Flames @ Blues Post-Game - Flames Heavy Lifters Need Some 'Roids
by Kent Wilson on Dec 16, 2009 9:03 AM PST
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"We have to find a way very quickly to get it back. We took our foot off the pedal in the third period and made some mental mistakes."
That's Brent Sutter with the press after last night's contest. And I hate to disagree with the Flames coach (well...not really; I tend to be fairly disagreeable), but the Flames never really had their foot "on the pedal" so to speak last night. They were out-shot and out-chanced in every single period. The third just happened to be the worst of the bunch. Implicit in this quote is the assumption that the Flames played 40 minutes of good hockey and tripped over their own feet down the home stretch. They didn't, but the relative quality between the first half and the last half skewed perceptions of the team's efforts after the fact. See also: the anchoring effect.
In short, the Flames were about as poor in this game as they were in the last two losses. In fact, in many ways this was Calgary's worst contest in recent memory at ES. Two of of the Flames top 3 lines had their heads beat in by the opposition - par for the course when it comes to Iggy and Jokinen this year, but a rare poor evening out of Moss, Glencross and Conroy. Had the Langkow unit not shown up for the party, the Flames would have been blown out of the water.
A poor three game stretch isn't necessarily something to panic over. Teams lose three games in a row all the time. What's perhaps concerning is the manner in which the Flames are losing however - not only are they bowing to ostensibly inferior teams, they are getting legitimately out-classed all over the ice. In addition, issues that have plagued the club all year are finally beginning to show up in the teams results - that is the lack of shots on net and the relatively poor ES (and PP) performance of the "#1" scoring unit. Hidden by good goaltending a rash of favorable bounces to start the year, things have begun to regress to the mean and the Flames have looked decidedly worse than ordinary as a result.
What's perhaps most unnerving for Flames fans is that the decision-makers behind the bench don't seem to see the problems.
"To be honest, I think it’s something mentally right now," said coach Brent Sutter, following the game. ‘There’s been so much talk, ‘oh, they’re not scoring goals, they’re not scoring goals’. All of sudden when that happens, then we’re doing some things we shouldn’t be doing. "We’re pushing, forcing certain situations instead of staying with our game, sticking with our game. If we win games 1-0, 2-1, 3-2, whatever . . . so be it. It’s the bottom line. It’s a process you go through to get a victory at the end of the night. We’ve gotten off track on our process and we have to get it back."
There's a lot of garbled coach-speak in there, so it's all very vague but none of it is comforting to me. Is it a mental thing plaguing the Flames right now? Really? Perhaps you can put the Conroy lines lackluster effort down to something transient like "lack of focus" (since they typically beat up the competition), but Iginla and Jokinen have been playing like this for most of the year. That suggests not an acute condition but a chronic one. And until the conditions change around their deployment, I can't imagine things improving all that much: a team can only win for so long with the grinders and pluggers dragging the big guns along by the ears.
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Hilariously, Iginla spent most of his night againt McClemment, Perron and Crombeen! And still got killed!
Shrug
Jarome Iginla is (offensively speaking) a streaky player now. I mean how many pointless games did he have last year? I remember a lot of them and this years Jarome looks a lot like last years Jarome. He’ll go hot and cold and I imagine the team will go hot and cold along with him.
Adding a top six guy would help a lot Eric Nystrom could go back to doing what he does well on the PK unit/fourth line, David Moss could go back to chewing up the lesser lights on other teams from the third line, the top line would have a another guy up there to help carry it when the others are running cold.
It really looks a lot like the Sutters were banking alot on David Moss being able to assume that top line LW position, Dustin Boyd being able to replicate what Moss did last year and for Conroy to not start showing his age… none of which has really happened (Well, Boyd looks better but that much better).
Jarome looks a lot like last years Jarome. He’ll go hot and cold and I imagine the team will go hot and cold along with him.
You hit the nail right on the head. Jarome is not an old geezer yet he can still play with the best of them but to me he’s very tentative in the corners and all over the ice for that matter and I rarely ever see him take the puck from the Flame zone up ice. He waits at the blue line or waits till someone to take the puck to the net and looks for the pass.
What happenend to the Power Forward Jarome ’’Don’t piss him off or he’ll kill you’’ He’s not like that anymore and just as you said we live and die by Jarome if he’s not clicking the rest of the team isn’t clicking and I really don’t have an answer for what could improve this team because when the Trade Deadline rolls around that is when Sutts makes his moves which in my mind is way to late and with the deadline coming the 2nd day after the season resumes from the Olympics it might be way too late.
