Quinn Hughes and Tyler Myers dead last in the league in Even Strength Defence Wins Above Replacement
Posted Mar 14, 2021, 9:01 PM UTC
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There’s a ton of good defencemen on that list so I’m gonna go out on a limb and say that this isn’t a great indicator of a defenseman’s play
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Hockey is completely different, for exactly the reasons you stated. It's a fluid, intense, high tempo game. The statistics we track, which are then used to come up with metrics like WAR, are just scratching the surface on what it takes to be a good hockey player.
Baseball, on the other hand, is completely a numbers game. Discrete events (pitches and at bats) with numerous ways to quantify the results. Throw in modern ball tracking technology and there's literally nothing you can't do statistical analysis on. It's a game just made for astute statisticians to dig their hands in on, and I'm surprised it took until the 2000s for that approach to become mainstream.
Hockey, on the other hand, can lend itself well to analytical models and metrics for certain aspects of the game, but it must always be coupled with the "eye test" as a sanity check.
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Except, as this thread is a fantastic example of, the coupling works both ways. You don't get to just say "that doesn't look right so it's obviously wrong" just because you dislike what it says.
People who dismiss stats purely because of emotion are just as bad as the people who rely solely on stats to judge a player.
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Not really.
The fact that Myers and Hughes, two very good players, are the league worst in "specific stat purporting to measure a player's overall contribution" should tell you that "specific stat purporting to measure a player's overall contribution" is fucking horseshit. Advanced stats available to the public have a long, long way to go before they should be considered anything more than interesting. They rarely tell us anything about a player other than that there is so much more to hockey than one specific stat can ever tell us.
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There are but look at how far away from the pack Hughes and Myers are. It’s obviously not the be all end all but it’s jarring what outliers they are.
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:(
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Hughes is fantastic offensively, but he has a pretty long way to go on the actual defensive side. We shouldn't have to sugarcoat that.
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A good offense is a good defense, so far Hughes literally carries the offensive pushes every.single.time.
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dumbest shit I've ever heard. Scores a goal, but lets in 2 goals. cool.
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so far Hughes literally carries the offensive pushes every.single.time
Its not literally every single time. He fucks up on zone entries and turns over the puck in the offensive zone numerous times every game. He's great offensively but to say he carries the offensive pushes every single time is completely delusional.
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That's fucking bullshit. A good defence gives the team confidence. Goalie + defence is the backbone of any team.
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Ahhh, not surprised it's the JFresh model. It always spits out wonky results that don't jive with reality. His model called Horvat a 3c last year for one.
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Oh man, I remember that hot take from him. Made no sense at the time since it was so clearly wrong. If he could be so horrifically wrong about that how accurate is his other stuff?
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Oh man, every time I hear something is form JFresh I head the opposite direction. Dude has created models that output the most hilariously garbage rankings.
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Norris
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Okay now how do they look last 16 games?
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Do you think we can still trade Huggy for DJ MDZ?
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and Tanev and stecher are both in the top grouping... ooof
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Tanev and Tony 😩
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Um ... DJ MDZ and underwear/beard-God Gudbranson are ranked defensively higher?
Yikes.
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We had both of them, and Benning gave them up! He can't keep getting away with it!
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There you have it Toni Stretcher top 10 D league-wide.
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He plays very well. Cheap and realiable defender who can play up and down the defensive pairs.Every team needs 1-2 guys like Tony. Good thing we have Harmonic and Benn instead(sarcasm alert).
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Except, Benn and Hamonic have been playing well in their roles.
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If you think thye played well you have low expectations form them. Maybe is better this way.
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Wow, what a stupid fucking take. You irrational hatred for our players is beyond fucking pathetic, same with you putting Stetcher on a pedestal.
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Not knowing what this stat is but by Judging the names on the list I’d say they are really good?
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Interesting how this stat was used by a lot of people here last year when they wanted to prove Hughes > Makar but now that it poopoos Hughes this is a garbage stat.
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Fortunately Hughes has a lot of room for improvement. He just needs to spend an offseason with Hoglander to learn how to bulk up as a smaller person in the league.
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It's not that easy. It depends on his build. Some short guys are fucking tanks. Hughes is thin and agile. You don;t want him to lose that agility. Putting on too much muscle can be detrimental. I don't think he is even 5ft10. He looks the smallest guy on the ice most of the time. Troy is also short but he is more stout.
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Can someone explain this stat? What is the replacement?
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Replacement level is basically the average AHL call up, personally I think it kind of overrates it but whatever, that isn’t the point, it is just a way of counting. It basically measures your on ice impact by isolating the player from teammates and measuring how shot quality/quantity for and against changes while said player is on the ice. If a player is always hemmed in their own zone whenever they’re on the ice, their stats aren’t going to be very good. It can have flaws and outliers (one example is chiassons PP numbers being godlike last season, likely because the only other player in that PP position was James Neal, who was god awful) but it is usually pretty reliable. You also should take into account quality of competition. Obviously some of these random nobodies aren’t better defensively than like Hedman, but they also have much easier deployment and competition. They’re great stats but you just need to remember to use common sense at the same time.
