I just watched the Secret Life of Bobby Ryan for the first time. It definitely makes the Burke comments a little more interesting, as the guy seemed to be pretty integral in turning his life around at one point. Clearly there's a long relationships there, so those comments were probably harder on him than if they were made towards anyone else. I found it interesting that in his interview today, that even though he wasn't pleased with the comments, Ryan still kept referring to him as "Burkie".
Here it is for those who haven't seen it. You definitely come out of it pulling for the guy to succeed.
The Following 3 Users Say Thank You to Table 5 For This Useful Post:
That's not the point. The point is that the results are clear: being good at puck possession, building your team so that the roster you ice has a high Corsi%, is something that GMs should strive for, because teams that have a high Corsi% are more successful than others. Good possession teams make the playoffs, bad ones tend not to, so if you're running a team, you should probably try as hard as possible to fall into the former category.
I agree with this. For example, Justin Williams is consitently one of the best possession players in the league, but I'd still rather have Phil Kessel. However, it certainly is a strong attribute to have, and since there are only so many Phil Kessel level talents in the league, it's absolutely an important factor to consider when making personnel decisions.
I really don't want to get dragged into the stats debate, but I just couldn't let this quote go because it is so fundamental...
There is a difference between cause and correlation, which I am certain you understand, but you have erred here nonetheless.
There is absolutely no evidence whatsoever that building your team to have a higher corsi will lead to success (that would be a causal relationship).
What seems clear from the evidence is that if you build a better team, your corsi will go up (a correlative relationship).
GMs should focus on building better teams, not improving corsi.
The Following 13 Users Say Thank You to Enoch Root For This Useful Post:
It's weird with all the reaction today to what Burke said about Ryan, when read in the full context of the discussion, Burke was the one defending Ryan and arguing that he should be on the team because although he isn't intense, he has a game-breaking ability the others being considered don't...
Quote:
Holmgren suggests the coaches have to decide if Ryan is going to be an integral part of the power-play groups, and if so, he needs to be pushed ahead. But if not, maybe they should be looking at two more well-rounded players.
"I agree," Poile says.
Burke points out that Poile has included the coaches more than he did when he occupied the GM position in Vancouver four years before. It's good, but, he adds, "I think coaches see snapshots, and I think GMs watch the whole movie."
"I think we have to know what we're taking with Bobby," says Burke, who had him in Anaheim when the Ducks won the Stanley Cup in 2007.
"He's a passive guy," Burke says. And over 82 games, yes, Saad and or Pacioretty might be more attractive than Ryan. But Ryan's a game-breaker.
"He is not intense. That word is not in his vocabulary," Burke says. "It's never going to be in his vocabulary. He can't spell intense."
If he's not going to be put in a role in which he can score an important goal, use his skills as a sniper, he shouldn't go, Burke says.
"Is everybody really happy with our speed up front?" Poile asks.
There is a pause.
"I don't think it's a fast team," Tallon notes.
Ryan doesn't add to the speed quotient, so do these last two spots need to be filled with speed guys? And if there are injuries, which of these guys are more compatible, more able to move up the roster to fill in more demanding roles?
Pacioretty and Saad are both better 60-minute players, Burke says, "But neither can do what Bobby can do."
I wonder if Ryan actually read the whole story, or if he just heard that one quote out of context?
__________________
Turn up the good, turn down the suck!
Wow, not only have you continued to be unjustifiably patronizing but you've become more obtuse in the process. The fact that you're casting all of this as a skill, as if guys take a particular angle to a puck so that ten moves later it'll lead to a goal is hilarious. Often, goals result from a deliberate skill play, and often, the puck bounces off a skate right to a guy in front for a tap in. This isn't chess.
You're quite right, this isn't chess. It's even more complex. Pieces are moving at the same time and each with an independent brain, not one move at a time like in baseball or controlled by one mind like in chess.
That's why sabremetrics to this point haven't really gained traction in hockey. It's too fluid a sport to really be accurately tracked.
Quote:
There are lots of unexpected elements that lead to goals going in or not that makes a small sample size of TOI less useful as a predictive measure. Which is why when a fourth liner has a three point night, that doesn't somehow mean he's capable of it on a regular basis. Alex Steen is not a top five goal scorer in the league, Kyle Okposo is not a better scorer than Phil Kessel, and Cam Talbot isn't the best goalie in the league... any more than Mark Parrish was an 80+ point player, the 2011-12 Wild were the best team in the Western Conference or any number of other small-sample trends that regressed to reality over time.
Yep, the bigger sample size is the more accurate results one can draw. Never said otherwise.