If I’m Sutter and the team still is having this swoon by January I make a deal right after the new year to get this team ignited and excited to play hockey which they haven’t been all December.
30 years of the NHL's Best Hockey, It got us through some tough times.
McElhinney was in net...
Which is practically a guaranteed poor outing by the rest of the team. Other than the game he was in before last night’s, the Flames have pretty much always left him out to dry. I really don’t know what it is but for some reason every time he’s in net the Flames play like garbage in front of him. I understand what you mean about the whole game not being that great, regardless of the third period shitkicker, the game was still 3-3 going into the third. 3-3 against the not only the league’s worst home team but the team with the fewest goals scored as well. That says a lot. If the Flames had played well there’s no reason to think they couldn’t/shouldn’t have beaten the Blues pretty soundly. Now they have to play the Kings who have been the hottest team in the league. They can’t afford to keep playing like their dogs were hit by a car before the game, pretty soon the teams below them are going to catch up (ie. Canucks and Wild).
While not defending the play of the team in front of him, I simply do not agree that Mcelhinney is anything close to a victim of his teammates play. The biggest reason why he loses virtually every time out is his own poor goaltending. He can’t make the big save, he coughs up amazingly awful rebounds, and he is a mess positionally.
He can’t make the big save
Good Lord, I had hoped you would have left this misconception (among others) behind at Calgary Puck. I mean, the BIG SAVE and the BAD GOAL, these are right up there with WINS as supremely lazy ways to look at goaltenders.
I mean, almost all ice time is high leverage, I would hope this is obvious from watching the games that things don’t often get out of hand, but if you need actual evidence you can visit one of the “stats” blogs (linky, linky, linky). Every goalie makes the BIG SAVE (about 20-ish times a game on average) and every goalie gives up the BAD GOAL (about 2-ish times a game on average).
I mean, it’s obvious that McElhinney hasn’t (yet) shown NHL calibre goaltending. Lawrence pretty much hammers it home with his EVSV% numbers. But this BIG SAVE business… that’s talk radio stuff.
An opinion is not automatically invalid because there is no contrived statistic to “support” it. The simple fact is, McElhinney’s play does not come remotely close to what one would expect out of an NHL calibre goaltender.
Like it or not, goaltenders who routinely give up BAD GOALS absolutely destroy the confidence of the team in front of them. McElhinney’s BRLBG* rating is nearing 2.0, that is not good.
(*Brutal Rebound Leading to a Big Goal)
An opinion is not automatically invalid because there is no contrived statistic to "support" it.
No, but an opinion is easily invalidated when it turns out that said opinion is bullshit. I mean, did you even read the articles I linked you to? No, I doubt it.
How do you even define a BAD GOAL anyway? I mean, it’s such a bullshit idea.
Is it the goal that breaks a tie? Because you know what, more than half of all goaltenders on a given night let in BAD GOALS.
Is it a goal that you look like a useless boob on? Sometimes when the shooter is in the scoring area, all you can do as a goalie is guess. Witness, using observations about human reflex time, and observations about wrist/snap shot speeds, and math that does not extend beyond multiplication (literally a grade school student could do this stuff). I hope this is not too contrived for you.
Is it a goalt that destroys the CONFIDENCE of the team? If so then that is too deep for me, I don’t have the psychic capacity to read people’s feelings from split-second shots of them on TV that have been framed specifically to enhance the viewer experience.
You know what, there are shots that seem like they should be saved (not shot from scoring areas, goalie had time to get square, goalie saw it all the way, etc. etc.). Fine. But I have seen many a fine NHL goaltender (Kipper included) let in such goals. So to go from making an observation like “that was a weak goal”, to making the observation that a goaltender is poor because he can’t make the BIG SAVE (after you’ve watched him play less than half a season’s worth of games)… boy, that’s Kent’s “anchoring effect” idea at its very finest.
R O I can semi-agree to what you are saying here, but resolute does raise some strong points. CuMac couldn’t provide the BIG Save when the team needed it the most (on TJ Oshies goal). Would have Kipprusoff saved that? I don’t know? I don’t know if the stats could prove that………
And to be ripping CuMac’s EV SV%….Cmon we both know that we are dealing with a very small sample here for his games played (n=5) and for something to have ANY statistical signifigance n >= 30.
