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I guess that stats are not considered as important in hockey as they are in baseball. If we were discussing a baseball player and someone said to ignore his stats because they won’t give you an accurate picture of him and instead just watch him play, I would probably think that person is foolish. I guess this stems from hockey being a much more team-oriented sport (which makes it hard to evaluate individuals accurately) than baseball is.
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Feb 13, 2012 19:36
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CobwebMustardseed posted:I guess that stats are not considered as important in hockey as they are in baseball. If we were discussing a baseball player and someone said to ignore his stats because they won’t give you an accurate picture of him and instead just watch him play, I would probably think that person is foolish. I guess this stems from hockey being a much more team-oriented sport (which makes it hard to evaluate individuals accurately) than baseball is. I think baseball was an easier nut for stats geeks to crack. People are working on hockey but it's inperfect thus far. Part of what makes hockey tough it that there are tons of things a player can do to help the team that don't show up on the stat sheet. There's no stat for always being in the right place on the ice, backchecking, clogging shooting lanes, etc. People are digging into it and some(most?) teams are running stats on their own (for example, Nashville's goaltending coach recently mentioned that he tracks what happens possession-wise every time the goal plays the puck) so I'm sure it will become more important in the future.
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Feb 13, 2012 19:52
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CobwebMustardseed posted:I guess that stats are not considered as important in hockey as they are in baseball. If we were discussing a baseball player and someone said to ignore his stats because they won’t give you an accurate picture of him and instead just watch him play, I would probably think that person is foolish. I guess this stems from hockey being a much more team-oriented sport (which makes it hard to evaluate individuals accurately) than baseball is. Yeah, this is probably part of why it is. The other part is that players in hockey usually have a certain role. Daniel Sedin and Ovechkin are mostly there for scoring (players like this are usually called "snipers"), Henrik Sedin and Pavel Datsyuk are mostly there for passing and ability to set up plays (he's a "playmaker"). Jordan Staal is good at barrelling down and using his size and strength to set up scoring plays and in general make it hard on the other team defensively (he's a "power forward"). Guys like Vitale on the Pens are pretty defensively minded players and when they are in the offensive zone, they may not score much but they're extremely good at hitting, cycling the puck and in general tiring the other team out (he's a "grinder"). On D as I mentioned before, there's offensive defensemen (like Karlsson and Letang) who are good at generating offense from the point; and defense defensemen (think Orpik and Girardi) who are a lot better at basically shutting down the other teams offense, and just keeping play alive when their team is on the attack. Goalies are a bit of an exception. Stats can give you a general idea of a goalie's performance, certainly a better picture than stats on non-goalies ("skaters"), but you can't base their performance entirely on stats, at least not short term. Goalie stats actually do rely on their team's defensive performance a lot too, which is why you'll see goalies' stats fluctuate wildly sometimes (Brodeur is having a terrible season right now, but the Devils are having a lot of problems with their defensemen). Goalies are also not always consistant. Sometimes goalies will have extremely good years, and sometimes they'll just suck for a season. A big part in measuring how good a goalie is overall is more or less average stats over his career. Stats for a season can still tell you how they're doing that year, but the team they're playing behind affects them a lot too. e: maybe it would be good to add a breakdown like this to the OP? Player roles are key to the game and it's pretty key to understanding how and why line are formed and played the way they are. Look Around You fucked around with this message at 20:17 on Feb 13, 2012 |
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Feb 13, 2012 19:58
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CobwebMustardseed posted:This thread is wonderful and I wish I had noticed it earlier. Yeah, good question. As a Tampa resident and Lightning fan, I can tell you that most of the local chatter about the team is some variation of "why do we suck so badly on the power play?".
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Feb 13, 2012 23:53
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Kekekela posted:Yeah, good question. As a Tampa resident and Lightning fan, I can tell you that most of the local chatter about the team is some variation of "why do we suck so badly on the power play?".
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Feb 14, 2012 01:41
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CobwebMustardseed posted:I guess that stats are not considered as important in hockey as they are in baseball. If we were discussing a baseball player and someone said to ignore his stats because they won’t give you an accurate picture of him and instead just watch him play, I would probably think that person is foolish. I guess this stems from hockey being a much more team-oriented sport (which makes it hard to evaluate individuals accurately) than baseball is. The difference between baseball and hockey is that baseball can be boiled down to a series of events between 2 players. This is almost completely isolated (though baseball stats do account for defense and stadium and a host of other things), so it's much easier to extract meaningful information about how valuable a player is. When a man gets on base, it's purely the result of some thing happening between him and the pitcher, whether it's a walk or a HBP or a hit, or what have you. Errors are factored in, too, but that's beyond the scope of what I'm trying to say. In hockey, there are almost no isolated events between 2 players or even with 1 single player. The game is constantly played for 60 minutes with anywhere from 6 to 3 skaters on the ice for either team at any given moment. It's almost impossible to determine the value of a player when you can't possibly pick out a single instance of something to quantify some statistic for him without tons of influence from his teammates.
