How Screwed are the Flames?

[DJones]

Originally Posted by trublmaker

"please explain why you'd take that view. The statement "You're wrong, clearly X team is better than Y team because they're higher in the standings" barely deserves a response even if you don't believe in any "advanced" stat. It's clearly wrong, and we've just been talking about how obvious that is. "

It's not a single team (X) that's higher than them though, it's 3

"I'd again point to the above post by "trublmaker" as an extreme example of people coming to the conclusion that they're suddenly not any good anymore. Yeah, no, they still are."

Where do I say that LA is suddenly no good anymore, I said those 3 teams are ahead of the kings therefore at the moment all 3 teams are better and I think after 65 games that's not a bad sample size for the season.

LA is just such a unique situation. Potentially they are the best team in the league but on any given night they can #### the bed.

No matter what system you are using that is going to throw a wrench in your predictive abilities

[Red]

Originally Posted by Resolute 14

He was wrong, but interestingly, also one of not many that predicted we would be improved this year.

Edit: but as a useless exercise I won't take up, it would be interesting to see him do that using the actual numbers from this year and seeing how well that correlated.

What did he predict exactly? That our stats would be better thus better standings? He was clearly wrong. Wouldn't be surprised if our stats are worse this year.

Possession stats based on shots taken/given up are just not that telling. Any team or a player can improve those stats by firing shots from everywhere with no good results overall. See Eakins's Oilers. Often times teams shoot from everywhere to break out of a scoring slump. If they get no results they lose the game while showing superior possession stats.

Good teams don't often have scoring slumps so this is a case in which a poor team can boost their possession stats with no real merit. All this just makes it hard to predict future results.
Add player turnover, injuries, changes to opponents rosters or style (kids playing for next years jobs late in the season as an example) and you really have no idea who will throw a bunch of shots at you in a given game.

With all these unknowns, why bother with corsi/fenwick? THey only tell you a part of the story from games already played.

[heep223]

Originally Posted by Resolute 14

If teams like Pittsburgh and Anaheim can't even manage more than one bloody goal against the likes of Vancouver and San Jose, then we might actually be screwed.

No we're not, because teams like Arizona and Edmonton are going to light them up instead

[Fighting Banana Slug]

Originally Posted by edslunch

The linked article is interesting. I applaud his attempt to predict this season's standings but the results are pretty...... Wrong

As an advanced stat fence sitter, this was pretty informative, but ultimately a pretty poor prediction. Not so sure it is more accurate than any old school guy's prediction going into the season. One obvious problem, is that the point totals seem like they total more than the points available over the season. I mean, how can the worst team be in the 80+ range? I realize the 3 point game makes it more difficult, but I would have thought the average should be around 82. That seems like a flaw that could be easily fixed. I would also be interested in seeing maybe an average of this years Fenwick, to see if the prediction on Fenwick for this year is valid.

Honest question for stat guys, how much above zero does the R2 value need to be to assert a "strong" correlation? I understand anything more than zero is better than a coin flip, but I think I could predict games at better than 50% without any advanced stats.

[edslunch]

Originally Posted by Fighting Banana Slug

As an advanced stat fence sitter, this was pretty informative, but ultimately a pretty poor prediction. Not so sure it is more accurate than any old school guy's prediction going into the season. One obvious problem, is that the point totals seem like they total more than the points available over the season. I mean, how can the worst team be in the 80+ range? I realize the 3 point game makes it more difficult, but I would have thought the average should be around 82. That seems like a flaw that could be easily fixed. I would also be interested in seeing maybe an average of this years Fenwick, to see if the prediction on Fenwick for this year is valid.

Honest question for stat guys, how much above zero does the R2 value need to be to assert a "strong" correlation? I understand anything more than zero is better than a coin flip, but I think I could predict games at better than 50% without any advanced stats.

Part of the issue with his analysis is he attempted to deal with changing rosters by predicting lines and time on ice for various players. His solution is a bit of a house of cards with advanced stats being just part of the input. To me the overall methodology is flawed enough that it's hard to say to what extent the advanced stats were predictive or not.

