A Little Luck Here...
by Hawerchuk on Nov 22, 2009 4:16 PM EST
in Analysis
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PrintMaybe I haven't been paying close enough attention, but nobody seems to have noticed that the Montreal Canadiens have been a truly horrible team this season. Let's compare them to the Leafs in regulation games this season:
| Games | Wins | Losses | Ties | Goals For | Goals Agt | |
| MON | 23 | 3 | 11 | 9 | 49 | 65 |
| TOR | 21 | 3 | 11 | 7 | 53 | 72 |
Because of the vagaries of the NHL's OT/SO system, even though Montreal has played just as badly as Toronto, they're tied for 8th in the East with 23 points, while Toronto's in last place with 14 points. If you think there's something about the Canadiens that allowed them to go 8-1 in the extra frames, while Toronto's obviously a 1-6 team, I'd love to hear it. Even allowing for Vesa Toskala's crappy goaltending, we'd expect Montreal to be 5-4 and the Leafs at 3-4.
And things bode much worse for Montreal going forward than for Toronto. At 5-on-5, the Canadiens have been outshot by 3.5 shots-per-game, while Toronto has outshot its opponents by 4.6 shots-per-game:
| GF/60 | SF/60 | SVPCTA | GA/60 | SA/60 | SVPCTF | |
| MON | 2.0 | 25.9 | 925 | 2.4 | 29.4 | 918 |
| TOR | 2.0 | 32.7 | 940 | 3.0 | 28.1 | 894 |
And it's not as though Montreal's shot total is high because they've been leading and gone into a defensive shell - they've been behind just as often in regulation as the Leafs.
Bottom line: both Montreal and Toronto have sucked so far. But I'm sure if the Leafs had 23 points today because they'd gotten lucky in the shootout and in OT, the hand-wringing alert would be several levels lower.
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This makes me happy.
leaf fan stuck in ottawa, a localized black hole that will suck everything in that area to oblivion.
ahhhh
yes, this makes me feel great.
"The only way out is in a body bag. Go Leafs Go." - Blinky
by Karina on Nov 22, 2009 8:43 PM EST up reply actions
The Leafs sucking makes me mad because the Bruins are the beneficiary. Start a freaking winning streak already!
Hockey blogging can't get any flatter.
Assuming “sucked” refers to true talent level as opposed to results, I don’t think either team has sucked. I think the Leafs are probably an average team, and the Canadiens are probably an average to slightly-below-average team.
The Oilers – now THEY suck.
Every Habs fans knows the team has been playing terribly. I don’t think this is groundbreaking news. Heck, there’s been more booing at Habs games for the home team this year than there has been at Leafs games at the ACC.
Of course, a couple of random blowouts have made the stats worse.
But yeah, once Markov went down a lot of us fans knew there was little hope than to eke out wins with goaltending and some luck.
The team has absolutely no secondary scoring, a terrible PP, and was leading the league in minor penalties taken a couple of games ago (and I assume still do). They give up way more shots from in close than the average and have had Maxim Lapierre on their second line for most of the year.
If you haven’t noticed, I’m guessing you don’t read French newspapers or websites.
Hockey blogging can't get any flatter.
I’ll admit to not reading the french press; it’s nothing personal – I don’t think I ever even read an article about the Leafs before last month. Let me do a quick scan of La Presse:
Pierre Ladouceur seems to think getting outshot 100-75 over three games is a great achievement:
http://www.cyberpresse.ca/sports/hockey/200911/22/01-923992-la-meilleure-semaine-de-la-saison.php
Michel Blanchard says we need to give the Habs time – no matter how bad the stats look right now, give it time, they’ll come around, implying that he thinks this team is better than 8th in the East:
http://www.cyberpresse.ca/sports/hockey/200911/19/01-923098-que-les-batards-se-taisent.php
Francois Gagnon actually claims that the Canadiens should have more points because they lose to their opponents in regulation but drag their wins out to OT and the SO:
Surely they can’t be serious! Is this representative of how the Canadiens have been viewed in Montreal.
There have been PLENTY of articles calling for Gainey’s firing, and the post-game RDS program L’Antichambre has been pretty consistent in their criticism.
Yeah, that Gagnon article is pretty freaking insane. He really supported the changes this offseason, so I think he’s thinks he needs to save face.
Blanchard doesn’t imply he thinks this team is better than 8th by their play thus far, it’s an article saying the team will improve in time. It’s pure conjecture, likely based on liking the offseason moves and/or believing Latendresse and others will start scoring.
And obviously Ladouceur is looking at 5 of 6 points, 3 of which were against two heavily favoured teams in Washington and Detroit.
But yeah, a lot of criticism first went on Price (not the horrid team play in front) and then, oddly enough, Chris Boyle’s article on Eyes On the Prize made its rounds through the Montreal media and kind of shut up that whole debate for a while. And Price’s play became very strong, too.
