Friedman's 30 thoughts - analytics say Oilers' luck should turn

[SeeGeeWhy]

I'd like to see a plot of ... the last 10 completed seasons, with ALL teams on the plot, with instantaneous PDO on the Y-axis, and Games Played on the X axis. Does PDO REALLY regress to 1000 for all teams? And does that hold true across multiple seasons? I'd like to think that a team that drafts well from a limited pool, hires good coaching will tend to accumulate pieces in their system that have a higher degree of performance and less variability to their performance... which is what this bullspit "stat" is all about.

I do not buy that two unrelated variables namely save % (proven to be a combination of team defensive ability AND goaltender skill - neither seem to be OVERLY luck related) and shooting % (again, seems to have more to do with the quality of shots attempted and player ability than luck) have anything to do with "team luck", and I buy even LESS that it is going to go to the same level for all teams every single year. This is not a law of freaking nature here. It doesn't blow my mind to contemplate that a well built and coached team will be consistently higher than poorly built and coached teams.

Let's think about it. Imagine an undefended wrist shot taken from the slot. What about the scenario makes the possibility of a goal a random chance event? Perhaps the probabilities of the ice being in good condition, the air density is consistent through the travel path, the player is healthy, the player gets the timing right, the stick holds integrity, the player getting the chance is one of your higher skilled guys (i.e. more accurate and consistently accurate) and that the goalie is good. I mean, those ARE variables, but teams have some degree of control over how many times they can let ANY player take that sort of shot, and they do have some control over the quality of player selection and development. Those factors seem more important to me in determining success and thus PDO ceiling on a long term basis than the tiny random events that can be chalked up to "luck". Good teams create high PDO numbers; high PDO numbers do not drag good teams down. Nor do I think that there is any good reason to expect that all teams will have a PDO that hovers around the same number. It makes NO sense.

Theres a reason crap teams who play crap defense and take crap shots end up with low PDO numbers - it's because they suck. "Luck" will help them a little in a few games, but that translates to what... 1 or 2 goals a night? How does that help you win more games when you're losing by more than 2 - 3 per game? It doesn't.

[Itse]

From watching the games, I think the Oilers stats are flattering them. Many opposing teams IMO play lazy and disorganized against Edmonton, in comparison to their normal play.

[Enoch Root]

We are 25 games into the season (give or take). Total shot attempts are now up in the 1500-2000 per team range.

The Oilers have been outscored 39-60 when playing 5 on 5. 39 to 60. They are being outscored by almost a goal a game, 5on5.

Over a 25 game period, the Oilers continue to score 2 goals every time the opposition scores 3, 5on5.

If that is luck, we are talking about flipping heads about 10 times in a row here.

[hummdeedoo]

Originally Posted by CaptainCrunch

I mean the whole possession thing is kind of ridiculous. If you watch the Flames they don't possess for long periods of time in the offensive zone because they score more often on the rush or with a quick transition, or whatever. So some team comes down to the Flames end and grinds in the corners and does some perimeter stuff for 20 seconds, and the Flames turn it over and a defenseman creates a 2 on one and Calgary scores in about 8 seconds. Well the team with possession didn't get a chance but got a punch of offensive zone time and the Flames get punished statistically for being efficient.

I posted something very similar to this in another thread yesterday. I characterized the Flames as not a puck possession team but a puck pressure team.

[Erick Estrada]

Luck is so overrated a team in sports. When you hit a post in overtime and lose in a shootout it's not bad luck you lost as that same shot next game would be a post again. Missing the net is missing the net. Just as a goaltender isn't lucky when he get's beat and the shot hits the post as the shooter missed the net and it matters not if he hit the post or misses by 5 feet. Every team gives up breakaways, every team gives up the odd soft goal, every team gets the odd bad bounce. When a team is continually giving up breakaways, soft goals, and having bounces go against you it's not bad luck it's because they are a bad team.

[dash_pinched]

Doom, despair, and agony on me
Deep dark depression, excessive misery
If it weren't for bad luck, I'd have no luck at all
Doom, despair, and agony on me

Yes folks, the Oilers have become Hee-Haw, starring Kevin Lowe as Buck Owens and Craig MacTavish as Roy Clark.

[Walter Reed]

Originally Posted by tvp2003

Edmonton: Even our luck is no good.

That one had me laughing ......

[Flash Walken]

Originally Posted by Itse

From watching the games, I think the Oilers stats are flattering them. Many opposing teams IMO play lazy and disorganized against Edmonton, in comparison to their normal play.

I think this is a seriously understated part of the stats argument.

[J epworth]

For those who really want to dive in on what PDO is (it isn't luck), read this loooooooong article from last summer that shuts down any attempt to prove that a PDO of over 100 is unsustainable for any team.

