2016-17 NHL Season: Happy 100th Birthday, National Hockey League

[Sport]

Things Lambert has already been wrong about this season: 
- picked the Blue Jackets to finish dead last in the division. Didn't even mention them in his preseason writeup. So did almost all of Puckdaddy for that matter. 
- After a good start he declared that we were stupid for being excited about not sucking, declared they were mediocre at best and that our poor Ohio public schooling was to blame for not understanding a concept as complex as shooting percentage. Almost immediately after he said this is when they started their 16 game win streak. 
- said they'd easily lose a playoff series to Philadelphia. Again, they have 24 more points than the Flyers. 
- declared they aren't good against good teams. They have a winning record against playoff teams. Now he keeps saying they aren't good against playoff teams after the streak, which makes no sense. 
- dismisses our streak as a fluke. Doesn't dismiss the hot streaks of the following teams: Pittsburgh, Washington, Minnesota, NYR, Philadelphia. If you throw out the best stretch of the season because it's not representative of who they are as a team or whatever other BS don't you also have to throw out the worst stretch too? Is expecting fairly applied reason to come from this guy too much?

Things he could be wrong about in the future:

- said with no evidence they'll collapse around game 65 and lose 10 of their last 17. I mean, could happen, but what evidence is there of this? Other than him finally wanting to be right about something, there isn't any. So far they're 2-1 in their last 17. Also only winning 7 out of their last 17 would put them at 49 wins. I'll think I'll be able to live with the embarrassment, dip***t. 

- they'll lose in the playoffs. REALLY GOING OUT ON A LIMB HERE, LAMBY. 

He's a goalpost moving hack. He's the Mark May/Skip Bayless of hockey, but it's worse because those guys don't pretend to be smart, analytics-studied, Journalists. If he keeps changing the measurable of success for this team eventually he'll be right. At this rate they have to win the stanley cup in 4 blowouts with dominating series victories over both Pittsburgh and Washington or it won't count in his eyes because for a little stretch this season they had a high shooting percentage and a good record against bad teams. 

 

[buckeye]

Speaking of Mr. Lambert...

 

http://sports.yahoo.com/news/what-we-learned-can-blue-jackets-really-challenge-for-stanley-cup-140200165.html

[The_Admiral]

2 hours ago, McCarthy said:

He's a goalpost moving hack. He's the Mark May/Skip Bayless of hockey, but it's worse because those guys don't pretend to be smart, analytics-studied, Journalists.

 

My favorite argument is that the Predators are a great organization for heroically rescuing P.K. Subban from the den of virulent racism that is Montreal. Well, phew, nothing bad has ever happened to black people in Tennessee.

[cmm]

I really don't get the NHL's postponement policy. Today's blizzard turned out to be much weaker than expected. The Jets made it to Newark overnight. Yet tonight's Winnipeg-Devils game has been postponed. But I can't count how many times Long Island was hit with over a foot of snow with county and state officials begging people to stay off the roads yet the Islanders game had to go on because both teams were in town. I'm not saying tonight's game shouldn't have been called off; I'm just miffed at all the times I had to drive out to the Coliseum in much worse conditions because the league refused to call the game even though the team and town, county, and state wanted them to.

[Kevin W.]

1 hour ago, the admiral said:

 

My favorite argument is that the Predators are a great organization for heroically rescuing P.K. Subban from the den of virulent racism that is Montreal. Well, phew, nothing bad has ever happened to black people in Tennessee.

Please tell me you have a link to that.

[Cosmic]

1 hour ago, cmm said:

I really don't get the NHL's postponement policy. Today's blizzard turned out to be much weaker than expected. The Jets made it to Newark overnight. Yet tonight's Winnipeg-Devils game has been postponed. But I can't count how many times Long Island was hit with over a foot of snow with county and state officials begging people to stay off the roads yet the Islanders game had to go on because both teams were in town. I'm not saying tonight's game shouldn't have been called off; I'm just miffed at all the times I had to drive out to the Coliseum in much worse conditions because the league refused to call the game even though the team and town, county, and state wanted them to.

