[POLL] Calgary Flames coaching change mega-thread—with poll

[Steve Bozek]

[QUOTE=Roof-Daddy;6659921]Hopefully if they are moving on from Burke it's because with a decent sample size of his influence on Treliving's hockey decisions, its become abundantly clear that he's holding Treliving back.

For example:

1. Hopefully he pushed hard for Brouwer signing and Tre was reluctant
2. Hopefully he pushed hard for Bollig trade and Tre was reluctant
3. Hopefully he had a major influence on the 2014 draft, and Tre went with because he was just hired



IIRC, one of the terms of Calgary being allowed to sign Treliving was that he not take a role in the Flames’ 2014 draft.

[Bingo]

Originally Posted by DeluxeMoustache

Yeah but those don’t work either in their current form because shot location as a proxy for quality is hilariously simplistic.

That's not actually true.

Shot location is the beginning point, but then adds and subtractions are made based additional situations like block shots and passing points.

[Locke]

Originally Posted by dammage79

agree, but Elliott was no where near a stable mental state to play any further that game #3. It was pretty clear and then proven early in period #1 of game 4.

I don't know, maybe throwing in Gillies would not have made a difference, but at least as a kid getting thrown into the deep end may come up and survive and steal one game. I just felt running with Elliott in game #4 was already admitting defeat.

If that wasnt, then immediately pulling him after his mistake certainly was.

[Textcritic]

Originally Posted by DeluxeMoustache

Yeah but those don’t work either in their current form because shot location as a proxy for quality is hilariously simplistic.

I agree these are simplistic, but I also don't think the solution is to dismiss them outright, which is precisely what Bingo has been preaching all along.

[bax]

Originally Posted by 868904

I don't really get the narrative that AV isn't good with young players. Go look at the age of the Canucks core when AV started there, they were right at that age where Gaudreau, Monahan, Bennett, Brodie, Hamilton, Backlund are right now.



AV grew with that core group which was in the early 20's. The reason why he didn't play young players at the end of his tenure with the Canucks is because they didn't have any.



As for the Rangers, don't really understand the complaints either, I see lots of young players on those rosters putting up pretty decent points. Some fans just want to see all young players and no veterans.

I don’t think the complaints are because of general usage, but more so for specific instances where a player gets into AV’s doghouse and never gets out.

The most recent example being limiting Buchenevich’s ice time, playing him in a checking role, and even scratching him for Tanner Glass at times.

[DeluxeMoustache]

^ which is fine.

But looking in to it is not looking in to a coach who won with the roster he had, it is looking at a coach who did not succeed and trying to understand why he did not succeed.

Pretty risky for Tre to make a hire while justifying lack of success

[Erick Estrada]

I see the resident Oilers fans and Flames haters are propping up their man Dallas Eakins.

[DeluxeMoustache]

Originally Posted by Bingo

That's not actually true.

Shot location is the beginning point, but then adds and subtractions are made based additional situations like block shots and passing points.

I know people are working on this, and it is part of what the Flames look at internally (and believe this is absolutely required for models to approach being useful) but are these publically available somewhere for all games ?

[dammage79]

Originally Posted by Textcritic

Ugh. No. As has been demonstrated numerous times, Gulutzan did not "coach to generate corsi events." The breakdown show rather abundantly that his Flames teams generated a tonne of shots from the slot.

Yes, a tonne of shots from the slot with zero secondary positioning. Is there a stat for that? there should be, either the players didn't get the system or rushed their shots before proper set up could occur. Either way, execution is a coaching sin. And I just find the players constantly second guessed their decision making and I assume that is because they're trying to execute a system that was counter intuitive. You can whip 40 shots from the slot a night but if there's no one screening the goalie or a forward just off the corner of the net to clean up rebounds, you're just not going to be successful despite having a "high danger" scoring chance.

Too many one and done chances by any name by the Flames this year but that also made them a top stats team.

Bottom line is, I want a coach that brings instinct back into the players games. Get these guys positioned better on scoring chances.

[Textcritic]

Originally Posted by DeluxeMoustache

^ which is fine.

But looking in to it is not looking in to a coach who won with the roster he had, it is looking at a coach who did not succeed and trying to understand why he did not succeed.

Pretty risky for Tre to make a hire while justifying lack of success

It is not especially risky if he has clearly identified correctable factors in a coach's limited success.

To be clear again, I am not saying that Bill Peters is the right choice to be the next Flames coach, but I do think that the strong rejection of him as the best candidate is entirely shortsighted.

[Bingo]

Originally Posted by DeluxeMoustache

^ which is fine.

But looking in to it is not looking in to a coach who won with the roster he had, it is looking at a coach who did not succeed and trying to understand why he did not succeed.

Pretty risky for Tre to make a hire while justifying lack of success

This is going to be risky no matter how you look at it.

Treliving hired a coach that he fired two years later, that's on him because he hired the coach and built the roster. They didn't mesh in the end regardless of the reason.

So now he has to hire a new guy and he has to get it right, I think we can all agree on that.

