The trials and tribulations of Glen Gulutzan

[cannon7]

Originally Posted by Kovaz

Was it stupid of Pittsburgh to hire Mike Sullivan, a guy with no rings, from Vancouver's 2014 team that was even worse?

Really? That's your take away from my post? I'm not saying all new coaching hires should have Stanley Cup rings. (Because that's both unrealistic and stupid.) But if the coach I had just fired had handily defeated my new hire the year before, I better have a damn good reason for making such a move.

[Bingo]

Originally Posted by cannon7

Really? That's your take away from my post? I'm not saying all new coaching hires should have Stanley Cup rings. (Because that's both unrealistic and stupid.) But if the coach I had just fired had handily defeated my new hire the year before, I better have a damn good reason for making such a move.

He was in charge of the Canuck's powerplay not the team.

That is the thinnest analysis I've ever seen.

[nik-]

Lets just analyze results then.

[kukkudo]

GG and the coaching staff underperformed simple as that, they didn't get the results that were needed. Just like any job if you underperform they let you go. I expect GG and his whole crew to be shown the door come April. Its a results driven business.

As someone said earlier Treliving will learn from this mistake and go out and find a well established experienced coach this summer.

[mrdonkey]

Originally Posted by Bingo

He delivered on the possession ... as the Flames are 4th in CF% at 52.7% and 4th in scoring chances at HDCF% 54.3%. Those are great numbers.

I've seen you beating the advanced stats drum like this quite a lot recently, but I haven't seen any convincing evidence that a good Corsi actually translates at all to winning games. Why exactly are these "great numbers"? They have the puck more, fine, but in doing so they give the other team all the time in the world to set up, and moves are slow and methodical and very easy to predict.

"Possession hockey" sounds neat if you have a team of players who can read the ice well and create seams on their own (look at the Lidstrom-era Red Wings as an example). Otherwise it seems to amount to a whole lot of perimeter passing and low-quality shots that get easily picked off and saved. The Flames as they are currently built do not have the tools to play "good" Corsi hockey. Whether you want to pin that on the coach, the GM, or the players themselves is up to you, but the standings will back me up on this. Right now it's like putting gravy on skittles, it's not a good mix.

[monkeyman]

Originally Posted by cannon7

The funny thing (for me, anyway) is that I do machine learning professionally and you'd never hear me waxing poetic about advanced stats when it comes to hockey. Corsi is classic overfitting and will leave many a GM/coach in it's wake.

I said this when the Oilers were trumpeting thier advanced stats ~3 years ago.
There is a difference between teams with good advanced stats based on play and playing to achieve good advanced stats.
Both may produce similar numbers, but with vastly different results.

[cannon7]

Originally Posted by Bingo

The Flames were a tire fire of a possession team relying on blocked shots to stay in games.

That wasn't a recipe for success.

His process had him look for coaches that could convince him that they had the ability and structure to coach an NHL hockey team to reverse the possession crater that had become the Flames.

He hired Gulutzan after many interviews, an odd hike, and then a 5 hour lunch meeting where they grilled him on the structure.

They liked it. They hired him.

He delivered on the possession ... as the Flames are 4th in CF% at 52.7% and 4th in scoring chances at HDCF% 54.3%. Those are great numbers.

I think Gulutzan whiffed on his assistant coaches as they special teams have let them down but the team is losing almost exclusively on finish (they are ranked 8th last at a shooting percentage of 7.1%.

I've said recently that the team's inability to respond to adversity may and perhaps should be Gulutzan's downfall, but the organization as a whole set out on a path to improve their play, and for most metrics they did.

This is where you (and many others) are led astray. You think there's a clear correlation between possession and winning hockey games. There isn't. If it were up to me statistics 101 would be a required course in high school so that we could shake this overfitting problem we see in modern advanced stats in hockey.

For example, I could make the case that Hartley's stretch passing created more odd man rushes and as a result correlates to higher shooting percentages. The numbers are clear, Hartley coached teams had significantly higher shooting percentages than Gulutzan coached ones. But I'd be mistaking a pattern in the noise for the signal. When I hear CF% thrown around, I just shake my head for the very same reason.

Hockey is an extremely difficult sport to model, and assuming you were successful at modeling it, your model would have a very short shelf life. The fact that CF% continues to be the de facto metric of choice after all these years is baffling to say the least.

[GranteedEV]

Originally Posted by Bingo

The Flames were a tire fire of a possession team relying on blocked shots to stay in games.

The Flames, after Kris Russell's final game played as a Flame, were 49.44% corsi for over a 28 game span (which is a very reasonable sample size), and 50.15% scoring chances for. This was Bob Hartley's tire fire.

