Randy Carlyle/Leaf Coach thread
- Thread starter LuncheonMeat
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L K
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Especially with the Leafs there is no excuse for that argument. Hire 1-2 advanced stats guys to at the very least monitor the team very closely. See if trends start to develop and go from there. The notion that a team needs to be composed of a team designed entirely off "character" or "stats" is just arrogance or stupidity. Bring in your character guys, sure, you need those glue pieces who probably don't pan out as much in advanced stats but mean so much more to the team as a whole. But you also shouldn't ignore the stats entirely either, even if you aren't ready to employ them in the makeup of the team.
nutman said:
You mean like at least a dozen NHL general managers?
J
Jalili
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CarltonTheBear said:
Boy, will their faces ever be red when they find out that advanced stats are a joke.
mr grieves
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Frank E said:
Phaneuf and Kessel aren't the Leafs' best players...?
bustaheims
Well-known member
CarltonTheBear said:
That's not the impression I'm getting, to be honest. From what I've been reading, Nonis and the Leafs have been looking find advanced analytics that would improve their scouting, etc., but haven't found any that they feel provide more information than the more traditional methods they've been using for a while now - and, I'm not convinced they're wrong there. While they're interesting and all, I don't think the so-called advanced stats we have at our disposal really provide all that much useful information when it comes to looking at individual players. I mean, really, most of these stats are pretty basic and are often based on things that are either easily observable (like zone starts, for instance, can be largely be discovered through traditional scouting) or suffer from similar flaws to existing stats when looking at individual players (Corsi/Fenwick are both just +/- for shot attempts, and, really, that means they suffer from the same basic issue as +/- itself - it's difficult to attribute much of anything to the individual player). I'm a big stats guy, and I'd love for the league and people who follow it to come up with real quality advanced stats. I just don't think what's available right now is there - and, I get the impression Nonis and Co. feel the same way.
J
Jalili
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Frank E said:
What he said seems pretty much accurate. I'm not sure what there is to dispute..?
Kin
Active member
mr grieves said:
I don't know how challenging that is to preconceived notions considering I don't think anyone would ever make the argument that character and talent are intrinsically linked(See Yashin, Alexei). In fact I'd guess that most people would argue the opposite, that the reason guys like Komi, Armstrong, Liles(although I don't think he was sold as such) and Clarkson were overvalued were, at least in part, based on that intangible.
To be completely honest the fact that Phaneuf and Kessel are guys perceived by some to not have "character" and are the "best players" on a team that suffered a pretty stunning playoff collapse last year and are the centerpieces on a team this year that people don't seem too high on despite a decent record supports the people who overvalue "character" rather than refute them in any meaningful way.
Kin
Active member
CarltonTheBear said:
Well, it's a witty line and everything but in a nuts and bolts sense isn't that true? Even Corsi's most ardent defenders wouldn't argue that it "answers" anything but rather is a factor that maybe shines some light on the way hockey games are won and lost. Even then it only attempts to narrowly quantify a pretty elementary piece of traditional hockey wisdom(the best defense is a good offense, the other team can't score when the puck is in their zone, etc).
Nik the Trik said:
You can essentially say the exact same things about goals or assists though, and Nonis said he takes those pretty seriously.
mr grieves
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Nik the Trik said:
That's one data point, sure. But between those two, you've got the bulk of this team's offense -- sometimes almost single-handedly winning games (Anaheim, Edmonton II, NJD) -- and the team's ability to shut down elite players who've torn up other teams' defenses. I don't know what people you're referring to, but I haven't seen any -- except for the occasional controversy-courting columnist -- whose lack of enthusiasm has to do with Phaneuf or Kessel.
Nik the Trik said:
And I think corsi is a pretty effective measurement of a player's puck possession abilities. One of the very many factors that can determine how valuable a player is. And it's something that literally no other stats really does. It of course doesn't provide all the answers, but if you were trying to decide between two identical players whose only difference is one seems to generate more shots while on the ice wouldn't you want to pick that player?
But to go back to your original statement, do goals provide all the answers for how to build a successful franchise, or do they just shine a light on how games are won or lost? Since the highest scoring team in the league doesn't always win the Cup, I would argue the latter and I'm sure you would too. So doesn't goals just narrowly quantify a pretty elementary piece of traditional hockey wisdom (the team with more goals wins)?
Kin
Active member
mr grieves said:
Sure, but the argument surrounding "Character" or "Leadership" has never been about the actual hockey playing abilities of the players that have them, it's about their perceived effect on the rest of the team and whether they, as a group, are living up to their potential or exceeding it. When people like Jaromir Jagr or, again, someone like Yashin were said to be lacking in those two areas, and therefore proving their importance, it wasn't because they weren't among the league leaders in scoring(because they usually were), it was because they weren't producing team-centric results.
