It's Always Been That Way

As I mentioned yesterday, in my review of Moneyball, there are a lot of stupid stats in sports.  Well perhaps stupid is too harsh of a word, but flawed stats would be very accurate.  While I was reading the book, I kept going back to hockey, and how so many statistics in hockey don’t make any sense.  And not just how the stats are often flawed, but also how conventional thinking in hockey is often flawed.

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.