There are divergent opinions on the Habs, which can be expected given the turnover on the team, the massive injury problems that are piling up, and the record vs. the preformance.
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Blanchard did end his piece with “Go Habs Go…” Try to find that in Toronto! Ok, so maybe if I followed things closely I’d see the flak Gainey’s taking, but he’s been the GM for six years. He owns this disaster. Burke’s been on the job one year and there’s a long way to go to erase Ferguson’s “work.” Look at the Kings – they had the patience for a real rebuild, and it took longer than nine months.
Well, while the Montreal hockey press is no paragon of sound analysis by any stretch of the imagination, that’s still a bit unfair to them. I think your scan was a little quick.
Ladouceur merely points out the Habs have gotten 5 points out of 6 in the week. From that standpoint, it IS the best week in the season for Montreal. He’s one of the better analysts covering the Habs and actually looks at scoring chances in the like in his game-by-game looks. He has high praise for Price — .940 goaltending can carry a team a long way, as Boston will attest.
What Gagnon is claiming is that the Habs winning in OT is giving Eastern rivals points which will make it harder for the Habs to qualify for the playoffs, which is true but IMO the least of the Habs’ worries. He calls the first quarter of the season “disappointing”.
Blanchard… ugh. He is, IMO, the worst writer “covering” the Habs, and I use the term “cover” loosely and with emphasis on the quotes. He is not saying that the team is better than 8th and will come around. He’d be more inclined to claim that people who say such a thing are Canadiens cheerleader hoping to con the poor, ignorant fan. He claims if they suck defensively it’s because their blueline lacks talent (and missing 3 D-men including the #1, it’s not surprising). Blanchard is ripping the team without much thought, and is all he does when he deigns to write, anyway; if you’re just discovering Montreal’s hockey press, I’d avoid him. This is a guy who openly rejoiced when Markov got hurt last year because he thought the Habs would miss the playoffs and that would get Gainey fired.
Draft pick
Great analysis and so true. I mean the Habs’ top line to begin last night’s game was Moen-Cammalleri-Metrpolit.
I think the difference is that the Habs have the first round pick this year and the Leafs don’t—thus the extra panic in Leafland.
Where every team is our home team
Not quite
The Habs’ top line to begin last night was Pacioretty – Plekanec – Kostitsyn. You described the second line.
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Hard to say who’s #1 and who’s #2. Plekanec’s line started the 1st and 3rd, but Moen-Cammalleri-Metropolit got the PP time last night – they went on when Abdelkader took the penalty late in the 1st and then went back on to start the 2nd.
In the 3rd, Martin changed the top line to Cammalleri – Plekanec – Kostitsyn. I choose to believe the top line to start the game was the one with more members of the top line at the end of the game on it. Also, Plekanec can’t be ignored or listed as the 2nd centre anymore. Cammalleri is the top winger, and Kostitsyn is the second winger.
Hockey blogging can't get any flatter.
As a Montrealer, I can confirm we’re well aware the team sucks, and have been since Markov got injured, as saskhab stated. The difference is that, through luck, we’re not out of playoff contention yet.
IllegalCurve, I’m not sure the casual fan is thinking that far ahead to the number of draft picks available, although you’re probably correct in that Leafs fans are aware they gave up a lot for Kessel.
Jacques Martin does not seem to be in danger of losing his job though. People in Toronto are freaking out too much…And people in Montreal are freaking out too little…
A lot of the freaking out is media-generated though, there was an article up on sportsnet.ca that basically went “I’m not saying that Ron Wilson should be canned… but if he wasn’t Burke’s coach for the Olympic team any GM in their right mind would have canned him.”
Remember that the press in either city are not paragons of journalism, they proscribe to stoic, “traditional” ways of thinking about the game and it’s fans, and they would much rather print something emotionally charged/cliched than something revealing or insightful. And I can see why, there’s nobody to really hold these people accountable and they run on tight deadlines.
Fact of the matter is, though, that despite the statistical information giving Leafs fans hope, it’s entirely possible that they can continue to lose games despite putting up decent numbers. The Habs can also continue to win games despite putting up numbers that are borderline worse. A single season isn’t big enough to ensure that these differences will even out, and there’s no consolation for moral victories at the end of a losing season.
Martin isn’t in danger, Gainey is the target of the Montreal media.
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It must be the French press
I haven’t seen one article in the Gazette about the horrid job Gainey has done, except for perhaps Jack Todd’s.
I guess the question is will the Leafs turn it around? The lost draft pick is certainly a genuine reason for a freak out given that, as you say, neither of these teams is any good.
