Like baseball and like most professional sports, much of the decision making is made by former players. While they have a lot of insight into the game, having played it, they aren’t really capable of looking outside the box. The thing about former players is they don’t have any experience or more importantly any education outside the game. As a result, ‘gut feeling’ is a popular method when making a decision, and reliance on these flawed stats, dominates their thinking. The doomed philosophy of “that’s the way it’s always been…’ is so prevalent in sport. When it comes to stats in hockey, there are several that come to mind as being fundamentally flawed, but I’ll just take a look at a couple that stick out in my mind.
Let’s start with a player’s plus/minus rating, which is used to determine a player’s defensive prowess. To begin, there are too many factors out of a single player’s control, such as the quality of the opposition, to render the stat almost useless. A defencemen playing on the top pairing is likely playing against the other team’s top line, meaning their best line. Odds are, regardless of how effective they are defensively, they’ll likely be on the ice for more goals than a number six defencemen. It also doesn’t take into account the quality of one’s teammates. Being on the ice with Ilya Kovalchuk might lead to more goals against than a more defensive minded player. Yes, Kovalchuk will score more goals, evening out the statistic, but then it ceases to be a defensive stat. As it is not a ratio, it also doesn’t take ice time into account either. The more time one spends on the ice, the more of a chance they have of being there when a goal is scored. But to prove the insignificance of the stat, one need only look at one of the all time highest plus/minus players, Wayne Gretzky. Nobody ever thinks defence when they talk about Gretzky, but he has one of the highest lifetime plus/minus ratings ever. This tells us that he scored a lot of goals, but I prefer to use a different stat to measure that; goals.
Another flawed statistic is shots on goal. While the stat does measure what it sets out to quite effectively, the flaw is in the interpretation. Shots on goal are often used as a measuring stick for how much pressure one team puts on another. The problem is that every time the goalie stops a puck, it’s considered a shot, and pucks that hit the post or sail just wide, are not. If Tanguay dumps the puck in from the opposite end on a penalty kill, and it slowly slides toward the goalie, who taps it to the side with his stick, it’s a shot. Yes, the goaltender had to stop it, but it hardly implies the Flames were applying any pressure on the opposition. Conversely, if Tanguay fires a shot off the crossbar, catches the rebound, fires it off the left post, where Iginla takes the rebound and then fires it off the right post, from which it ricochets out of the offensive zone, there won’t have been a shot recorded, despite there have been a lot of pressure applied to the opposing team. Shots on goal also doesn’t track how many shots were blocked. A newer stat, pucks on net, is much more effective at measuring the offensive pressure one team is applying, but it hasn’t been fully embraced by the NHL.
While there are countless other flawed statistics in hockey, I’ll finish with Penalties in Minutes. Yes, it accurately measures how much penalty time a players is issued over the course of season, but the question is why this is a good thing and why one ‘leads’ the league in this statistic. Watching the Flames/Avs game on Sunday, the announcers talked about Pierre-Luc Letourneau-Leblond (whose inclusion on the Flames’ roster is simply baffling), as leading the AHL last season in penalty minutes. So he made his team play shot-handed more often than anybody else? For the life of me, I don’t know why this is a good thing. Football players aren’t applauded for incurring penalty yards, they’re cut from the team. Baseball players don’t boast about the number of ejections they receive either, but in hockey, it’s seen as a sign of ‘grittiness,’ whatever that means. But really, it’s a statistic that measures how ineffective a player is. Getting two minutes for slashing or tripping isn’t grit; it’s an error that penalizes the team. But most in the hockey establishment continue to see it as a positive.
And that’s the other thing I kept thinking about while reading Moneyball with regards to the NHL. Hockey has a real problem with change, and most hockey people seem to be afraid of any changes, as they cling to the past like a family heirloom. When helmets were firs made mandatory, the players fought back saying it would negatively alter the game. It didn’t. When the head shot rule was brought in this year, people cried it would end hitting in hockey. It hasn’t. But this fear of change dominates the thinking in the NHL. In today’s game, where fighting serves no point whatsoever, players and coaches continue to look to PIM’s as a good thing, and value having an ‘enforcer’ on the roster. This player, as is the case with PL3, serves no purpose on the team, other than to go out on the ice to incur a penalty, which hurts the team. But, remember, ‘it’s always been that way…’ Players, coaches and the media continue to talk about plus/minus all the time, even though the statistic doesn’t really measure anything of value with regards to a specific player. Again, ‘it’s always been that way…’
But by continuing to adhere to the old ways, many teams are getting left behind. For the Calgary Flames, we only need to go back two years at the last few seasons of Darryl Sutter’s reign of terror. He continued to build teams as if it was 1998, and failed to embrace new ideas and strategies. Sutter was a poster boy for ‘it’s always been that way.’ Not only did he fully embrace PIM’s as a good quality, filling the team with checkers and grinders, he was against anything that wasn’t the same as when he played in the early 80’s. I’m sure if given the opportunity he’d have spoken out against helmets, goalie masks and pads as well.
Yes, ‘it’s always been that way…’ is a popular train of thought in sports. One could say…it’s always been that way.
-TheRev
Jersey Fouls
twitter.com/TheRevBW
thesportsroundup@gmail.com
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3 comments:
Very valid points I think. In regards to stats, one might look at scoring chances, rather than shots on net. I tend to say if the shots descepancy is a baffling number like 35-10, or something like that, than the stat is useful as the assumption is that the scoring chances were that lopsided as well. The difference between hockey and baseball though is that hockey is game built on flow, where baseball is built on strategy and I think stats really are takn to another level in baseball. There are intangibles in hockey players that the stats don't show, like a players' "hockey sense" or his ability to find the open ice and see plays develop which 99 did better than anyone.
I completely agree with the Sutter analogy though and because of that the Flames have been set back a number of years...kind of like when they traded Gilmour for Gary Leeman...
Very true, hockey will never be as stat driven as baseball, as it is more one-on-one match ups. But some of these hockey stats are really just meaningless numbers that have been given more value than they deserve.
True. Just look at what Kent Wilson is doing at Flames Nation...might be a bit much but he is trying to dissect it in a more meaningful way
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