[H2SO4(aq)]

Someone remind lambert that there are no asteriks in this life, just scoreboards.

[Rerun]

If only we had an advanced stat thread where all this advanced stats stuff could be argued.

[the2bears]

Originally Posted by Rerun

If only we had an advanced stat thread where all this advanced stats stuff could be argued.

Isn't this thread about advanced stats?

[Street Pharmacist]

Originally Posted by the2bears

Isn't this thread about advanced stats?

Some would prefer we keep all statistical talk to old buried threads even if it's relevant to the thread topic.

As you can tell, many just don't want to hear about it

[Rerun]

Originally Posted by the2bears

Isn't this thread about advanced stats?

Yes and no. The OP was about what an idiot Ryan Lambert is... but he did write about the advanced stats stuff.

I just get tired of the fact that it seems like every thread about how the Flame are doing seems to devolve into an advanced stats argument... and the same things are argued over and over again.

I must be wrong though. Carry on.

[Resolute 14]

Originally Posted by Red

What did he predict exactly? That our stats would be better thus better standings? He was clearly wrong. Wouldn't be surprised if our stats are worse this year.

Possession stats based on shots taken/given up are just not that telling. Any team or a player can improve those stats by firing shots from everywhere with no good results overall. See Eakins's Oilers. Often times teams shoot from everywhere to break out of a scoring slump. If they get no results they lose the game while showing superior possession stats.

Good teams don't often have scoring slumps so this is a case in which a poor team can boost their possession stats with no real merit. All this just makes it hard to predict future results.
Add player turnover, injuries, changes to opponents rosters or style (kids playing for next years jobs late in the season as an example) and you really have no idea who will throw a bunch of shots at you in a given game.

With all these unknowns, why bother with corsi/fenwick? THey only tell you a part of the story from games already played.

Literally every stat only tells part of the story. Even goals scored. That does not mean they don't have value when used in context. And yes, a team could theoretically try to raise their Corsi/Fenwick by shooting from everywhere. But a couple problems with that. First, poor shots usually result in turnovers which usually means a Corsi event against is coming right up, so no advantage there. Second, nobody actually does that, you're basically trying to discount the value by arguing against an extreme that is really only hypothetical.

[Street Pharmacist]

So much absolutism going on.

"advanced" stats are mildly more informative than "traditional" stats.

No argued that SOG was the most important stat like a select few are with corsi, but no one ever argued SOG was useless. Why has the words "advanced" and "corsi" changed things to such polarity?

[N-E-B]

The only stat I use to determine if a team is good or not is not advanced at all. It's called wins. The more wins a team has, the better they are.

I don't need a bunch of confusing math to tell me who's good and who's bad.

[CorsiHockeyLeague]

Originally Posted by N-E-B

The only stat I use to determine if a team is good or not is not advanced at all. It's called wins. The more wins a team has, the better they are.

I don't need a bunch of confusing math to tell me who's good and who's bad.

Sometimes with anti-stats comments I literally cannot tell if serious.

[Street Pharmacist]

Originally Posted by CorsiHockeyLeague

Sometimes with anti-stats comments I literally cannot tell if serious.

Don't bite

[N-E-B]

Originally Posted by CorsiHockeyLeague

Sometimes with anti-stats comments I literally cannot tell if serious.

Dead serious.

I should elaborate a bit more though, I do think there's value in the stats, but when people like Lambert use them to try tell me that the Flames are a "brutal team" I can't take it seriously. There's many ways for a team to be good, and clearly the Flames are a team that are good despite poor advanced stats.

It annoys me to no end that some people think that just because a team has bad advanced stats it must mean they're a bad team. They're not the be all end all.

Good teams win, bad teams lose. Wins and losses are all that matters at the end of the day. That's what determines who makes the playoffs, not who has the best Corsi, Fenwick, or PDO.