets the puck is to throw it at the net from anywhere... rarely resulting in goals. It’s ok to have a few of these types of players on the team... but in smaller roles. This team has rolled 4 lines fairly often over the years so having lots of these players who don’t score means they are on the ice a lot compared to other team’s 4th liners.
4. Hit the net!
A) This cannot be ignored and it could just as easily be a statistical anomaly for this season... but leading the league by a large margin in posts and missed shots on scoring is a big reason the flames are where they are now. To not capitalize on that many chances is unreal. Don’t know what the fix is for it but that can’t keep happening. In the same way the goalie cannot be letting in so many bad goals... the players can’t be missing so many chances.
Just my opinion on what I think needs to be considered from just watching the games. Like most of you I watch every game and judge it more but what I see and not just the stats.
Obviously this has been a terrible season. In fact, it may be the worst season I've ever witnessed as a Flames fan. It was fairly obvious from very early in the season that this team was lacking "it" or "swagger" or whatever you want to call it.
They were slow and had no speed to their game, slowly moving the puck up as a 5 man unit. No urgency, no attention to detail, and as a result no luck. It's not surprising their special teams are so bad. You've got to move the puck quickly and play with aggression to have good special teams, Flames do none of that.
Should players be traded? Should the coaching staff be fired? My question is why one or the other? I think it is fairly obvious that both things need to happen.
Under Gulutzan the team has taken steps back mentally, where they collapse at the smallest sign of trouble. Too passive. Too many guys looking to make the perfect play. Most nights it feels like they can't get out of their own way.
But they have no luck this year! Their Corsi is so good! They'll turn in around.
Except they didn't. You make your own luck in this league. We saw that with Hartley. We watched a team that was lost start to find it's way. It played aggressive and gave it's all for 60 minutes for at least a whole 1.5 seasons that culminated in a second round win before the wheels fell off.
I have not seen this type of progression under Gulutzan. This year's team didn't have any luck because they didn't do the things they needed to do to be successful. They didn't earn it.
This isn't a "Hartley shouldn't have gotten fired" post as it was fairly clear that his time had run its course. But for me the worrying part is the Flames needed to find a new voice to get this team to the next level and they ended up with a guy who's had them take several steps back.
In my eyes Gully has to go. I'm sure he's a great guy and a good hockey mind and he and his staff aren't solely to blame for the problems, but their hands also aren't clean either. Bad special teams and player usage are direct results of this coaching staffs inabilities.
Gulutzan can't get this team to where they need to be. It's obvious that while the team didn't like a hardass coach like Hartley, they certainly RESPONDED to a hard ass coach like Hartley.
As for the players, what's to say. They wanted a different type of coach than Hartley and they got it. Then they proceeded to take steps back for the next 2 years. These guys don't show up for starts of games, went on long stretches of both winning and losing. They have defensive lapses you see out of junior kids and crumble at the first sign of adversity.
Players don't get to have a clean slate under a new staff. They don't deserve it. It's time to ship some guys out as a message that this won't be tolerated.
This whole organization needs a dose of urgency and that urgency needs to start at the top with Treliving. That starts by removing the coaching staff and removing a couple core/veteran pieces. Which pieces those are is hard to say. I have some gut feelings but at the end of the day it doesn't matter. Regardless of who Treliving moves he has to get VALUE back. None of this Savard for Zainullan crap. Not a Hall for Larsson trade. You need to get value and the right type of players back.
The other thing I think we need to see is a shift in mentality on veteran players. Far too long has it been OK for veterans to come in, be slow and take time to find their game, only to see younger players get scratched for the same stuff. It's about accountability. We need to stop seeing guys like Glass and Grossman get contracts. We need to stop watching guys like Brouwer and Stajan play like garbage months while "finding their game".
Treliving needs to raise the floor of this team and a new coach needs to instill and 'play well to keep your spot' mentality. Brouwer can't get it going? Shame that he makes 4.5 million. Take a seat in the press box and be ready for your next chance. Brodie making mental error after mental error? Sweet, lets put him upstairs for a game or 2. Guys have lost their focus and that's not acceptable.
It's not that kids don't need to sit, they sometimes do. It's about accountability and progression. How long do you have to wait around for someone to find their game?
With this coaching staff they basically set the lines at the beginning of the season, made very few changes, and waited for the entire season. Just awful tactics and player management and an awful message to send to the players.
I'd rather have kids up here learning the NHL game, kids who might progress over the course of the season, than watch scrubs like Brouwer, Stajan, and Bartkowski meander their way through the season trying to find their game.
Honestly if this team doesn't oust the coaching staff this off-season that's a very worrying sign. I won't sit here and say that I won't watch the team next season because of it (I've been watching this team since '92 and only seen 2 seasons that weren't bad/disappointing) but if it's status quo going into next season, and the first 10 games resemble a lot of what we saw this season, I'll be tapping out even earlier than I did this year.
The good news is with a good summer the Flames could right the ship rather quickly. The bad news is, as a Flames fan, I expect that any move they actually do make will explode spectacularly in their faces.
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This can go on endlessly. He can turn around and say that the Flames had abnormally few injuries in the first part of the season, so -6 is abnormal too. Somewhere between -6 and -36 is fair and bad either way...