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Feb 14, 2012 02:34
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Judging the relative ability of hockey players is more of a situational and role thing, as others have alluded to. Stats are all but useless as they are currently kept and calculated, and being able to really assess player talent in a competitive game (where talent levels are relatively close between teams and players) requires a more than superficial knowledge of the strategies and mechanics of the game as a whole. The thing is - each decision made by a player requires a combination of training, skill and intuition that IMO (maybe I'm just being arrogant here  ) is unmatched in any other sport. The overarching strategy is to create odd-man advantage situations in your team's favor, on all parts of the ice. For example, how a player moves when not in possession of the puck is one of the most telling things you can assess about that player's talent level. And that's something you can't really come up with a great quantitative stat for.
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Feb 14, 2012 22:45
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Topoisomerase posted:For example, how a player moves when not in possession of the puck is one of the most telling things you can assess about that player's talent level. And that's something you can't really come up with a great quantitative stat for. Generate a new +/- stat for number of times player gets detonated by monster hit and loses the puck less than 5 seconds after receiving a pass. There. I just revolutionized hockey statistics. 
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Feb 14, 2012 23:21
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Do any of the fancy "new" hockey stats somehow quantify, say, how a goal was scored? And by that I mean if a goalie gives up a 5-on-5 goal to a 3-on-0 that's a hell of a lot different than if he gives up a laugher or lets in a 5-on-3 goal, etc. Or do the offensive stats, for that matter? If you get a tap-in goal because the defenseman blew a tire, should it count the same as a one where you went coast-to-coast and outworked all 5 guys on the other team before burying it? Do any stats cover that? Can they, conceivably?
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Feb 15, 2012 06:07
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myron_cope posted:Do any of the fancy "new" hockey stats somehow quantify, say, how a goal was scored? And by that I mean if a goalie gives up a 5-on-5 goal to a 3-on-0 that's a hell of a lot different than if he gives up a laugher or lets in a 5-on-3 goal, etc. I don't know if they do but I do know that nhl.com started tracking how goals were scored. "15ft wrist shot" "1ft tip in", etc. Well they don't show distance on the nhl site but at least it's recorded somewhere because the espn iphone app tells you the distance when it gives you a score update.
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Feb 15, 2012 06:14
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myron_cope posted:Do any of the fancy "new" hockey stats somehow quantify, say, how a goal was scored? And by that I mean if a goalie gives up a 5-on-5 goal to a 3-on-0 that's a hell of a lot different than if he gives up a laugher or lets in a 5-on-3 goal, etc. the new stats tend to try to quantify a player's effect on possession and chances - a player who drives through the entire team but doesn't get a shot on net didn't do anything, and when they do get a shot, how often is it better than a chance generated from a forecheck or cycle? a red-line laugher doesn't actually count as a chance because it's not shot from a close enough distance and would show up on some things (corsi, for instance) but not others I don't think you can start actually taking things like defensive errors into account, but in a very roundabout way they already are - defencemen who are prone to making horrible errors like falling over all the time will generally have a terrible corsi (a measure of shot differential) and, as far as i know, be considered low quality competition. a player who is always being put up against retards will have a low quality of competition and you can take that into account. I don't think there's much more you can do besides analyzing every single goal scored by players and doing qualitative analysis edit: i spend far too much of my day fiddling with advanced hockey statistics and i still feel retarded and uncomfortable trying to explain it to people because every time i figure OK I GOT THIS something confuses me  but i'm pretty sure what i said there is correctLook Around You posted:I don't know if they do but I do know that nhl.com started tracking how goals were scored. "15ft wrist shot" "1ft tip in", etc. Well they don't show distance on the nhl site but at least it's recorded somewhere because the espn iphone app tells you the distance when it gives you a score update. someone should make a program that collects all of this data and organizes it so we can see who has the most of any type of goal or whatever
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Feb 15, 2012 13:26
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The NHL do those massively detailed logs of every single game which is ripe for somebody who can code better than me to chew through: http://www.nhl.com/scores/htmlreports/20112012/PL020838.HTM for example from last night.