First off, here's a fun little quote from it to get you going:

Where does PDO come from? PDO is named after the name of a commenter on an Edmonton Oilers blog who coined it. Here is what he said that lead to the assumption that the baseline for teams/players should be 100:

Lets pretend there was a stat called "blind luck." Said stat was simply adding SH% and SV% together. I know there's a way to check what this number should generally be, but I hate math so lets just say 100% for ####s and giggles.

That's where this conventional wisdom comes from, I'm not making this up. (Source) The amount of thought that went into creating PDO as a way to measure luck really is a) that poorly thought out and b) stress tested at the "####s and giggles" level.

And later in the article, part that would be beneficial for us this year, why did Colorado play well with bad corsi last year, did having a high PDO show they were lucky?

let's say you were told that Team A was going to be heavily outshot throughout the course of a season and you were asked what they would need to do to come out with a strong winning record. You would say that they're going to have to save more shots than an average team would be expected to save and they're going to have to score more goals on their limited opportunities than would normally be expected. Another way of putting that last sentence is that they'll need to have a better than league average save % and a better than league average shooting %. If you added a better than league average save % and a better than league average shooting % you'd get a better than league average combined score, you'd get a PDO over 100.

If you're winning at a high rate while getting heavily outshot you have to have a high PDO. If a team is winning and has a CF%/FF%/SF% under 50% you don't need to look up that team's PDO, it has to be over 100 for reasons of simple math. Now in this case in order to determine if this team is lucky or just skilled you need to determine if it's because the team has better than average skill or if it's because the team performed far better than their expected output in these areas. PDO doesn't account for the expected value in any way and that's where it fails.

Full article: http://www.secondcityhockey.com/2014...ictment-of-pdo

[octothorp]

Originally Posted by SeeGeeWhy

I'd like to see a plot of ... the last 10 completed seasons, with ALL teams on the plot, with instantaneous PDO on the Y-axis, and Games Played on the X axis. Does PDO REALLY regress to 1000 for all teams? And does that hold true across multiple seasons? I'd like to think that a team that drafts well from a limited pool, hires good coaching will tend to accumulate pieces in their system that have a higher degree of performance and less variability to their performance... which is what this bullspit "stat" is all about.

Yeah, that would be an interesting data set. But before you call it a bullspit stat, consider whether it's the stat itself, or the conclusions that are being drawn from it. It's a weird stat because the assumption is that past performance IS NOT an indicator of future performance, and thus that things will tend to average out. But if someone runs the numbers as you suggest and finds that there is a correlation between past performance and future performance in this regard (which I think there would be), then it's still a useful stat, because it tells us that shooting percentage is the result of systems and players, and not the unpredictable element that has been suggested. The big failing of PDO right now is that it has zero predictive power, because most of us doubt that underlying assumption about regression. But if you understand the patterns of regression, you could then use it to project how likely it is that a particular team's goaltending or shooting percentage improves or declines throughout the season. And that would make the stat a heck of a lot more useful than it is now.

I'd expect you'd find that there's solid correlation between past and future results in save %, and a somewhat less solid but still noticeable correlation in shooting %. That's just a guess from a cursory look at past seasons.

[PeteMoss]

The Flames are interesting in the sense that the shot +/- is a lot closer than their corsi +/-.

If you take the Leafs from last year, they were outshot on average by 6.5 shots per game at even strength with a similar Corsi to the Flames. The Flames get outshot by 3.7 shots per game.

Assuming a .915 save percentage or 8.85 shoot percentage(and rounding difference to 3 shots per game and assuming the difference is all shots against), that's an extra 21 goal differential for the Leafs last year due the shot differential compared to the Flames.

[Erick Estrada]

Problem with shots for and against is that you can rack up 30 shots in a game and get few quality chances and in the next night you could get only 20 shots on net and have 1/4 of them very quality chances. Until there's a metric that can differentiate perimeter shots from quality shots using shots for and against isn't incredibly meaningful on it's own. Flames this season have scored a lot of goals off odd-man rushes through their transition game rather than sustained pressure which will skew analytics like PDO.

[Fighting Banana Slug]

Not a math guy by any means, but I still think that the idea that a team's PDO should regress to the mean assumes everything else being equal. But of course, it isn't equal, as some teams have better goalies and better scorers.

Hilarious that the expansion Thrashers is the example of historically bad PDO. Does anyone think they were unlucky? Check out their lineup: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1999%E2...rashers_season.

[Stay Golden]

Originally Posted by CaptainCrunch

The Oilers record has little to nothing to do with bad luck.

for every one goal allowed from the goal line they are allowing multiple times more due to lazy play, bad coverage, giving up on the play or just plain inability to execute.

There is too much reliance on advanced Stats, they should go hand in hand with actually watching a team play and understanding how they play. Instead too many people are using it as a substitution to watching a game.

Its a lazy mans way to make themselves look smart.