He has to be sure no matter what view you have on the parameters.

A) Hire a proven winner, and then move him into a different roster with different players and hope that winning record continues.

B) Hire a guy that has a challenged win/loss record that he thinks is a fit with the current roster.

Either way there's risk.

And with that risk I'd want to know why ...

Peters has lost with great underlying numbers.
Vigneault has won (until this year) with terrible underlying numbers.

If bad goaltending in Carolina and King Henrik in New York are the differences between the two you'd best not hire Vigneault and hope that Mike Smith is the answer next year.

[zamler]

Originally Posted by Bingo

Like it or not every NHL season has two teams that win despite having terrible numbers and two teams that lose despite having great numbers.

This is exactly why advanced stats are not all that valuable.

If I'm hiring a coach with a winning record but terrible underlying numbers I'm looking into why.

That's fair. But you seem to only want to look at it from one angle, get a good stats coach never mind his actual record versus a winning coach with stats that may or may not be good.

[Textcritic]

Originally Posted by dammage79

Yes, a tonne of shots from the slot with zero secondary positioning. Is there a stat for that? there should be, either the players didn't get the system or rushed their shots before proper set up could occur. Either way, execution is a coaching sin...

I completely agree with this.

Bottom line is, I want a coach that brings instinct back into the players games. Get these guys positioned better on scoring chances.

And I also agree completely with this. The question in the light of these observations is whether or not Bill Peters or Alain Vignault, or someone else is the right choice to make this correction. This is an impossible question for us to answer with the information we have in hand, so why are some so invested in their certainty about the capabilities of one coach over the others? It is counter-intuitive.

[Bingo]

Originally Posted by DeluxeMoustache

I know people are working on this, and it is part of what the Flames look at internally (and believe this is absolutely required for models to approach being useful) but are these publically available somewhere for all games ?

The difference between SCF (Scoring Chance For) and HDCF (High Danger Corsi For) are the adds and subtractions and those are available everywhere.

However, what isn't available is the math behind it sadly.

So all HDCF's start out a SCF but only those that get an add +1 for situations get counted as a HDCF.

I'd love to see the breakdown and see if it meets the eye test in a few games to really get my head around it.

[dammage79]

And for the record, I'm not against Peters coming in. I just worry that the Corsi life is too heavy a factor in bringing him in.

I think we can all agree as long as this new staff can have a decent PP and better 5v5 scoring, all the better.

[cross16]

Originally Posted by DeluxeMoustache

Either way, in looking at Peters there is a riskily disproportionate reliance on extrapolation, or even worse, hope.

Not sure I see it the same way. I think there is a lot of risk no matter what.

AV was not successful in Montreal and last year he finished 6 points behind Peters and the Canes despite spending 13 more mill on payroll and have a borderline hall of fame goalie. Yes I know he was 100 pts the year prior but do you know exactly what AV you are getting? What did Montreal think when they were hiring Julien?

I'm always of the opinion if you look at the underlying stats of the Hurricanes and put it with what the Flames have they make the playoffs. How much further would the go is hard to say but I also think the Flames need more pieces to be considered a threat irregardless of who their coach is.

[dissentowner]

I still think you grab Paul MacLean for the PP.

[getbak]

Originally Posted by SuperMatt18

I was looking that up too. Here is there ranking sorted:

Corsi / Scoring Chances For / High Danger For

14/15: 4 / 15 / 17
15/16: 2 / 11 / 18
16/17: 3 / 5 / 3
17/16: 1 / 1 / 3

So clearly a problem his first two seasons in Carolina but they seem to have figured it out more the last two.

Here's where they've ranked in terms of Goals Scored / Wins / Points...

• 14/15: 27th / 27th / 26th
• 15/16: 27th / 26th / 18th
• 16/17: 20th / 22nd / 20th
• 17/18: 23rd / 22nd / 21st

In the stats that actually matter, they didn't really improve at all.

[Bingo]

Originally Posted by zamler

This is exactly why advanced stats are not all that valuable.
That's fair. But you seem to only want to look at it from one angle, get a good stats coach never mind his actual record versus a winning coach with stats that may or may not be good.

Disagree.

A guy fell into a 30M crevasse near Jasper yesterday and lived. But I wouldn't hold the overall rule of not jumping into 30M crevasses in question.

It's statistics.

2/16 teams that made it shouldn't have
2/15 teams that missed shouldn't have

Those are summaries that advanced stats gurus would hold as gospel. I'm not in that camp at all. But I do wonder why they happened, and I think they should be looked into in order to make sure you don't over look factors that could help make a good decision.

[Textcritic]

Originally Posted by dammage79

And for the record, I'm not against Peters coming in. I just worry that the Corsi life is too heavy a factor in bringing him in.

I think we can all agree as long as this new staff can have a decent PP and better 5v5 scoring, all the better.

For my money the biggest fixes are these: the powerplay and the bizarre discrepancy between home and road splits. If the coach can figure out why the Flames were so bad at the Saddledome this year then the team will be competitive.