The next season, Gulutzan's first year, the Flames were 50.52% corsi over 82 games, and 49.89% scoring chances for. This was GLen Gulutzan's "improvement". Now keep in mind that the 2015-16 Flames didn't have Matthew Tkachuk, whereas the 2016-17 Flames did. Ponder that. Barely a percent improvement between coaches. I would gladly drop a percent in our possession stats if it meant TJ Brodie playing like a superstar again.

You build a strong possession team through strong possession players who can keep up with the speed of the game and execute. You build a competitive team through a coach that can get the most out of those players.

Now maybe I disagree with some aspects of how Hartley's Flames played, i.e. the easy zone entries they allowed. But In realisty most of Hartley's bad possession stats were because of bad possession players - Kris Russell, Lance Bouma and Deryk Engelland being the worst culprits. Which of those three players are still Calgary Flames?

Coaches can influence possession stats, but I question if they SHOULD influence possession stats by design. Coaches should get the most out of their roster, and possession should be a symptom of that. With Gulutzan, possession seems to the endgame - an excuse for getting the least out of this roster. I fully accept and champion that a competitive team is a puck possession team. I just do not accept that Glen Gulutzan's systems and utilizations are suited to the makeup of this particular roster.

[cannon7]

Originally Posted by Bingo

He was in charge of the Canuck's powerplay not the team.

That is the thinnest analysis I've ever seen.

Brush up on your statistics and you'll realize that basing your hiring decision on possession numbers is worse than thin. You might as well be sacrificing octopi to appease the hockey gods.

[Erick Estrada]

The Flames gaudy possession stats under Gulutzan have have amounted to a pile of magic beans in regards to success on the ice. As many have noted the possession stats have come as the expense of transition game and creativity. I'm pretty willing to bet most season ticket holders will agree that these possession stats have not provided much in the way of entertainment per dollar as the product looks lifeless and boring. Arguably the worst hockey that's been played in the dome since pre-Darryl Sutter Flames. The bottom line is that regardless of what the advanced metrics say this team doe not play visually well and the results in the standings back that up.

Sooner or later fans that rely too much on advanced stats to pass judgement have to look in the mirror and ask what's more important to them. A team that looks good by advanced stats or one that looks good on the ice because as we have seen these two things are not mutually exclusive.

[jayswin]

Bingo reminds me of Tyler Delow (mudcrutch) in a lot of ways. Not a shot or praise (hell he was hired by an NHL team for his analysis), they're just very similar in that everything is stats, stats, stats (their pet stats mostly) and the eye test and criticism from others is shunned as "just not getting it".

[Enoch Root]

Originally Posted by Bingo

The Flames were a tire fire of a possession team relying on blocked shots to stay in games.

That wasn't a recipe for success.

His process had him look for coaches that could convince him that they had the ability and structure to coach an NHL hockey team to reverse the possession crater that had become the Flames.

He hired Gulutzan after many interviews, an odd hike, and then a 5 hour lunch meeting where they grilled him on the structure.

They liked it. They hired him.

He delivered on the possession ... as the Flames are 4th in CF% at 52.7% and 4th in scoring chances at HDCF% 54.3%. Those are great numbers.

I think Gulutzan whiffed on his assistant coaches as they special teams have let them down but the team is losing almost exclusively on finish (they are ranked 8th last at a shooting percentage of 7.1%.

I've said recently that the team's inability to respond to adversity may and perhaps should be Gulutzan's downfall, but the organization as a whole set out on a path to improve their play, and for most metrics they did.

But improving their possession numbers is about all they have achieved. They have not become a better hockey team. Results are results.

Possession stats should be a barometer of good play, they are not a means to achieving it. Almost every team that seeks to improve possession stats as a path to success, ends up collapsing (Oilers, Coyotes, Leafs a few years ago, Panthers a couple years ago). Now the Flames have followed that path.

The idea that better possession numbers will lead to more success is so fundamentally flawed, and has such a spotty track record, that I am amazed that anyone still posits it (and to be clear, I highly respect your opinion).

[cannon7]

Originally Posted by jayswin

Bingo reminds me of Tyler Delow (mudcrutch) in a lot of ways. Not a shot or praise (hell he was hired by an NHL team for his analysis), they're just very similar in that everything is stats, stats, stats (their pet stats mostly) and the eye test and criticism from others is shunned as "just not getting it".

Unfortunately I don't think the field of statistics is well understood, even in analytics circles. Why else would the Replication Crisis be so widespread?

[Enoch Root]

Originally Posted by Erick Estrada

The Flames gaudy possession stats under Gulutzan have have amounted to a pile of magic beans in regards to success on the ice. As many have noted the possession stats have come as the expense of transition game and creativity. I'm pretty willing to bet most season ticket holders will agree that these possession stats have not provided much in the way of entertainment per dollar as the product looks lifeless and boring. Arguably the worst hockey that's been played in the dome since pre-Darryl Sutter Flames. The bottom line is that regardless of what the advanced metrics say this team doe not play visually well and the results in the standings back that up.

