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Let the Fire Bylsma Watch begin

matter2003

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TrueBlueGED Hall of Famer

TrueBlueGED

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He's carrying the Flagg for the rest of us. Keep up the good work.

 

Correct. Flagg has shown an impressive level of stamina to keep fighting the good fight. I, on the other hand, have largely given up trying to persuade.

 

The low percentage plays, the single forechecker, the forwards having no speed entering the zone because they're waiting for a pass to chip, the forwards abandoning the defensive zone the second a Dman picks up the puck as if they will contract HIV by staying in longer...these things are systemic, and have all been covered so frequently and in such depth that if people don't see it by now, they're not going to.

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Taro T Hall of Famer

Taro T

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You are all over the place."13th in shots for, offensive zone time is not the issue."

"Pi, when you remove special teams from the equation, we fall to bottom 5, it IS an issue"

After this exchange, you basically abandoned that half of your argument and were using the same vigor to promote the half that literally everyone on this forum agrees with - we allow too many shots. 

 

"I don't buy the idea that BUF is constantly giving the puck away with rushed stretch passes out of the zone.... in fact, studies show, the Sabres rank 7th BEST in the league in number of giveaways:"

Then when I called out the fact that your use of the giveaway ranking above doesn't make sense when used as an argument against us blaming the stretch pass for possession numbers, because the most common result of the stretch pass doesn't get called a 'giveaway' (which is a stat I don't trust at all, anyway), you came back with

 

"Nor should they.   Stretch passes that are intercepted are counted as giveaways.    A stretch and chip-in is a good hockey play, it flips the ice, allows for changes, creates forecheck opportunities, etc..  "

 

Then how does your original giveaway point hold, Pi? Most of our stretch passes are not outright intercepted. I know because I've spent a statistically significant (sqrt(N)) amount of games watching and counting them. Most of them result in plays that you are calling "good hockey plays" and are successful roughly 0 to 4 out of the 15 to 20 times they are attempted per game by this team.

 

You then finished with 

 

 

You'll have to show me which measure you're using for the bolded, because we are the 5th worst team in both CF per 60 and CA per 60 at even strength, according to Corsica.hockey. This does not fit your claim. I agree with half of your conclusion again, the half that wants to make our defense better at defending and grow the defensive abilities of the young forwards (along with maybe adding some forwards who are good both ways) but your final conclusion, which matches the overarching theme of this whole argument, is again misguided.

 

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I will restate this for clarity, using quotes (some from here and some from the other Bylsma thread) - 

 

"BUF is supremely inept at defending.. and my eyes tell me it's not because of the "system", it's the players who are too slow, unwilling to block shots, can't win faceoffs.. etc.. intangible skills that aren't a reflection of coaching." 

 

" If they brought somebody else in and suddenly Jack's numbers plummeted because it's all about possession, not getting pucks up ice, then it would fly in the face of all the Bylsma haters."

 

"Again, they're 7th in the league in giveaways, which is excellent.... the problem is defending, they can't get the puck back, they rank 24th in takeaways... which tells me they need some defensively skilled players... i don't think it's so much of a system thing as it is a one-on-one inability of this team to generate any takeaways.... .....Eveybody talks about how D are always giving the puck away with long stretch passes, well Risto leads our team in giveaways but he ranks only 39th worst among defensemen and he's out there half the game.    If Bylsma's system was such garbage, we'd be leading the league in giveaways."

 

""Woont madder cuz ya kno... BYlsma!""

 

You can correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure I understand the gist of your point - you think that complaints about his system are overblown and that any bad possession stats we have (which you agree are good indicators of postseason success, especially if you bolster them with other metrics) are due almost entirely because of our inability to play defense. Keeping everything else the same and adding good defensive players will fix our possession issues and make us a good team, and anybody who still has a problem with Bylsma's system at that point is an idiot that can't spell. Got it. But I'll address a few things in those quotes:

 

Faceoff wins don't correlate with anything. Adding one player who is 4 percentage points higher than his replacement will not impact our ability to possess the puck when the problem is the breakout in the first place. Blocked shots, as pointed out, don't affect these measures either. You are right that we have more slow players than I would like, but Justin Bailey is fast and his speed isn't helping us play this system any better, it just gets him to the blue line waiting for the stretch faster than Moulson or someone.

 

Jack's numbers are going to plummet because the team has the puck more when he's on the ice? That will be the reason why, the fact that we possess the puck in the offensive zone more often? When has this ever happened to any player? Why did it happen?