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Feb 15, 2012 13:43
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CobwebMustardseed posted:I guess that stats are not considered as important in hockey as they are in baseball. If we were discussing a baseball player and someone said to ignore his stats because they won’t give you an accurate picture of him and instead just watch him play, I would probably think that person is foolish. I guess this stems from hockey being a much more team-oriented sport (which makes it hard to evaluate individuals accurately) than baseball is. Anybody who tells you to completely ignore all stats of hockey players is also kinda stupid - there are very few players that are qualitatively excellent players that also don't produce something. My favorite example that has come up recently is Manny Malhotra (albeit, this example is sort of opposite situation of what I just said) - he's a checking/defensive centre with little offensive talent that played a huge role on the Canucks last year until he took a puck in the eye. He lost a lot of his vision, and spent the entire summer rehabbing it and getting it operated on, and essentially lost a lot of his offseason training time. Fast forward to next year and he starts the season tentatively, gets tired easily and generally plays badly for about 20 games. Over the next 30 or so, while his play looks a little better, some people are noticing that A: his line is constantly in the defensive zone B: he's not scoring at all C: dude takes like 5 second shifts before getting off the ice D: his line is letting up way more chances than they are generating offensively All of this, and yet the coach loves him and continues to give him important draws/responsibilities, much to the chagrin of the fans ("I love Manny and I feel bad for him, but fire him right now!" Turns out the reason he was getting destroyed in possession, wasn't scoring and why he was always defending was because he literally never started in the offensive zone. The average defensive centre (lets take Dave Bolland, for example), starts in the offensive zone maybe 35% of the time. Manny was starting there less than 13% of the time. Zone starts don't happen to be an official stat that is tracked (although it's recorded in the sheets that the guy above me so conveniently posted - thanks guy!) and graded, so nobody was aware that this was happening. On top of that, even though he starts there 13% of the time, he's ending there almost 40% of the time, meaning there's a huge shift in the position of the puck when he finishes a shift. Of course, only the most ridiculous statheads were looking for this (and even understand it) so you will still, despite being profoundly wrong, hear good hockey minds that are good at watching and analyzing the game say that he's underperforming. edit: i typed all this out and realized its more hockey 103 and isnt super appropriate but i just spent like 20 minutes typing it out instead of sleeping so deal with the huge wall of text edit2: if there's anything confusing in here please dont hesitate to ask and i will definitely try to clarify when i wake up
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Feb 15, 2012 13:50
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Verviticus posted:stuff about zone starts Yeah, I was under the impression that Malhotra was chewing up the vast majority of the hard defensive minutes for the Canucks and moving the puck out of their zone which in turn allowed the Sedins to get some massively favorable % of offensive zone starts (best in the league I think) so Manny's providing tons of benefit for the team but the payoff comes when he's not even on the ice.
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Feb 15, 2012 14:16
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Verviticus posted:edit: i typed all this out and realized its more hockey 103 and isnt super appropriate but i just spent like 20 minutes typing it out instead of sleeping so deal with the huge wall of text I'm pretty sure I understand what you said. I've always been a baseball fan, but have gotten really into hockey recently (there's only so many years of Pirates baseball that a person can be expected to endure, right?). Stats are one of my favorite things about baseball (there's just SO MUCH that you could never know about a player or a team from just watching the games -- the stats unlock this entirely untold story for those who are willing to seek it out) and so naturally I keep trying to translate that into hockey. A lot of what I'm getting back though, is that it's really hard to evaluate a player until you're much more familiar with the game than I am now. When I watch the Pens with my pals, I hear them make comments about stuff that I don't even begin to notice. I'm still working on following the puck. So maybe it's a "don't try to walk before you can crawl" sort of thing. Regardless, thanks for taking the time to explain the idea of more advanced stats. Even if I don't really know what they mean, it's still really interesting to read about (i.e. I'm a dork).
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Feb 15, 2012 15:29
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While we're having statschat, I always hated how GWG are determined. I usually get torn to pieces for this, but it'd annoy me when you'd see a guy get credited with a winner when he scores the fifth goal to put his team up 5-0 and then hang on for a 5-4 win compared to a guy who breaks a tie with five minutes to go. I get that yeah, that fifth goal was the winner, but I'd rather see who comes through in the clutch than who pots a seemingly meaningless goal and the team hangs on.
