Randall Flagg

If we won 10 in a row and the wild card slots continued at their normal pace we'd make up about 7-8 points, putting us 4-5 points back with something like 17 games left. We'd be in the race but would then need to continue to have a very good record the rest of the way.

Yay <3

What happened on the injury front that Asplund goes back? When will Olofsson be back?

What that tells me is that we should sign Holtby to be our Fleury ?

Definitely gonna do that when I get a second. good call!

Marchand's career trajectory is pretty fascinating.

Yeah, for some reason excel didn't give the easy option for that like it did R^2, and quite frankly I woulda been fine just squinting at the general shape of the data since it's just hockey. I've never rigorously learned statistics so if excel won't pop it out I'm not going to bother right now

I'd do it just for the despairing moans of Sabres fans

Yesterday Pi and Liger were debating various statistics in the Botterill thread, and I had said I'd plot some numbers on the rest of them, and I figured I'd stick them in a new thread since that thread isn't about numbers. Pi and Liger were arguing over whether faceoff percentage, hits, and blocked shots were strongly/weakly correlated/uncorrelated with on ice success. So I had plotted the hit rankings of every team to finish 1st -> 31st in the standings, every season since 2013-2014. A stat that would do a good job describing the standings is, uncontroversially, goal differential. Generally, teams with a large positive goal differential have a good record, as they acquired it by winning a lot of games. Same goes for negative differentials and losing. So, this is what an effective descriptive stat would look like (an ideal one is obviously a perfectly straight line of y = x on this particular plot) I haven't done a lot of statistical analysis, but from my understanding the R^2 value tells you how much of the linear (ideal) variation in the y axis (goal differential here) is due to variation in the x-axis (standings position). This R^2 value is quite high for a hockey stat, which makes sense - most hockey advanced stats are used for predictive purposes, and nothing can describe wins versus losses better than the thing that determines wins and losses (goal differential in games). So if we skim the standings and sort by goal differential, we're probably also doing a pretty good job of sorting teams from best to worst. Pi suggested doing the same thing with the hit statistic. This is 1/60th as descriptive as goal differential. It's more or less a scatter plot. Fun things to point out - only ONE of the last 35 teams to finish in the top 5 of the NHL standings were also top 5 in hits. Sorting the standings by hits any given year will give you, more or less, a random distribution of the teams, you won't see the good ones at the top and bad ones at the bottom, or vice versa, you'll see a mix. Remember, this is at a team level. You could try to do different analyses for players, I'm not prepared to do so and it's not what we're here to discuss. He also suggested doing this with faceoff percentage: There is a little more correlation here, though it's still quite weak. In particular, there is a cluster of points at the top, while everything else is more or less randomly distributed. What this tells me is, as long as you aren't bottom ~7 in faceoffs, it doesn't really matter whether you're 1st or 15th, as far as your likelihood of being high in the NHL standings. It's not a particularly compelling stat. Here's the plot for blocked shots: I included the line's forumla here, because the slope is NEGATIVE. This implies that it's actually slightly better to have a smaller number of blocked shots as a team than a higher number, as we talked about in the other thread, because of the implication that you don't have the puck as often if you're racking up that stat. At a team level, it's worse than useless to use as a barometer of success. Takeaways are slightly stronger predictors than faceoffs, but it still looks like more or less randomly generated data. I have the impression that they aren't recorded very reliably. Giveaways are, like blocked shots, essentially random data with a slight negative correlation, implying that teams with more giveaways are sliiiiiiiiightly more likely to be good than teams with less giveaways (which is consistent with the "having the puck more" argument) So I decided to do two stats that proxy how much you "have the puck," expected goals percentage and score-adjusted corsi. Keep in mind: These stats are used for predictions, it's where they perform the best (predicting team and individual level success over the NEXT batch of games, not describing where teams/players CURRENTLY rank). They blow goal-based counting stats out at doing that, so I'm not even using them in their proper regime by running this analysis, but I did it anyway. Both of these predictive stats are better team-level descriptors than ANY of hits, blocked shots, giveaways, takeaways, and faceoff percentage. This is why stat dweebs use them instead. It was also interesting to take note of the outliers when doing these last two. Every team was an outlier in the other stats but in these ones, you'd see Carolina underperforming their high xGF/Corsi a couple years before exploding on the scene in the actual standings. You would see other teams like Montreal finish really high in the standings despite bad numbers, and the following season they'd be 20 spots lower in the standings, and you'd remember that the first year was Price's Vezina year, the next was his injury year, stuff like that. Washington was a consistent outlier in having bad underlying stats with high standings finishes - they have had the best team-wide shooting talent since 2007 in the entire league, allowing them to consistently get away with this. These stats showed you crashes of Colorado, Calgary, the year before they happened. I like to critique advanced stats a lot because I don't think that they are used correctly by very many people, but this was a fun reminder of why they're more interesting than the numbers that were all NHL.com had for a few years, that get talked about like dinosaur numbers nowadays. Like I said in the other thread, the mechanisms that drive players to hit and block shots are emblematic of a commitment and focus for the current game, and are things we all want this team to have, so I think that's what pi means when he says he wants to see hits and blocked shots. But using the numbers as a comparison tool is statistically useless. You'd be two to three times as much better off using advanced stats in the wrong domain for the same discussion. I know, I know pi won't ever do that. (I encourage nobody to do that.)

