Commandant

Living close to Toronto, the Marlies get almost 0 media attention or coverage. Even with Nylander ripping up the AHL last year, you barely heard about them. Once the playoffs started there was a little bit of coverage with the Leafs being out and all, but it really isn't even like 5% of what the Leafs get. These are still big league hockey cities, that won't pay much attention to the minor league team.

1) Almost immediately after that trade Boston made the best free agent signing of the last 15 years in Zdeno Chara. 2) Dallas hasn't won a cup yet but no doubt they improved as a team. 3) Its not the deciding factor, but it makes things a heck of a lot harder. Trades can bring you closer to your goal or further from the goal... this one did the latter.

Who said I was against toughness.... Weber is a better hitter and better at clearing the crease. Those things certainly matter. No doubt. Subban is still ahead in many key areas. Hence the lower shots and scoring chances against, and less zone time. The fighting.. meh...

Vrbata goes to Arizona 1 year 1 million + bonuses

i like rocket.

I didn't say 7 minutes per game... I said 7 minutes for fighting after a cheap shot (5 minutes + 2minute instigator) and asked if you wanted your best defenceman doing the fighting. Cause he's the Habs best defenceman even if he's a downgrade on Subban.

It was pointed out that Weber had 1 fight last year. That kinda kills the narrative...

In a league where you make millions to be in the NHL, and 70-100k to be in the AHL, punches to the face don't deter guys like Steve Ott, Patrick Kaleta, Chris Kreider, etc... etc... They all know that if they don't play the game on edge, they won't be getting a new contract when their current one expires. And that is why its not a deterent in 2016. Also, if Weber is so good, why do we want him doing the facepunching? Wouldn't it be better to not have a guy that we want to play half the game, spending 7 minutes in the box every time he fights? Isn't it encouraging to the other team to get him taken off the ice, knowing he'll do something stupid if you take a cheap shot? If fighting is our best way to justify trading away this team's best player (other than price); well that just shows how stupid the trade is.

If you read the posts at no point did anyone say that his offensive game was on the decline. Its the other end of the ice that seems to be the issue.

Nothing "guarantees" a win... but when you tell me that 70% of the time the team with the better corsi numbers before a playoff series starts wins that playoff series... that seems kind of important to me. Seems a little better than the team with the better fighters wins 50% of the time. Seems to me when one is 70/30 and the other is 50/50.... that one is actually influencing the outcome of games, and one isn't. And I don't enjoy numbers. I enjoy WINNING hockey games.... if face punching is more important to people, maybe there are better sports, like UFC and Boxing, where the fight numbers aren't dropping to all time lows.

Gatlin shouldn't have competed.

You can make fun of corsi all you want, but there is one stat you can't argue... Wins and Losses.... and there is zero evidence that fighting leads to wins. Shows just how bad the trade is though, we've now resorted to the fact that Weber is a better face puncher to justify it.

He's making progress, he managed to insult subban without using any racial slurs.....

Funny we like to bring up what NHL GMs value... but then we also bring up fighting. This is something that 30 NHL GMs have shown, through their own actions, has less value today than it ever has. Do you guys think it is coincidence that fighting in the NHL is less than half of what it was 10 years ago, and that GMs are putting less and less value on those players who stick up for team mates. Its dying, whether you want it to or not. For reasons we have gone over millions of times. But I'm glad we took a less talented player cause he's better at facepunching. That makes the trade so much more appealing now... how did I miss this important aspect of the deal. As for where intangibles show up in advanced stats... here is the thing, if intangibles lead to teammates playing better, if they actually lead to more wins as you propose... that would show up in the stats under wins and losses; improved possession, more goals, less goals against, or some other stat. It would be measurable somewhere. At the very least it would show up in the win column. and if its not showing up in the win column, why do i care about it.

How much of your best defencemen spending 7 minutes in the box is a good idea. The Corsi would suggest this is a bad idea. How much of this is a deterrence to future messing with teammates. Statsitically speaking... there is no evidence that more fighting leads to more wins or less injuries. So whats the point?

Thats even assuming a couple punches in the face stops players from going to the net. If you are an NHL player, and you make millions in the league, or like $70,000 in the AHL... why do you stop going to the net? Guys need to score, go to the net, cause havoc to stay in the league, and if the cost of that is a defenceman punching someone, oh well. Maybe this theory worked when the differences in money were so great but not so much anymore. Add in that the Instigator rule means your team is going to get a PP, and is going to get the other team's best defenceman (in Weber's case with habs) off the ice for 7 minutes. And yeah the theory doesn't really hold up.

Hamonic never fought with the Islanders. He wanted to go home to be near a sick relative. That situation has resolved itself (came to its unfortunate conclusion), and he's no longer trying to leave the Isles. I don't think that is the same thing as a player feuding with management.

