Whore Island 3.0

[LeafErikson]

[Curry Rage]

I could live with that.

[cawbber]

I could live with that.

Yup. Nice to know there's someone else to haul the mail.

[LeafErikson]

I'm just wondering what kind of voodoo they're using to come to that number? I mean, how the hell do you project production from a kid who's never played a shift in the NHL. It's harmless fun kind of stuff, but it's baseless IMO.

[clawfirst]

They actually have pretty decent comparative ppg/league models now. Provided his usage is similar

[Thomas Malthus]

http://www.sportsnet.ca/hockey/nhl/just ... lus-minus/

[Thomas Malthus]

https://hockey-graphs.com/2016/06/30/en ... ppression/

Not too surprising, but nice to see tested. Really just stocks vs. flows. Similar to the unemployment rate changing---is this because of exits from or entries into employment? Examining the flows gives us a much deeper understanding of what's really happening under the surface.

[LeafOfBread]

https://hockey-graphs.com/2016/03/04/qu ... andedness/

Thought this was pretty interesting. Essentially a test to see correlation of handedness of d-men and possession metrics. There is actually a noticeable, quantifiable impact. Nice to see some harmony between old school and new school, and that people can stop trying to justify that playing on the off-side or handedness is no big deal.

[Curry Rage]

http://www.stanleycupofchowder.com/2016 ... w-for-real

In which Pickles is declared the best defenseman in the NHL.

[vf]

That might be the most reasonable adv. stats article for hockey I've ever read.

[Thomas Malthus]

Noticeably absent from the list is our very own fancy stat darling Mr. Jake "Shithead" Gardiner.

[LeafOfBread]

Noticeably absent from the list is our very own fancy stat darling Mr. Jake "Shithead" Gardiner.

He would probably be in the top 30 if I had to guess. The one thing that likely held him back is that he doesn't generate many goals for...or at least not as much as you would expect or want. His offense has been quite spotty, so hopefully he gains some more consistency in that regard. Doesn't help that the team has collectively sucked donkey balls and he hasn't had much to work with, especially this past year where there was literally no offense to speak of.

Good article though, I've been reading about the expected goals model a lot this past year and I really like it, I think there's a lot of potential for it as a quality statistic and there's definitely more depth to it than just your basic corsi. I'm not surprised that Vlasic came first on the list...he's always been extremely underrated and in terms of pure defensive ability he's the best in the league imo. Rarely makes mistakes in his own end.

[AGENT ZERO]

That might be the most reasonable adv. stats article for hockey I've ever read.

Agreed, and while I disagree with some of the rankings notably Spurgeon and Campbell in the top 10 and Doughty absent from the top 5 it seems very reasonable overall.

[AGENT ZERO]

I also like that Tanev is ranked high, he is incredibly underrated in his own end.

[Philthy Thrillz]

I also like that Tanev is ranked high, he is incredibly underrated in his own end.

Underrated? I've only ever read that he's some sort of God in his own end.

[Thomas Malthus]

Gardiner's chart looks pretty similar to Campbell's but yeah, I can see your point there, LOB, with respect to xGF and offensive production (specifically primary assists). On top of that, it appears that Gardiner's impact on his teammates is not quite as strong as that of Campbell's. Gardiner's power play production isn't the greatest either, he's right around where Klefbom is about 60th or so among defenders this past season (Rielly is just ahead in the mid 50s). Additionally, Gardiner spends next to no time on the PK. To put in perspective, Corrado had nearly as much PK time as Gardiner last season. Not that lack of PK time stopped some other D from getting onto that list, but those guys scored at a much higher rate that Gardiner so that's probably why (either 5v5, or on the PP, or both).

Here's the chart for Gardiner:


And from that article, here's Soupy's:

[LeafOfBread]

I also like that Tanev is ranked high, he is incredibly underrated in his own end.

Underrated? I've only ever read that he's some sort of God in his own end.

That's a fairly recent revelation, he was very under the radar before this season. His excellent play alongside Rielly at the Worlds brought him a lot of exposure and recognition.

[Philthy Thrillz]

Who am I thinking of that made the Olympic team?

[vf]

Dan Hamhuis?