The comparison of the effort of the two players is logically consistent. We've each identified one similar flaw from two players who have played thousands of minutes of hockey over the last few years. You gave the Bruins some mythical status where you don't see this happen, so I provided an instance of it not only happening, but happening at a far more inexcusable situation. That is all this comparison really is - pointing out that the narrative you painted was flawed. Agreed on not wanting Jason handling any more deals - and I'm not even opposed to a Reinhart swap. I just don't want some off-ice, fan/media blown up narrative leading to something stupid happening again. The fact is, you can isolate effort plays like this for every player in the NHL every season, and I see no evidence that Sam is worse about it than others, so if you're going to trade him fine, but make a case that's more grounded than the flare up of anti-Sam resentment after that play.

The team success did indeed happen while Sobotka was playing, but they were in the midst of losing their 4th game in a row when he got hurt. The collapse was coming whether Vlad Sobotka was playing or not. Though he was having a good start to the year relative to last season, he is not the glue to this team. If you don't believe this, I'll point out that 1.) He also had a good start to last year, culminating in a two goal night in the middle of the streak, before going 42 straight games without a goal despite getting the 4th most minutes of all forwards in that span 2.) he was also there for last year's hot start, which was better and longer than this one 3.) The collapse last year happened with him in there too

An offseason orchestrated by a GM that's in the top half of the league in "ability to be a competent GM" would make next season the most fun season we've had since 2009-2010 and would put us in a wild card position. Wild, more than 50% of the teams in this league make the playoffs, and we have Skinner, Eichel, Reinhart, Olofsson, Dahlin, and several 2nd pairing defensemen, and Linus Ullmark is a reasonable goalie. We don''t have to keep adding forward trash to this roster for the 4th straight offseason pretending we're light years away and just need to wait for Kyle's contract to end or something

No. That is likely Reinhart's return without including Okposo, so it's not realistic, and it doesn't do me the favor of at the very least maintaining the number of good NHLers we have in the organization, which is what all of our problems ultimately boil down to in the first place - not having enough of those. There are players you can say "oh, these guys suck and are detrimental to their teams." There are players that you can say "these guys can exist on good teams as long as there aren't too many of them." There are guys that can be successful players on good teams, being a reason their teams are good. These include both elite, franchise players as well as staple second pairing defensemen or good second line forwards. The Sabres will not be good until they get above some threshold of the latter category. Sam is unequivocally in this category whether his style butters your bread or not. We cannot afford to lose any more of this category of player. We need to add about 4 of them. We simply do not have the net assets in this organization to get more than a couple, and losing Reinhart for pieces in lesser categories just puts us further behind the 8-ball. Jason's biggest problem is that he views guys who are in the middle category as guys who are in the last category described.

While at the game I noticed that Reinhart had a few plays along the boards to spring the puck out to an open teammate that I'm not sure a single other Sabre is capable of. I said to my sister that there's no way any of them would have been mentioned on Sabrespace, because Reinhart is a weak, soft player. As far as I saw, nobody commented on them. They were pretty impressive. He's a good player. And LTS appears to be the only one that noticed that Jack had a play far worse than Reinhart's backcheck last night

I didn't actually bookmark it. Just gonna say told you so when Jason trades Reinhart for a 2nd, a mediocre prospect, and a depth player that's some amalgamation of the worst bits of Vesey, Sheary, Frolik, Vlad, Berglund, Josefson etc. along with signing Wayne Simmonds and Troy Brouwer to complete the forward core heheh

Bookmarked

Vogl became my least favorite media member for his writings before, during, and after the ROR trade. He helped blow up the quote into some big, meaningful thing that meant ROR could no longer be here. He helped convince people whose immediate reactions here and on hfboards were "well duh, he just went through the most futile and frustrating season a player could go to" to move to a perpetual stream of "ROR is a cancer" talk for seven months after the trade happened. I strongly dislike Vogl and it stems from his writing from April through the summer of 2018 Was going to mention this, it happened right in front of me. Jack's worst play in at least 3 years.

