mhockey91 at it again with the mind-blowingly cold takes

thanks for the reply, now I know to add you to my list as well. not like you're even an active poster or anything.

Oliver Bjorkstrand.

PLD isn’t good, he was great for us, but Bjorkstrand was the best forward we had in the defensive zone and in watching the game Bjorkstrand create scoring opportunities each and every shift. The kid finally got a top 6 role and ran with it. He wasn’t just the best RW we have but he was the best forward in Columbus and we hurt severely when he was out of the line up.

Bjorkstrand- oiGF 40, oiGA 28, +12 goals when he’s on the ice.
PLD- oiGF 50, oiGA 49, +1 goals when he’s on the ice.

Bjorkstrand doesn’t score as much when he’s on the ice but doesn’t give up near the amount that PLD does.

Also point per game, Bjorkstrand was a .73 ppg and PLD was a .70 ppg.

All in all Bjorkstrand> PLD.

Ty, and Bjorkstrand also led the team in 5v5 p/60 as well iirc

Take that mhockey91

Advanced analytics, especially RAPM, are not indicative of a player's skillset or value to their team.

Having a good CF% does not mean that a player "drives play" - all it means is a player is out there for more chances for than against. Without supplemental data with regards to forecheck schemes, positioning on the zone entry, neutral zone schemes, etc., the stats of CF%, xGF% aren't exact in a player's value.

A player like JVR is someone who always has a high xGF%, but often times throughout the season, will miss high danger chances near the crease. This has happened sustainably for multiple seasons, so he isn't "snakebitten", he just isn't a reliable high danger scorer. His entries into the zone without the puck need to be cleaned up. Multiple times a game, he has a tendency to skate towards the puck carrier on the zone entry, forcing a dump with a low percentage recover. This, along with his lack of urgency in the offensive zone, negatively affect the Flyers offensive, even though he has good underlying numbers.

The entire basis of underlying metrics is to determine who can help generate chances that can turn into tangible results (high danger scoring chances to goals). Draisaitl and players of his skill are so good that they produce tangible results, even if their underlying metrics indicate they are "outperforming". If a player can sustainably outperform their underlying metrics with great tangible results, then you don't care if he lets up more chances relative to his teammates because his conversation rate on his chances is higher than his teammates.

In the end goals are what matter, and yes, player do consistently underperform (Hornqvist Tkachuk already) or overperform (Kane* Laine to a smaller extent) and you can adjust for that accordingly, but that doesn't mean in the majority of cases (especially smaller sample sizes... Kane's xGF all of a sudden falling off) xGF is completely useless (especially things like RAPM xGF where it adjusts for QoT QoC usage etc) and defensively xGA is 100% the best metric we currently have available, it shows to the best of our ability how many chances a player limits etc, and you don't have to worry about having a terrible goalie tanking a players defense, and the unexplained factor in most RAPM models is 80% offensive/TM's S% bc the variance in opponents shooting/offensive talent largely balances out

The issue with that logic is both Drai's GF-GA (bad stat ik) RAPM GF-xGA are negative or barely positive (and were negative till they called up Yamamoto lol)

My critique of using expected results as being directly related to a player's ability is that the measurement cannot take into account enough variables to accurately indicate a player's skill or value. Often times analytic people on Twitter (Micah, EV twins, Dom, etc.) will use the rhetoric that "we understand the model has flaws, but it's the best available so we will rely on it until we can develop better models." This mostly comes into effect with WAR/GAR models and micro statistics (zone entries, exits, etc.)

I could pull up any player's xGA and the only thing I'd be able to definitively say is that they were on the ice for when those results happened. It cannot account for positioning, systems, situation, etc., and those limitations effectively make the stat useless with regards to player evaluation. I think it's nice to look at after watching games, but there needs to be context to the stat, which there currently isn't any. The concept of "something is better than nothing" doesn't matter if the something is used incorrectly.



Again, the entire purpose of underlying metrics is to find players who can generate offense. Once you have a player like McDavid, Draisaitl, MacKinnon, etc. who can produce year in and year out, then there advanced stats aren't relevant in their evaluation of their skill set. The expected results don't matter if a player can score over the long run.

A. Michah EW etc, almost all clowns, they use their model and treat it like 100% truth without even knowing how to really even apply it lol

B. The point of analytics is to judge which players impact the game in as positive a way (offensively yes, that is scoring goals, defensively that is preventing chances against, which xGA does a surprisingly good job of, some guy did manual tracking including pre shot movement, on the rush or not and some other stuff, and found that like 70-80+% of the xG is explained by shot location)

C. Micro stats are largely useless when judging a players overall impact, they try to quantify the eye test

Positioning is what leads to the good results more often than not (over a large sample size when adjusted for QoT QoC usage/situation [also largely overstated, the majority of shifts start in the NZ] TOI, COACHING SYSTEM [in Michah's magnus model at least] etc)

This is a joke no kane

We've been over this a lot already, he doesn't defense.

It's not even cold takes any more it's straight-up stupidity