Pay attention. The same people are on here daily, dealing Willy or Marner or anyone else on the leafs for a bunch of nothing and then people like you say, "see leaf fans think like this, so that gives me the green light to also think their players are worthless" . Either just own your anti leaf bias.

Giveaways, takeaways, and blocked shots are not advanced metrics. I never said that they shouldnt be used, im saying that real stats should be weighted higher. You use advanced metrics too much, you end up like the A's in moneyball.

But what do I know? Im only about to graduate with a bachelors in stats

The hard part on this site is that not only does everyone have a bias towards their favorite team to whatever degree, most seem to have a crazy big bias against the leafs. Which makes it just a toxic environment

Its not just this site. its 90% of people you talk to in general are biased. Once you take it to the internet, its 50% trolls

Oh good to know I’m talking with an educated expert. What is the difference then between - takeaways, giveaways and blocked shots and high danger chances against? You won’t find any of these ‘stats’ in standards stats the nhl publishes?

Which is just the worst

If you are going to use raw stats to compare then you have to acknowledge Pesce played 27 more games (edit: as a Stats Major, you should know better). So, maybe Pesce has him on the takeaways but Brodie has him on the blocked shots.

takeaway - did he take the puck away (poke check or hit the guy off the puck)

giveaway - did he have the puck taken away

blocked shots - did he block the shot

those are strict binary outcomes. imo, giveaways are the most important d-men stats because most of the time, a d-man is the last thing between a opponent and the goalie. If he gets that taken away close to the blue line trying to keep it in the off. zone, then thats a 1 on 0, 2 on 0, ect. If he gets it taken on the rush, then the other d-man is back and (hopefully) a forward is covering for him. But its still a more dangerous rush

hdca (which is mostly used for grading lines instead of individual players) - unblocked shots within a certain distance to the goal or shots off the rush/off a rebound. How dangerous a shot really is comes down to whose shooting it. Its a lot different if McDavid is taking that shot or if Puljujarvi or Ho-Sang is taking that shot. I think hdc is a good stat for offense tho

the best ability is availability. but yeah he played significantly more games

That's true. One guy is 33 and the other is 29, so it could be expected. That being said in the previous two seasons Brodie was completely healthy while Pesce missed 1-game (maybe a suspension idk) in one season and 12 in the other.

Hits are binary too - did one player physically impact another player - until you realize one person’s hit is not the same as another person’s. Evidence is that lots of guys in the league have more hits at home than on the road, not because of style of play but because of homer stats keepers. In the end, you’ve proven your own point - you’re cherry picking stats you think are important and that coincidentally support your argument (surprise surprise) that Pesce > Brodie. I have a different opinion - a giveaway ( or failure to execute a takeaway) resulting in an odd man break will pretty much always generate a hdca. And Brodie is better at limiting hdca 🤷🏻

I see a bunch of posts about the Analytics here. I can tell you that being a defenseman on the leafs and on the canes are pretty different. Im not sure that is how Brodie was used, feels like to me that he was utilized more like Slavin, being a defensive presence with an offensive minded guy.

The Skjei/Pesce line has been deployed by the Canes over the past two seasons as a pure, min munching, against the other teams top forward lines pairing.