How did the Kings miss the playoffs?

[edslunch]

Originally Posted by EldrickOnIce

The go to response is PDO (luck).

PDO is the most meaningless of stats. If a team has a PDO if 100 are they:
A) totally average
B) lights out shooters with lousy goaltending
C) offensively inept but saved by an all world goalie
D) somewhere in between

The answer is Any of the above. What a helpful stat

[mikephoen]

Originally Posted by Resolute 14

No, but when you are looking at 1600-1900 shots (at ES) over the course of the season, that usually does not matter, no matter how much Flames fans want to pretend otherwise.

I'm having trouble buying this argument. If a team plays the same style all year with mostly the same personnel and that style causes them to take a lot of low quality perimeter shots, wouldn't thier 1600-1900 shots be of lower quality than another team that generates high quality shots on a regular basis?

[underGRADFlame]

Originally Posted by PlayfulGenius

The league has so much parity, there's just not a lot to separate most teams...I suspect the Kings were a tad tired and lacking just enough 'fire' to bring them back to the pack.

My money says they rest up this summer and come back as a dominant, hungry team next season.

This.

[EldrickOnIce]

They don't really belong together.
Combining them for 100 is just saying that a shooting % of 9 is about average, as is a save percentage of about 91%
So if you are lucky in one, the other, or both - that number over 100 is representative of 'luck'.
I don't buy it. Of one does buy it, you also have to say that The NY Rangers and Tampa Bay are as 'lucky' as the Flames are this year, too. I don't recall much talk about how lucky they are...

That said, I can not see the Flames maintaining the shooting percentage they are putting up this year

[Street Pharmacist]

Again, it's only accurate in context with obvious exceptions. The trouble is, with so many rookies you can't know if it's luck or exception.

It's been well established that save% is not reproducible except for a very few elite goaltenders. Same goes for shooting%. The trouble for the flames is the shooting %. Well with so many rookies/sophomore playing important roles, you can't say it's not sustainable because you don't know if it's their baseline.

And adding them up is silly

[Monahan23]

3 reasons

-couldn't rely on another defence-man other that Doughty
-They played with 0 sense of urgency
-they couldn't score

[EldrickOnIce]

Originally Posted by Street Pharmacist

Again, it's only accurate in context with obvious exceptions. The trouble is, with so many rookies you can't know if it's luck or exception.

It's been well established that save% is not reproducible except for a very few elite goaltenders. Same goes for shooting%. The trouble for the flames is the shooting %. Well with so many rookies/sophomore playing important roles, you can't say it's not sustainable because you don't know if it's their baseline.

And adding them up is silly

Not quite sure I understand what you mean, unless a team like that is the exception?
Tampa has been 1st, 3rd, 8th and 1st in the league in shooting % over the last 4 years. That seems reproducible , with the outlier being 8th (instead of higher).

[Sylvanfan]

I suspect that Boston and Pittsburgh are also teams suffering a bit from a compressed 2 and a half seasons. The 48 game lockout season was pretty compressed, last year with the Olympics was compressed, and these guys are feeling it this year.

I personally thought Jonathan Quick wasn't as good this year as he's been in previous seasons. He should be much fresher next season.

[edslunch]

Originally Posted by dieHARDflameZ

In my opinion they've just played way too much hockey over the past few seasons. I don't think they had enough left in the gas tank.



Make no mistake, this team should be back in the playoffs next season contending for another cup.

The gas tank is probably as much emotional as physical. Been through the war three years in a row, won it twice. Even subconsciously is your heart still in it to the same extent?

[Resolute 14]

Originally Posted by mikephoen

I'm having trouble buying this argument. If a team plays the same style all year with mostly the same personnel and that style causes them to take a lot of low quality perimeter shots, wouldn't thier 1600-1900 shots be of lower quality than another team that generates high quality shots on a regular basis?

No, because of the exact same argument being made to try and dismiss this: not every shot is the same. And over this many shots, everybody is taking massive amounts of both low quality and high quality shots.