 

Check out the system thread, Pi. It's all in there. teams do not have to rely on individual one-on-one performances to boost up their possession and scoring numbers. This argument has already been had a million times. Full team transition plays exist and are more effective than ANYTHING ELSE you can do. We're not asking everyone to go coast to coast and singlehandedly enter the zone, beating 3 guys on the way, like Eichel can. It's never been about that. I stressed in that post - Joakim freaking Nordstrom, who has scored fewer goals this season than Jack Eichel did in a 10 day stretch at one point, has the basic hockey ability of completing a short 5 foot pass to a player who is open by design. He can make these plays, especially after 2 seasons of team practice in the system, and Carolina gets in the zone way easier than we do. They take the stretch pass, which is used by us ~20% of our zone entries, and a good chunk of any dumps that they are able to, and turn them into structured pass plays, which run at a 70% clip when the Sabres decide to do them. This is how possession is maintained. Not by looking at the stat in the next column on nhl.com and creating another pi2000 narrative to go along with it when the previous one was shot down.

 

This conclusion is built upon those shaky narratives. I don't know what to say other than, no, nobody has made the claim that the dubiously-tracked giveaway stat should be way higher for teams that play stretch pass chip&chase hockey.

 

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Alright, I'm going to re-quote the original quote I had there and finish up inside:

 

Randy, you are the best poster on this board at present. Some of us really do appreciate you wasting your youthful energy on our little portion of h*ll. Don't ever let the morons here (myself included) break your spirit. (Sorry True, you are now #2. :p)
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MattPie All Star

MattPie

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Nor should they.   Stretch passes that are intercepted are counted as giveaways.    A stretch and chip-in is a good hockey play, it flips the ice, allows for changes, creates forecheck opportunities, etc..  

 

You can't just have a blanket system that says carry the puck in..   It depends on who those players are.    Because a turnover within 6ft of the blue-line is a big no-no, we're taught that from peewees.    Either get it deep, or if you have the speed and skill, carry it in.

 

In your expert opinion, why do they rank near the bottom of the league in takeaways, do you think that's important, and how would you improve that?

 

And instead of attacking my method of analysis, why don't you (in you're own words) "pick apart my post, show me where I'm wrong".    :P

 

Maybe we should call unrecovered chip-ins intentional giveaways if it's not a line change. I agree that chip-ins create forecheck opportunities. Keeping the puck on your stick creates scoring opportunities. I know which I want to see.

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pi2000 First Liner

pi2000

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Maybe we should call unrecovered chip-ins intentional giveaways if it's not a line change. I agree that chip-ins create forecheck opportunities. Keeping the puck on your stick creates scoring opportunities. I know which I want to see.

 

That's not always true.   Eichel was benched a while ago because he tried to keep the puck on his stick at the wrong place and wrong time.    As one of my coaches used to say... move the puck, move your feet.    That said, I'm fine with skilled guys trying to dangle but there's a time and a place for it, Eichel is still figuring that out.      When you have a team with some big fast wingers you want to wear the other team down with your forecheck.    The Sabres first goal last night was created by D-Lo.   He was a wrecking ball and caused the d-man to turnover the puck because he heard his footsteps.... Eichel picks off the errant pass and we all know what happened next.     Guys like Bailey, Kane, Baptiste, Okposo to an extent, are big fast wingers that can pressure the puck.... you ask those guys to dump and chase most of the time because it's what they're good at and it creates scoring opportunities as the game wears on.    Trying to carry the puck in every single time makes it very very easy on the defense, they don't have to turn and chase pucks and get hit, they just back in and eliminate shot and passing lanes, simple.  

 

Again there's not one blanket strategy, you have to read and react, if you have the time and space, sure carry it in,  if you're a skill guy and going 1-on-1 against a bottom pairing guy, yeah try and create something, otherwise make the smart play and live to fight another day.

 

 

You are all over the place.

 

"13th in shots for, offensive zone time is not the issue."

"Pi, when you remove special teams from the equation, we fall to bottom 5, it IS an issue"

After this exchange, you basically abandoned that half of your argument and were using the same vigor to promote the half that literally everyone on this forum agrees with - we allow too many shots. 

 

Special teams are part of the game, why would you remove it?   And it's a part of the game BUF excels at.   I don't see why you shouldn't count those shots towards their total... every team does.     Your picking out whatever data fits your narrative.... "well if we remove this stat, and this stat and look at only this single thing on it's own... Bylsma sucks!"

 

 

"I don't buy the idea that BUF is constantly giving the puck away with rushed stretch passes out of the zone.... in fact, studies show, the Sabres rank 7th BEST in the league in number of giveaways:"

Then when I called out the fact that your use of the giveaway ranking above doesn't make sense when used as an argument against us blaming the stretch pass for possession numbers, because the most common result of the stretch pass doesn't get called a 'giveaway' (which is a stat I don't trust at all, anyway), you came back with

 

"Nor should they.   Stretch passes that are intercepted are counted as giveaways.    A stretch and chip-in is a good hockey play, it flips the ice, allows for changes, creates forecheck opportunities, etc..  "

 

Then how does your original giveaway point hold, Pi? Most of our stretch passes are not outright intercepted. I know because I've spent a statistically significant (sqrt(N)) amount of games watching and counting them. Most of them result in plays that you are calling "good hockey plays" and are successful roughly 0 to 4 out of the 15 to 20 times they are attempted per game by this team.

