NHL Anti-Thread: Bad Business Decision Aggregator

[The_Admiral]

He captained a team that won three championships in six years, so he might still be. He just sucks now, you know, like Mike Richards.

[The_Admiral]

Hey, did you like how the bye week made you forget about the NHL for five or six days only to be reminded of it by your team getting pasted? Well, next year, you'll get to do it twice!

[cmm]

I think each team will still have one bye week. But they won't be spread out like they were this season. So half of the teams will all be taking their byes on, say, February 1-5 and the other half will have theirs from February 11-15.

[Sport]

Islanders arena stuff: http://sports.yahoo.com/news/rangers-owner-investing-in-new-islanders-arena-at-belmont-park-192235394.html

 

Belmont Park, Queens location. 

[The_Admiral]

Getting this arena is probably for the best, but we seem to be getting back to Norris House League levels of incestuous ownership: MSG will own the Islanders' arena, AEG owns the Knights' arena, Bell owns half the Leafs and an eighth of the Habs, and Delaware North runs a ton of teams' concessions. Then again, Molson used to handle teams' TV deals while owning the Habs, so maybe it never stopped being this bad in the first place.

 

I don't think Belmont Park provides the same accessibility by both car and rail as Flushing would, but if it's what works, it's what works. They have to get out of the rusted spaceship as soon as they can, even if that means playing in the downsized NVMC for a year or two.

[Sodboy13]

Elliotte Friedman is reporting five Vancouver Canucks are out with the mumps. They were in Pittsburgh on the 14th and St. Louis on the 16th, by the way.

[RyanMcD29]

The Islanders' news is covered, which means while one arena deal looks to be heading in the right direction...

 

.....HERE COME THE COYOTES

[Sodboy13]

Quote

“I’m not a hockey fan but I’m a business guy and I want to save any business of this magnitude from leaving and impacting thousands of jobs,” Worsley said earlier this month

 

Sir, I have no doubt you aren't a hockey fan, but I question your "business guy" bonafides if you still think the Coyotes would impact thousands of jobs.

[The_Admiral]

Now hockey has a Worsley who induces copious vomiting instead of suffering it himself.

[HedleyLamarr]

2 hours ago, Sodboy13 said:

 

Sir, I have no doubt you aren't a hockey fan, but I question your "business guy" bonafides if you still think the Coyotes would impact thousands of jobs.

Yeah, don't think there's 2000+ employees involved, but between the full-time and seasonal employees, that figure is possibly north of 1000.  The number of employees we had with the Thrashers was over 1200.

[The_Admiral]

Quote

The Hurricanes do a lot of things at least passably well. They’re 15th in adjusted shot attempts and 14th in scoring chances. I would argue they don’t get enough of those attempts on net and cut down on the number of blocked shots, but that’s not the hugest issue in the world, no matter what Don Sweeney says. That they’re also 14th in the league in expected goals feels just about right, overall. They are also plus-25 when it comes to drawing penalties, good for the fourth-highest differential in the league. That also helps you win games, in theory.

So why, then, are they third from the bottom in terms of actual goals?

You can very easily argue that some of it is bad luck. Any time you have a PDO that starts with “97” things really haven’t gone your way. With that having been said, though, this was always going to be a possibility for this team in particular, no matter how good their process was.

For one thing, the decision to re-sign Cam Ward for two more seasons at middling money is one that was rightly derided when it happened. Ward is not an NHL-level goaltender and hasn’t been for a few years. That the team consequently has the lowest 5-on-5 save percentage in the league (.904) and the third-lowest in all situations sounds just about right. But again, the Hurricanes aren’t dumb. They didn’t think to themselves this would be the year Ward turned it around, after he’d already turned 30. They knew this was probably about what they’d get out of him.

One imagines they perhaps also hoped they’d get a lot more out of Eddie Lack, who was a .917 as a backup with Vancouver before Carolina got him. In the past two seasons, in which he appeared in just 40 games, Lack is .895. And moreover, they didn’t really have a ton of sure-thing options out there in the summer either. Run down the goalies who got contracts from July to September: Apart from Chad Johnson and James Reimer, there weren’t any really exciting options available to serve as any sort of stopgap or insurance policy if (when) Ward was awful again. They signed Michael Leighton in September, to really highlight how dire the situation was.

So obviously that’s a big reason for the low PDO at 5-on-5. What’s amazing is how effective this team has been when it comes to the PK (above 86 percent!) despite these problems.

Overall, Carolina goalies have cost the Hurricanes a little more than 20 goals versus what an average goaltender would have allowed. Call that about seven points in the standings. That alone makes them playoff-competitive — though not, like, actually competitive — and might have kept them from selling, which they shouldn’t have done. But you see the point.

The other aspect of PDO, though, highlights what has been a problem for the Hurricanes for more than just this season: They don’t shoot the puck all that effectively. They generate the fourth-most scoring chances per 60 minutes in the league. They score the ninth-fewest goals. Their shooting percentage is 23rd.