And, for the record, I'm not advocating that point of view, just saying that the inconsistency you see is one that someone who does would see as evidence of their theory in action.
GhostofPotvin29
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Here we go!
Kin
Active member
CarltonTheBear said:
But "puck possession abilities", I think you'd agree, is a pretty vague term that doesn't translate particularly well to any actual attribute. Does it mean that a player is very good with the puck on his stick? Wins battles? Is good at taking the puck away from other players? It seems like you're using it as a stand-in for a sort of general effectiveness and even before you get to the specific criticisms of it that busta pointed out, I'm not sure that there can be all that effective a measurement of something so unspecific. Goal scoring, at the very least, relates to a specific event that happens on the ice.
CarltonTheBear said:
Well, I think the problem there is in the "Seems to" generate more shots while on the ice. If I, as a hypothetical GM, really cared about these things wouldn't I be far more interested in the actual specifics of what a player did or didn't do on a given shift that led to shots for/against rather than a sort of all-purpose cumulative effort that assumes a sort of evening out in the aggregate? My personal issue with Corsi has never been that it's too advanced but rather that it was a lazy and intermediate stand-in for actually evaluating the effect a player has while on the ice.
CarltonTheBear said:
Well, but I think that you're moving the goal posts a little by switching back and forth between these concepts as individual measurements and team concepts but, again, I think that the specificity of "Goals For" provides it with a certain value in it being a pretty cut and dried measurement of something that's pretty important. Remember the issue is "answering questions" and not a sort of all purpose effort to solve everything in one go. "Who is the best player/team at scoring goals" is a question that someone might have honestly and can be effectively judged. Counting goals answers that question. I don't know what question Corsi answers because, again, "Who seems to generate the most shots" or "Who is the most generally effective player at driving the play" doesn't seem to be something someone would spend a lot of time on if they were really interested in the specifics of how things happen. Actually timing puck possession, for instance, would be measuring something along those lines. Or offensive zone time, again, would be. Shots for/against. I don't know if Corsi measures anything particularly meaningful that isn't better covered by one of those more rudimentary measures and, in fact, seems more subject to the influence of distorting biases(say, not accounting for the fact that the best number of shots to take on a shift is one).
So, yeah, I mean I get the problem with Nonis' comment if the idea is a war between fancy stats and reading the sports pages but I don't have any problem with Nonis looking at what exists in the world of advanced stats in Hockey nowadays, not thinking they outweigh or add much to the luxury of a professional scouting department and not devoting a lot of time/energy to them.
And, honestly, I don't know that it makes him that much of a dinosaur. Even in Basketball, for instance, where I think they're doing a much better job in actually evaluating players in a real-time sense there's still a big gap between evaluation and implementation.
bustaheims said:
So why not track that information and make it easily accessible? Zone starts and zone entries fall under these analytic stat categories. Is Nonis saying that he doesn't think it's valuable to know which players are more successful at entering the zone than others? Or if a players point totals are somewhat effected by how a coach is deploying him on faceoffs?
bustaheims said:
But nobody is suggesting that corsi should be looked at in a vacuum. And neither should +/-/. I think +/- can be a pretty useful stat if you take into consideration what type of ice-time a player is getting and who he's playing against. I'm sure many in the NHL community would agree with that. It's not perfect, but there is some value there. I would say the exact same thing about corsi.
And I think this is my biggest problem with how Nonis views corsi. It seems like he thinks the idea about corsi is that team with a high rating will win and a team with a low rating will lose. He said today that "we've had teams in the past where we were outshooting teams on a nightly basis. Our so-called Corsi stat was probably pretty good." It's like he's pretending that the team didn't have the worst goaltending in the league those years.
bustaheims said:
Nonis and co. seem to be in the minority here though. In fact I honestly can't name a single other GM that has spoken out against advanced stats like he has. Maybe you can point out a few. But earlier this season somebody compiled a list of all the NHL teams that are using advanced stats or analytics one way or another. 17 teams seem to say that analytics are a valuable resource. That's including all the recent Stanley Cup champions. Winnipeg wasn't on that list but after what Cheveldayoff said today you can add him too.
Kin
Active member
CarltonTheBear said:
But, I mean, doesn't the fact that Toronto is one of those 17 say that either A) say that Nonis isn't too far away from what you perceive to be the majority or B) that in compiling that list they set the bar so low that you can't really discern a meaningful trend? I mean, a lot of those entries basically boil down to exactly what the Leafs have said about internal use of analytics, even if people don't agree with what they've said about them.
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