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Feb 15, 2012 17:41
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Verviticus posted:Manny is a pretty awesome guy I literally* want to start punching people in their stupid faces when they start bitching about Manny without realizing what his job is with the team. Dr. V is obviously very happy with how he's playing right now, and with the way the Canucks play I can't say I blame him. <insert 15 page rant about AV and his love for all things Roman here>
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Feb 15, 2012 17:46
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Schremp Howard posted:I get that yeah, that fifth goal was the winner, but I'd rather see who comes through in the clutch than who pots a seemingly meaningless goal and the team hangs on. GTG?
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Feb 15, 2012 17:55
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Verviticus posted:zone starts This also reminds me of earlier in the season when people were complaining about a lack of production from Bickelll and Frolik on the Blackhawks. Their Qualcomp (quality of competition) was always higher than any other forward on the team, and if I remember correctly, they still managed to break out of the zone often despite getting mostly defensive zone starts. e: Granted, they've been playing lovely lately, because Blackhawks 
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Feb 15, 2012 18:07
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Thufir posted:GTG? Similar, but still a winner. I just see more worth in a stat that tracks who scores to break a tie than just opposing team's score + 1 = GWG.
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Feb 15, 2012 18:28
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Schremp Howard posted:Similar, but still a winner. I just see more worth in a stat that tracks who scores to break a tie than just opposing team's score + 1 = GWG. GWG is a useless stat, it's true. And that's why it's funny to bring up that, for example, Benoit Pouliot has like 4 or 5 of them
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Feb 15, 2012 18:36
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Petr Sykora has 5 GWG and I had no idea he was still in the league.
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Feb 15, 2012 18:39
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Verviticus posted:Anybody who tells you to completely ignore all stats of hockey players is also kinda stupid - there are very few players that are qualitatively excellent players that also don't produce something. This is great and makes a ton of sense. I too am a baseball nerd and love reading about stuff like this in any sport. If anyone has any more information on these kinds of stats, I'd be fascinated. DrGonzo90 fucked around with this message at 22:57 on Feb 15, 2012 |
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Feb 15, 2012 22:51
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DrGonzo90 posted:This is great and makes a ton of sense. I too am a baseball nerd and love reading about stuff like this in any sport. If anyone has any more information on these kinds of stats, I'd love to read about it. Here's a rundown on some of the main new stats: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/sports/hockey/hockeys-new-numbers/article2178781/ and behind the net is pretty fun to play around on: http://www.behindthenet.ca/about.php
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Feb 15, 2012 22:55
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At what point does being a guy who fights a lot start to be a drag on the team? Sometimes I’ll see a guy lose his temper during a game and start shoving someone or hit someone with his stick, etc. Whenever this happens, I always think, “Well, that was dumb. Now you’ve given the other team a power play and opportunity to score.” Is there some value here that I’m not seeing? If the guy you go after just keeps a cool head and skates away then all you’ve done is put your team at a disadvantage. Even if you’re successful in getting a guy to square off with you, it doesn’t seem like you’re doing the team any favors.
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Feb 16, 2012 20:36
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CobwebMustardseed posted:At what point does being a guy who fights a lot start to be a drag on the team? Sometimes I’ll see a guy lose his temper during a game and start shoving someone or hit someone with his stick, etc. Whenever this happens, I always think, “Well, that was dumb. Now you’ve given the other team a power play and opportunity to score.” Is there some value here that I’m not seeing? If the guy you go after just keeps a cool head and skates away then all you’ve done is put your team at a disadvantage. Even if you’re successful in getting a guy to square off with you, it doesn’t seem like you’re doing the team any favors. If you are a team that is riding on your goalie's shoulders, and somebody takes a run at your goalie, they might not necessarily get a penalty, but you sure as gently caress don't want them thinking that's okay. So somebody tells the guy that's not kosher by roughing him up, at the cost of taking a penalty, maybe taking him to the penalty box, too. Maybe the guy gave your teammate a nasty elbow to the face, so you want to crush his face in. If there's no repercussions for dirty play, be it a penalty or a fist, a dirty team might intimidate another, scaring them because "gently caress that, I don't want to get concussed." Though sometimes I think that's a stretch. Mostly, though, I don't get it either. If somebody does something questionable, they should get a penalty for it. I'd like to see fighting, or at least the Enforcer role, get penaltied out of the game. And it sort of is getting phased out. Sure, it still exists, but I don't think it's near as bad as it was. I'd rather see the game played out. I think I'm finding myself more wanting to rant against staged fights. Like when a questionable hit happens, and next shift or next faceoff, two goons duke it out right off the bat. gently caress off with that. Or if somebody lays a clean hit that happens to hurt somebody and everybody has to start fighting. C'mon, hit was clean, get on with it. (Note: I'm not saying that play should continue when somebody's bleeding out on ice or otherwise seriously hurt, but if somebody gets their clock cleaned on a clean hit and they're just shaken up, it shouldn't be grounds for stopping play.) I don't know if I answered the question. Sometimes you have to let the other guy know that something is not okay. And if there is a fight, the other guy goes in the penalty box, too, usually. I think most players won't go in to fight if the other guy isn't feeling it, because like you said, it'd be silly to take a penalty like that.
