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Deep Dive #1 - A whale of a time
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LGRW613Registered Senior Member
I think the easiest way to start this off is by stating the absolute obvious:
The Vancouver Whalers are NOT a good hockey team. They are currently: - LAST in Goals For - LAST in Goals Against - LAST in Shots For per game - LAST in Shots Against per game - LAST in Giveaways Just like dieting, the Whalers are failing the one golden rule: More calories out, less calories in. Calories, in the case, are obviously goals. You simply cannot win a hockey game when you're averaging 2 goals per game while allowing almost 6. What makes this worse for Vancouver, however, is that the go to person to blame in these situations is the person between the pipes, and there's just no way you can place the blame on the shoulders of their goalie. Vancouver is allowing 50.5 shots against per game (at the time of writing), and I have never met a single goalie who could take the brunt of that and walk away successful. Add in the fact that their goalie is a rookie, and you've got a recipe for disaster: A 1st time SMJHL goalie who isn't sheltered at all. But, it's not all bad in Vancouver. While their powerplay leaves something to be desired, their penalty kill sits in the absolute middle of the league at 75%. They may lead the league in giveaways, but they're also 7th in takeaways. They're 4th in Hits per game as well, which shows that they throw the body frequently and make sure that the opposing teams don't walk away from these games without being a little banged up. Breaking this down by player, while no players' counting stats are fantastic, I believe their advanced stats are where you'll see what I see: The Whalers players are simply "unlucky". What I mean by that is that, out of 17 players on the Whalers roster, only 5 of them have a PDO at the 100 average or above. That means 70% of their roster is, essentially, playing below league average. Now, there are a TON of factors that go into this, and PDO on it's own should never be expected to tell a full story of a team (and take me with a grain of salt, as I am also relatively new to the advanced stats world and I'm still trying to figure it all out myself). But there's a reason we call this stat "the measure of luck", because over a full season, you will typically expect to regress to mean of 100. For a team and players playing with PDOs above 100, you would expect over 66 games that their counting stats will start to fall, as it is incredibly difficult for a team and individual players to sustain a high PDO. Let's use the Maine Timber from last season as an example, just for contrast. Last season, Maine had all but 1 of their players sitting finishing with a PDO of 100 or higher, with that 1 lone player finishing at 99.2. What did we see from Maine last season? A 51-11-4 record and a championship win! Compare that to this season, where they currently only have 2 players with a PDO at 100 or above, and the rest are 97 and under. What's the end result? A 4-4-1 record and 10th in the standings after the first 10 games. Maine also retained 11 of their 16 players from last season, so while roster turnover could answer some of these questions, it doesn't answer them all. What I type all this out to say is this: At some point, over these 66 games, the Whalers "luck" will turn around, and we'll see their players start to regress to the mean. When that begins to happen, we'll start to see Vancouver win more games and climb up those standings. For their sake, and my own (seeing as I play for them! My personal PDO is also at 97.8), I hope the regression happens soon. (687 words) ![[Image: QdpOz9m.png]](https://i.imgur.com/QdpOz9m.png)
MarshiRegistered Senior Member
LGRW613Registered Senior Member
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