dudacek

Agree with this. I think where I might be going with this thread is that analytics should be used the same way and they aren’t. (Ristolainen is the worst player in the NHL! Charts!)

This thread was partially inspired by a snarky comment I made on the game day thread yesterday about a shot that Skinner made off a rush that was two feet wide. I want to remove the snark and I don’t want this to be about Skinner, but I do want to use the example to start the discussion about stats based on shot attempts. I think the situation was largely one where the defender made an excellent play to neutralize what could have been a good scoring chance, by essentially forcing Jeff to take a low percentage shot. As a coach I’d give the defender a strong pat on the back for a good play and I’d be fine with Skinner’s play selection if disappointed with his execution. Shot attempt based analytics and high danger chance analytics give Jeff pluses on that play and the defender minuses. When Colin Miller, faced on the point with a charging Scot Laughton, winds up and blindly blasts a puck into his shin pads he gets a plus on the shot attempt clock. When Rasmus Dahlin, in the same situation, spins and throws a no-look pass to Okposo on the right boards he does not. Discuss.

Thought we had a thread for this but I couldn’t find it. I remember when +/- was in vogue as a player debate tool and I remember the campaign to discredit it. “How can we put any stock Into that stat when they give Sam Reinhart a plus on a goal when all he did was hop over the boards” ”Like Lazar deserved a minus there. That stupid pass was all on Montour.” ”Of course Risto’s going to be a minus, he gets the hardest ice time on a bad team” ”Poor McCabe is a -3 because Hutton couldn’t stop a beach ball” Basically, the argument - and it’s a sound one - is that there are way too many factors going on during a hockey game to ever use +/- as a definitive indicator of how “good” a player is. I know advanced stats are an attempt to address that, but I get the sense sometimes that a similar argument can be applied to most advanced statistics. I would like to discuss that here.

You’ve been calling it for months. Ive been praying we could avoid the chance to prove you right, but deep in my heart I knew this day would come. It is the Sabres after all.

He flubbed four zone exits and turned the puck over multiple times in his past few shifts. If the analytics show he’s tilting the ice the right way this period, I’m going to stop believing analytics. Im going to stop taking about him now. Picked the wrong period to really focus on his play. Sorry for poisoning the thread.

Oh look starts on the PP and immediately turns it over.

A missed shot, but that will look good on his Corsi

That was the same shift he flubbed a good pass from Mitts and turned the puck over on another exit and on a board battle? Skinner another flubbed exit.

My god, this is bad hockey.

Considering what Reinhart got a penalty for, he has a point

What a horrible shift from Skinner. Two blown exits, and he managed to be the last one up and the last one back on every rush.

Gotta say Bryson so far is sure looking like we what hoped we were getting with Montour. Such a great skater.

It hurts listening to RJ right now. He’s a legend because of his cadence would match and amplify the flow of the game so well, but he’s a hall-of-farmer because he was so dialed in to what was happening. That’s vanished entirely. All he’s got now is the sound of his voice.

This. He’s either been completely neutered by over coaching, or he is being obstinate to prove a point, because this is easily his worst period of the year. And he is dragging Sheahan and Mittelstadt down.

Holy cow has the broadcast been awful. Staal sets up a wide-open Cozens in the slot for the Sabres best chance for the period there and neither guy even mentioned it happened. A few minutes Earlier, Eakin throws himself in front of a puck on the PK to block a shot that was headed into the open net with Hutton down and out. We get Rayzor “that was a bit of a cluster.” Bryson takes a penalty be lifting Hayes stick to save another goal and we get “Hayes missed the open net” and “Bryson clipped him with a high stick.” Call what is happening, please. They are so disengaged.

John’s had an unhealthy chip on his shoulder on here, but he seems to be a pro at his job. He seems to strike the right balance between asking the tough questions but not being an ass about it. Harrington seems to have reined himself toward that line recently after a long stretch of being a dick, although my only exposure to his work these days is recognizing his voice in a presser.

Usage and deployment colour results, they don’t dictate them. And you and I both know that Jeff Skinner was not being force fed tough defensive minutes against the other team’s best players last year. Last time I checked goals for and against is the measurement for winning hockey games. If you can produce some arcane chart that “proves” no goals, three assists and -17 over 22 games was actually good, I think you’re missing the point of hockey. Putting all your stock into theoretical measurements while dismissing actual results is the epitome of ivory tower thinking. The emperor has no clothes.