 

 I know you've probably already mentioned this in some other thread, but what do you consider a "successful" chip-in?   In my mind a successful chip-in is to facilitate a change or make the defenseman turn skate and take a hit or create a turnover or relieve pressure.    I those plays a failure when the other team gets an easy retrieval and clean breakout without the threat of physical punishment or stress.    Look at the play DLo made just last night.   He was punishing the dmen on chip-ins every chance he got.... which created enough stress that they eventually made an errant pass right to Eichel's stick and puck ends up in the back of their net.     

 

 

You then finished with 

 

I'm not saying that BUFs even strength shots-for doesn't need to get better, it does... and it will get better when they spend less time chasing the puck in their own end.. again, when compared to the rest of the league their shot suppression is worse than their shot generation.    That should tell you righ there where GMTM needs to focus his attention... he said it himself, he needs to find a way to fix the defense... and IMO he's not just talking about defensemen... If they had a few forwards capable of defending in their own end against other teams top players, they'd spend less time there, and more time in the offensive zone generating shots.

 

You'll have to show me which measure you're using for the bolded, because we are the 5th worst team in both CF per 60 and CA per 60 at even strength, according to Corsica.hockey. This does not fit your claim. I agree with half of your conclusion again, the half that wants to make our defense better at defending and grow the defensive abilities of the young forwards (along with maybe adding some forwards who are good both ways) but your final conclusion, which matches the overarching theme of this whole argument, is again misguided.

 

It was in my previous post... their league ranking for shots against is worse than their shots for ranking.    Improve your weakness.    

 

Even strength only you say?  Well, when evaluating the team I prefer to take a more holistic view. 

 

 

I will restate this for clarity, using quotes (some from here and some from the other Bylsma thread) - 

 

"BUF is supremely inept at defending.. and my eyes tell me it's not because of the "system", it's the players who are too slow, unwilling to block shots, can't win faceoffs.. etc.. intangible skills that aren't a reflection of coaching." 

 

" If they brought somebody else in and suddenly Jack's numbers plummeted because it's all about possession, not getting pucks up ice, then it would fly in the face of all the Bylsma haters."

 

"Again, they're 7th in the league in giveaways, which is excellent.... the problem is defending, they can't get the puck back, they rank 24th in takeaways... which tells me they need some defensively skilled players... i don't think it's so much of a system thing as it is a one-on-one inability of this team to generate any takeaways.... .....Eveybody talks about how D are always giving the puck away with long stretch passes, well Risto leads our team in giveaways but he ranks only 39th worst among defensemen and he's out there half the game.    If Bylsma's system was such garbage, we'd be leading the league in giveaways."

 

""Woont madder cuz ya kno... BYlsma!""

 

You can correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure I understand the gist of your point - you think that complaints about his system are overblown and that any bad possession stats we have (which you agree are good indicators of postseason success, especially if you bolster them with other metrics) are due almost entirely because of our inability to play defense. Keeping everything else the same and adding good defensive players will fix our possession issues and make us a good team, and anybody who still has a problem with Bylsma's system at that point is an idiot that can't spell. Got it. But I'll address a few things in those quotes:

 

Faceoff wins don't correlate with anything. Adding one player who is 4 percentage points higher than his replacement will not impact our ability to possess the puck when the problem is the breakout in the first place. Blocked shots, as pointed out, don't affect these measures either. You are right that we have more slow players than I would like, but Justin Bailey is fast and his speed isn't helping us play this system any better, it just gets him to the blue line waiting for the stretch faster than Moulson or someone.

 

When the team is at the bottom of the league in takeways, losing possession immediately off the face-off is a big deal.      Imagine if they had a 3rd or 4th line checking center who has defensive zone and face-off skills... that would cut ROR's minutes down significantly and allow him to flourish late into games and the be more effective down the stretch.   Currently, their bottom 6 is the leftover parts of the tank year's top 6.    They're mediocre offensive players who don't know how to defend 1-on-1... and that's evident by the takeaway statistics.  

 

 

Jack's numbers are going to plummet because the team has the puck more when he's on the ice? That will be the reason why, the fact that we possess the puck in the offensive zone more often? When has this ever happened to any player? Why did it happen?

