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Leafs - Sens - Habs 2013-14

Overall the PDO on the season is 101.2.... being on the plus side of 100 indicates luck. However it is very, very small at this point.

Which indicates that overall on the season there has been a regression to the mean. Overall, the Leafs have not really benefitted from luck, either good or bad... over 81 games.

However over 60 games, the PDO was much higher.... so yes, before that regression you were beneficiaries of luck.

I'm not buying this, if we got more luck we'd be in the playoffs.



As for shooting percentage being a factor of skill. There is a reason that most elite players will not be able to maintain a shooting percentage over 14% over their career, and non-elite players will be below that. It will eventually regress, and a team shooting percentage over 12% as the Leafs had in December was never sustainable.
 
nearly a quarter of the team's losses on the seasons happened consecutively.

the leafs have played at a 94-95 point pace, apart from that stretch.

there absolutely is some plain bad luck there, however you want to calculate luck.
 
mbow30 said:
nearly a quarter of the team's losses on the seasons happened consecutively.

the leafs have played at a 94-95 point pace, apart from that stretch.

there absolutely is some plain bad luck there, however you want to calculate luck.
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that is the problem with a pace argument, you cannot take out the bad games

whether it was just one of those things, you started losing and couldn't get out of it, bad luck, or whatever, as old Bill Parcells used to say, you are what your record says you are, right now you are basically a .500 team.

I figured you would be in easily, it is rare to miss when you are in as of the end of November in any given season.

I believe we were tied with you at 80 points about 3 weeks ago, now it is 98-84. That is simply not supposed to happen. It is a freak occurrence for sure but it is since 1967 Leafesque.
 
I just remember how back in the late 90s and early 00s, there was a year when you won 4 of 5 against us and finished about 8 points ahead in the standings. I tried the "well if we beat you 4 of 5, we would have been ahead" line with some of you that still post here, didn't get anywhere.

That is basically the on pace argument ;)
 
BKerr said:
Overall the PDO on the season is 101.2.... being on the plus side of 100 indicates luck. However it is very, very small at this point.

Which indicates that overall on the season there has been a regression to the mean. Overall, the Leafs have not really benefitted from luck, either good or bad... over 81 games.

However over 60 games, the PDO was much higher.... so yes, before that regression you were beneficiaries of luck.

I'm not buying this, if we got more luck we'd be in the playoffs.



As for shooting percentage being a factor of skill. There is a reason that most elite players will not be able to maintain a shooting percentage over 14% over their career, and non-elite players will be below that. It will eventually regress, and a team shooting percentage over 12% as the Leafs had in December was never sustainable.
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It's weird how above average goal scorers tend to, with much regularity, have shooting percentages higher than league average.

SV% and SH% are skill based, not luck based. The top down analysis are lazy and don't take personnel changes into account, just the team name.
 
Higher than league average? Sure. League average is about 8.5% seeing as League average save percentage is around .915.

Forwards naturally are also going to be higher than defenceman (more shots from closer). So even if you adjust that you find the vast majority of forwards in the league are somewhere between 8-12%. Of course there are outliers.

Now yes, some skill is involved, so we should see elite players have an average better than that.... However I said even the elite scorers are going to have a hard time being over 14% for a full season. Alex Ovechkin might be the most talented shooter in the NHL, he has exactly 2 seasons over 14%, one of which was the lockout shortened season. He had a 14.6 and 14.5 season. His career average is 12.3.

Phil Kessel, the best shooter on the Leafs, Has one season over 14%.... a 15.5 way back when he was in Boston. His career average is 11.1, and he hovers around the 12 mark since coming to Toronto.

So yes.... some shooters can shoot in that 12-14 range consistently.... those are the elite snipers in the league. Yes there is some talent involved.

However shooting above 14%, requires some amount of luck. It just cannot be maintained long term.

Since no team can assemble a group of snipers of this level.... shooting at 12% as a team is not maintainable (the Leafs were at 11.8% in December). We don't see teams doing it year after year, even when personnel has very minor changes. It just doesn't happen.

Goaltending is more sustainable at above average levels, because a team has 20 shooters and only 2 goalies (one who plays the majority of the games) so an elite goaltender can stay above league average for many years. However as a team, even if you have a couple of elite shooters who can maintain an average above 12 long term... .expecting the team to shoot close to that 12% is just not maintainable (even if Phil Kessel can do it, the rest of your shooters, especially the defence, won't.
 
That's all very good, but PDO is based upon the presumption that any variations in team SV% & SH% from the leagues dead average is based on luck. There are a number of teams that have been average or better over a long period of time...and on the other side of the ledger, the same teams have tended to dwell among the bottom group as well over similar time periods (New Jersey must be very, very unlucky). If it was pure luck, we would see very wild swings from year to year regularly. Anyone who calls SH% "luck" doesn't understand probability. If SH% was based on "luck", the odds of a team being above average in luck, for multiple years running, is unlikely. The odds of multiple teams doing it is astronomical.

So sure, shooting 12% isn't sustainable, but that's ultimately, a meaningless statement. What matters is your % relative to your competition, and multiple teams have shown (Toronto, Pittsburgh, Tampa, Washington, Chicago) that staying significantly above average, over a long period of time (3-4 seasons) is absolutely sustainable.