The Kings took nearly 20% more shots at 5 on 5 than the Flames did. Obviously that means they took more low quality shots, but it probably also means they took more higher quality shots too. So while one could argue that the Flames skill level is higher than expected, which resulted in a higher shooting percentage than expected, it is hard not to believe the same should have been true of LA. I don't believe for one second that the difference between our offence and their offence is the idea that we eschew low quality chances for high. In fact, at 5 on 5, the Kings actually outscored us 148-145 - our abnormally high shooting percentage ate up that nearly 20% difference in shots, however.

[Enoch Root]

Originally Posted by Resolute 14

No, because of the exact same argument being made to try and dismiss this: not every shot is the same. And over this many shots, everybody is taking massive amounts of both low quality and high quality shots.

The Kings took nearly 20% more shots at 5 on 5 than the Flames did. Obviously that means they took more low quality shots, but it probably also means they took more higher quality shots too. So while one could argue that the Flames skill level is higher than expected, which resulted in a higher shooting percentage than expected, it is hard not to believe the same should have been true of LA. I don't believe for one second that the difference between our offence and their offence is the idea that we eschew low quality chances for high. In fact, at 5 on 5, the Kings actually outscored us 148-145 - our abnormally high shooting percentage ate up that nearly 20% difference in shots, however.

Well, the two most plausible explanations are:

a) the Flames are taking higher quality shots overall, or

b) the Flames are lucky

Over 82 games (and in fact well over 100 now), choosing 'b' is pretty silly. If 'a' didn't sit well with me, I would be looking for a 'c' before I started arguing for 'b'.

[Resolute 14]

False dichotomies don't strengthen the case for the option you prefer.

[GGG]

Originally Posted by edslunch

PDO is the most meaningless of stats. If a team has a PDO if 100 are they:
A) totally average
B) lights out shooters with lousy goaltending
C) offensively inept but saved by an all world goalie
D) somewhere in between

The answer is Any of the above. What a helpful stat

Pdo is useful in measuring the sustainability of sucess. Pdos of above 1.01 and below .990 are definately not repeatable year over year. So if you are outside of those bounds even with great goal tending or great shooting (assuming those exist) you will likely regress to between those two bands. The bands might be even narrower.

People hate pdo because people keep saying all teams should have a pdo of 1 and it's entirely random. But it isn't quite. Better teams will have marginally higher pdo.

[EldrickOnIce]

This is particularly interesting work

“It’s not that my first thought was Corsi is bogus, it’s just there needs to be a stage 2,” said Valiquette, now an analyst with the New York Rangers and a goalie coach. “The old train of thought was, ‘Pucks to the net, pucks to the net. Good things happen when you get pucks to the net.’ Actually (most of the time) it’s, ‘Pucks to the net, nothing happens.’ ”

The Royal Road

Valiquette doesn’t think about shots. He thinks about shot sequences, and said red shots are highly overvalued while green shots are hugely undervalued.
A red shot is one where a goalie has more than a half-second of clear sight on either side of the Royal Road. These shots require minimal movement. Valiquette claims NHL goaltenders, on average, stop 97 percent of red shots. Green shots are those where the puck crosses the Royal Road, either by the puck carrier or a passer, then are shot on goal. According to Valiquette’s research, 76 percent of goals so far this season have been on green shots.

http://www.thehockeynews.com/blog/wh...iquette-knows/

[Itse]

Bad stat reading is bad. The Kings are not a statistical aberration, and neither are the Flames. Anaheim is.

Long version:

Spoiler!

If you look at what the goal differential suggest for each team in the west:
- STL, CHI and NSH are in a league of their own when it comes to goal differential, and this is pretty well reflected in the standings.
- CGY, LAK, VAN and WIN are relatively consistently close to each other throughout the season, both in points and in goal differential. Nothing to see here either.
- SJS hangs with the group above in points for the first half of the season, but for a large part their goal differential lags a bit (but not a lot) behind. In the second half of the season first the goal differential and then points start to drop clearly out of playoff competition numbers.
- For the first half, MIN goal differential and points put them clearly out of the playoff picture. Then something happens, and their record in the last 39 games is +46 goals and 59 points. "Something" in the case of Minnesota is not a mystery however.