Wild overreaction seems to be theme for this storm.

[Kramerica Industries]

4 hours ago, buckeye said:

Speaking of Mr. Lambert...

 

http://sports.yahoo.com/news/what-we-learned-can-blue-jackets-really-challenge-for-stanley-cup-140200165.html

 

Quote

But to call this team’s season a roller coaster isn’t totally accurate. They won 27(!) of their first 36, including 16 straight — albeit mostly against soft competition — but are only 16-12-2 since then. That’s a pace for 93 points, which is a playoff pace, but only by a hair. Moreover, they’re only 12-13-6 in regulation over the last 31 games, which is also a little bit worrying.

 

This is such a ridiculous argument. For many really good teams, across various sports, the make-up of their season is something like 75% average play and 25% superb play. I mean, for a totally random example, the 2013 Rays were a 91-71 team in the regular season that found their way into the playoffs. The make-up of that record was a 68-68 record, with a 22-3 stretch around the time of the ASB. They were a phenomenal team for 15% of their schedule; that enabled them to make the playoffs as a result. 

 

This is all arbitrary endpoints. If you want to place an extra weight on more recent developments, there's nothing wrong with that. But just because their play in December doesn't help your overall argument doesn't mean their play in December didn't happen. 

 

Quote

For example, Columbus fans like to talk about how they have two wins against the Caps this year.

 

The patronizing here is suffocating. 

 

Quote

Meanwhile, Sergei Bobrovsky, finally healthy after all these years, is showing why he won a Vezina. He’s a high-end goalie, and that’s always going to make your percentages look better. It’s always going to keep you in games where you’re getting outplayed, and snuff out any meager resistance when you’ve got it all going right. It’s also going to make your PK look pretty good (Columbus’s is currently ranked 10th).

 

The Habs and the Rangers both say hi. This isn't a new strategy; it also isn't a strategy that has no chance to succeed. Columbus has a positive Fenwick mark both in terms of percentage and terms of rank. They're tied for 12th with a 50.6% Fenwick mark. The Capitals are 11th with a 50.7% mark. The difference is literally maybe a couple of errant shot attempts over the course of 67 games. Give me a break.

[Still MIGHTY]

That Lambert article is particularly awful.

 

He said the Blue Jackets were unbeatable, pretty good, mediocre and bad all in the same piece all surrounded by an unnavigable garnish of fancy stats and snarky contempt. I read the whole thing, and I don't know if I understand what his point is. I also don't know if he actually watches the games or if he just interprets charts and box scores.

 

His little points on each team at the bottom are troublesome too.

 

Lambert is a perfect example of why discussing hockey on a pure analytics/sabremetrics level doesn't work. They're nice supplements if used properly, but there's so much more to the game than boiling things down to percentages or data points on a graph.

[BeerGuyJordan]

Did his wife cheat on him with a Columbus fan, or something? The 16-17 Jackets are a hype train totally worth jumping on. Perennial basement dwellers having a season their fans will remember for the rest of their lives? Let's be happy for them.

[Sport]

1 hour ago, Kramerica Industries said:

 

This is such a ridiculous argument. For many really good teams, across various sports, the make-up of their season is something like 75% average play and 25% superb play. I mean, for a totally random example, the 2013 Rays were a 91-71 team in the regular season that found their way into the playoffs. The make-up of that record was a 68-68 record, with a 22-3 stretch around the time of the ASB. They were a phenomenal team for 15% of their schedule; that enabled them to make the playoffs as a result. 

 

This is all arbitrary endpoints. If you want to place an extra weight on more recent developments, there's nothing wrong with that. But just because their play in December doesn't help your overall argument doesn't mean their play in December didn't happen. 

 

Bingo. The Pens last year were trash garbage for most of the season. Does that mean the part at the end when they got hot isn't real? Of course not. If you're going to use arbitrary endpoints you could also say that since coming back from their bye week they're 7-2-1, but that looks favorably on the team and doesn't fit the narrative. 