 

Check out the system thread, Pi. It's all in there. teams do not have to rely on individual one-on-one performances to boost up their possession and scoring numbers. This argument has already been had a million times. Full team transition plays exist and are more effective than ANYTHING ELSE you can do. We're not asking everyone to go coast to coast and singlehandedly enter the zone, beating 3 guys on the way, like Eichel can. It's never been about that. I stressed in that post - Joakim freaking Nordstrom, who has scored fewer goals this season than Jack Eichel did in a 10 day stretch at one point, has the basic hockey ability of completing a short 5 foot pass to a player who is open by design. He can make these plays, especially after 2 seasons of team practice in the system, and Carolina gets in the zone way easier than we do. They take the stretch pass, which is used by us ~20% of our zone entries, and a good chunk of any dumps that they are able to, and turn them into structured pass plays, which run at a 70% clip when the Sabres decide to do them. This is how possession is maintained. Not by looking at the stat in the next column on nhl.com and creating another pi2000 narrative to go along with it when the previous one was shot down.

 

This conclusion is built upon those shaky narratives. I don't know what to say other than, no, nobody has made the claim that the dubiously-tracked giveaway stat should be way higher for teams that play stretch pass chip&chase hockey.

 

I appreciate your effort to analyze the % of this that and the other thing.    But can I ask over what stretch of games did you perform this analysis?    Unless you look at 15-20 games, you're not getting the big picture... as gameplans change depending on personnel and who you're matched up against... how the game is progressing, if they're winning or losing, how far behind are they, etc...   Many many variables that need to be taken into account, I'm assuming you've fleshed all those out.     And anybody can pick and choose what screenshots from a game match their narrative and build a case.   I could just as easily build a case to show they support the puck and exit the zone as a group.

 

 

In your expert opinion, why do they rank near the bottom of the league in takeaways, do you think that's important, and how would you improve that?

 

I don't have the first clue. What is a "takeaway" and how reliably are they tracked? Takeaways are probably nice things to be able to do, but they have no bearing on any point that us anti-Bylsma's-system folks want to be addressed. If there is a huge difference in "takeaways per team per game", and I doubt there is, it's not going to affect the success rates of the things you do once you have the puck back. Our problem is with exactly that. The coach sees it the way you do, either you dump it in or you go full-Eichel, and I spent a full week showing that this isn't the case, and I can do it again next season if I have to, with different teams. I even used one with much worse depth and skill levels than ours to emphasize what should be an obvious point - 5 foot passes in mini-odd-man-rushes actually require less skill than pin-point 80 foot ones to guys who are surrounded and flat-footed.

 

If you're questioning the validity of the underlying data, then it's a lost cause and I'm just wasting my breath.

 

Takeaways reduce shots attempts against.   It's that simple.   

 

I counted 187 passes that were 5 feet or less made by BUF players in last night's game compared to 143 for MTL.    

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Randall Flagg Hall of Famer

Randall Flagg

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1.) Special teams are part of the game, why would you remove it?   And it's a part of the game BUF excels at.   I don't see why you shouldn't count those shots towards their total... every team does.     Your picking out whatever data fits your narrative.... "well if we remove this stat, and this stat and look at only this single thing on it's own... Bylsma sucks!"

 

 

 

2.) I know you've probably already mentioned this in some other thread, but what do you consider a "successful" chip-in?   In my mind a successful chip-in is to facilitate a change or make the defenseman turn skate and take a hit or create a turnover or relieve pressure.    I those plays a failure when the other team gets an easy retrieval and clean breakout without the threat of physical punishment or stress.    Look at the play DLo made just last night.   He was punishing the dmen on chip-ins every chance he got.... which created enough stress that they eventually made an errant pass right to Eichel's stick and puck ends up in the back of their net.     

 

 

 

3.) It was in my previous post... their league ranking for shots against is worse than their shots for ranking.    Improve your weakness.    

 

Even strength only you say?  Well, when evaluating the team I prefer to take a more holistic view. 

 

 

 4.) When the team is at the bottom of the league in takeways, losing possession immediately off the face-off is a big deal.      Imagine if they had a 3rd or 4th line checking center who has defensive zone and face-off skills... that would cut ROR's minutes down significantly and allow him to flourish late into games and the be more effective down the stretch.   Currently, their bottom 6 is the leftover parts of the tank year's top 6.    They're mediocre offensive players who don't know how to defend 1-on-1... and that's evident by the takeaway statistics.  

 

 

 

5.) I appreciate your effort to analyze the % of this that and the other thing.    But can I ask over what stretch of games did you perform this analysis?    Unless you look at 15-20 games, you're not getting the big picture... as gameplans change depending on personnel and who you're matched up against... how the game is progressing, if they're winning or losing, how far behind are they, etc...   Many many variables that need to be taken into account, I'm assuming you've fleshed all those out.     And anybody can pick and choose what screenshots from a game match their narrative and build a case.   I could just as easily build a case to show they support the puck and exit the zone as a group.