As for SV%, it's ridiculous on it's face to call it luck. The NYR have been in the top 5 in team SV% in 5 of the last 6 seasons, top 10 in all 6. Anyone who wants to call that luck, and predict a return to the mean, is more that welcome to look ridiculous.
 
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TheCountofMonteCristo said:
that is the problem with a pace argument, you cannot take out the bad games

whether it was just one of those things, you started losing and couldn't get out of it, bad luck, or whatever, as old Bill Parcells used to say, you are what your record says you are, right now you are basically a .500 team.

I figured you would be in easily, it is rare to miss when you are in as of the end of November in any given season.

I believe we were tied with you at 80 points about 3 weeks ago, now it is 98-84. That is simply not supposed to happen. It is a freak occurrence for sure but it is since 1967 Leafesque.
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that isn't a 'problem' with the pace argument.

how many teams have lost 8 games in a row this year? or 12 of 14 (or whatever they're at now)?
 
TheCountofMonteCristo said:
that is the problem with a pace argument, you cannot take out the bad games

whether it was just one of those things, you started losing and couldn't get out of it, bad luck, or whatever, as old Bill Parcells used to say, you are what your record says you are, right now you are basically a .500 team.

I figured you would be in easily, it is rare to miss when you are in as of the end of November in any given season.

I believe we were tied with you at 80 points about 3 weeks ago, now it is 98-84. That is simply not supposed to happen. It is a freak occurrence for sure but it is since 1967 Leafesque.
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Well that's not really a problem with pace... you can't go selectively eliminating games from the regular standings either.
 
nobody is selectively eliminating games.

the whole point is that this team had an uncharacteristically awful streak. uncharacteristic for any team in the league, but least of all a team that, up to that point, was on pace for 95 points.

whichi s why the odds of them making the playoffs before the 8 game losing streak were calculated at over 90%...
 
Habspatrol said:
Well that's not really a problem with pace... you can't go selectively eliminating games from the regular standings either.
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it is playing with the size to make your argument stronger, it is the inherent bullshit in the pace argument because despite all the comments to the contrary about it showing "context" etc, we all know the pace arg is really there to show something that someone has not yet achieved..

To say, well without these games we were 94-95 pace , while true, is misleading as you cannot isolate that way.

Desharnais is not a ppg player this year despite the fact that since say Dec 1, he has been. I can't logically say, well take out his first 20 games and he is.

It is Zekism 101 though. When the numbers don't give you what you want, play with the numbers until they do

:couch
 
it isn't misleading. it's a fact.

you're not even really addressing the point of my argument, which is that the odds of them missing teh playoffs was, from an odds perspective, infinitesimally small -- about 5 out of 100... they went on an uncharacteristic bad streak. two wins, or a couple of OTLs and they probably make the playoffs.

you can pretend that this was just teh 'real leafs', but that's bullshit. they aren't a 0 win team.. .but the problem is they won 0 games over a stretch amounting to 10% of the season.

definitely a lot fo bad luck there.
 
Meh... whether it was 8 losses in a row or 8 losses from any other point it's all the same. They also won 6 in a row at one point. I'd argue that anyone who wanted to eliminate those games to say that the Leafs played like a 75 point team outside of that stretch was cherry picking as well.

Pace, actual standings... doesn't matter.
 
mbow30 said:
it isn't misleading. it's a fact.

you're not even really addressing the point of my argument, which is that the odds of them missing teh playoffs was, from an odds perspective, infinitesimally small -- about 5 out of 100... they went on an uncharacteristic bad streak. two wins, or a couple of OTLs and they probably make the playoffs.

you can pretend that this was just teh 'real leafs', but that's bullshit. they aren't a 0 win team.. .but the problem is they won 0 games over a stretch amounting to 10% of the season.

definitely a lot fo bad luck there.
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But nobody is claiming the Leafs are "just" the team that lost 8 straight... they're the team that lost 8 straight but they're also the team that won 6 straight at one point. They aren't a 0 point team. They aren't a 164 point team. They aren't a 95 team... they're a 85ish point team.
 
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Habspatrol said:
Meh... whether it was 8 losses in a row or 8 losses from any other point it's all the same. They also won 6 in a row at one point. I'd argue that anyone who wanted to eliminate those games to say that the Leafs played like a 75 point team outside of that stretch was cherry picking as well.

Pace, actual standings... doesn't matter.
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an excellent point
 
i'm not calling them a 95 point team.

you guys just want to rail against hte pace thing. zeke's clearly in your heads.
 
Habspatrol said:
But nobody is claiming the Leafs are "just" the team that lost 8 straight... they're the team that lost 8 straight but they're also the team that won 6 straight at one point. They aren't a 0 point team. They aren't a 164 point team. They aren't a 95 team... their a 85ish point team.
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yep, they are the team their record says they are, taking the good with the bad
 
mbow30 said:
i'm not calling them a 95 point team.

you guys just want to rail against hte pace thing. zeke's clearly in your heads.
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where is old Zeke anyway?

I am waiting for another instalment of the "Bernier didn't produce after he was named starter" treatise.
 
mbow30 said:
i'm not calling them a 95 point team.

you guys just want to rail against hte pace thing. zeke's clearly in your heads.
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I think you mean "Count" and not "us "guys."

I've been firmly in favour of "pace" from the get go. In fact I joined this discussion by disputing Count's statement that there's a problem with "pace." My point is that there's a problem with selectively eliminating games from pace or actual standings.
 
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