 

Second, in their win streak against "mostly soft competition" they beat Pittsburgh, LA, Tampa, Montreal, Edmonton 2x, Minnesota, Boston, and the Islanders. Every team in the NHL plays stretches against mostly soft competition because there's only 30 teams, the schedule is evenly spread, and this isn't college football where you can schedule yourself. I don't know what else they're supposed to do except not lose a game, but do it with a PDO at exactly 100. It's asinine.*

 

Let's remove the streak - they're 28-18-6 without it. That's a 98 point pace. That's still a playoff team.

 

 

Quote

 

The patronizing here is suffocating. 

He took a shot at the fanbase and then the team didn't lose a game for five straight weeks. I think he's still embarrassed and isn't big enough to admit it. 

 

Quote

 

The Habs and the Rangers both say hi. This isn't a new strategy; it also isn't a strategy that has no chance to succeed. Columbus has a positive Fenwick mark both in terms of percentage and terms of rank. They're tied for 12th with a 50.6% Fenwick mark. The Capitals are 11th with a 50.7% mark. The difference is literally maybe a couple of errant shot attempts over the course of 67 games. Give me a break.

 

It's akin to saying "If the Cavs didn't have Lebron they wouldn't be good" Yeah, but they do have Lebron. You know who else has a good goaltender? Every team who's ever won the Stanley Cup ever.

 

 

 

 

*I thought this was a great rebuke of the lambert types - a tongue in cheek look at "legit" wins or wins that only count if they're over a playoff team, with a PDO less than 100, with a higher score adjusted corsi because anything else was just "lucky". 

 

http://thesportsdaily.com/buckeye-state-hockey/the-blue-jackets-ridiculous-standards-and-real-legit-wins/

 

 

As you can see, it's a really dumb and not fun way to approach the game. 

[HedleyLamarr]

3 hours ago, the admiral said:

 

My favorite argument is that the Predators are a great organization for heroically rescuing P.K. Subban from the den of virulent racism that is Montreal. Well, phew, nothing bad has ever happened to black people in Tennessee.

For what it's worth, PK Subban is the most popular Predators player, and by far.  Just walking around the arena last night, there's more Subban jerseys/shirts than any other player, he got the loudest cheer in the announcement of the starting lineup, and he gets the loudest cheers and "ooohs" whenever he has the puck.

 

[Sport]

1 hour ago, Still MIGHTY said:

That Lambert article is particularly awful.

 

He said the Blue Jackets were unbeatable, pretty good, mediocre and bad all in the same piece all surrounded by an unnavigable garnish of fancy stats and snarky contempt. I read the whole thing, and I don't know if I understand what his point is. I also don't know if he actually watches the games or if he just interprets charts and box scores.

 

His little points on each team at the bottom are troublesome too.

 

Lambert is a perfect example of why discussing hockey on a pure analytics/sabremetrics level doesn't work. They're nice supplements if used properly, but there's so much more to the game than boiling things down to percentages or data points on a graph.

 

I'm almost certain he doesn't watch the games and relies on stats to fill in his opinion of teams, and that would be fine because he has to cover the entire league, but he doesn't know how to interpret them correctly and shamelessly bends them to fit his own narrative. Example "They're 1-1-1 against the Caps and Penguins since the end of the streak". Okay... if you look at it another way, the way where you actually give them credit for games they actually won, they're 2-0-1 against the Penguins this year and 2-1 against the Capitals, which is 4-1-1 by my count. 

 

BTW, he's been doing this for years with other teams and it's driven me nuts for just as long. He puts way too much stock in PDO, which is almost debunked by now as a useful measure of anything. It's two random stats mashed together. Save percentage and shooting percentage - They sound related, but they're not. Not for an individual team, at least. 1. a good goaltender is going to inflate it. They have a good goaltender. See, also: Price, Carey and Montreal's PDO. 2. shooting percentage isn't magic. Some teams actually are better at it than others. 3. All the percentages throughout a season will even out to 100, but that's across the entire league. Some teams will be over and some teams will be under just as the same is true of wins and losses, but nobody expects every team to go 41-41. It’s just one of many stats to use, but definitely not to be used as the sole indicator of a team’s worth. The Jackets had the gall to have a high PDO early on and therefore he still sees them as fraudulent. 