 

 

6.) If you're questioning the validity of the underlying data, then it's a lost cause and I'm just wasting my breath.

 

Takeaways reduce shots attempts against.   It's that simple.   

 

7.) I counted 187 passes that were 5 feet or less made by BUF players in last night's game compared to 143 for MTL.    

 

1.) I'm removing special teams because the system I'm discussing, and the most predictive stats in the world, both pertain to hockey that is not played on special teams. You even said yourself that you agree that these possession stats are tremendous predictors of successful hockey teams. They are tracked at even strength! Holy , pi. "ES data is cherrypicking." what the . It would be cherrypicking if I was making the case that Bylsma made our PP and PK bad, or something idiotic like that, sure. But Bylsma's neutral zone transition system is my problem! We don't transition when we're killing penalties, and when we're on the power play we have one more guy than the other team! I'm worried about the stuff that most of the game is made up of, especially in today's NHL (and the playoffs) where penalties are rarely called!!!!!!!!!!! Jesus Christ what a paragraph to read.

 

Here, I'll use some pi logic. Our PP is 1, our PK is 30. Those cancel out to dead even, and now all we have to do is look at even strength. Ooh wee! ooh wee!

 

2.) I define a successful chip-in as one in which we do indeed recover the puck at some point before the team makes a controlled zone exit. I differentiate between chip-ins that are used to change, chip-ins a player makes by choice when he has other options available, and chip-ins that are forced due to being pressed without puck support. Obviously teams need to change and sometimes players get squeezed out. I don't feel I should have to explain this, but since we're in full black&white mode here, I'm not asking every single chip in and dump in and stretch pass to go away. Stretch when you see a player with a chance for a breakaway. (Which we have almost never seen this season, because teams know what we do and know how to sit back and snuff it out, as I showed in great detail with pictures and tracking stats.) Dump in when you have to change or when you can win the puck battle. But you should predominantly be looking to transition as a team, creating odd-man rushes, instead of constantly putting yourself at a disadvantage and turning full possession into a less than 50% chance of getting the puck back, which again, I've gone through in absolutely agonizing detail. Other teams do it. We don't. Jack and Sam and ROR know this and it's why they're going to do everything they can to get this coach out of here. He suppresses all of their scoring numbers. All of them. KO has never had below 1.5 points per 60 at ES, and only has dipped below 1.7 twice in his career. He hit a gaudy 1.13 this season. ROR's fell off a cliff too. GF/GA stats for every single Sabre to come to this franchise from somewhere else have gotten worse. At least, that was the case ~20 games ago, I'm not going through to count now because I can't do this anymore.

 

3.) Pi, I'll say it again. we are 25th in CF per sixty and 25th in CA per sixty. I didn't know that 25 < 25.

 

4.) It's good to have players that can win key situational draws and all that, but overall they have very little impact on possession and winning hockey games, and this has been shown statistically. One study claims that with everything else in isolation, you need to increase your faceoff wins by over 200 in a season to equate to a single victory. Based on the number of faceoffs that teams won this year, being the difference between the 30th best faceoff team and 1st is 2 wins. We are 16th in faceoff percentage, which is much better than our place in the standings, and even then it would be a stretch to say that somehow adding enough, not to just be good, but to be the best faceoff team in the league, we would improve our standings position by at most 2 points. And again, this is ignoring almost everything else that goes on in a hockey game as soon as the puck is dropped. For good measure - the second best team in the league this year at winning faceoffs is the Avalanche. The bottom 3? Edmonton, Chicago, and Pittsburgh. Here's an article that shows that you cannot claim a correlation between CF% and faceoffs: http://www.hockeywilderness.com/2014/11/6/7155985/faceoffs-nhl-possession-correlation-do-faceoffs-matter 

Faceoffs just don't have any predictive value to NHL success, the way possession stats do. 

 

5.) By the end of this season I'll have 9 or 10 games/data sets, which is close enough to the square-root-of-N + 1 recommendations. Furthermore, this is more than the zero games of data or pictures or anything but cursory scrolling through stats that have proven to be next-to-meaningless at predicting hockey success that have been used in return by you and all of the other pro-Bylsma's-system-people combined.

 

6.) I'm the lost cause? What a joke. You do know that hits are tracked differently for each team in each arena, for example, right? That you can't trust final hit stats at all? I've heard similar things about giveaways and takeaways, so I'm asking you to show me that I can trust that one team having more takeaways than another is meaningful. i'd also like it if you could show some meaningful statistical correlation between these, the other real-time stats you like, and NHL success. Give me some R^2 values, P values, give me anything. Don't just tell me that takeaways affect possession, because here's what I do when you do that: 

 

Buffalo: 464 takeaways in 80 games, for 5.8 takeaways per game.