How many times did he run a supremely talented player out of town and didn't get fair value. He kept Cantona. He gave up Beckham and Ronaldo only when the offers were so outrageous that he couldn't refuse them. It wasn't so much not wanting to keep them, but selling them at huge premiums. If we got a huge premium for Subban the move would make sense. So who is the guy he forced out of United because they were too big for the team? Who is the guy who was bigger than his bosses?

Nothing about this current management regime has convinced me that they should be mentioned in the same breathe as Sir Alex.

Some players do play better Some players play worse Most stay the same. An average of all players shows that contract situation has virtual zero influence on results. Which makes sense. If a player is giving 100% in a contract year, do you really think players in non contract years are giving what 80% effort, 90% effort. I don't buy that players slack off in non-contract years. Especially since two things. 1) Contracts are often based on multiple years of performance, not just the contract year. 2) Players are ultra-competitive beasts. It takes a real Type A personality to even make the NHL.. I don't think they are working less hard in non-contract years and then putting it all on the line in their last year. 3) Even if you could raise your game for a short spurt (which doesn't seem to be the case that players can control when they get hot), but even if you could can you maintain for 82 games?

I may not be 100% positive of how he will play with Beaulieu... but I'm 99.9% sure that Beaulieu is a downgrade on Roman Josi, the defenceman he played with last year. Expecting that changing partners will improve his stats doesn't seem to provide much hope that this will be the reason for his improvement. And lets not compare these players to gretzky or these teams to the 80s oilers. Its an outlier. (and we also didn't keep track of Corsi in the 80s but i digress and say yeah it probably was better). That said, yes teammates influence corsi. For most teammates the effect though is minimal. But we have to remember what the stats showed and that is based on the pure stats Weber is a defensive black hole that is not worthy of playing in the NHL. To be clear I'm not saying that is what Weber actually is. What I'm saying is that even when you adjust for zone starts and teammates and system he's still not at Subban's level. The adjustments help and the adjustments clearly explain why a guy who is a good defenceman can have such bad stats, but they don't put him back into elite territory. So yes, teammates can have a small effect on possession, and if thats true than of course there may be outliers who can massively effect corsi. The idea that Gretzky, the greatest player of all-time, can have a big effect on corsi (where most guys on the Habs and Predators today are going to have small effects) yes I can buy that.

rel.html I agree that stats are not the be all end all and that they should be used more often as just a tool not a measuring stick of how one player is better than another, that's not really what I am attempting to do. I am just trying to put the numbers in perspective for the crowd ready to take Weber out to the shed and old yeller his ass before he has even stepped foot on the ice in Montreal. Where is the r of .45? it's certainly not in the article you linked.... and what is it based on... because the level of the correlation should not be based on one player. It should be based on hundreds. Second here is the key to the zone starts... http://hockeyanalysis.com/2015/03/21/zone-starts-and-impact-on-players-statistics/ "For me, the main evidence that zone starts don’t have a significant effect on a player’s overall statistics is if I remove the 45seconds after all offensive/defensive zone face offs (which basically ignores the entire shift) the majority of players have the same CF% +/- 1% and only a handful with heavy offensive or defensive zone starts have an effect in the +/- 1-2%. If removing all shifts that start with an offensive or defensive zone start does not dramatically impact a players overall statistics you simply cannot conclude that zone start bias plays a prominent role in driving a players overall statistics. Yes, for a particular shift it will, but not overall. Furthermore, the majority of that impact occurs in the first 10 seconds after a face off which is why my zone start adjusted data removes these 10 seconds which is something I showed over 3 years ago." I also remind you that Subban's zone starts were actually worse than Webers when you pull the data. On teammates. The player who everyone is saying is effecting Weber's corsi is Gaustad. Here is the problem. Corsi is the relationship between shots for and shots against. Gaustad is good in preventing shots against. The defensive half of the equation for Gaustad is good. The offensive half of the equation is very, very bad. Weber is the opposite. His offensive side of the equation is very good. The defensive side shows real problems. So gaustad being on the ice doesn't correlate to why Weber's defensive stats are so poor. How is Gaustad and the fourth line an explanation for Weber's defensive stats falling so much? http://hockeyanalysis.com/2015/03/16/zone-starts-corsi-and-the-percentages/

You clearly illustrate that you don't understand analytics... goals, assists, and plus minus are not analytics.... and the prospect rankings were not based on analytics... they were based on watching their games since they were 16/17 til now. There are no AHL analytics. The numbers weren't based on analytics. They were based on tangibles, skating, puck skill, vision, etc...

The solid play on the ice IN THE REGULAR SEASON... is a predictor of playoff success. Even the LA Kings team that was an 8th seed in the playoffs, the worst playoff team in the Western Conference.... corsi scores predicted that they had a 70% chance of winning each round as they were the better team in puck possession in the regular season.

The original post doesn't explain it, because the poster only identified reasons why there would be a drop off, he didn't indicate how much of a drop off each of these reasons would create... (or a range of it).... others did that math. No one is denying that playing more dzone starts creates some effect on relative corsi. I am just saying the effect isn't as pronounced as the poster says, and i had the numbers to show it. Good night.