[Thomas Malthus]

Defensemen from Sochi:

Bouwmeester
Doughty
Hamhuis
Keith
Pietrangelo
Subban
Vlasic
Weber

[Thomas Malthus]

http://nhlnumbers.com/2016/7/29/stat-of ... roundtable

Wherein a bunch of people involved with fancy stats and blogging (including Scott Cullen) have a roundtable discussion about fancy stats, their uses and such. It's looong so be warned.

[Curry Rage]

You think it's the length that's going to put us off?

[Thomas Malthus]

You think it's the length that's going to put us off?

Naw, I know it's the personalities. But I wanted to give fair warning about how much time it would take to slog through.

[Philthy Thrillz]

Defensemen from Sochi:

Bouwmeester
Doughty
Hamhuis
Keith
Pietrangelo
Subban
Vlasic
Weber

Vlasic, that's who I was thinking of.

[LeafOfBread]

MLHS with a solid response to the "oh no leafs management are dinosaurs again" mongoloid crowd

https://mapleleafshotstove.com/2016/09/ ... analytics/

[vf]

[LeafOfBread]

:nice:

lol on reddit someone comments saying this is why MLHS is the best leafs blog and jeffler replies with this

Not for anything, and I say this as someone who reads MLHS all the time and thinks Kerison is one of the best writers out there, but I don't know if this is what I'd use as a 'shining example' type post for either the writer of the platform.
It's basically a few paragraphs of "the Leafs are drafting a bit of everything, because one executive on another team said that was smart a few months later", followed by an extended re-wording of Zac Urback's post from June.
Not to mention that the Leafs didn't have an overly amazing DEV/PGPS/PCS draft outside of a couple of players. Grundstrom and Brooks both look promising but most of the rest of the guys were very pedestrian if not underwhelming in those numbers. Overagers wasn't a particularly unique thing to them either; teams like Buffalo and Florida also grabbed older guys, and even teams that still believe in grit oil and sandpaper like the Canucks did the same. A lot of the eyeball scouts felt this wasn't a very depth-heavy class, so a lot of teams looked towards glanced-over players this year. A smart approach, no doubt, but given how it was pretty frequently replicated, I don't think this was a clear example of influnce from Kyle, Darryl, Cam, Rob, and Bruce.
I still think the Leafs did pretty decently at the draft (though I'll never understand the Middleton pick), but their approach at the draft isn't proof that the analytics department is still being taken into consideration. Darryl getting a promotion and Jake being hired is that proof, and even then, I think there's a bit of de-emphasis now that they've gone from asset-replenishing to roster composition.
Again, it's a good piece by a good writer on a good site, but it's hardly a cornerstone article. It lists a bunch of things everybody has already talked about in a presentable, optimistic sounding way, though I guess if that's what you're looking for, that's what MLHS excels at.

seems like a long-winded way of masking his jealousy that his blog isn't as highly revered.

[vf]

I really hope somebody re words that last paragraph about him and PPP as being argumentative and negative.


It lists a bunch of things everybody has already talked about in an argumentative, negative sounding way, though I guess if that's what you're looking for, that's what jeffler and ppp excels at.

I'd list his blog, but, I've forgotten what it's called and don't care enough to go look it up.

[Curry Rage]

MLHS with a solid response to the "oh no leafs management are dinosaurs again" mongoloid crowd

https://mapleleafshotstove.com/2016/09/ ... analytics/

Nice. He said a lot of what I've been saying but with pretty numbers and such. Good article.

Still people freaking out over Middleton, though.

[Curry Rage]

:nice:

seems like a long-winded way of masking his jealousy that his blog isn't as highly revered.

And a really long-winded way of making the udderly illogical point that "some other teams did similar stuff so the Leafs analytics guys couldn't have been behind it."

[Thomas Malthus]

We've posted on here extensively about taking a pessimistic view pays off because if you're right then you get to lord it over everyone and if you're wrong, nobody fucking cares because things are going well for the franchise. The Leafs blogosphere is just a group of people who take contrarian positions because they think it makes them sounds smart, and they fancy themselves as being smarter than executives working in the NHL. Here's a conundrum for them: Cox is a contrarian, how smart does he sound?