Blogging on hockey at fromtherink.com
i still say kessel will be a better player than whoever boston gets this year, it will be next years pick that makes or breaks that deal
There is no "I" in team, but there is an "M" and an "E"
by Matt_Roberts on Nov 23, 2009 10:59 AM EST up reply actions
Well, they haven’t been dominant, and now they have 23 millions on the injury reserve, so…
Nobody’s complaining yet because Price is white hot and Cammalleri and Plekanec are making their shots (and it seems the fabled Andreï Kostitsyn awakening may be upon us) and they just coaxed 3 points against Detroit and Washington, but how many times do the Wings let Cammalleri score those two goals?
They’ve been lucky up to now. If it can allow them to squeak into the playoffs, nobody’ll complain, I think. Especially not the Molsons…
A bit simplistic for you Hawerchuk…
The Canadiens have won 4 games (4-0) in the extra 5 minutes of open play, while Toronto have lost are 0-4. Even if you want to average out the shootouts, it’d still be more like 7-2 for the Habs and 1-6 for the Leafs. Being that there’s no analysis of the OT here, just the assumption that all OT results must eventually be distributed evenly, I question the value of the observation.
Alas, the acolyte of statistics will always have trouble grasping how a team can exist away from the mean. But still, we expect more from the guru than:
Even allowing for Vesa Toskala’s crappy goaltending, we’d expect Montreal to be 5-4 and the Leafs at 3-4.
4 on 4 is a bit more measurable and hockey related. Same with 4 on 3 PP’s/PK’s.
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Given 3 goals-per-game league-wide scoring, five minutes just isn’t long enough for the better team to show its dominance. I’ll have a post on this tomorrow. If you take team records in regulation, they regress about 80% to the mean in OT. So a .300 team will, on average, play .460 in OT. (Of course, as Sunny pointed out, neither the Leafs nor the Habs are actually this bad.) I think there’s a case to be made that Toskala’s been so weak/injured this year that Toronto’s expectation is a little lower. Hence a reasonable guess is MTL 5-4 (or 4-5), TOR 3-4.
You can’t just use the same stats for 4 on 4 in regulation time and extrapolate them to OT? Surely, there is plenty of evidence that shows certain teams perform better than others in 4 on 4 situations in general.
Here is who Montreal has beat in 4 on 4 OT: Toronto, Buffalo, Atlanta, NY Islanders. Buffalo can be considered better, but I don’t think it’s really that unusual to see Montreal go 4-0 against those teams.
And I don’t see how 5 minutes isn’t long enough. It’s more than long enough for other special teams situations.
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Over the last two seasons, the R^2 between a team’s 5-on-5 shots (100% in regulation) and 4-on-4 shots (90% in OT) is 23%. So yes, there is a link, but it’s tenuous – hence 80% regression to the mean for regulation W-L to OT W-L.
Hawerchuk is correct: no team in the NHL today outscores its opposition by more than 1.5 / 1 at even strength, thus there’s no reason to believe that any team’s record in overtime should be better than 60 / 40 long-term. There’s even less reason to believe that that team is Montreal.
5 minutes is not long enough for the better team to showcase its dominance in a relatively balanced league, since scoring 4v4 is roughly 3 goals / 60 min. I don’t understand what the other special teams situations have to do with it.
Essentially saying that observed PP/SH performance in 600 minutes per season = true talent. So 4-4 play in 200 minutes must be related to a team’s true talent.
But there’s too much randomness. A team’s record in OT is no more representative of its abilities than its performance in the first five minutes of its odd-numbered games.
Except, of course, that the benches are shortened (obviously) in 4 on 4 situations, and generally the bottom 4 forwards on each team don’t even get a shift in OT. It’s a significantly different situation than 5 on 5, and pits a disproportinate amount of ice time for the most talented forwards on each team. This is why I liken it more to a special teams category than an even strength one. 4 on 4 numbers should show different SF/SA ratios, as it features different players and player combinations than 5 on 5, not to mention opens up more shooting and skating lanes.
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Correct me if I’m wrong Saskhab, but the general assumption between Habs fans is that the team is over-acheiving at 4-on-4 because it’s a situation that is particuliarly suited to the team’s forwards, thus enabling them to short-circuit the team’s great weakness, that is outlet passes from the D.
As Tom Awad stated, there just isn’t enough time spent at 4-on-4 so to get a sustained level of performances such as the habs have produced. But still, they are (according to behind the net) first in TOI and shots for and middle of the pack at shots against at 4 on 4, and according to the scoring chances I record (an iffy metrics, I’ll admit), they outchanced the opposition 23-15.
How is that sustainable, I don’t know. I’m eagerly awaiting that post on 4-on-4 play, Gabriel!
I guess the unsustainable part of that would be scoring on 4 of 23 scoring chances while stopping 15 straight. But it does show that the Habs are a better 4 on 4 team than they are a 5 on 5 team.