Minnesota: 540 takeaways in 80 games, for 6.75 takeaways per game.

Washington: 621 takeaways in 80 games, for 7.76 takeaways per game.

 

I picked 2 teams with tremendous 2 way forwards and defense units, teams that are consistently the best at allowing few goals and scoring chances. The difference between us and them is less than 1 takeaway per game for Minnesota, and less than 2 takeaways per game than Washington. You pick the next random stat in your lineup of stats, and assert that it has more to do with possession than something like a f*cking system that is built to tell you what to do every single time your team gets the puck, even though that stat happens a whopping one to two more instances per game for the teams that kill us in the standings and in puck possession. And less than that for many good teams with great possession numbers. For example, LA has the best possession numbers in the league, and they are TREMENDOUS defensively most of the time, and they only average 3.93 takeaways per game, way less than us. Montreal averages less than a takeaway per game more than us. The Rangers get shelled and take the puck away as often as Washington does. You literally can't predict anything with these stats. They don't tell you anything without taking loads of things which are better at predicting anyway in context with them. They're neat, but like all "real time stats" they don't teach you much about hockey without delving in much deeper.

 

7.) That's fantastic. What percentage of those were zone exits vs. zone entries, passes within the offensive zone, passes within the defensive zone, and what were each of those success rates? Because I only track zone entry  stats, which I defined as plays that were made in which the Sabres either entered the zone or got between center ice and the blue line, 1.) because that's what I aimed to judge success rates of, because that's the part of Bylsma's system that sucks,  and 2.) because I'm only a human being and that's all I could keep track of in real time, with no ability to pause. I could count a bunch of other short passes that had nothing to do with what I was tracking as well, and it wouldn't have helped my Sabres transition strategy analysis in any tangible way. 

 

You've brought giveaways, takeaways, and faceoffs to the table as attempts to explain why we can't maintain the puck. They've come with our rankings relative to other teams and undeveloped connections to how it could work on the ice, but I showed you that this doesn't change our success at all. Relative shot attempts diverge SHARPLY to zero, within 20-30 seconds after a faceoff victory. This is not the behavior of a hockey event that holds long-term predictive value. and can put a dent in possession stats over 82 games. Takeaways and giveaways vary in a range less than 3 per game between us and the best teams in the league. This teaches me nothing, and this changes nothing about the demonstrable lack of puck support we have, backed up by countless images (from highlight videos with poor chance of discovery to boot) and from Disco Dan's words himself, on how he wants his team to play and what he wants them to do. 

 

I'd have a little more patience and type with a little less emotion but through your own narratives, from Matthews to Moulson to Risto's +/-, I cannot tell when you are trolling and when you are being serious. I have little interest in being baited or in continuing this discussion at this point, because I don't know which is happening. You can have the last word. 

 

 

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Sabres Fan in NS Hall of Famer

Sabres Fan in NS

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Oh ######, pi responded. That was a lot of time and effort you both put in, appreciate the stubbornness

 

I think this discussion is awesome.  The back and forth of two of our better posters with keen knowledge and, not yo mention, two stubborn mules is really something.

 

I really wish I had time to read them, but I just scroll down and skim the length of the posts.  

 

At this rate SDS is going to need a bigger server ...

 

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Jsixspd

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No matter how bad the player or coach is, someone will support them,  their support defying all statistics and reason.  I recall die-hard JP Losman supporters,  and Trent Edwards supporters.... jeez!!!   I bet the fan club is still out there;  with knee jerk enthusiasm for those two.    

Edited by Jsixspd
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Kruppstahl Second Liner

Kruppstahl

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For a while now, it's been obvious that Bylsma would survive the season after earlier thinking he would not.

 

He isn't going to get canned in the offseason either.

 

So now we almost need the Sabres to start next year in a funk and crap the bed for their first 10 games or something...that's when Bylsma will get the ax.

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Crusader1969 First Liner

Crusader1969

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The 2 players I'm most interested to see under a new coach or change in philosophy are Tyler Ennis and Zack Bogosian. Maybe injuries have derailed both players and we will never see them at peak again but I'm not ready to give up on either yet. 

 

Along with Byslma does anyone still have a need for Girgensons to return? 4th line centre at best for me and I think I already like E-Rod better.

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pi2000 First Liner

pi2000

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1.) I'm removing special teams because the system I'm discussing, and the most predictive stats in the world, both pertain to hockey that is not played on special teams. You even said yourself that you agree that these possession stats are tremendous predictors of successful hockey teams. They are tracked at even strength! Holy ###### ######, pi. "ES data is cherrypicking." what the ######. It would be cherrypicking if I was making the case that Bylsma made our PP and PK bad, or something idiotic like that, sure. But Bylsma's neutral zone transition system is my problem! We don't transition when we're killing penalties, and when we're on the power play we have one more ###### guy than the other team! I'm worried about the stuff that most of the game is made up of, especially in today's NHL (and the playoffs) where penalties are rarely called!!!!!!!!!!! Jesus Christ what a paragraph to read.