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Thanks man
Do you know what the EVD stands for?
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Even strength (EV) defence (D).
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Hockey WAR stats are made up garbage so badly constructed that they can cause data scientists to wake up in the middle of the night with cold sweats. Also JFresh is an awful advanced stats blogger that’s been trying for years to turn it into a proper job with a team. Thing is he’s so bad that he just continues to spam his stats on Twitter.
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you know i started doing this approximately 13 months ago right
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I assumed it would have taken longer to become synonymous with terrible advanced stats analysis. Well done?
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thank you it's been a true pleasure. i do like your little narrative about my life but it seems like we're a few years away from that being the case
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Lol if somehow u could distribute Myers weight and strength into Quinn they would be top 10 on that list
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That’s some good company to be in.
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The hate on Hughes from our own fanbase is outstanding. Is he sucking defensively this year? Hell yes. But some people here just seem to love to make it a bigger thing than it is. It’s like this isn’t his sophomore year being relied heavily on both ends of the defensive game.
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Lmfao, the names in this list show how stupid, pointless and poorly created this stat is...
I don't care what fucking fancy stat is being used to justify these ratings, but having Nurse/Jones/Rielly/Morrissey/Keith as 5 of the worst defensemen, and Hedman nowhere near the top means your stats are shit, not that your stats are insightful
Myers is still tops in the all-important neck length per player stat, so I could care less about the other conjured stats fwiw.
Couldn't care less.
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are you seriously trying to tell me Mackenzie Weegar isn't the best defensive defenesman in the league? smh my head. honestly though this stat looks like total horseshit just looking at the names on both lists.
i thought it was accepted that keith is bad at this point
No?
He's nowhere near what he was at his peak, but still a great defenseman
Bruh even hawks fans I talk to say he’s shit, watching him, he’s shit. His stats are shit. He is just shit at this point and has been declining since 2015
5 of the worst defensive defensemen* and where did the name nurse come in? They are facing harder minutes hence why they’re lower but they still have been struggling in those minutes and if you ask fans of those teams, they can probably tell you the same thing. You’re basing your opinion off of name value and saying stats that track every single shot and it’s quality + quality of teammates and how your on ice presence effects them is stupid and pointless?
Ah yes okay, Travis "I get walked twice a game" Dermott is a better at defense than the reining norris winner and Justin "Actually good at defense" Holl. The model said it so it must be true
Lot of Justin Holls value comes from offense. Still the much better player. Just coz you’re better defensively doesn’t mean you’re better and as i said it doesn’t account for competition
Bro in what world, he's literally a shutdown defenseman
It;s stupid because it does not fit with what you think of Myers. Maybe you are wrong. Did you follow those players this year or do you look at the names and just don't belive they can play bad? Erik Karlsson, Doughty and Burns used to be great a few years back. Now they kind of suck.
At what point did I even mention Myers lol
Myers is on the list. And you said the list is garbage.
You could have said that Myers deserves to be there. But you did not. :)
You're putting words in my mouth but okay. Apparently that means i think DJ MDZ and Guddy are elite defensively too...
Yes, a stat intended to measure defensive impact is totally invalided because 5 random players you happen to think are good aren't at the top, when most of them aren't generally held in high regard for their defensive play.
It might be a useless stat, but your argument is worse.
I mean, A) they aren't random players. And B) when trying to assess the accuracy of something, comparing to real world examples is pretty helpful.
If built a model that purported to show the best hockey players in the world and my model showed Chaput, Vey and Sbisa as the best players in the game, which would you say is more likely faulty, my model or the entire hockey community's understanding of the game?
Nah brah you're using advanced stats so the model is always right
No, what the person I responded to basically said is "this model doesn't align with my own pre-conceived notions based on pure conjecture, so it must be wrong". Their "real world examples" would also be proof this model is somewhat accurate because most of the players they singled out aren't good defenders
Chaput, Vey, and Sbisa would grade poorly in just about everyone's model, so if there's one that says they've very valuable, then it's valid to say here's why this model is most likely wrong.
I'm just saying it's not a solid counter-argument to say "I think Nurse is a good defender, so him not being at the top of the list makes this model bad"
I wouldn't say these are pure conjectures. A quick check at matchups and you'll notice the mentioned players also align with coaches' expectations. Nurse, in particular, is assigned a matchup role in Edmonton where he is consistently is played against top lines.
Which leads us to 1 of 2 conclusions, Edmonton's coaching staff is insane/doesn't get hockey/is trying to tank OR, that the models are not accurately showing what they claim to show.
Given the impracticalities of accurately using statistics for a game with very few measurable events and explicitly non random distribution of players/matchups, I lean to the latter.
Very well said.
Build a team based off this list and let me know how it goes.
If you look at the other models for defensive and offensive forwards you'll see the entire model is flawed.