[PGT] Flames blank Bruins 4-0. But team needs to score more, apparently

[Ziggy Lidstrom]

I may be wrong in the end when it’s all said and done but I’m not backing down. I’m happy to hear others’ opinions mind you, save for that one person on my ignore list.

And it was a solid effort in the Boston game. It’s nice to win in that building so convincingly.

[dino7c]

When you are wrong you will make some dumb excuse like you are doing now.

Zero logic to your excuse though.
Flames have scored a lot of goals because the soft schedule...yet you only consider a few teams to be good. By your own definition almost every team sucks so the schedule moving forward will also be soft.

Anyway, I know you won't bet me but I hope someone takes you to the cleaners.

The guy who was calling the Oilers waaay better than the Flames and a 50 win team after 3 games thinks it's too early to read anything into the Flames play lol.

[Jay Random]

Originally Posted by Ziggy Lidstrom

Regarding my comment : I don’t think the flames have played very good teams during this run. I’m holding out hope that this momentum can carry them to better results versus the better teams.

So far this year, the average points percentage of the 32 teams in the NHL is .560.

The Flames have played 17 teams in their first 19 games. As of today, the average points percentage of their opponents (weighted by number of games played, so the Rangers and Philly count twice) is .556. So the Flames' schedule has been just about exactly average in terms of the strength of their opponents.

However, 13 of their 19 games have been played on the road, which increases the difficulty.

Sagarin rates them as having had the 5th most difficult schedule in the league so far.

[Ziggy Lidstrom]

Originally Posted by Jay Random

So far this year, the average points percentage of the 32 teams in the NHL is .560.

The Flames have played 17 teams in their first 19 games. As of today, the average points percentage of their opponents (weighted by number of games played, so the Rangers and Philly count twice) is .556. So the Flames' schedule has been just about exactly average in terms of the strength of their opponents.

However, 13 of their 19 games have been played on the road, which increases the difficulty.

Sagarin rates them as having had the 5th most difficult schedule in the league so far.

Who is Sagarin, if you don’t mind explaining?

Road hockey is “tougher “ objectively but it’s not like football or basketball. The home crowd on those sports are a different animal than in hockey IMO.

Hockey is based a lot on puck luck. How many flames squads have we seen outwork teams and have better Corsi or advanced stats but still lose the game.

I just don’t value the same metrics as you Jay in regards to the definitions of difficult. Agree to disagree I suppose.

[Scroopy Noopers]

Originally Posted by Ziggy Lidstrom

Who is Sagarin, if you don’t mind explaining?

Road hockey is “tougher “ objectively but it’s not like football or basketball. The home crowd on those sports are a different animal than in hockey IMO.

Hockey is based a lot on puck luck. How many flames squads have we seen outwork teams and have better Corsi or advanced stats but still lose the game.

I just don’t value the same metrics as you Jay in regards to the definitions of difficult. Agree to disagree I suppose.

You’re right, it’s way harder than football on the road. Travelling to multiple cities within the same week, is exhausting. Losing your routines. Not having last change…

[dino7c]

Home teams win more games this is not even a debate...home teams win 55% of games

[Ziggy Lidstrom]

Originally Posted by Scroopy Noopers

You’re right, it’s way harder than football on the road. Travelling to multiple cities within the same week, is exhausting. Losing your routines. Not having last change…

The reasons you state as making it difficult aren’t convincing enough for me. Travel like that is part of the game. It’s part of the job description when u sign in Calgary. Geographically we have to travel further than most other squads.

As far as routines I’m sure sutter and co have them designing some team specific routines, we don’t know what that dynamic looks like so how can we say their routines are being lost? For all we know they have home routines and road routines.

Not having last change is a thing but how much of a factor is it really?

And you’re saying that road games in hockey are more difficult than road games in football? I respectfully disagree sir.

[Always Earned Never Given]

Originally Posted by Jay Random

So far this year, the average points percentage of the 32 teams in the NHL is .560.

The Flames have played 17 teams in their first 19 games. As of today, the average points percentage of their opponents (weighted by number of games played, so the Rangers and Philly count twice) is .556. So the Flames' schedule has been just about exactly average in terms of the strength of their opponents.

However, 13 of their 19 games have been played on the road, which increases the difficulty.

Sagarin rates them as having had the 5th most difficult schedule in the league so far.

So technically the teams Flames played HAD a much better points percentage before meeting them. Flames are the ones that made them regress to a combined .556

IIRC most of those teams had a great record coming into the game against the Flames.