 

Here, I'll use some pi logic. Our PP is 1, our PK is 30. Those cancel out to dead even, and now all we have to do is look at even strength. Ooh wee! ooh wee!

 

2.) I define a successful chip-in as one in which we do indeed recover the puck at some point before the team makes a controlled zone exit. I differentiate between chip-ins that are used to change, chip-ins a player makes by choice when he has other options available, and chip-ins that are forced due to being pressed without puck support. Obviously teams need to change and sometimes players get squeezed out. I don't feel I should have to explain this, but since we're in full black&white mode here, I'm not asking every single chip in and dump in and stretch pass to go away. Stretch when you see a player with a chance for a breakaway. (Which we have almost never seen this season, because teams know what we do and know how to sit back and snuff it out, as I showed in great detail with pictures and tracking stats.) Dump in when you have to change or when you can win the puck battle. But you should predominantly be looking to transition as a team, creating odd-man rushes, instead of constantly putting yourself at a disadvantage and turning full possession into a less than 50% chance of getting the puck back, which again, I've gone through in absolutely agonizing detail. Other teams do it. We don't. Jack and Sam and ROR know this and it's why they're going to do everything they can to get this ###### coach out of here. He suppresses all of their scoring numbers. All of them. KO has never had below 1.5 points per 60 at ES, and only has dipped below 1.7 twice in his career. He hit a gaudy 1.13 this season. ROR's fell off a cliff too. GF/GA stats for every single Sabre to come to this franchise from somewhere else have gotten worse. At least, that was the case ~20 games ago, I'm not going through to count now because I can't ###### do this anymore.

 

3.) Pi, I'll say it again. we are 25th in CF per sixty and 25th in CA per sixty. I didn't know that 25 < 25.

 

4.) It's good to have players that can win key situational draws and all that, but overall they have very little impact on possession and winning hockey games, and this has been shown statistically. One study claims that with everything else in isolation, you need to increase your faceoff wins by over 200 in a season to equate to a single victory. Based on the number of faceoffs that teams won this year, being the difference between the 30th best faceoff team and 1st is 2 wins. We are 16th in faceoff percentage, which is much better than our place in the standings, and even then it would be a stretch to say that somehow adding enough, not to just be good, but to be the best faceoff team in the league, we would improve our standings position by at most 2 points. And again, this is ignoring almost everything else that goes on in a hockey game as soon as the puck is dropped. For good measure - the second best team in the league this year at winning faceoffs is the Avalanche. The bottom 3? Edmonton, Chicago, and Pittsburgh. Here's an article that shows that you cannot claim a correlation between CF% and faceoffs: http://www.hockeywilderness.com/2014/11/6/7155985/faceoffs-nhl-possession-correlation-do-faceoffs-matter 

Faceoffs just don't have any predictive value to NHL success, the way possession stats do. 

 

5.) By the end of this season I'll have 9 or 10 games/data sets, which is close enough to the square-root-of-N + 1 recommendations. Furthermore, this is more than the zero games of data or pictures or anything but cursory scrolling through stats that have proven to be next-to-meaningless at predicting hockey success that have been used in return by you and all of the other pro-Bylsma's-system-people combined.

 

6.) I'm the lost cause? What a joke. You do know that hits are tracked differently for each team in each arena, for example, right? That you can't trust final hit stats at all? I've heard similar things about giveaways and takeaways, so I'm asking you to show me that I can trust that one team having more takeaways than another is meaningful. i'd also like it if you could show some meaningful statistical correlation between these, the other real-time stats you like, and NHL success. Give me some R^2 values, P values, give me anything. Don't just tell me that takeaways affect possession, because here's what I do when you do that: 

 

Buffalo: 464 takeaways in 80 games, for 5.8 takeaways per game.

Minnesota: 540 takeaways in 80 games, for 6.75 takeaways per game.

Washington: 621 takeaways in 80 games, for 7.76 takeaways per game.

 

I picked 2 teams with tremendous 2 way forwards and defense units, teams that are consistently the best at allowing few goals and scoring chances. The difference between us and them is less than 1 takeaway per game for Minnesota, and less than 2 takeaways per game than Washington. You pick the next random stat in your lineup of stats, and assert that it has more to do with possession than something like a f*cking system that is built to tell you what to do every single time your team gets the puck, even though that stat happens a whopping one to two more instances per game for the teams that kill us in the standings and in puck possession. And less than that for many good teams with great possession numbers. For example, LA has the best possession numbers in the league, and they are TREMENDOUS defensively most of the time, and they only average 3.93 takeaways per game, way less than us. Montreal averages less than a takeaway per game more than us. The Rangers get shelled and take the puck away as often as Washington does. You literally can't predict anything with these stats. They don't tell you anything without taking loads of things which are better at predicting anyway in context with them. They're neat, but like all "real time stats" they don't teach you much about hockey without delving in much deeper.

