CarltonTheBear said:
Zee said:
Potvin29 said:
Zee said:
My point in comparing is the fact that the hallmark of Wilson teams were shoddy defense and suspect goaltending. They were winning games early last season because they were scoring a ton of goals while giving up a ton. Winning 5-4 isn't sustainable long term once your offense dries up. This last 10 game stretch so far resembles that Wilson team far too closely in my opinion. I'd have to agree with the above poster that it's looking grim now for they playoffs. Lose against the Pens tomorrow and the players will get that "here we go again" feeling.
The hallmark of Carlyle so far has been get outchanced and rely on the goaltending.
I don't recall many games that you can say the goalie stole the game for us this season. Looking at our un-scientific "man of the match" standings it shows that Reimer/Scrivens have only won it 4 times combined out of 15 wins.
They might not have stolen us games but, losing streak aside, we got to where we are in the standings because we were getting a .920 save percentage out of our goalies. That's top-10 goaltending. There's no way Reimer and Scrivens were going to keep that up. So if we're only going to get average goaltending from this point out Carlyle needs to tighten up the defence and the team needs to stop getting outchanced on a consistent basis.
To further this point, as of recently, the leafs were 3rd last in the league in "fenwick close" (basically, shot differential, including both shots on goal and missed shots when tied or up or down one goal) and *last* in "fenwick tied" (basically, shot differential when tied):
http://behindthenet.ca/fenwick_2012.php?sort=1§ion=close
Now, you might ask, why should anyone care about this esoteric stat? Well, apparently, if you are interested in trying to predict how a team will play in the future, the best way people know how to of do so is to use Fenwick. In fact, Fenwick is a better predictor of future success than the number of points accrued in the standings so far! Yes that is pretty surprising. For example, a recent blog post:
http://blogs.thescore.com/nhl/2013/03/12/why-advanced-statistics-approaches-hockey-completely-wrong-but-still-gets-things-right/
A team?s Fenwick percentage when the score is close or tied, for instance, is generally far more predictive of a team?s future results than their current results. The Los Angeles Kings seemed to surprise everyone but the advanced statistics crowd with their dominance in the playoffs: they had the fourth highest Fenwick Close in the league. Then there was the well-predicted slide by the Minnesota Wild from top of the Western Conference to out of the playoffs
So when trying to predict how the leafs will play in the future, you should probably predict that they will play like Columbus, Edmonton or Tampa. It looks like they will play worse than teams like Ottawa, the Islanders and Philly. And, of course, way worse than Montreal, Pittsburgh and LA.
Now, since the season is short and the leafs have accrued quite a number of points, their chances of maintaining their position probably isn't that bad relative to what it would be if the season was longer. Also, getting players like Frattin and Lupul back could help (and Gunnar was out for a lot of that period and Liles/Gardiner could be subbed in for a guy like Holzer, who the stats seem to show is a bit of a train wreck). Obviously, Fenwick isnt going to measure how good a team might be with different players .... Finally, 25 games of Fenwick stats probably isn't that much -- there's probably a lot of error in how that stat measures Toronto's "true skill" -- Toronto may be better than the stat makes us look currently (or we may be worse).
Nevertheless, prior to the Ottawa game a few games back, when Toronto was at a high, I bet my Mum they would miss the playoffs. It's the sort of bet I win either way: if they make the playoffs, well, THEY MADE THE PLAYOFFS! If not, I drown my sorrows in my Mum's bottle of wine. We will see. I didn't actually do any math to calculate what winning percentage one might expect going forward, given these stats, and whether that winning percentage would lead the leafs to making or missing the playoffs. I just knew the underlying stats were *horrendous*. We will see. Despite the bet, I still hope they make it, of course.
Last, please don't interpret this post as a suggestion that Fenwick and/or Corsi are the be-all, end-all. They aren't. They just happen to be the best individual stats that I've heard of for predicting future success. But I certainly don't spend as much time thinking about these things as many others in the blogosphere. I have a job.
Definition of Fenwick:
http://www.pensionplanpuppets.com/2012/7/25/3184137/intro-to-advanced-hockey-statistics-fenwick