Quote:
No one is saying that there's a silver bullet stat that explains why teams win in the NHL. All that your basement bloggers on their laptops (as you again refer to them in unbelievably arrogant fashion while typing out your opinions on a hockey message board) are doing is accumulating data and testing and tweaking the methodology to try to make a better model to predict how teams will end up performing. Why that kind of curiosity, which can't possibly hurt and can only help provide more information about hockey, would offend anyone is... silly. But not surprising, I guess, sadly.
Don't really understand why you are so upset. Go back and read my posts (even though they are long winded). Never said advanced stats were useless or stupid. Heck, go back and read some of my first posts on this forum. Had tracked Flames zone entries a couple years back in a few games as part of a theory from watching the team. My observation was that the Flames were struggling to navigate the neutral zone and were having troubles entering the offensive zone effectively. Tracked zone entries via dump and via carry and sure enough the stats confirmed that in fact the Flames were struggling to keep possession of the puck through the neutral zone. Was even contacted by an advanced stats blogger that wanted to publish my findings elsewhere.
Advanced stats aren't bad. But the biggest stat-defenders tend to not use them correctly. Example - a stat geek watches a game on TV and a scout watches it live. Lets say Phil Kessel scores two goals. The scout says Kessel scored twice because he has great offensive instincts. The stat geek says Kessel must have great offensive instincts because he scored twice. That's backwards.
See the difference? Advanced stats just need to be used properly - as an additional tool to watching games as it helps to confirm what was seen. Not as a substitute to watching the game and then predicting future results blindly.
__________________
Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
The Following 4 Users Say Thank You to Red John For This Useful Post:
Oh you right G, don't like advanced stats, must be a troll.
So why don't you answer my question? If you have a personal preference that your belief is correct that's ok, but if you want to call someone else wrong than you I'd hope you'd have evidence.
Statistics can certainly obscure, lie and mislead as often as they illuminate, inform and describe.
A good hockey mind can get more out of watching a game than statistics can tell you about that game.
It's funny you write that because Twain wrote that in regards to politics and now you have Nate Silver going 50/50 in the Presidential election and 31/33 in the Senate election. So in fact that quotes origins can be said to be incorrect.
on Fenwick. You'll find that a higher Fenwick close , which is shots and missed shots discounting blocked is a very good indicator of team success. The close part means that the game is within one goal in the first or 2nd and tied in the third.
Playoffs:
Missed playoffs:
That article is from before this year, and if you don't bother to read the article the only team to win the cup below a .500 Fenwick team(finished at .499) and that's because Bylsma took over half way through the year. With him they were a .549 Fenwick team.
So why don't you answer my question? If you have a personal preference that your belief is correct that's ok, but if you want to call someone else wrong than you I'd hope you'd have evidence.
Bro, you mad?
Aside from the blatantly obvious fact that numbers can't actually account for the intricacies of the human brain, it's a little something called "false positive science". You cannot accurately predict human behaviour and reactions in sport based on statistics alone. You need to use your eyes first, and if you'd like, you can support that with numbers. Anyone who says "Well these statistics show this player is actually THIS or would perform in THIS way" is wrong. Statistics are historical, not future-predicting. Stats simply tell what happened, but do not tell anything above that (including what will happen, what certain players or like, etc). They can only be used to add weight to an argument, not to create one. Basement bloggers with no knowledge of science or the human condition do not understand that or purposely disregard that.
Here is a link to an article written by a environmental scientist who studies human decision making and reactions, there are also links to scientific papers in this article: http://freakonomics.com/2012/03/22/f...ct-the-future/
Quote:
Originally Posted by Dagger
I would direct you to this article. on Fenwick. You'll find that a higher Fenwick close , which is shots and missed shots discounting blocked is a very good indicator of team success. The close part means that the game is within one goal in the first or 2nd and tied in the third.
Playoffs:
Missed playoffs:
That article is from before this year, and if you don't bother to read the article the only team to win the cup below a .500 Fenwick team(finished at .499) and that's because Bylsma took over half way through the year. With him they were a .549 Fenwick team.
Problem is, this is about building a team. There is zero evidence that (as has been said before) good cup-winning teams don't just rate higher on these things because of regular season dominance. There is nothing that suggests that if you assemble a team with this in mind that you'll win a cup. As I said before, this is a clear example of "false positive science".
You're stating the effect and pretending it's the cause, when there is zero evidence to suggest that is true.
It's funny you write that because Twain wrote that in regards to politics and now you have Nate Silver going 50/50 in the Presidential election and 31/33 in the Senate election. So in fact that quotes origins can be said to be incorrect.