Sooner or later fans that rely too much on advanced stats to pass judgement have to look in the mirror and ask what's more important to them. A team that looks good by advanced stats or one that looks good on the ice because as we have seen these two things are not mutually exclusive.

This is a completely separate issue from the debate about how good of a coach Gulutzan is, but it is also a very important issue, IMO.

I simply do not like or enjoy the style of play that the Flames currently employ. At $10k per year, plus concessions, dinners, etc, plus 41 evenings spent, I want - and expect - to be entertained. I want to enjoy the experience. (I also want them to win, but that is a separate issue).

And right now, the enjoyment level is so low that I am seriously debating renewing my seats. I have decided that I am going to send them a letter stating that I won't renew if he remains the coach. I don't expect them to care, or even respond, but that is where I am at.

[Red]

Someone mentioned here that teams that trail in games have better possession stats than those with a lead.

If that's true then it should explain why the flames have good stats. I guess there is situationally adjusted possession stats to counter that?

I don't like advanced stats myself, but I have to admit that I don't really know how they are collected. Watching the games is still the best way to judge a team or a player. When you see stats supporting the notion that Conklin is better than Brodeur then these stats just lose all the meaning.

[Erick Estrada]

Originally Posted by Enoch Root

This is a completely separate issue from the debate about how good of a coach Gulutzan is, but it is also a very important issue, IMO.

I simply do not like or enjoy the style of play that the Flames currently employ. At $10k per year, plus concessions, dinners, etc, plus 41 evenings spent, I want - and expect - to be entertained. I want to enjoy the experience. (I also want them to win, but that is a separate issue).

And right now, the enjoyment level is so low that I am seriously debating renewing my seats. I have decided that I am going to send them a letter stating that I won't renew if he remains the coach. I don't expect them to care, or even respond, but that is where I am at.

I agree. I know that there's a lot of season ticket holders that are considering not renewing because of the product. My brother who's had the same seats for 20 years now (used to be my seats) is in the same situation in that if the coach comes back he won't and the longtime people in his row have told us they are done regardless. The last two seasons of Flames hockey have not been very entertaining even in the wins. I'm finding that I have more games on in the background these days because the hockey in-between goals is simply not very interesting or exciting.

[Flash Walken]

Originally Posted by jayswin

Bingo reminds me of Tyler Delow (mudcrutch) in a lot of ways. Not a shot or praise (hell he was hired by an NHL team for his analysis), they're just very similar in that everything is stats, stats, stats (their pet stats mostly) and the eye test and criticism from others is shunned as "just not getting it".

don't agree.

a lot of dellow's work involves the value of draft picks as well.

[Enoch Root]

Originally Posted by cannon7

Unfortunately I don't think the field of statistics is well understood, even in analytics circles. Why else would the Replication Crisis be so widespread?

Exactly. It is part of our evolutionary DNA to want to see patterns. It is how we think and perceive the world.

When patterns appear in numbers, we don't just see them, we want to see them. And we are pre-disposed to draw conclusions.

And that is fine for some things. In fact it is vital for some survival instincts. But it causes big problems with statistical analysis. I have been involved in research for decades in finance, and behavioral finance, where replication crisis is a major issue. Because the financial rewards are so potentially lucrative, people seek patterns that they can exploit and profit from everywhere.

And because we are over-confident in our own abilities, we are quick to believe that which we are quick to see. Who has time to bother replicating our findings? Patterns are patterns, let's go!

And the problem is rampant even among professionals.

In sports, where we have no real incentive to prove our work, to replicate our findings, it is far too easy to simply jump to the conclusions we seek.

Player A has higher CF% than player B, therefore player A is a better player.

[cannon7]

Originally Posted by Erick Estrada

I agree. I know that there's a lot of season ticket holders that are considering not renewing because of the product. My brother who's had the same seats for 20 years now (used to be my seats) is in the same situation in that if the coach comes back he won't and the longtime people in his row have told us they are done regardless. The last two seasons of Flames hockey have not been very entertaining even in the wins. I'm finding that I have more games on in the background these days because the hockey in-between goals is simply not very interesting or exciting.

As long as GMs and coaches continue to put too much emphasis on CF%, and as a result, players continue to pad their CF% -- the product is going to suffer. It's the modern day clutch-and-grab / trap.

[Enoch Root]

Originally Posted by Red

Someone mentioned here that teams that trail in games have better possession stats than those with a lead.

If that's true then it should explain why the flames have good stats. I guess there is situationally adjusted possession stats to counter that?

I don't like advanced stats myself, but I have to admit that I don't really know how they are collected. Watching the games is still the best way to judge a team or a player. When you see stats supporting the notion that Conklin is better than Brodeur then these stats just lose all the meaning.

Stats are adjusted for that