This, too, was a calculated risk. Carolina added plenty of offensive talent in the summer, most notably Teuvo Teravainen, as well as bringing in some of their younger high-end prospects (Sebastian Aho and so on) to hopefully round out the attack. The very impressive but still very young D corps for which Hainsey was the greybeard also plays a role, given that they look pretty good getting the puck up the ice most nights.

But the big offensive jump didn’t happen, which I guess is going to be a risk when most of your forwards are under the age of 24 and still improving as goal producers. They had to know that because they went through it last year. Before the talent infusion, of course, Carolina was a very good “process” team that was lacking in results. They finished 11th in share of attempts, 13th in shots on goal, 16th in expected goals. And because they were only 22nd in scoring chances — they likely just didn’t have the talent to get to the net consistently — and the seventh-lowest shooting percentage to go with their rotten goaltending, they finished third-bottom in goal share.

No real surprise.

These are guys whose quality is obvious, but whose finish remains an unrefined weapon in their arsenal. Again, some of this is luck, but if it’s the second year in a row of this level of bad luck, it’s not bad luck alone. Here’s what the goal totals for all Carolina skaters with at least 500 minutes at 5-on-5 look like versus what they “should have” scored:

 

 

This is drivel. Let's hear it for the Hurricanes, 2017 Hypothetical Hockey Champions! God, they're so smart, if you ignore their continued signing of Cam Ward, who makes them worse. But even that seems to be okay, because once you're An Analytics Team (other than the Blackhawks), nothing you ever do will ever be wrong, it's simply bad luck: bad luck that's deserving of a big babbling apologia like this one, where you say they need to cut down on misses and blocks, then say they don't because that's what the Stupid Bruins think, then say they need "better finish," which is completing more shots that don't miss or get blocked.

[Cosmic]

1 hour ago, the admiral said:

They’re 15th in adjusted shot attempts and 14th in scoring chances. I would argue they don’t get enough of those attempts on net

I think you just don't appreciate the beauty here.  He takes an analytics stat like adjusted shot attempts, then tries to go meta-analytics on that, only to end up (unwittingly, I'm sure) back at the regular old shots on goal stat that's so run-of-the-mill that it's been posted inside arenas for decades.  So hot, it's cool.  Also, they're 13th in regular ol' shots per game, so he's just wrong.

[The_Admiral]

It should be clear to anyone that the "process" of playing squeaky-clean and taking lots of shots breaks down when you lack talented scorers to close the deal. (I mean, this isn't even new for them: they've been playing this way for years now, it's just that people are noticing because they finally have competent defensemen to flip the ice. Before, when they were never taking penalties, trying to play more uptempo than they had the guns for, and losing games because of Cam Ward, just as they are today. nobody really expected much because their best defenseman was, like, Tim Gleason or whatever.) If you can't will yourselves past stifling defensive systems and elite goaltending, which seems to be UH THING again, you're either running the wrong system or treading water until you get the right personnel. All this ends up being is a broad facsimile of what a finesse-based hockey team should be doing. It's failing an exam but not understanding how; after all, you opened a book, looked at it, and furrowed your brow like you were thinking hard.

[Kramerica Industries]

This was clearly a Lambert article, which made looking it up real easy for me, and I'll bring up a different part of it:

 

Quote

If they’re smart — and they, of course, very much are — that number will continue to climb as the deadline approaches and, perhaps ahead of the draft. 

 

Just what is the determining line for this, exactly? I think very highly of Bill Peters as a head coach, but that part focuses on their front office and just what has Carolina's front office done to establish their intelligence? Draft Noah Hanifin and Sebastian Aho in the first five picks of the draft?  , I could've done that. Pick up Teravainen by swallowing Bickell's contract (before realizing Bickell's career was basically over)? Ok, I guess; call that the benefit of keeping cap space available, but using a desperate team cap-wise and leveraging a bad contract against them to pick up an out-of-favor prospect isn't a new philosophy. 

 

I realize that virtually any team that plays "puck-possession hockey" tends to get plaudits, but that's a useless proposition because virtually every team tries to play puck-possession hockey. It's a nebulous term. Hockey isn't soccer but on ice; you can't play behind the puck and try to attack on counters as a base method for offensive success; the variables are far too different. Some teams are able to play "puck-possession hockey" on the basis that their players collective talent level is better than their opponents. Some are able to do so because they're able to win puck battles; the Kings won two Stanley Cups as a high-possession but "dump-and-chase" team because they were able to win the puck back thanks to their physical advantage over most opponents. It's funny to think that there are multiple methods to success; these methods also have inherent weaknesses, and of course they do, because if any single method were flawless, everybody would be doing it. 