These are both spot on, IMO. Don't underestimate Krueger's clout with ownership. Also, Kevyn Adams has no allegiance to Skinner.

And I think it's obvious there is power struggle going on between Ralph and Jeff. I'm just responding to the idea the consensus around here that Ralph caused the power struggle by jerking Jeff around for no reason by providing evidence that the reason (terrible production) predated the jerking. I'm fully on board with the idea the Krueger could have and should have handled the situation better. But I am frankly shocked that I seem to be one of the few upset with Jeff's play, which has been bad for a year now.

I wouldn't argue if Okposo was sat. I would argue that Ralph is giving him the benefit of the doubt because he played well last year and he is coming back from an injury. Just like he gave Jeff the benefit of the doubt and continued to play him a lot throughout the first two months of his enormous slump last year, and kept him in the lineup even after it continued. I mean, my god, 0/3/3/-17 in 22 games? Who does that and doesn't get benched?

This is where the disconnect comes for me. The chance has become more and more negligible as time has past and Skinner's slump continues. The Jeff Skinner of the past year smells a lot like the Kyle Okposo of a few years ago, without the excuses of "injury" and "good teammate" propping him up. I'm not sure why you are giving as much weight as you are to the small sample size of Skinner's early season analytics. I have not seen Sheahan/Lazar to be less effective with Asplund or Mittelstadt than with Skinner.

I don't think Skinner scoring 4 goals in a month is bad. Disappointing by the standards he previously set, but not bad. Scoring 4 goals in 46 games, or 7 in 60, that's bad, especially for a guy who is in the league for his offence. That's a look at your other options level performance. I actually thought Jeff's work in the details of the game were as good as I've seen them in the first half-dozen or so games this year. And even as his production sucked over the past year, Jeff still did two things really well: draw penalties and generate a high number of shots in high danger areas. But (again, over the past year) I struggle to see where else he has helped the team. Generally speaking he doesn't get in hard on the forecheck and retrieve pucks. He doesn't get open for tap-ins or burying one-timers. He doesn't support his linemates well by getting open for them, finding them when they are open, or rotating to fill the holes when they attack. His passing is outright bad. He will make some really nice steals from behind at times, but he's not winning a ton of puck battles, or providing good puck support for his teammate's battles, and he is generally the last man back on the backcheck. He is non-entity on zone exits, doesn't carry the puck much through the neutral zone or shine on entries. He doesn't wear down the opposition physically, block shots or win faceoffs. He doesn't kill penalties and has not added much to the PP those times he's been on it. Is his overall play "worse" than the other guys rotating through the bottom six? Not really. Should he have been tried earlier and more sincerely with the talent more than the 5 periods he got this year? Yes. Has he been doing more than Lazar, Sheahan, Reider, Mittelstadt, Cozens, Olofsson, Hall, Reinhart, Okposo, Thompson or Asplund? Maybe Thompson and Okposo. Has he contributed more than your typical bottom-sixer? No. And sitting out a bottom-six player isn't worth losing your ***** over.

That Ullmark sequence and Sam's lacrosse goal were those moments where you stop and “say how did he do that?” It is so sad they were squandered and will vanish from our memory banks in the quicksand that is Pegula Sabres.

I think Asplund has been pretty good too, in a 4th-line kinda way. Really, all of Sheahan, Lazar, Eakin, Rieder and Asplund have been solid in the kill-penalties, win face-offs and don’t ***** things up kinda way coaches like from their fourth liners. But a good team only wants two or three of those guys in the lineup at any given game, rather than four or five. We have a lot of guys that can play centre, but it’s still our weakest position. The majority was right, in that Eakin hasn’t got the 20- to 30-point upside we had hoped, and the majority was wrong that Staal could fix our 2C issues. The brain is still there, but the body is not. There is an opportunity for Casey, should he grab it.

Of course it adds up. The whole hockey world saw Jack’s leg bend awkwardly and him favouring it afterward. He missed the morning skate to rest it, tried it in warm-up and decided not to go. Krueger lied about it to the media because hockey culture says admitting your injury in this kind of instance gives up some kind of competitive advantage. Nothing to see here except the normal eye-rolling NHL coach speak