Tuesday Morning Fly By: Your Narrative Is Ruining My Reality

Well, I’ve certainly be told I am numerous times.

I just hate those stereotypes, even when it’s used against Lambert.

No, it’s one of the ne’er used insults … apparently Geoffie and some others take great offense. Some characterization about not wearing pants, living in Mom’s basement, and spending all day on ‘useless’ hockey blogs.

“I like hockey before it went mainstream…”

Ooh, that has potential. We’d need to put the picture someplace that we can all find it quickly and everyone knows where it is.

From February on, Bobrovsky was not good. But Brian Boucher was fantastic. The 91.5% number reflects the Flyers save percentage for the year, not just Bobrovsky. That was my fault, a lazy decision.

I didn’t say Bryz has the ability to make other humans try harder, I said having him in net takes away their excuse for playing lazy. In other words, the coach can say, "Now there’s a proven guy back there rather than a question mark. If the results are the same, you guys need to look in the mirror."

The problem here is that this is the exact opposite effect that playing in front of Michael Leighton had. Saying the team will play better with a better goalie is ignoring that teams also play better with a worse goalie. It’s conjecture and guesswork, with the exact opposite being equally true.

If the Flyers start to flounder mid season like they did last year, Bryz won’t be getting benched, lazy players will be getting traded.

Bobrovsky didn’t get benched when the team floundered midseason last year, so what does this statement have to do with anything?

But you’re ignoring the fact that Bryz2011 stopped 91.6% of shots and Bob2011 stopped 91.5% of shots. That is 2 goals
over 2000 shots.

Would it also be fair to look at the shot difference that bob and bryz faced for the year? I could be wrong but I think bryz faced a lot more shots over the course of the year. Would it also be fair to add the Flyers defense into the equation because we can agree that it is superior?

Last season Bryz faced 31.25 shots/game, and Bob faced 28.3 shots/game.

Looking at Neil Greenberg’s scoring chance percentage per team we can see that Coyotes shots against were within the defined chance zone 49.8% of the time whereas the 48.3%of the Flyers were within the scoring chance area.

Bryz had 15.56 SCA/game compared to 13.67 SCA/game for Bob.

So Bryz faced ~2 more scoring chances against per game than Bob.

I agree with you. It seems like believing you have a better goalie behind you makes you think you don’t have to worry about playing smart on defense as much because he’s got you covered.

Yes, I agree with both of you. I had forgotten about the “you can make stats say whatever you want” part of the original comment.

See I even disagree with that in a sense because it’s part of my job to call BS on people who try to do that. I agree that you can make stats say whatever you want, but it should never be able to get through the filters. The important part is having the filters in place to make sure you don’t allow that to happen. here we have a pretty good system because we have enough stats oriented people, we will link people to whatever info they want, and answer questions as to why or why not things were addressed in the analysis, and if leaving them out/keeping them in played a big part in the outcome.

But yes, in general, if your audience is the mindless and uniformed, and you want to be dishonest, you can manipulate a lot of statistics.

“I never felt comfortable with Cechmanek in net! I knew he was bat shit crazy from the beginning!”

I actually agree – memories are automatically tainted by the initial caste of the viewer’s attitude. Absolutely true. Equally true is that one can take statistics and make them say multiple things – even in the face of seeming causality. The inclusion of variables is always a subjective decision, as is the structure of the mathematical relationship. (I don’t mean taking shots against, dividing by goals against, and getting save %. I mean saying things like ‘Bryz is good for an extra X goals per year over so-and-so’.) The reduction of real-life into mathematics creates, by definition, one of two outcomes: either the math has a degree of uncertainty, or the equation is absurdly long and complicated beyond what we typically see around here.

