WordsOfWisdom Posted January 22, 2017 Author Share Posted January 22, 2017 Jan. 21: TOR vs OTT Marner, Bozak Marincin (Shootout) Final score: 3-2 (SO) OTT. 1: Lost coverage by Marner (not covering for Gardiner) and Bozak who leaves the point. 2: Penalty by Marincin. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BluPuk Posted January 22, 2017 Share Posted January 22, 2017 Weak effort I thought. It's frustrating seeing these guys play this poorly. As a matter of fact, I thought Ottawa were not all that good either. Blechh. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WordsOfWisdom Posted January 24, 2017 Author Share Posted January 24, 2017 Jan. 23: TOR vs CGY (Shutout) Final score: 4-0 TOR. Easy game to score tonight! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BluPuk Posted January 24, 2017 Share Posted January 24, 2017 Where was this team against Ottawa?? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WordsOfWisdom Posted January 24, 2017 Author Share Posted January 24, 2017 4 hours ago, BluPuk said: Where was this team against Ottawa?? It's important to keep in mind how far they've come in one year. With the Leafs piling up wins at an alarming rate, it may mean that the best trade may be no trade at all. The current group seems to be getting it done quite nicely. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WordsOfWisdom Posted January 26, 2017 Author Share Posted January 26, 2017 Jan. 25: TOR vs DET (Shutout) Final score: 4-0 TOR. These games are making life easy for me. Another huge win. I can't wait to see what the numbers are for the end of this month. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Podein25 Posted January 26, 2017 Share Posted January 26, 2017 http://https://twitter.com/stats_canada/status/824452457422020608 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WordsOfWisdom Posted January 27, 2017 Author Share Posted January 27, 2017 Jan. 26: TOR vs PHI Hunwick Martin, Gauthier, McElhinney Final score: 2-1 PHI 1: Miscue/turnover at the blue line. 2: Martin and Gauthier are completely out of position here. That creates a 3-on-2 down low (temporarily). Poor rebound control on a bad angle shot followed by a soft goal allowed by McElhinney. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WordsOfWisdom Posted February 1, 2017 Author Share Posted February 1, 2017 Jan. 31: TOR vs DAL Gardiner Bozak, Marincin Gauthier, Soshnikov Polak Kadri, McElhinney Marincin, McElhinney Final score: 6-3 DAL. Working overtime tonight. Total defensive collapse in this one. 1: Beat clean. 2: Turnover by Bozak. Marincin beat clean. 3: Gauthier and Soshnikov sleeping. The two of them together can't cover one guy. 4: Polak not taking his guy. Standing there watching the play. 5: Penalty by Kadri, soft goal by McElhinney. 6: Marincin beat clean again, another softie by McElhinney. Crappy way to end the month. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BluPuk Posted February 1, 2017 Share Posted February 1, 2017 That's two straight losses now. Every team in the league will start playing better now, and losing streaks mean no playoffs. I'm beginning to think this group will not climb the mountain - only half the team was making an effort. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WordsOfWisdom Posted February 1, 2017 Author Share Posted February 1, 2017 Here are the numbers as of the end of January: Notes Kadri leads the team with 18 errors. Komarov leads the team with a stunning .998 def% among the regulars Marner leads the team with a +30 true +/- score Carrick (-10) and Marincin (-5) are the Leafs two worst defencemen. Gardiner (+8) and Zaitsev (+7) are the two best defencemen. Polak continues to stand head and shoulders above his fellow defencemen with a .991 def% yet still has a -2 because he doesn't contribute anything offensively. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WordsOfWisdom Posted February 1, 2017 Author Share Posted February 1, 2017 3 hours ago, BluPuk said: That's two straight losses now. Every team in the league will start playing better now, and losing streaks mean no playoffs. I'm beginning to think this group will not climb the mountain - only half the team was making an effort. I kind of expected a game or two where the Leafs would get lit up badly. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hobie Posted February 1, 2017 Share Posted February 1, 2017 Quote Many of us who write about hockey from a statistical standpoint are fond of using Corsi, otherwise known as shot attempt ratio, to describe the general flow of play when various players or teams are on the ice. The idea is that a team with a ratio above 50% is doing well at controlling the game, while a team below that mark is getting outplayed. While Corsi is a good high-level indicator, especially at the team level, it does have problems in terms of evaluating individual players. The biggest problem is that since Corsi takes account of all shot attempts while a player is on the ice, we don't have any indication of how much credit or blame to assign to each player. The best way to tackle that problem is to build more granular data sets. One of the most promising ways of determining individual player impacts is by measuring their performance in the neutral zone. Neutral zone play has strong correlations to both shot attempts for and shot attempts against, which makes it a good way to assess some of the things individual players are doing well (or poorly) in the battle to outshoot your opponent. ................. Marincin and Zaitsev both have numbers that are disappointing, I think. Zaitsev, in particular, does not look like he's up to the top-pair role he's being asked to play, at least in terms of his performance at the Leafs' blue line. Finding an upgrade on Zaitsev to play those big minutes with Rielly looks like the Toronto's biggest need at the moment. As for Roman Polak, there's not really much positive to see in his results here. Defensive zone play is supposed to be his forté, but his numbers here simply don't bear that out. http://theleafsnation.com/2017/1/31/examining-the-neutral-zone-play-of-the-leafs-defence-corps Interesting article, I think and a far better tool to evaluate d-men than Corsi or +/-. I think the conclusion is a little harsh for Zaitsev but stating he might not be top 2 worthy at this time is warranted but I'm seeing growth and I definitely see him as top 4, for sure. I think the evaluation for Polak is spot on. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WordsOfWisdom Posted February 1, 2017 Author Share Posted February 1, 2017 4 minutes ago, hobie said: While Corsi is a good high-level indicator, especially at the team level, it does have problems in terms of evaluating individual players. The biggest problem is that since Corsi takes account of all shot attempts while a player is on the ice, we don't have any indication of how much credit or blame to assign to each player. That's a problem specifically addressed by my defensive errors stat. It is a player-focused stat, not team-focused. Every player that receives a defensive error deserves it for their poor defensive play. 6 minutes ago, hobie said: Marincin and Zaitsev both have numbers that are disappointing, I think. Zaitsev, in particular, does not look like he's up to the top-pair role he's being asked to play, at least in terms of his performance at the Leafs' blue line. Finding an upgrade on Zaitsev to play those big minutes with Rielly looks like the Toronto's biggest need at the moment. Nobody on the Leafs has jumped forward and shown themselves to be a true #1 defenceman. That being said, Zaitsev has 21 points, and there's no denying the tremendous impact he's had on the Leafs offence. He has been a terrific addition to the team. He's much better than the article is giving him credit for. 9 minutes ago, hobie said: As for Roman Polak, there's not really much positive to see in his results here. Defensive zone play is supposed to be his forté, but his numbers here simply don't bear that out. The defensive error numbers say differently. The Leafs allow fewer goals when Polak is on the ice. That's just a fact, and it isn't even close. Polak isn't in with the rest of the pack. He is clearly above them. He isn't fast or flashy, but he's almost never caught out of position, and he's the one guy teams always want to pick up at the trade deadline when the Leafs are out of it. That being said, he achieves a high defensive rating because he isn't doing anything offensively and likely isn't taking any risks offensively. He's an overall -2 on the team, so he isn't as valuable to the Leafs as Gardiner, Zaitsev, Rielly, Hunwick, and company... overall. That's the problem with Polak. He only has a high defensive %, nothing else. 16 minutes ago, hobie said: Interesting article, I think and a far better tool to evaluate d-men than Corsi or +/-. Remember that I'm not using the general +/- in my analysis. I have my own +/- statistic. This is a crucial difference because the two have nothing in common. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WordsOfWisdom Posted February 1, 2017 Author Share Posted February 1, 2017 Several corrections. See below: Note: I have decided to update the spreadsheet to be positions: F, D, or G. This change has been made to reflect the fact that the forwards are typically not being used at their listed (L, C, R) position. The only real distinction is FORWARD, DEFENCE, and GOALIE. Note: McElhinney should not have +/- stats since he is a goalie. I fixed it. Note: Renamed MPBE stat to MBE for ease of understanding. MBE stands for "Minutes Between Errors". Tutorial: A quick review on what you should be looking at here and how to interpret the data: DE is Defensive Errors. Think of this as Errors in Baseball. Errors occur in baseball during fielding when a misplay occurs that allows runners to advance or a batter to reach base when they shouldn't have otherwise. If you understand baseball, and you're familiar with errors in baseball, you already UNDERSTAND defensive errors. MBE is Minutes Between (Defensive) Errors. The analogy in baseball is this: If you care about hits, are you going to compare two hitters based on who has the most hits, without any regard to at-bats? No. You're going to compare hitters by their batting average. MBE is the "batting average" of defensive errors. It is TTOI divided by DE. Higher is always better. (Technically it's the reciprocal of a batting average in baseball.... but I digress) Defensive % is Fielding % in Baseball. Again, you don't compare fielders by who has the most errors. Errors are the raw stat and they have to be viewed in the context of innings played. Defensive % is just another way of looking at the performance of a hockey player. It is a different way of representing MBE, but it means the exact same thing. TPM is "True" +/-: By true I mean "correct", "actual", "the real thing", "the one you want to know". It is POINTS - DEFENSIVE ERRORS. This is what a player gives the team offensively minus what he costs the team defensively. It bears no relation to the +/- used by the NHL. Whether you use MBE or Def% is personal preference. Def% is meant to appeal to fans that are familiar with Fld% in baseball, and who prefer to look at the stat as a percentage. MBE is meant to appeal to fans that like dealing with integer numbers and prefer to think in minutes and averages. They are two different ways of representing the same data, but are otherwise identical. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hobie Posted February 1, 2017 Share Posted February 1, 2017 Words, I don't think the article is any way diminishing what you've been contending, it's more involved in why TO is getting into the situations that result in your numbers. Like someone gives away the puck in the neutral zone and a goal is scored against TO as a result, there might be 3 more mistakes before the goal is scored. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WordsOfWisdom Posted February 1, 2017 Author Share Posted February 1, 2017 3 hours ago, hobie said: Words, I don't think the article is any way diminishing what you've been contending, it's more involved in why TO is getting into the situations that result in your numbers. Yeah, I was kind of responding to the article and to you at the same time. Believe it or not, the DE stat is doing that too -- to an extent. Examples: A turnover causes a 2-on-1 and leads to a goal. The person that turned it over gets the DE. Root cause identified. A player skates in and flips a harmless looking shot on goal which goes in. The goalie gets the DE. (We acknowledge that you can't stop all shots. You minimize them, and you try to make the opposition take them from poor scoring areas.) Therefore, when something like this occurs, it's the goalie's fault. It has nothing to do with CORSI or +/- or player Y allowed player X to skate to the red line and shoot the puck. It's just the goalie and nobody else at fault. Once again, root cause identified. A player takes a hooking penalty and puts his team short for 2 minutes. His team comes under siege for the next 2 minutes (as is usually the case) and ultimately allows a goal. The penalized player gets the DE. Again, root cause identified. In every scenario you can find in the game of hockey, the defensive errors stat makes the best effort possible to assign fault to the player or players most responsible for the goal being allowed. Now granted, if a team has trouble moving the puck up the ice, and spends most of the game in their own zone, the stat isn't tracking how many times they failed to advance the puck. It doesn't track failed zone entries or how many times the opposition successfully got into the zone. It doesn't track zone time or shots on goal. All of these are tracked elsewhere. So if the issue is that "player X doesn't move the puck through the neutral zone well and therefore the other team gets the puck more often which therefore leads to more zone time in our own end which therefore leads to more scoring chances against which therefore leads to more errors", it's not going that deep. No single statistic can. Thus, we need to have a few different stats we can analyze to gauge how players are doing overall. I think that's the point you were making, that the article was looking at different things (I'll call them "upstream factors") that put the team in a position where the "downstream factors" occur which cause goals being allowed. If you look at a chain of cause and effect, my stat operates here: Cause--->Effect--->Cause--->Effect--->Cause--->Effect--->Cause---->Effect--->Cause---->Effect (goal) While this article seems to be looking here: Cause--->Effect--->Cause--->Effect--->Cause--->Effect--->Cause---->Effect--->Cause---->Effect (goal) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WordsOfWisdom Posted February 1, 2017 Author Share Posted February 1, 2017 I forgot to add that both approaches are valid. They're just looking at different aspects of the game. (I seem to have a knack for writing five paragraphs when I should just say "agreed" lol.) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hobie Posted February 2, 2017 Share Posted February 2, 2017 I get too wordsy, often. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WordsOfWisdom Posted February 3, 2017 Author Share Posted February 3, 2017 Feb. 2: TOR vs STL Smith Polak Rielly, Andersen Kadri, Brown C. Carrick, Komarov, Gardiner Final score: 5-1 STL. Another whoopin. Kudos to St. Louis for firing Hitchcock a day early. Leafs ran into the wrong Blues team tonight. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BluPuk Posted February 3, 2017 Share Posted February 3, 2017 18 wheeler? Cliff?? I'm gettin' ticked........ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WordsOfWisdom Posted February 3, 2017 Author Share Posted February 3, 2017 9 hours ago, BluPuk said: 18 wheeler? Cliff?? I'm gettin' ticked........ I'm getting ticked at the fact that I keep praising how well Polak has been playing defensively and the dumb b**ch has two errors in his last two games. I don't like when I stick up for a player and they make a fool out of me. (I'm good at doing that all on my own.) I've changed my "stay the course" opinion and would like to see the Leafs make an upgrade defensively at the trade deadline. I think like Hobie said: the time is right. We have some excellent core pieces in place among our forwards. It's time to make a decision on Rielly/Gardiner/Zaitsev/Hunwick/Polak/Marincin. One or more of those guys needs to go and we need an upgrade there big time. A noticeable upgrade, not just more spare parts. We need a #1 guy back there. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WordsOfWisdom Posted February 5, 2017 Author Share Posted February 5, 2017 Feb. 4: TOR vs BOS Hyman, Andersen Marner, Zaitsev Bozak, Marincin, Andersen Soshnikov, Rielly Komarov, Gardiner Final score: 6-5 TOR. Big win for Toronto. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BluPuk Posted February 5, 2017 Share Posted February 5, 2017 What a wild game though, eh? Nice to see Nylander get off the snide.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WordsOfWisdom Posted February 7, 2017 Author Share Posted February 7, 2017 Feb. 6: TOR vs NYI Zaitsev, Rielly Gardiner, Kadri, Komarov Smith Matthews, Rielly, Brown Smith, Komarov, Rielly Nylander, Van Riemsdyk Final score: 6-5 (OT) NYI. Wow. The Leafs have been giving up 5 goals a game lately. The defence that seemed to have figured things out a few weeks ago has evaporated. Exciting to watch, but the Leafs are swiss cheese right now defensively. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Archived
This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.