[GioforPM]

Originally Posted by Ziggy Lidstrom

Ok I try to apprise myself of as many of the opinions in the thread before I post. Many people are using the distance as some sort of badge of merit. It’s in this thread.

Those are false equivalencies of comparison you’re using about injuries. I said Crosby and malkin. I said NYI top four defence and their top PWF. Ottawa didn’t have their top center and top goal scorer who owned the flames last year.

If we were missing OK, tanev, Rasmus and hanifin. Maybe. If it were lindy and Johnny? Maybe but your comparisons were our depth players.

Sens were missing Batherson, still had Stutzle, Tkachuk, Norris, Ennis, Chabot. Isles were missing D but they still had Chara, Dobson, and all their top forwards.

Like I said, you take your opponent as you find them. Those same Isles beat Florida the game before. The same Sens beat Pittsburgh the game before, 6-3.

[dino7c]

Home teams win 55% of games

/Next excuse please

Imagine a Flames fan trying this hard to discredit the team he supposedly likes when making multiple tire pumping Oiler posts.

Huh

[GioforPM]

Originally Posted by Ziggy Lidstrom

The reasons you state as making it difficult aren’t convincing enough for me. Travel like that is part of the game. It’s part of the job description when u sign in Calgary. Geographically we have to travel further than most other squads.

As far as routines I’m sure sutter and co have them designing some team specific routines, we don’t know what that dynamic looks like so how can we say their routines are being lost? For all we know they have home routines and road routines.

Not having last change is a thing but how much of a factor is it really?

And you’re saying that road games in hockey are more difficult than road games in football? I respectfully disagree sir.

Yes, travel is a fact of life in Calgary. It doesn’t make it any easier.

[Scroopy Noopers]

Originally Posted by Ziggy Lidstrom

The reasons you state as making it difficult aren’t convincing enough for me. Travel like that is part of the game. It’s part of the job description when u sign in Calgary. Geographically we have to travel further than most other squads.

As far as routines I’m sure sutter and co have them designing some team specific routines, we don’t know what that dynamic looks like so how can we say their routines are being lost? For all we know they have home routines and road routines.

Not having last change is a thing but how much of a factor is it really?

And you’re saying that road games in hockey are more difficult than road games in football? I respectfully disagree sir.

Being part of the game doesn’t make it less difficult. It’s one of the reasons western Canada has a hard time attracting free agents. It’s a known thing players dislike, lots of travel and long trips.

I’m saying road trips sure as #### are, football players play once a week. What’s the longest road trip, 2-3 games? Probably back home for practice during the week in between?

[GioforPM]

Originally Posted by dino7c

Home teams win 55% of games

/Next excuse please

Imagine a Flames fan trying this hard to discredit the team he supposedly likes when making multiple tire pumping Oiler posts.

Huh

I wonder what the comments were when the Oilers were creaming the Sens last year when the Sens had goalies who actively got out of the way of pucks.

[Cleveland Steam Whistle]

Originally Posted by Ziggy Lidstrom

The reasons you state as making it difficult aren’t convincing enough for me. Travel like that is part of the game. It’s part of the job description when u sign in Calgary. Geographically we have to travel further than most other squads.

As far as routines I’m sure sutter and co have them designing some team specific routines, we don’t know what that dynamic looks like so how can we say their routines are being lost? For all we know they have home routines and road routines.

Not having last change is a thing but how much of a factor is it really?

And you’re saying that road games in hockey are more difficult than road games in football? I respectfully disagree sir.

Don't the stats tell the story, does it really matter what debates we can conjure up in regards to reasons.

55% = The Home Team's winning percentage in the NHL since 05/06

Apparently last year with no crowds, was the first year in the NFL that home team won less games than away teams, but prior to that from 2010 to 2020 the home team winning % was actually 56.5%.

So I'd say practically, there is no difference, it's the same, but technically it's been slightly harder to win on the road in the NFL.

For the purposes of what's appears to be being debated, a challenge to the assertation that being on the road is "tougher" and the Flames schedule has been tougher given it's road heavy, is actually correct, being on the road for as much of the season as the Flames have been makes their current record even more impressive.

[GranteedEV]

Originally Posted by Ziggy Lidstrom

I’m not rewriting my prediction. I’m standing by it still despite it being more tenuous now than when I said it.

It's... not about... now though

It's... about this team's 82 game prorated goalscoring every season since Gaudreau entered the NHL.