That said, well-factored statistics absolutely trump the eye-test in most measureable areas of performance. I had (have?) an on-going tiff with some Pensburgh posters about the value of ‘grit’ players and locker room presence. Their argument is that Talbot only scored 8 goals last seaosn, therefore he’s worthless. My argument is, I don’t care how many goals he scored – his presence makes people around him better. Without going into the whole breakdown of GAON/60 and so forth, you can easily see that both arguments have a subjective conclusion being made. Their argument is based on the simple data perspective; mine upon the Mark-1 eyeball test. There are actual statistics to support both side of the argument. So who is right? Maybe both, maybe neither, maybe it doesn’t matter because some people need a more right-brain justification for their impressions, and some people need more left-brain stimulation to form a belief.

And when I said I hate that argument, it’s because of people that don’t try to clarify anything and just dismiss stats because “they can say whatever you want them to”. I think my statement is pretty clear; I hate that argument, and I hate it for those specific reasons. If you don’t fall in to those reasons (like asking Geoff to clarify something), then thumbs up.

Indeed. And that’s why questions are important. I make mistakes too.

I’m just point out that this is a prime example of why stats cant be used to judge a player fully. Brodure is one of the best goalies, no, best PLAYERS to ever lace the skates. Biron is a low #1/high #2 goalie.

Geoff, out of curiosity, do you have the data so you can do a quick grab of ES shots faced per game? I’d go do a grab, but I’m busy with some stuff.

A PERFECT example – thanks Geoff. Career ESS% … isn’t comparable. Since Brodeur was a starting goalie as of 1993, when the league was a bit different from Biron’s first starting season in 1999. Brodeur is great because he has been consistent – playing that way for 1132 games. Biron has only 479 games played. You cannot simply throw out those ‘stats’ and call them equal. They may be in that singular instance of simple mathematical comparison, but looking at the background shows that they are not even close to the same player.

And I’m guessing to Geoff and I, team accomplishments count for less than they do for you.

The problem is in the balancing. Brodeur was one of 20+ guys to win a Championship each year. And he never won a Conn Smythe. For someone who “just finds ways to win”, he was never thought of as the guy who willed his team to a Championship.

Brodeur was an above-average goalie every year, but his teams won a lot of games. You seem to be one who puts more stock in the team winning with him in net than I do. The argument for Brodeur is the same one for Osgood, which ignores the fact that plenty of other goalies would have won just as many games as Brodeur and Osgood if they were on those teams.

Like Martin Brodeur, Kirk Maltby never put up elite numbers, but he has four rings. His teams won 57% of their games.

Is he a great player too? Or was it the other 21 players on the team who were finding the ways to win?

Why is Brodeur the one who gets the credit for finding ways to win on a stacked Devils team?

Stats are a good foundation to start with, but there’s more to the story than just the numbers.

Yes, but the same is equally true of eyes/gut/memories/etc.

The thing that drives me bananas is the people who just automatically respond “stfu stat nerd” and won’t hear what you have to say. I don’t consider myself a stat guy at all. I mean, I’m an engineer and use lots of statistical-type analysis in my work, but I’ve never applied to it sports. I never knew how. But I’m learning a lot from the work others around this site have done, and it’s fascinating. I still watch the game with my eyes, but I understand it better because of what I’ve learned from the numbers.

Durability

Its almost as crazy as Glenn Hall playing 502 consecutive games (without a mask!)

So would I.

Shot suppression and shot distance would be your best bet IMO. But again this leads to the question of system versus puck handling goalie versus what ever else you throw in there.

He was the flagbearer but there were a number of other very good puck-handling goalies like Marty Turco.

Yes, I did.

This is a good debate with me taking a clearly losing side. I didn’t want to be the first to throw a stone in my glass house.

Yeah, stats aren’t everything. I have an innate fear/hatred of intangibles because of how they are used. People throw them out when they have nothing else to argue, and they throw them out in a hyperbolic way. It’s what people use when they try to describe a guy with little skill, but who tries really really hard.

The guy with superior skill is often said to lack intangibles, for no other reason than he’s so good, it looks easy. I hate that, and I will fight that even when unnecessary.