Short version:
At the end of the season the top 7 teams in goal differential (STL, CHI, NSH, CGY, VAN, MIN, WIN) are all in the playoffs. The 8th in goal differential are LAK, who are 9th in standings.

The aberration here is Anaheim. Most of the season their goal differential suggests they should be in the same group with CGY, LAK, WIN and VAN, but their points keep having them in the same group with STL, CHI and NSH. From January until the end of the season they actually have a negative goal differential, but this did not stop them from ending up at the top of the conference.


So, the real question is not why did LA make it (they're a playoff bubble team, some of them don't make it), nor is it why did CGY make it (they're a playoff bubble team, some of them make it, and CGY was the better of those teams for most of the season).

The question is, how come Anaheim has 107 points? Are they Corsi monsters?

[Buster]

Originally Posted by Resolute 14

No, because of the exact same argument being made to try and dismiss this: not every shot is the same. And over this many shots, everybody is taking massive amounts of both low quality and high quality shots.

The Kings took nearly 20% more shots at 5 on 5 than the Flames did. Obviously that means they took more low quality shots, but it probably also means they took more higher quality shots too. So while one could argue that the Flames skill level is higher than expected, which resulted in a higher shooting percentage than expected, it is hard not to believe the same should have been true of LA. I don't believe for one second that the difference between our offence and their offence is the idea that we eschew low quality chances for high. In fact, at 5 on 5, the Kings actually outscored us 148-145 - our abnormally high shooting percentage ate up that nearly 20% difference in shots, however.

This is an assumption. It also seems to be an assumption that is not proving valid as we draw more scrutiny to it.

Any statistical model must also take into consideration the sensitivity of an input. If the Flames are playing a style that results in a higher shot quality, it is possible that even a very minor difference in this regard can result in a significant difference over the course of a season with respect to points.

[d_phaneuf]

Slap Shots has been told by two sources that the Kings locked the door to their locker room following a defeat on the road within the last two weeks so that Sutter could not get in and deliver what the players apparently expected to be another in a series of lectures/tirades.
As the tale was told, after Sutter finally tracked down an arena operative to unlock the door, he was greeted by three heavy waste receptacles lined up as barricade to what had become an empty room.

http://nypost.com/2015/04/11/calenda...hampion-kings/

[jayswin]

Originally Posted by Resolute 14

I don't believe for one second that the difference between our offence and their offence is the idea that we eschew low quality chances for high. In fact, at 5 on 5, the Kings actually outscored us 148-145 - our abnormally high shooting percentage ate up that nearly 20% difference in shots, however.

From watching them play this season this seems to be exactly what the Flames do. Not a lot of chances, but the ones they do take are of high quality.

They seem more geared towards a "keep the pressure on until that high scoring area chance comes up and make it count" style rather than coming in and just looking to overload the other team with shots like most teams do.

[CorsiHockeyLeague]

Originally Posted by Tiger

It is when you take an argument. Make it more extreme and stupid but the same premise and then prove your right by saying the extreme case is wrong.

Datsyuk playing with 12yr olds seems like a extreme case when it was used to argue gaudreau with other nhlers.

Please explain if it is wrong

It is. A straw man refers to the practice of inventing an argument, attributing it to the person you're arguing against and then defeating it. Often easily recognized on the internet by posts beginning with the phrase "so what you're saying is..." Or some variant thereof. It's particularly obnoxious to have someone try to tell you what you think.

An extreme example used to disprove a general principle is not a straw man, it's a reductio ad absurdum which is a logically sound form of argument. Datsyuk with 12 year olds demonstrates how someone's corsi rel can be a more useful expression of their possession ability by adjusting somewhat for the other 9 skaters on the ice.

[Moneyhands23]

Lol, tsn " the reporters " are about to tell us!