1. You are attributing it incorrectly. Twain was referring to politicians using statistics to bolster weak arguments ie saying Marc-Andre Bergeron is the 2nd best dman in the league last year and using Corsi to prove it.
2. You are saying that the one instance of Nate Silver predicting all the states correctly in an election disproves a quote (one that shouldn't even be applied to the situation you are using to disprove it). You must not understand that in science and statistics something has to be repeatable in order for it to be accepted. Silver didn't do so hot in predicting the 2010 mid term elections. Which one is the anomaly? He's predicted 3 elections. you can't extrapolate any significant data from a sample size of 3.
What you're describing is exactly the point of these so-called "advanced" stats. You're describing internal, random events within a game. What possession numbers are designed to do is to track much larger sample sizes (an entire season) of much larger sets of events (shots instead of goals). And yes, many of these stats do take into account things like playing against the fourth line - quality of competition is a very frequently used stat, and will often be combined with possession to adjust a player's possession statistics to account for how good the players he plays against are.
These guys aren't stupid, if you've thought of a flaw in the methodology that seems obvious to you, they've probably also thought of it and either tested it and found that it doesn't actually impact the results, or they've tried to find a way to account for it.
No. The Oilers are a terrible possession team. They're 27th in the league. Why would it lead you to build that team? If I'm taking over as GM and want to improve the team I've just inherited from the perspective of puck possession, I'd probably sign guys who are a) good at it, and b) see their teams generate more shots when they're on the ice as opposed to when they're on the bench. There are lots of ways to look at this; pure fenwick, WOWY (measuring whether a player does better or worse with or without a particular teammate), Corsi Rel, etc. In other words, I'd probably sign guys like Justin Williams and Logan Couture.
I'm talking in general terms. Yes... the Oilers are a terrible puck possession team. But if I was sitting at the draft table all of those years and trying to build a puck possession team would you not pick guys like Hall and RNH?
When you've got years of stats, you might be able to find guys with good Corsi's but when you're at the draft table picking 18 year olds you don't have those numbers.
...Problem is, this is about building a team. There is zero evidence that (as has been said before) good cup-winning teams don't just rate higher on these things because of regular season dominance. There is nothing that suggests that if you assemble a team with this in mind that you'll win a cup. As I said before, this is a clear example of "false positive science"...
I might express this a little differently: There is zero evidence that good cup-winning teams are constructed from the results of Fenwick ratings, and with a preference for players with good corsi (what is the plural of "corsi", if indeed I can use it as a noun?)
In other words, these sorts of statistical reports are likely not very useful for making decisions about team composition. They can help to show where and why teams are successful or unsuccessful, but really don't provide any solution to the problem of low puck possession. The only way to become a good puck-possession team is to construct a lineup that consistently outplays their opposition. It's about as simple as that.
__________________
Dealing with Everything from Dead Sea Scrolls to Red C Trolls
Quote:
Originally Posted by woob
"...harem warfare? like all your wives dressup and go paintballing?"
I'm talking in general terms. Yes... the Oilers are a terrible puck possession team. But if I was sitting at the draft table all of those years and trying to build a puck possession team would you not pick guys like Hall and RNH?
No, because virtually every team in the NHL is either trying to become a puck-possession team or attempting to remain a puck-possession team. I would rather say that if I were sitting at the draft table all of those years and trying to build a puck possession team based on good, individual players's puck possession ratings, then it would make sense to build around Hall, Nugent-Hopkins, J. Schultz, and Eberle.
Successful puck possession is a group characteristic, and teams produce it by factoring into consideration all sorts of variables.
__________________
Dealing with Everything from Dead Sea Scrolls to Red C Trolls
Quote:
Originally Posted by woob
"...harem warfare? like all your wives dressup and go paintballing?"
Maybe Polie trying to put the heat off Burke but here it is:
Kevin Allen @ByKevinAllen
Poile reveals that Brian Burke voted for Bobby Ryan on his final ballot submitted to Poile
Michael Russo @Russostrib
Poile says criticism is part of what goes on behind every closed door in every managerial meeting. It just usually doesn't get out #ryan
Aaron Portzline @Aportzline
Poile: "I'm trying right now to apologize to Bobby Ryan. I apologize as much as I can."
Larry Brooks @NYP_Brooksie
GM Poile states that "Brian Burke was absolutely biggest supporter of Bobby Ryan on our staff." What?
Bruce Garrioch @SunGarrioch
Poile says quotes "were taken out of context" and USA Hockey felt it had editorial final say on the product. Didn't criticize Scott Burnside
Last edited by sureLoss; 01-03-2014 at 08:05 AM.