The Leafs bloggers have never been at the forefront of the analytics movement—Tulsky was a Flyers guy, that zone entry dude was a Canes fan, two other prominent stats guys came from the Isles and Sharks bases, then you have some of the "pioneering" people from the Oilers and Canucks blogs. The quality of discourse pales in Leafs land, comparatively. When the analytics world is moving on to things like xGF%, we still have our bloggers extolling the virtues of Jake Gardiner by using CF rel. There's a reason that a good article from that Boston SBNation site left him off the list, and yet our bloggers are sticking their heads in the sand and overrating him when the analytics say he's not as good as they think he is. Wait, doesn't that sound like something that could be written about Nonuts? :O

[Curry Rage]

I've always got the sense that some of those little communities were/are into analytics for analytics' sake whereas a lot of the Toronto bloggers took them on as an angle to set their personas apart and to pillory the team with. It's not "here's some numbers and numbers are cool and so is hockey". It's more like "here's some numbers and that proves you're a potato". Motivated thinking isn't always the most innovative.

[mooseOAK]

I can't figure out why people think that they can and actually put a lot of effort into evaluating the 2016 draft in 2016.

[LeafOfBread]

When the analytics world is moving on to things like xGF%, we still have our bloggers extolling the virtues of Jake Gardiner by using CF rel. There's a reason that a good article from that Boston SBNation site left him off the list, and yet our bloggers are sticking their heads in the sand and overrating him when the analytics say he's not as good as they think he is.

Good post and I agree with most of what you said though I'm not sure about this part. Yeah, they use CF rel a lot, but there's a lot of other stuff too like zone exit/zone entry data and also those new passing metrics which have also indicated that Gardiner is pretty fucking good.

Hell, even basic Goals Against/60 at 5v5, Gardiner has consistently been among the 2 best Leafs d-men in that aspect every year with the exception of his rookie season.

Defensively I think he's top pairing material, it's his offense which is very inconsistent and that's what really hurt his xGF% a bit.

[LeafOfBread]

I really hope somebody re words that last paragraph about him and PPP as being argumentative and negative.


It lists a bunch of things everybody has already talked about in an argumentative, negative sounding way, though I guess if that's what you're looking for, that's what jeffler and ppp excels at.

I'd list his blog, but, I've forgotten what it's called and don't care enough to go look it up.

His comment ended up being downvoted to hell and torn apart in replies. I personally enjoyed this one

Some of this may be fair criticism, but you're looking pretty catty with that final tongue-in-cheek compliment about MLHS being the place to go for optimistic takes.
I read all Leafs blogs because I'm a veracious reader of literally anything about the team, but I am definitely partial to MLHS -- I'll admit that off the top. I've been a regular there forever. I love the community and I love the content.
However, I think you're conflating being a fanboy and being even-handed and objective. The reason why MLHS is widely loved is because of their levelheaded approach and their more professional tone. This doesn't mean you won't find criticism of the team or the players there.
For instance, this is just an easy example because both articles were shared on r/leafs, go look at the Gardiner piece at MLHS and the one at TLN from the past few days. You'll find the MLHS one is far more critical -- in a fair, evidenced manner -- of the player than the TLN one is.
They just don't run the sensationalist headlines that sometimes get you in trouble, Jeff. Just my .02.

[vf]

Excellent.

[Thomas Malthus]

When the analytics world is moving on to things like xGF%, we still have our bloggers extolling the virtues of Jake Gardiner by using CF rel. There's a reason that a good article from that Boston SBNation site left him off the list, and yet our bloggers are sticking their heads in the sand and overrating him when the analytics say he's not as good as they think he is.

Good post and I agree with most of what you said though I'm not sure about this part. Yeah, they use CF rel a lot, but there's a lot of other stuff too like zone exit/zone entry data and also those new passing metrics which have also indicated that Gardiner is pretty fucking good.

Hell, even basic Goals Against/60 at 5v5, Gardiner has consistently been among the 2 best Leafs d-men in that aspect every year with the exception of his rookie season.

Defensively I think he's top pairing material, it's his offense which is very inconsistent and that's what really hurt his xGF% a bit.