Also I like this formula that was used in the first stats link you posted….
The Pythagorean expected points equation (GF^2/(GF^2+GA^2)) allows us to predict what a team’s record will be given their goals for and against.
Good Lord I didn’t realize that a teams projected point total based on their GF and GA was related to the equation for solving the hypotenuse of a right triangle (surely you know the formula a^2 +b^2 = c^2). The Pythagorean Point Equation eh?
Please explain this formula to me R O. You posted the link so you should be willing to back it up. Maybe you could complete a derivation of it so I can gain a better understanding. Or you could complete an uncertainty analysis based on the projected point totals and actual point totals of all thirty teams using their GF and GA (I will explain this if needed) to prove that it isn’t complete bogus.
I don’t care what Sutter says, because I think coachspeak is meaningless. However, I do care what he does, and putting Nystrom with OlliIggy is perhaps the most indefensible thing he’s done (even moreso than putting those two together in the first place). May as well just try Prust and McGratten too. The first line wasn’t good last night and nothing will change the fact that Joker is overpaid and an anchor. But I think at least 10 reasonable cycles or pressure situations died on Nystrom’s stick last night, none of them ending in a scoring chance. Doesn’t matter who you’re against, you can’t generate anything 2 on 3.
And I think Nystrom has value (although less and less all the time, I confess). He is a pretty good PKer and a solid 4th liner. But you’re just giving up if you stick him on the first line.
Jarome looks a lot like last years Jarome. He’ll go hot and cold and I imagine the team will go hot and cold along with him.
I was dreading the moment someone was going to blurt this out. Sad but true.
by Calgarian in SJ on Dec 16, 2009 6:21 PM PST reply actions
God, I finished a bottle of Chablis and began to sip on a Merlot to get me through that game. Unbelievable to see the performance on the ice in the last few games.
I do admit I am loving the commentary on this site. So refreshing to see the deeper analysis you guys offer compared to the predictable rhetoric the coaching staff and mainstream media echoes. I suppose that criticism to this extent would be seen as ‘going too far’ for the typical Sun columnist or what not, but after seeing games like the last ones, bluntness is required.
I read the links R O posted by the Brodeur is a Fraud blog, and I truly was stunned to see how much the statistical evidence shies away from that elusive ‘big save’ the guys on the Fan 960 seem to value so highly. As an (aspiring) sociologist, I rely on statistics heavily to prove the cultural inferences I research- they don’t tell anything but the truth. Good to see that they carry so much significance in the athletic arena as well, because from my experience, they usually can tell the whole story.
Thanks for the good read, everyone.
Dude...
Did you pull your butt plug out when you drank that wine? Pack a dip and chug a Pil like a real hockey fan. And fuck your asskissing too, pussy. Sociologists will judge a situation beforehand and then selectively use stats to back it up. Quit acting like you are some sort of genius contriving data that someone with half a brain has pulled out, warping it to fit your own conclusions and calling it gospel. And on that Note, If I see another tool using ‘corsi’ or EVSH%/60 or QUALCOMP or some other stat to ANCHOR their own bias against a player’s performance, my head will explode.
by Dustin Timberlake on Dec 16, 2009 10:28 PM PST up reply actions
Pythagorean Expected Points Equation
R O:
Just curious: the Contrarian Goaltender uses the stat of GF^2/GF^2+GA^2 to suggest this is what a team’s point totals should be.
I do not understand this at all. How can it account for loser points? How could a teams goals for and against be a direct correlation for goaltender success when so many factors are involved? And what does this have to do with Pythagorean theory? I feel like Shaquille O’Neal- I can’t figure it out! Ha ha.
I apologize if I am coming off as edgy or accusatory. I assure you that is not my intent. I am new to the statistical approach to hockey and there is a lot I don’t know, so any light shed on the situation will help.
On a more personal note, do you have any formal training in statistics or mathematics? It appears you have quite a knowledge base on the subject.
Thanks, R O.
By the way, thanks for getting rid of that Dustin Timberlake. I hope he wasn’t a solid, well-liked guy who posted here often. I didn’t mean to provoke him.
by Ken Williams on Dec 17, 2009 9:07 AM PST via mobile reply actions
Ah it appears M F had the same questions as myself. At least I am not alone in my confusion!
by Ken Williams on Dec 17, 2009 9:40 AM PST up reply actions
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