Bob McKenzie just mentioned that we need to be patient with Jason, and that the Pegulas can't keep cycling through people. I don't know if it's just his affinity for WJC's and Botts being an old guard WJC guy, but Bob has not once made sense regarding anything Jason has done. Before/during the ROR trade McKenzie literally called him a 3C on a good team. He tried to carry Jason's water and tell us how great the return was. So did guys like Pierre, who supposedly was in defense mode as well last night. Bob is a great gossip who is good at knowing people. The dude's hockey takes are nothing to take stock in, I trust the takes of 50 Sabrespace posters over his. He can go pound sand. The GM he likes has no idea how to build a hockey team.

What I think is going on here is something like this: When fans see a team engaging in hits, the team they are watching is generally playing intense and engaged hockey in other aspects as well, which they view is a clear positive. I completely agree with this, especially when some teams really know how to use physical hockey as a defensive tool. The kind of hits fans look for are a marker for a team that could do something in this league. This can get conflated, though, with comparing hit totals as a stat. But hits are counted differently in different buildings, and many "hits" recorded are the dumbest little things you've ever seen, and so those stats not only don't really tell us the best or most consistent teams at physical engagement, they are downright distributed as if it was a random number generator handing them out, and so they're useless as a number to tell you anything. The same thing with blocking shots - you can have a team fully committed to laying it all out on the line and putting themselves in front of shots. That team could also be elite at hockey, and allow 1,000 fewer shot attempts than a different, less committed team, therefore skewing the "shot block" stat against them undeservedly, having 1000 fewer attempts to rack up these numbers. Pi, what I'm saying is that you pulling these stats out doesn't mean a lot. Show me video of our guys shying away from these things, and show me video of the guys you want and the teams you like using these things to their advantage, and your case is a lot more compelling. Otherwise, I'm simply not convinced that player x's shot blocking stat tells me anything, or is a problem. I don't have the details but I do remember this being a thing.

I pondered this in the arena. The thing is, the music was louder than I've ever heard it, so I thought I heard some boos, and was depressed by them (I honestly got close to tears once or twice last night, though I'm a pretty emotional guy) but couldn't be sure because of the music. That this was the case made me wonder if they were anticipated, and being covered up on purpose.

Uh, what I saw was talked about for weeks - the eventual game 7 GWG was scored while Marchand lollygagged to the bench while the Blues were rushing, abandoning his man who eventually scored the goal. It was ripped on by national media in real time during the game and intermission, and is one of a million examples of the fact that bad effort plays are universal to all levels of hockey ability and all qualities of organizations, even on the biggest stage. I'm just not interested in THAT play, in which Sam was well aware he wasn't going to catch the fastest skater in the east even if he hadn't been out for a minute and forty seconds, becoming some bullsh*t watershed moment for us to pretend it's okay to lose another good player for pennies on the dollar, like some people cackling over the ROR trade tried to explain at the time.

I watched Marchand dog it in game 7 of the Stanley Cup Finals, leading directly to the Blues second goal.

Sam was at the end of a 1:40 shift. Larkin is perhaps the fastest skater in the conference. i was there! I thought Skinner was the best forward all game, if he plays like that offensively he'll be back on the goal scoring track. Phil often didn't use him in OT either, I think Skinner is -10000000 in OT since 3v3 began Pilut's poise with the puck stood out in the first two periods when most of our other guys had the yips in their hands. Eichel's legs were made of lead right from the opening draw, he had no burst all game. Looked like he just got done setting a squat PR before each shift. We have burned him and Risto out by February like usual, which is crazy because they're legitimately two of the most in-shape players in the league. The atmosphere was ugly all game. Didn't think the first period boos were called for, the Sabres had the flow of the game and just weren't burying chances. If this was Hutton in goal we'd have put the game on him probably, with Linus it's a 4-2 win. Yeah yeah, the context obv plays a role, but that period in November would have elicited zero boos Fans were misbehaving on the Jumbotron all night. Cute eight year old dancing, catches the camera? Just kidding, double bird for five full seconds. Floss dance from another child? Nah, grotesque sexual humping instead. The fans get an F for this performance. I guess I understand that frustration adds up, but a single game is never as good or bad as it feels, and this team has been playing in games like this for three months, and was set up for this kind of night and stretch right from "we like our team." These players were doomed from the start Jason really thinks that tweaking "chemistry standpoints" will make this roster playoff competitive. He told us this on Tuesday. Even with our roster imbalance, scandella brought us far more this year than Frolik has. The guy is f r i e d and beyond useless if the puck is anywhere near him. My jaw dropped to the floor when he lost a race for a loose puck that he had a 15 foot head start on in the first period. There exist reasonable off-season moves that will couple with royal blue to leave this era in the dustbin starting this October. If Jason is still around I don't think we will see them.

It really was comical how random-sample it turned out

Even if you got one of those two guys as coach, and a hockey president? Because while Botterill has overlapped their low points, to date he has not approached within ten miles of their high points, and I would assume that people learn things over time that would make it so their mistakes wouldn't necessarily map to our team