The Following 3 Users Say Thank You to sureLoss For This Useful Post:
Aaron Portzline @Aportzline 5m
Poile says there was a "breakdown" in communication, that they expected ESPN article to be like HBO's 24/7, w editorial control of content.
It did seem a bit wacky that they'd let that much out of the bag. In a way they are lucky that its Burke taking all of the heat since I doubt he cares much and all of the guys there have enough of a reputation that it shouldn't harm player relations in terms of signing players or whatever.
I would direct you to this article. on Fenwick. You'll find that a higher Fenwick close , which is shots and missed shots discounting blocked is a very good indicator of team success. The close part means that the game is within one goal in the first or 2nd and tied in the third.
Other than the graph being terribly designed (why would you use polar coordinates on linear data?) all that data was telling us something we all happily concede.
I'm not against advanced stats, I believe they can be used in the right context, but was there a huge need to show that graph? Teams that outshoot their opponents are usually the better team. Teams that have possession of the puck more are usually the better team. Is there a large group of people who debate this?
But then you take an actual look at the data and you'll see it's not always the case. The Sharks have some of the highest numbers yet were out in the first round. Columbus and Toronto weren't making the playoffs when they appeared to be good possession teams. You can see Calgary nearing that 0.550 border, it's the 2008-2009 team, where they had some of the best fenwick close% in the league yet couldn't even claim their division and finished fifth in the West. That year the much worse (at least going by the fenwick close %) Canucks won the division - they were below 0.500. Why? You don't need advance stats to figure it out. The 2008-2009 season saw Luongo outplay Kiprusoff. You can blame Keenan for it, but the Flames were letting in too many goals while Luongo was one of the best in the league that year. So yeah sure, if you want to show it's good to have more shots and have the puck more when the game is close and you happen to meet the one person on Earth who disagrees by all means show them that graph. But when the graph isn't taking in account goalies it's already missing a huge part of the story.
Look at it this way. If I told you there was a team that when the game was close they were routinely being outshot, I put it into data by saying the team had a 46.08% close Fenwick percentage. It was second worst in the entire league. What's your first thought? They were terrible team probably if you put weight into that data. So when I told you they made the Conference Semi-Finals that year you might be a little surprised. Some critical thinking though and you'll realize if they are routinely getting outshot when they are close and yet they are still making the playoffs they must have had a goalie stopping a lot of shots. Congratulations you used some data to tell a story.
Everyone else just watched Nashville in 2011-2012 and realized Pekka Rinne was a pretty good goalie.
The Following 2 Users Say Thank You to Oling_Roachinen For This Useful Post:
Teams that outshoot their opponents are usually the better team. Teams that have possession of the puck more are usually the better team. Is there a large group of people who debate this?
Well, there's the management team of the Toronto Maple Leafs.
Quote:
But then you take an actual look at the data and you'll see it's not always the case. The Sharks have some of the highest numbers yet were out in the first round.
While your point is correct this isn't a very good example. A 4-7 game sample size just isn't big enough to use as a reference point. The rest of your examples are fair. That chart obviously does indicate that it's not 100% the case that positive possession teams make the playoffs and negative possession teams don't, just the majority of them. No one is really arguing that it isn't "missing a part of the story". It's missing all of the minutes that aren't at 5 on 5, too.
Teams that outshoot their opponents are usually the better team. Teams that have possession of the puck more are usually the better team. Is there a large group of people who debate this?
Quote:
Originally Posted by 19Yzerman19
Well, there's the management team of the Toronto Maple Leafs.
Do they, though? This would suggest that the Maple Leafs have been deliberately constructed based on a foil of Fenwick and corsi numbers; that Toronto's management has built a team which attempts to avoid pick possession as a means to win, and that is quite frankly preposterous.
The fact that you make this point though (tongue in cheek as it may be) actually illustrates something that many of us have been arguing with regards to so-called advanced statistics. And that is that teams do not (and more appropriately should not) prioritise them as a tool for assembling their roster. In other words, we all recognise that the Toronto Maple Leafs presently enjoy an unsustainable level of puck possession time that shows they are a bubble playoff team. If they want to improve, it will not come by way of inserting players with great corsi or Fenwick ratings, but rather, by way of better, more skilled players. It's not difficult. It is surely something that even Maple Leafs management recognises and is willing to correct, it is just difficult to do, since great players are a rare and priceless commodity.
__________________
Dealing with Everything from Dead Sea Scrolls to Red C Trolls
Quote:
Originally Posted by woob
"...harem warfare? like all your wives dressup and go paintballing?"