 

It's also, of course, quite dumb to overlook the Cam Ward aspect in all of this. Whether a team is very good or very bad with their possession metrics, goaltending is always the great equalizer. This is how Montreal had success a couple years back despite awful metrics; Carey Price isn't human (Montreal's possession metrics are actually really good this year, for a change). That's how the Rangers have had success in recent years and this year, despite being #21 in terms of Fenwick. Minnesota's #25 in the league; have we even noticed? Goaltending can play up mediocre possession teams and play down strong possession teams. Carolina has all those draft picks at their disposal? I don't think much of Brian Elliott (probably underrate him, frankly), but he was there to be had an off-season ago and would've been a much better option than Cam Ward; can pretty much guarantee that. Not all those draft picks are gonna work out anyway; might as well allow yourself to use some of them as capital for actual NHL talent. Alex Nedeljkovic is still a few years off from being a viable option if he ever becomes one at all; can pretty much guarantee that.

 

EDIT - had some bad recollection on Aho's draft status. He was #35 overall in his class. Mea culpa.

[The_Admiral]

21 minutes ago, Kramerica Industries said:

Just what is the determining line for this, exactly?

 

Ron Francis wears glasses.

 

I think the Hurricanes have always had the benefit of the doubt as a "smart team" because for one thing, they've gravitated toward college players, who are always "heady" because hey, they went to college, and Euro projects, who haven't had short-shift dump-n-chase drilled into them since they were still pooping themselves like Canadians have. Also, Raleigh's hockey fanbase, as elsewhere in the Sun Belt, is perceived by Hockey Twitter to have a lack of irritable pot-bellied oafs to look down upon, so it's assumed that the team is run by smart people for other smart people, hence so much jerking off over the exploits of Francis, Jim Nill, and your own Steve Yzerman (though the tide does seem to be turning on dear old Stevie Y).

[Sodboy13]

If neither of your goalies can save 9 shots on goal out of 10 and the date on the calendar says anything past 1992 your NHL team is doing f k-all forever the end bye where's my contract for a weekly column.

[Kramerica Industries]

1 hour ago, the admiral said:

 

Ron Francis wears glasses.

 

I think the Hurricanes have always had the benefit of the doubt as a "smart team" because for one thing, they've gravitated toward college players, who are always "heady" because hey, they went to college, and Euro projects, who haven't had short-shift dump-n-chase drilled into them since they were still pooping themselves like Canadians have. Also, Raleigh's hockey fanbase, as elsewhere in the Sun Belt, is perceived by Hockey Twitter to have a lack of irritable pot-bellied oafs to look down upon, so it's assumed that the team is run by smart people for other smart people, hence so much jerking off over the exploits of Francis, Jim Nill, and your own Steve Yzerman (though the tide does seem to be turning on dear old Stevie Y).

 

I'll edit more later, but in the cases of Nill and Yzerman, I'm sure some of that is coming from Detroit's front office. You know, before we started treating Holland and Detroit like morons.

[tp49]

On 2/24/2017 at 0:38 PM, McCarthy said:

Islanders arena stuff: http://sports.yahoo.com/news/rangers-owner-investing-in-new-islanders-arena-at-belmont-park-192235394.html

 

Belmont Park, Queens location. 

I'm good with them building at Belmont as it would bring the Isles back to Nassau County, though the Flushing location is honestly better.

[cmm]

Belmont doesn't have subway service, but at least it has a recently renovated LIRR station. It obviously wouldn't be as convenient as the 7 train to Mets-Willets Point, but hopefully they'd at least run some shuttle trains between Jamaica and Belmont to give city fans (and Long Islanders who don't want to deal with traffic) a somewhat reasonable way to get to the game, something they never had at the Coliseum.

[kroywen]

In terms of location, Flushing >>>>> Belmont >>> Hempstead. Flushing has the trifecta of great subway, LIRR, and highway access from both the city and Long Island. Belmont has decent LIRR and highway access (better from Long Island than the city), and no subway access, while Hempstead is limited to extremely congested highways, and is incredibly difficult to access from the city (doubly so if you don't have a car).

 

The ideal scenario would be for the Islanders and NYCFC to both build venues at Flushing (or within a redeveloped Willets Point). We know from experience with the Mets (and the US Open) that Flushing is extremely accessible for both city and suburban residents, whether by transit or by car. There's space to build on there, whether it's the Citi Field parking lot (build a garage or two to replace capacity), Willets Point, or within the park. There's already two successful venues there - Citi Field and the USTA center - make it a true sports complex. And it's a hell of a lot better for everyone involved to be in a place with subway access, rather than way out at Belmont relying on special LIRR trains to get city fans to the venue.

 

At the end of the day, either Flushing or Belmont would be preferable to continuing the untenable situation at Barclays, or to the Islanders moving out of town entirely (which I find quite unlikely). But the Isles should absolutely pursue Flushing as their first priority (and NYCFC would be wise to try and partner with them).