Tuesday Morning Fly By: Lots of Great Reading, If You Have the Time

Part of me wants them to succeed but another part of me will be somewhat bitter if they win the whole thing. I just can’t root against a team with Ron Hextall somewhere on their payroll. This is easier though then when he was in goal for Quebec or the Isles. Adding Gags and Richards is just a couple more kicks to the groin. Ow.

According to the Philadelphia Inquirer’s Sam Carchidi a source within the organization has told him that Chris Pronger will be named the teams captain. Along with Pronger, Danny Briere and veteran defensemen Kimmo Timonen will be alternate captains.

but is the FGSB picture legitimate, or supposed to be funny

if it’s legitimate, I want that minute of my life back

i knew I shouldn’t have watched that Gagne video, you know.

Geoff, big link fail. That last one doesn’t open in new window. FOR SHAME!

From DGB’s column:

2010 – After several intense hours, Jonathan Toews wins the staring contest when the Cup blinks first.

Of all people, statisticians are aware of their sample size; a statistician that attempts to make definitive, over-arching statements with small samples is what you would call a bad statistician.

Except when your own guys do it…

If you’re not concerned with backing up your statements, if you’re so full of yourself that you assume people will view your opinion as an expert opinion not to be questioned, then by all means make definitive statements based on your observation (which, incidentally, is a VERY SMALL SAMPLE SIZE).

So if you just cite stats and think they should be viewed as expert opinion and not questioned, is that any better?

Corsi wasn’t established as a valuable statistic with a small sample size; it’s been vetted and adopted by some of the best hockey statisticians out there, including Gabe, Tom Awad (who used it to develop his Delta metric), JLikens, Vic Ferrari, Derek Zona, Jonathan Willis, Rob Vollman, and countless others for whom I’ve not the energy to find examples.

So because a lot of people who you already agree with said it, it must be true? How is that not a bit of confirmation bias as well?

Discuss.

I forgot to link this, but Pat Hickey of the Montreal Gazette gets taken to task for trashing the Rangers’ granting of scholarships to military kids in Derek Boogard’s honor.

The KuklasKorner article seems a little lazy. It cites the Flyers’ low total Corsi score and says the following:

Philadelphia was a bit more of a fluke. They didn’t have strong goaltending.

It would seem that the writer can’t think of any way the team could outperform their Corsi score other than having strong goaltending. They were third in the league in blocked shots — their Corsi may have been negative, but their Fenwick was positive. And they were among the league leaders in shooting percentage, not because they wildly outshot their career numbers, but because they had a relatively high-percentage-shooting group of players (team total was very close to expectations based on career totals).

Pointing all of this out seems like the bare minimum for explaining how a team ends up with a +36 goal differential with a negative total Corsi, instead of just writing it off as a fluke. A good analysis would also note that they conceded an awful lot of shots with big leads, which says more about system and score effects than talent.

but they were not as good as their standing showed last year, so the team can be improved talentwise and still wind up with fewer points.

Just to hammer it home, what we have here is an absolute statement based on a single statistic, the exact thing the non-stats people say we do, and that I routinely say we don’t do. I’m a huge proponent of Corsi, and I think it tells you a lot, but just looking at total Corsi and declaring that the team overachieved without considering any of the other factors that go into scoring is silly.

As long as I’m on the topic, I’ll use the opportunity to remind everyone that they should always ask when they have a question about the stats. Speak up! If you’re confused, lots of other people are too, and the comments help sort out the confusion and avoid it next time.

But all the same, Jeff Carter and Mike Richards, supposedly the twin bedrocks of future leadership, were sent to Columbus and Los Angeles, respectively. The goal was to free up money to sign free-agent goaltender Ilya Bryzgalov under orders from the very top, and all it took was some serious financial acrobatics to accomplish it.

Will there ever come a time when people will stop saying Richards & Carter were traded so the Flyers could sign Bryz?

Versteeg + cap increase = Bryz.

There is absolutely no way to logically say that they were traded to make cap room for Bryz. Even if that was the case, one or the other would have been more than enough. If you don’t believe the rumors about drugs, or locker room problems, or anything else, I have noproblem with that, but you can’t make a same reason for trading both of them to make room for Bryz.

Someone apparently just pied Rupert Murdoch in the face with a shaving cream pie.

There IS someone more hated than Gary Bettman. Who knew?

Okay, so I believe this has been spoken on already, and I’m not advocating replica jerseys, but this is probably the 4th or 5th site that I have seen this jersey on. Did I miss something? Why are they all pushing this exact same design? I look forward to the feedback.

Winter Classic Replica Jersey

Stamkos got a 5 year deal, per Lightning twitter