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It shows that the Habs have, to this point, played better at 4-on-4 relative to their opponents. But it doesn’t mean the Habs are better than the opponents they faced at 4-on-4. Observed performance and true talent are not the same thing, and for small samples, they can be very far apart.
In substantially larger samples, the Capitals have played better than the Habs at 5-on-5, 5-on-4 and 4-on-5. But the Habs have played 63 minutes at 4-on-4 this year and have the highest SOG rate in the league. Washington has played 38 minutes and has the lowest SOG rate in the league. The better predictor of future performance is the 5-on-5 play, not the small OT sample size.
I’m sorry, I’m confused here. By ‘the better predictor of future performance’, do you mean in the whole of a game, or for the 4 on 4 OT? My argument is that the 5 on 5 play is not related to the 4 on 4 play.
Obviously, the better strategy for long term success is to improve one’s 5 on 5, 5 on 4, and 4 on 5 play rather than hope one is “good enough” in those areas to get the game to 4 on 4 OT. But I don’t see a regression to the mean as the obvious solution here for the Habs’ future OT record… if anything, if there 4 on 4 dominance continues, they should expect to win more OT games than lose.
If you have a problem with the small sample size, that is fine, but I don’t think we can use 5 on 5 play as the predictor for 4 on 4 play. There are too many variables with the shortened bench and the overall change in strategy. It’s obviously not a foregone conclusion that the Habs are the best 4 on 4 team in hockey, they’ve just been very good so far and like any early season stat, we’ll have to track how this progresses over the full season.
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I can guarantee you that 5-on-5 performance to date is a better predictor of future 4-on-4 performance than 4-on-4 performance to date.
I can live with that assertion. I don’t like it because it flies in the face of the fact that I saw the habs good at 4 on 4 time and time again, using the only thing they had running for them at them time (their frst line, 2/3rd of which is now sitting injured) but that’s observer bias for you. However good he is, Markov is only one player and Gill’s absence isn’t torpedoing the habs ability to rely on cris breakout passes.
But now that Latendresse is gone for a bag of beans, they can at least unleash unhindered the fury of Chipchura, Stewart and Laraque (or Sergeï Kostitsyn while George is suspended) on their unsuspecting opponents.
Christ I need a beer.
Markov missing has a profound impact on the transition game.
Last year the Habs were decent in that phase of the game, no more. Gainey correctly assessed this as an area of improvement and acquired a puck-moving defenseman in the off-season in the person of Jaroslav Spacek. He was expecting an improved transition game from his team this year.
But with Markov out, what he’s done now amounts to replacing Markov with Spacek with everyone else remaining mostly equal from last year in terms of transition skill. Spacek is good, but Markov is one of the best in the game, resulting in a team that is worse than last year for transition.
No wonder they have trouble. Credit Spacek for allowing them to even stay afloat, if badly listing.
Here’s another way to look at it:
5-on-5 goal differential per 60 has a standard deviation of 0.37 over 82 games. So a team that’s in the top 5 in the league is around 0.37 goals better per 60.
Assume that’s close enough to true talent and it transfers over to OT. Then they’re going to be 1/12 of that – 0.031 goals better per 5. That’s a very small effect even over a large number of OT games.
I find it hilarious that the Habs would be called “lucky” given the way they’re falling like flies. It’s been the story of the year for everyone but I’m not sure there are many teams that have been battered so much as Montreal from game one onwards. It’s difficult to imagine that the team could be competitive with roughly twenty million worth of salary cap on IR. What the Habs illustrate is the way injuries can really cripple a team. There is no way to make a real evaluation of the talent level of a team that was hamstrung on game one and is operating at less than 2/3rds of its budget a quarter of the way in.
It’s true that they have not been playing well especially lately as the injuries are starting to mount. Grabbing three out of four points this weekend was a goaltending miracle, though Olivier’s scoring chances numbers are a lot more forgiving to the Habs than the shot count (I’d love to see a different perspective on those).
The weird thing about them, though — and this might easily be observer bias, mind — is that they seemed to be having an equal or worse record when they were healthier, playing better and outshooting their opponents. They had quite a few games where they were hammered on percentages and had a stretch were probably “unlucky”, and pulled out games in overtime that they really ought to have won in regulation. Bizarrely, though, as Montreal keeps losing more and more players, the percentages have tilted back in their favor so their record hasn’t really suffered. Frankly, since I doubt they will be making the playoffs the way they keep losing players again and again, all that “luck” is really hurting their draft position more than anything else.
A really, really strange year for the Habs.
I think I should qualify that yes, I understand and agree about what you mean by “lucky” and that you weren’t referring to health. I just thought it was amusing that a team so battered by freak injuries would be called “lucky”. I certainly don’t feel like they have been lucky, in the general sense. ;)
The Canadiens are lucky to be 11-11-1, especially given that injuries have made them a below-.500 team. That’s all I’m saying.
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