2014-15 - 237 - and this was the year Giordano missed the latter quarter of the season
2015-16 - 229
2016-17 - 222
2017-18 - 216 - and this was that absolutely miserable Gulutzan year where the team was two places shy of DFL in shooting percentage
2018-19 - 289
2019-20 - 239
2020-21 - 227
2020-21 (Ward) - 222
2020-21 (Sutter) - 232


Your prediction, was that this team, which has bottomed out at 216 goals, was going to score fewer than 200 goals.

Now let's stop for a second.

"But we won't have Giordano!?"

Okay, so I'm going to establish one pretty basic statement - that secondary assists for defensemen are a pretty noisy statisitic (since there is no existence of a tertiary or quaternary assist, it requires a very specific circumstance to isolate value from a Dman's second assist)

And I'm going to follow that up with another statement: "The offensive skill defenseman on the 4F 1D powerplay is not of high impact compared to the offensive skill of the four forwards"

Based on these two statements, or if you insist, assumptions, let's look at the primary points totals of our defensemen last year (100+ minutes played 5v5):



It's pretty evident that Hanifin, Giordano, Andersson, and Valimaki, all in similar icetimes, were similar producers. Giordano wasn't this elite play creator last year. He was a solid #3, #4 defenseman for us. While his absence may have created a bit of an offensive hole, it was fair to assume that, even if Oliver Kylington didn't come and light the world on fire, Juuso Valimaki would have gotten some opportunity as Chris Tanev's partner, and probably produced at a rate offensively similar to Mark Giordano.

So really, where were you assuming this vacuum of goals to come from?

Surely not the 1st powerplay unit, which retained the four forwards (Gaudreau, Tkachuk, Lindholm, Monahan) who have been a PP staple since 2018-19.

The bottom six? Last year's team had friggin Joakim Nordstrom on it. And while I'm a bit surprised at how productive our 4th line has been so far given the absense of Derek Ryan... it's also important to consider that the production of the 4th line is not a large portion of any team's season-end goal total. You can roughly apply that sensibility to the second powerplay unit as well. Does Edmonton even have one of those?

The second line? Backlund and Mangiapane have produced almost every single year at ES. You didn't even need to predict Mangiapane's wild season. Backlund's on-ice 5v5 goal pace last year was 50 goals. Playing a big chunk of it with the aformentioned Nordstrom.

The first line? Last season, Gaudreau-Lindholm-Tkachuk spent 165:07 together and the team scored 13 5v5 goals with them on the ice. If you figure they'll spend about 15 minutes a game 5v5, that's over a goal per game just from your top line at 5v5. 82 goals. Though if you actually want to be accurate, that prorates to around 97 goals - but I'm being conservative here.

So we already have 132 goals expected just from the top two lines 5v5. Without factoring in depth scoring, shorthanded goals, 3v3 goals, powerplay goals, empty net goals etc etc. You really think all that couldn't amount to 68 goals?

Really?

[Ziggy Lidstrom]

Originally Posted by GioforPM

Sens were missing Batherson, still had Stutzle, Tkachuk, Norris, Ennis, Chabot. Isles were missing D but they still had Chara, Dobson, and all their top forwards.

Like I said, you take your opponent as you find them. Those same Isles beat Florida the game before. The same Sens beat Pittsburgh the game before, 6-3.

I agree with your point about you play the opponent as you find them.

I wholeheartedly agree. They still had to win those games and did. Big check mark. But I want to see this team fare well versus the better rosters is all. The flames are rolling that’s indisputable.

[monkeyman]

Originally Posted by Jay Random

Sagarin rates them as having had the 5th most difficult schedule in the league so far.

Interesting. so according to Sagarin, unless I'm reading it wrong, Toronto, Vegas, Edmonton, Montreal and Winnipeg have had the easiest schedules thus far.

[GioforPM]

Originally Posted by Ziggy Lidstrom

I agree with your point about you play the opponent as you find them.

I wholeheartedly agree. They still had to win those games and did. Big check mark. But I want to see this team fare well versus the better rosters is all. The flames are rolling that’s indisputable.

Like the Bruins?

[Scroopy Noopers]

Originally Posted by monkeyman

Interesting. so according to Sagarin, unless I'm reading it wrong, Toronto, Vegas, Edmonton, Montreal and Winnipeg have had the easiest schedules thus far.

Yikes….

[dino7c]

as we speak the Sens are beating the Avs...no easy games in the NHL