triumph_communes

Mittelstadt- a summer of conditioning will do him wonders. I believe Dahlin already looked great.

Maybe he wouldn’t have been overcompensating so hard for taking responsibility for their trash performance during the Bylsma years if he took responsibility upfront for being an idiot. Nah, instead his e: older brother he got a sweetheart deal for totally trashed the Amerks locker room simultaneously instead.

Abandoning the scene of crimes after drunkenly crashing into an establishment named after a player who, died himself from drunk driving, and is in the rafters of the team he just signed a major contract to be the future captain of. The only character assassination going on here is you all pathetically trying to wipe these things away as nothingburgers. I was wrong. This was a great example he set forward for Sam and Jack. So great that they gift each other thousand dollar bottles of liquor for each other’s birthdays years later. Great influence ROR, Kane, and Bogosian had on our two budding superstars. Getting those tools out of the locker room needed to be done at any cost. Murray spent TONS of capital on all the drunks mentioned above who amounted to nothing here.

ROR was taken out of the Buffalo locker room because he was an alcoholic that was being a bad example for the kids. Just because ROR could play well despite being an alcoholic doesn’t mean others could. Key, unarguable example: Lehner. Botterill did the moves he did to transform a broken locker room with ineffective leadership. ROR went to another locker room, became just a guy instead of expected to be ‘the guy’, and he was a core component of a Stanley Cup team. That, mind you, was last place in the league in November and needed a coaching change and goalie change before they turned things around. Lehner went to freaking rehab and turned his career around. Fact is, neither of those players would’ve rebounded like that staying with Buffalo. Sometimes people need a change of scenery. They fell into their traps because of what Murray built. Botterill gave them a go, and then abandoned them when they failed miserably.

What a low bar

I'm more referring to the articles these Athletic writers keep churning out trying to do statistics with their journalism degrees from community colleges, completely missing the big picture from the weeds they have their magnifying glass set on to the point they're burning holes into it. "Find out whether analytics says your team got better or not" is a notification the Athletic just sent me. It's awful journalism.

People take fancy stats that only explain 11% of the variation between Ovechkin goal totals versus than Jimmy Vesey's totals waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too far.

As much as he may have had an eye for talent, he had no idea how the whole human interaction thing works. His single word draft announcements really signal how inept he is to this. What destroyed his teams were his locker rooms (and coaches). The players he picked all went on elsewhere and contributed, or excelled, but while in Buffalo were ranging from criminal alcoholics to full on raging alcoholics, outcasts in their own locker rooms, completely aloof, more concerned about basketball events than their hockey games, and getting benched for being a few minutes late for a meeting as a top-down approach to solving these issues. A good scout doesn't necessarily make a good manager, and Murray was an extreme example of the fact that it takes more to build a team than just talent. And the absurd amount of 2nd round picks that were traded away for nothing, or turned into gems like Karabacek and Cornel, is why we have such abysmal depth today and why Botterill has taken years fixing the cap situation and reforming the roster from the outside-- since the cupboards at home were bare.

McCabe has probably lost years off his life with the concussions and hits he's given for this team, or more aptly, his teammates. Cannot thank a player enough for that. But he really is just a slightly more skilled Mike Weber. He doesn't have the smarts to move the puck properly, even if he has the body and the hands. He is always trying to catch-up with the play, not thinking ahead of it like talent's like Dahlin are. Also, I simply don't like his basal attitude. It's too lackadaisical, which again, I think points to him being a little slow to process things. Housley's system was over his head and he has struggled for two years. He can be a mid-pairing guy for a team running something simple, and a hard-hitting type of game. He does well on simple situations like PKs. He's not a fit for the mold it appears Botterill is cramming the team into though, and I expect him to be traded away more than I do Ristolainen.

Great off-season, and something’s going to give when Pilut and Bogosian come off IR

Some players are the same year after year. Others have career years, but not until after being traded to good teams. So so what’s to say Ristolainen wouldn’t have a career year after being traded to a good team like Schultz did? When you start making crap like that, maybe your stats need context...