 

If you're gonna be stats guy and all empirical evidence shows you're wrong then you have to admit when you were wrong. He's been wrong half a dozen times with them this year alone while being insulting while being wrong and yet keeps shifting the bar and smugly saying things like "Columbus fans have a brain disease". F*** that guy. 

[Sport]

38 minutes ago, BeerGuyJordan said:

Did his wife cheat on him with a Columbus fan, or something? The 16-17 Jackets are a hype train totally worth jumping on. Perennial basement dwellers having a season their fans will remember for the rest of their lives? Let's be happy for them.

 

Appreciate that. I think Tortorella yelled at him once and he's a baby sooo...

[The_Admiral]

Yeah, it's allllllll rooted in how John Tortorella is a dumb idiot who's dumb and does dumb things dumbly. That's really all it is. I understand the Jackets don't do morning skates, which would be amazingly progressive if the Hurricanes or Predators did it but here just proves how awful Tortorella is. And make no mistake, he's been an awful coach for years now, but there's enough talent on the roster right now with Jones, Werenski, Saad, and Bobrovsky that they can overcome whatever bad ideas Torts still has.

 

I think Dave Lozo hates Tortorella for the same reason. He got yelled at. Gotta watch out for that tough East Coast media.

[Sport]

Wyshinski's openly admitted that he hates Tortorella. I kind of did too when they first hired him, but he's surprised me and really mellowed out. I think he learned something in Vancouver.

 

These reporters complain when a coach is boring and doesn't say anything, like Babcock. Then they get a quotable, cantankerous, loud mouth and all they want is for him to shut up. Sorry a guy forces you to come with a good question instead of some booolsheet like "Talk about that power play in the second period". 

[Crabcake]

2 hours ago, BeerGuyJordan said:

The 16-17 Jackets are a hype train totally worth jumping on. Perennial basement dwellers having a season their fans will remember for the rest of their lives? Let's be happy for them.

If it's not the Caps standing on top of the hill this May (and believe me, it won't be), I'll be fully rooting for Columbus.  Two Leicester-style fairytales within the space of 12 months is enough to erase a lot of the pain from the Super Bowl.

[The Six]

The Lambert hate on this board is almost as bad as the Patriots hate.

[The_Admiral]

Patrick Kane is back in front of the scoring race, at least until McDavid picks up a point in the Oilers game.

[Michael Bolton]

Somebody needs to break up the damn Flames.

[Sport]

15 hours ago, The Six said:

The Lambert hate on this board is almost as bad as the Patriots hate.

 

the difference is he sucks and is annoying while the Patriots are just annoying. 

 

Case in point, because I just noticed this: "Moreover, they’re only 12-13-6 in regulation over the last 31 games, which is also a little bit worrying."

 

It's worrying because he's fudged the numbers so they look worse than they actually are. 1 He's including overtime losses in a stat about regulation wins. That's really fair. And 2. They have 6 OTL losses all season, not just in their last 31 so that's just flat out incorrect. What he means to say is they have 12 regulation wins in their last 31, which sounds bad, but their actual record in the last 31 games is 16-13-2, which is hardly the collapse he wants to present here. If you isolate a sample of games and remove overtime wins while leaving in their full season overtime losses every team will look worse than they are. I'm waiting for him to say "if you throw out their 44 wins they're only 0-18-6 on the season. That's a little bit worrying". That's his stupid logic taken to its hyperbolic end. 

 

And besides that they're 7-2-1 in their most recent 10 and appear to have fixed the issues that led to the post-streak dip. He's being purposely misleading because he sucks. I mean that in the sense that he's literally bad at what he does for a living.