I'm not saying that Jake isn't good; I think he's very good. What I'm saying is that he's not as good as they think he is. These people also display biases in their articles because they've failed to keep pace with where the analytics movement has been going. The direction of the bias doesn't necessarily need to be in the same direction (i.e. like over-estimating how good he is) for the point to hold, not using the zone entries stuff and passing data introduces also bias. To me, this links up with the point that Courage made about the motivation behind the Leafs blogosphere using analytics. There's all this concern about Morgan's defense while they all happily ignore that Gardiner used to be just like Rielly when he was Mo's age. They picked their golden boy (even if they don't present the more recently available evidence that works in his favour (as that that works against him)) and that's the way it's always been. Just like Franson and to some extent Grabovski.

[Thomas Malthus]

Here's an article from Ryan Stimson (the passing project guy) that elaborates on part of his presentation from a recent conference. I really just want to point to two graphs that he has:





This first graph is a ranking of shot assists against per 60 minutes (a shot assist is the last pass before a shot). The nice part about this metric is that it has the highest degree of repeatability of any metric we've used so far to evaluate defensive play at the team level, which tells us that this appears to be something that teams have control over. On top of that, it's the second best metric in terms of predicting goals against (the best metric has much lower repeatability).

The second graph is a ranking of zone entry assists against per 60 minutes (a zone entry assist is a pass originating in the neutral or defensive zone that leads to a controlled zone entry or shot). This metric is fairly repeatable and does a decent job of predicting goals against.

The key takeaway here is that the Leafs rank 10th in shot assists against and 8th in entry assists against. So, last year the Leafs appear to be a pretty damn good defensive team who lacked ability up front and saw exceptionally poor performances in goal. Now, this isn't' something new; it's been said before by many on here. But it's nice to see some of these new stats corroborating that narrative (and appearing to have more reliable properties too). Losing some vets will probably hurt our defensive ability but an increase in goaltending performance and an influx of ability should have us being pretty competitive.

Just one more reason to look forward to this season.

[mooseOAK]

The Leafs weren't good defensively in any sense last season.

[AGENT ZERO]

^ what?

[mooseOAK]

They were bad defensively. Is that more understandable?

[AGENT ZERO]

The Leafs were fairly decent last year with respect to shots against and possession, no? They weren't great defensively by any means, but given their personnel I thought they were solid.

[LeafOfBread]

The Leafs were fairly decent last year with respect to shots against and possession, no? They weren't great defensively by any means, but given their personnel I thought they were solid.

yeah but for people who just hate stats it doesn't matter what you say unfortunately

[clawfirst]

The Leafs were fairly decent last year with respect to shots against and possession, no? They weren't great defensively by any means, but given their personnel I thought they were solid.

yeah but for people who played and watched the games it doesn't matter what you say fortunately

Uh huh


They were better than whorachuck hell.

[mooseOAK]

Maybe Babcock's system made the numbers look better but there the Leafs were at the end of the season right beside the Oilers in goals against.

[Thomas Malthus]

You realize that goals against is a function of goaltending (which we didn't have) AND defensive play, right? Those numbers a better than shot metrics and help us decompose that awful goals against ranking I to one party that was not bad and another which was atrocious.

I admit I was a bit hyperbolic above when I said "pretty damn good", a more apt description would have been "average at worst, around the top third of the league at best". But relative to where we were in recent season, that's a huge improvement and right in playoff territory.

[mooseOAK]

The whole package includes third pairing defencemen playing on the first pairing and plenty of man-games by rookies and the end result was a below average defensive team. Analytics and the large number of blogs using them reminds me of this John Oliver bit I watched yesterday.

[akiberg]

The whole package includes third pairing defencemen playing on the first pairing and plenty of man-games by rookies and the end result was a below average defensive team. Analytics and the large number of blogs using them reminds me of this John Oliver bit I watched yesterday.

beautiful

[AGENT ZERO]

[LeafOfBread]

https://mobile.twitter.com/ShutdownLine/status/786678779334844416

god damn travesty they lost last night. hunwick doesnt get injured or andersen doesnt shit the bed and it was a guaranteed W. hell, just take away that one major marincin fuck-up even....