Risto has openly complained about being stuck with partners like Scandella who he can't trust to pass the puck to. A lot of his problems really appear to stem from bad habits that were born out of him being extra-tired all the time. Now the team has a plethora of guys who Risto can 1) trust he can pass to and 2) likely have a better first-pass out of the zone than he does. I think the 'uncoachable' comments stem simply from him not listening to a coach because despite all these coaches, he's yet to have a D partner he can trust. He's been stuck with Scandella, McCabe, etc. Risto will be fine if he stays. His comments make it seem like he recognizes that Dahlin-Montour pairing is going to come steal many of his minutes, and he's saying he doesn't mind that.

We aren't. That ship sailed when we signed Johansson. If we sign a player like Gardiner then I bet we trade out Bogosian/Scandella/Hunwick/Nelson for scraps to some other team who has room though and wants the vet 3rd pairing.

Daily dosage of grains of salt: The curious story of Justin Schultz: RAPM charts still require CONTEXT-- the models don't explain it all

Only thing holding talents like Mittelstadt was conditioning and strength. Smart players that know they’re good don’t need the confidence boost playing in lesser leagues. Some guys who need more confidence boosting because their IQ/Hands aren’t there yet need to be in lesser leagues or they turn into a stone hands grinder like Girgensons who has forgotten how to play with the puck that isn’t a hot potato. Things holding Nylander back was confidence and drive.

He’s never played them. You can’t say that. Statistics have no data on him in that role—- they don’t describe how he would do there.

They didn’t have to sign Ceci though. They did

Laine and Hoffman are power play specialists who we don’t need. With all the new defenders we have, there’s a good chance we won’t even be able to keep whatever forward we acquire from a Risto trade in the expansion draft. Only getting a couple years out of the target is all you should expect.

Laine wants a short contract taking him right to UFA. This kills his value. You only add something desirable, but small like Rodrigues or picks going back. I think it’s be funny if it was Ristolainen+Thompson for Laine. Analytics people hate Laine more than they hate Thompson

Need to be clear: The correction factor ***attempts*** to account for teammate effects, but by no means can it completely do so. It also has no ability to distinguish chemistry with one player va no chemistry vs another. When players have very few linemates, the model will fail them to some degree.

I wouldn't call it a mess when there isn't a player who would have to pass through waivers that anyone would mind actually losing, or have value any higher than a 3rd rounder. That's just healthy competition, with no externalities forcing him to make a decision beyond what's shown on the ice.

Okposo+Thompson, similar drags The collinearity tries to correct for individual players, but it obviously can't without data outside of it. The lowest errors for all these models happens for players who played for multiple teams. When looking at a teenage prospect who has had limited opportunities, you have to take it with a huge grain of salt. When you have Mittelstadt with less than 200 minutes with a replacement level player, it doesn't matter if there's 900+ minutes of data on it, he's never had a chance to do anything but be dragged.

The highest errors in the model come when percentages are above 60% for players with >700 minutes. And yes, quite literally, the author of these fancy stats states:

https://arxiv.org/pdf/1006.4310.pdf Pages 34-37 A snippet: i.e., when a player spends the majority of his time with another skater, the player's stats become indistinguishable from each other. Casey spent all year with Okposo and in limited time with Thompson, and Thompson otherwise spent his year with Sobotka outside a few games. As a result, their charts are going to mimic those players to a large degree, a digression explicity noted by the creator of the statistics. The terms in the regression are built off of a massive dataset, so the error by smaller minutes played put into the model is relatively low. If this is what you think, then you really have no clue how this model was created. Read the links above.

Casey stuck with Okposo all year sucked, surprise! Casey in his 6 game stint the year prior, not saddled with idiots: People like you really undermine the usefulness of these charts when you take everything in poor context and post stats just to prove a narrative.