I mean the whole possession thing is kind of ridiculous. If you watch the Flames they don't possess for long periods of time in the offensive zone because they score more often on the rush or with a quick transition, or whatever. So some team comes down to the Flames end and grinds in the corners and does some perimeter stuff for 20 seconds, and the Flames turn it over and a defenseman creates a 2 on one and Calgary scores in about 8 seconds. Well the team with possession didn't get a chance but got a punch of offensive zone time and the Flames get punished statistically for being efficient.

If you want possession stats to be properly analyzed maybe they should be combined with average time to score on possession or chances generated per possession cycle.

But the advanced stats are goofy when they say that the Oilers are merely unlucky. I don't see anything unlucky about their game but I do see a ton of deserved results.

Exactly luck schmuck, the Oilers are a collection of dumb players, playing dumb and making dumb decisions. Lead by a GM, President of Ops and coaching staff that have been reduced to a bunch fools.
Ference should get himself on a jet as fast as he can out of there. He doesn't belong in that muck of a team.

Sorry no SNL clip I can find it's too bad because it is classic.
The Late John Belushi on the Luck of the Irish...

"Luck? Gimme a break.

I got a friend, his name is Dan Sullivan, he's Irish as they come. We used to drink together a lot. After two drinks, he would look like an Irish pirate. You know?
You think he had luck?
In one day he got his car stolen, and the stupid, he had no insurance, and no license, and he gets locked up for being drunk. And after that, he takes off for someplace like India or Nepal, or someplace like that. And his mother dies, ya know, so they wire him to tell him to come to the funeral. It's his mother's funeral, that's all. And he's in India or Nepal, sitting squat-legged listening to some sacred cow. So he comes back and he gets stopped at U.S. Customs for trafficking illegal drugs, not holding, he's trafficking.
I mean, here's this guy Sullivan, his old lady kicks off, he gets popped at the border and he's sitting on fifty pounds of black Tibetan finger hash and two keys of slam. Now that's not bad luck, that's DUMB luck. I don't think luck has anything to do with it, I don't think he has any brains at all."

[Flash Walken]

I'm not dismissing the stats at all and I think they are likely very determinate in nature and practice.

If we take the example of the Flames and the Oilers, for example, I think the Oilers look better than their play should otherwise indicate, as it is very clear that teams coming into the game are taking early leads and sitting back/taking their foot off the pedal/going through the motions/phoning it in.

They aren't seeing a ton of backups yet as teams are still getting the starters into the swing of things, but teams are noticeably playing looser against the Oilers after getting out to early leads.

The oilers have played 38 more minutes 5-5 when down by 2 or more goals than the next closest team.

The oilers are spending most of their games down significantly and the result is a lacking effort from the opposition.

I think, based on the quality of their defensive lapses, general compete, things like stats for shots-against might even be slightly distorted by the way teams hold onto the puck against Edmonton, similar to the fashion that Calgary's off the rush offense might influence their possession statistics.

I don't have numbers to prove this out, but it's my opinion based on reading other people's statistical evaluation and comparing that to what I see on the ice.

[FlamesAddiction]

Corsi is emphasized too much. While it does give you an indication of possession and shot/scoring chances, it doesn't tell you at all "why" certain teams have balance issues. And while I agree that a poor Corsi rating is often an indication underlying deficiencies on a team, I believe there are instances where it is not the case (even if they are the exception).

The other thing is that is puts too much value on simple shots. Quite often if one team is playing a strong team, they try to pepper the net with shots just to try and get pucks on net and garbage goals. And the reverse is true... if they are playing a poor team that allows the opposition to set up and get better quality chances, why would they bother shooting from anywhere?

[HOWITZER]

Forget PDO, the stat that matters most is TDPG and I think we all know that unless it gets better in Edmonton that they won't stand a chance!

[Tron_fdc]

I'll start giving credence to advanced stats when someone comes up with one called"Team with the highest SUCK factor" and the first name I see is Edmonton.

[malcolmk14]

I created a normal distribution curve using PDO numbers for all NHL teams for the last six years and it came up with the following results:

Mean: 100.01
Standard Deviation: 1.234

Within 1 standard deviation of the mean (68.27% of teams will fall within this range):

98.776 - 101.244

Within 2 standard deviations of the mean (95.45% of teams will fall in this range):

97.542 - 102.478

Within 3 standard deviations of the mean (99.73% of teams will fall in this range):

96.307 - 103.713


The Oilers are outside 3 standard deviations from the mean at 96.1. This means they are either historically bad (bottom ~0.08% of teams), or they are unlucky.

The Flames are just outside 2 standard deviations from the mean at 102.9. This means they are either historically good (top ~1% of teams), or they are getting lucky.

[Roughneck]

Originally Posted by Tron_fdc

I'll start giving credence to advanced stats when someone comes up with one called"Team with the highest SUCK factor" and the first name I see is Edmonton.

Is looking at the standings in reverse considered an advanced stat?