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Feb 16, 2012 20:57
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CobwebMustardseed posted:At what point does being a guy who fights a lot start to be a drag on the team? Sometimes I’ll see a guy lose his temper during a game and start shoving someone or hit someone with his stick, etc. Whenever this happens, I always think, “Well, that was dumb. Now you’ve given the other team a power play and opportunity to score.” Is there some value here that I’m not seeing? If the guy you go after just keeps a cool head and skates away then all you’ve done is put your team at a disadvantage. Even if you’re successful in getting a guy to square off with you, it doesn’t seem like you’re doing the team any favors.
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Feb 16, 2012 21:02
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I think a lot of time it's sort of like, team-building signaling. Like, if you just wrecked a dude on my team along the boards I'm gonna go after you even though I'll end up in the box and maybe get my face punched in, but my teammates will know that we've got each other's backs. plus NHL refs don't want to impact the game too much and will almost always call off-setting roughing penalties so it's not necessarily that big of a deal.
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Feb 16, 2012 21:04
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Gio posted:it's a little known secret that enforcers are a waste of money Yeah they're getting phased out pretty quickly now. Ott got sent down by Burke which is pretty much a sign that it's the end of that kind of poo poo. I mean there's still going to be players who can fight, but they're going to be able to actually like, play hockey too, not just punch people (Deryk Engelland is a great example of this kind of player)
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Feb 16, 2012 22:31
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If someone fights during OT and still has time on their penalty when OT ends, can they participate in the shootout?
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Feb 17, 2012 04:36
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Wolfy posted:If someone fights during OT and still has time on their penalty when OT ends, can they participate in the shootout? Yes. The only thing that keeps someone out is a 10 minute or game misconduct, or a match penalty.
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Feb 17, 2012 04:48
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Wolfy posted:If someone fights during OT and still has time on their penalty when OT ends, can they participate in the shootout? Also, the next fight that happens in an OT will probably be the first
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Feb 17, 2012 04:49
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Wolfy posted:If someone fights during OT and still has time on their penalty when OT ends, can they participate in the shootout? Yes. The only time a player can't participate in a shootout is if: -They have received a game misconduct (thrown out of the game) -They are serving a 10 minute misconduct -They have received a match penalty (thrown out of the game for deliberately attempting to injure another player.)
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Feb 17, 2012 04:50
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nature6pk posted:Also, the next fight that happens in an OT will probably be the first
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Feb 17, 2012 05:07
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When the playoffs are seeded, do they give the division winners the top three spots or do they go by how many points everyone has?
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Feb 17, 2012 15:05
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CobwebMustardseed posted:When the playoffs are seeded, do they give the division winners the top three spots or do they go by how many points everyone has? Yeah, a division win guarantees you a top-3 spot and the top 3 are ranked by the points among the division leaders and then everyone else is by points (and then various tiebreakers).
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Feb 17, 2012 15:38
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Statnerd question: Does behind the net have a place for team corsi?
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Feb 17, 2012 21:13
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Gio posted:Statnerd question: Does behind the net have a place for team corsi?
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Feb 17, 2012 22:04
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What does it mean for a player to be called "floaty"? Someone in the N/V thread called Ovechkin "floaty mcfloater" and I did not know if this was good or bad.
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Feb 24, 2012 03:10
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CobwebMustardseed posted:What does it mean for a player to be called "floaty"? Someone in the N/V thread called Ovechkin "floaty mcfloater" and I did not know if this was good or bad. Basically it means they don't backcheck hard, they don't forecheck hard, and they're generally lazy and don't show much hustle when they don't have the puck. Think about a forward floating around near their blueline or in the neutral zone waiting for their teammates to get the puck to them so they can go on the attack, but not doing any actual work themselves for it. Being floaty is a bad thing.
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Feb 24, 2012 03:13
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