 

7.) That's fantastic. What percentage of those were zone exits vs. zone entries, passes within the offensive zone, passes within the defensive zone, and what were each of those success rates? Because I only track zone entry  stats, which I defined as plays that were made in which the Sabres either entered the zone or got between center ice and the blue line, 1.) because that's what I aimed to judge success rates of, because that's the part of Bylsma's system that ###### sucks,  and 2.) because I'm only a human being and that's all I could keep track of in real time, with no ability to pause. I could count a bunch of other short passes that had nothing to do with what I was tracking as well, and it wouldn't have helped my Sabres transition strategy analysis in any tangible way. 

 

You've brought giveaways, takeaways, and faceoffs to the table as attempts to explain why we can't maintain the puck. They've come with our rankings relative to other teams and undeveloped connections to how it could work on the ice, but I showed you that this doesn't change our success at all. Relative shot attempts diverge SHARPLY to zero, within 20-30 seconds after a faceoff victory. This is not the behavior of a hockey event that holds long-term predictive value. and can put a dent in possession stats over 82 games. Takeaways and giveaways vary in a range less than 3 per game between us and the best teams in the league. This teaches me nothing, and this changes nothing about the demonstrable lack of puck support we have, backed up by countless images (from highlight videos with poor chance of discovery to boot) and from Disco Dan's words himself, on how he wants his team to play and what he wants them to do. 

 

I'd have a little more patience and type with a little less emotion but through your own narratives, from Matthews to Moulson to Risto's +/-, I cannot tell when you are trolling and when you are being serious. I have little interest in being baited or in continuing this discussion at this point, because I don't know which is happening. You can have the last word. 

 

 

 

 

1)  Baby steps.   With a lethal PP, if they can reduce shots against (at even strength), they'll get more better than if they just focus on improving even strength shots for.    The best offense is a good defense.  

 

2)  IMO a chip-in isn't unsuccessful if you don't recover the puck.     That's what this whole discussion boils down to.    A strong forecheck takes it's toll on the defense, leading to breakdowns and scoring chances.      I do agree that Corsi% is a good predictor of playoff success in general, but there are exceptions... otherwise the team with the better Corsi would always win, and that's not the case.    Do you happen to know what the overall winning % is for teams with possession stats superior to their opposition?

 

3) Fine.

 

4) In the Sabres case, having another guy who can take d-zone draws and eat up PK minutes besides ROR will have a greater impact than most people think.

 

5) 

 

6)  So on one hand you're arguing there isn't enough difference in giveaway/takeaway stats between teams to have a make a meaningful difference, yet you're harping the fact that each arena tracks stats slightly differently.    Which is it?  You want a meaningful correlation?   8 of the top 10 teams in takeaways are in the playoffs and only 1 of the bottom 10 is in the playoffs.      That's a significantly better indicator for success than Corsi/SAT% where only 6 of the top 10 are in the playoffs, and 3 of the bottom 10 are in.   WHERE IS YOUR GOD NOW FLAGGMAAAAANNNNNNN .....HAHAHhahahaaaahahahahahahah

 

7) I'll say this, takeaways are important, BUF sucks at it, sucks really bad.. very bad.    That's one area I want to see them improve next season, and IMO that starts with better defensively aware players.... and I will say this... I don't think the lack of takeaways is ENTIRELY on the players... they play a very very passive defense in their own end, they pretty much play man-to-man near the puck and zone away from it.   That said, I don't know how much of that is due to Bylsma not trusting the players to win one-on-one battles?  Or if it's just that the players are incapable of being agressive in their d-zone without giving up grade A opportunities.    When you look at scoring chances... BUF is normally on par with their opposition... I don't know if there's a league wide stat for that, and yeah it's highly subjective... but I'd wager BUF has a pretty high percentage of shots which are considered scoring chances vs their opposition... they give up a lot of shots, but typically not a whole lot in prime scoring areas... which makes them look bad Corsi wise, but Corsi doesn't factor in shot quality so it can be a misleading stat, a stat that appears worse for BUF than it really is (if you tracked scoring chances vs shot attempts).

Edited by pi2000
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pi2000 First Liner

pi2000

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BTW, Pi, I'm sorry for the sass/demeanor in my post. I'm high strung right now and it has nothing to do with this place, and I need to stop it from leaking into my posting. 

 

No worries Flagg, I like the fact we can exchange opinions in a civil manner without insulting eachother.    Nothing you've said has offended me in any way shape or form.

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