The Hockey PDOcast - Episode 156: Podcasts Above Replacement

Episode Date: March 31, 2017

Dom Luszczyszyn joins the show to discuss a variety of topics, which include: 2:00 The trickiest teams to project this season 4:50 Being in on the Blue Jackets early on 6:30 The Senators defying the odds 9:30 The search for certainty and strong takes 13:30 Catch-all statistics like WAR 20:00 Challenging pre-existing opinions and beliefs 21:54 The Viktor Arvidsson Fan Club 24:30 The difficulties in evaluating depth defensemen 27:00 The shrinking margin for error for most teams 30:42 The next things we'll all be focusing on 33:09 How to fix the Los Angeles Kings 36:36 Game Score revelations Sponsoring today’s show is SeatGeek, which is making it easier than ever before to buy and sell sports and concert tickets. They’re giving our listeners a $20 rebate off of their first purchase. All you have to do is download the free SeatGeek app and enter the promo code PDO to get started. Every episode of the podcast is available on iTunes, Soundcloud, Google Play, and Stitcher. Make sure to subscribe to the show so that you don’t miss out on any new episodes as they’re released. All ratings and reviews are also greatly appreciated. Thanks for listening! See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices If you'd like to gain access to the two extra shows we're doing each week this season, you can subscribe to our Patreon page here: www.patreon.com/thehockeypdocast/membership If you'd like to participate in the conversation and join the community we're building over on Discord, you can do so by signing up for the Hockey PDOcast's server here: https://discord.gg/a2QGRpJc84 The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the hosts and guests and do not necessarily reflect the position of Rogers Media Inc. or any affiliate.

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Hi, I'm Dom. Dom, Dom, what? Dom, how would you... You can give it a shot here. Let's just see how it goes. So, I had Myrtle on the podcast recently, and he was saying, it was like, loose chin, loose, loose... What? It's loose chishin.

Loose chishin. Okay, I'm with Dom, loose chichin. Yeah, there we go. It's easy to say when you look at it, it's very overwhelming, even for me as a young child. Yeah, I feel like it would especially be tough for, like, a dyslexic person that's, like, mixing up the letter. and all of them. Especially since those letters shouldn't be together to begin with. So we're here in my, in the place I'm staying at here in Toronto,

and we won't disclose the location, although by the time we post this, I probably won't even be here anymore, so it's not that big of a deal. Yeah, this number is nice, though. Yes. So I, yeah, that's a good point. The listeners can figure out which one of the two nice numbers it is.

So we're going to talk about, let's talk about some of the stuff that you have made a name for yourself with, especially stuff like game score and things like that, because I've been meaning to have you on the show for a while now. I think this is episode 156 or something. Yeah, finally. And listen, that's totally on me. It's honestly a, it's indefensible that I haven't had you on yet, but I was kind of hoping to get you on while I was here in Toronto to figure it out. So we're finally doing it. Um, so I know, I You know, you write for the hockey news, the athletic, Leifes Nation, you do a bunch of DFS stuff. I mean, you're turning out content everywhere, but you also do the daily projections for that day's slate of games.

Yeah. What teams would you say have been the trickiest for you, both in terms of maybe just constantly disappointing as the favorites and constantly, you know, surprise? rising and being the underdog and just coming through of just time and time again? I guess the easiest two teams would be the two teams I get ribbed for the most. Most disappointing has to be the Winnipeg Jets because they should be a lot better

than they are given their top six. They have Buffalo and they have Truva on the back end. That should be a good team, but their bottom six is a flaming ball of garbage. Their other D-Men aren't that great. Their goal-tending is, I've hung out to dry a lot, and they lose a lot of games. And given that Forbes generally drive the bus the most and who they have, they have

Wheeler, Shifley, Eilers, Line A, Little, Perot, like, I don't think there's many top sixes in the H.L. Like, what top six would you have over that? Like, Pittsburgh, maybe Washington. Yeah, yeah, it's a pretty short list. And I think that that's like the, I mean, what we're running on now, like, like six years since they went back to Winnipeg and they have one playoff entry and zero playoff wins during that time and it's like I'm kind of torn because I'm always a fan of like you know

letting stuff play out and pro sports can be so reactionary like after just one or two bad seasons all of a sudden teams are making these dramatic changes so I'm all for like letting things play out and giving Kevin Shevolde off and Paul Murray's a chance to figure this stuff out but there's such an imbalance between how much talent is on his team and what they have to show for it. I think early on in the year, I remember, like they were one of the lowest pace teams

that were playing really slow at 5-15, which is bizarre, considering all those guys you mentioned are young, exciting, dynamic guys who should be able to push the pace and get into track meets. And I think it's improved a little bit, but I mean, there's still just, there's just something missing.

And I get asked what it is often, and I'm like, I... Yeah, like, maybe it's the way they do top six, bottom six, like maybe if they had their six guys in the pairs and carried some of their weaker links, that might better some more time for Marco Dano, which we both, I remember loving last year and then he went straight to the miners after writing articles about how underrated he is. And that should be the easiest spot to improve like this offseason, just fix the bottom six guys.

And I guess we'll see if they can do that. But the pieces are there that they should be better going forward. Yeah. It is easy if you, A, understood that that's what you needed to do. and B had the capabilities of knowing what to look for, and we haven't necessarily seen that they have the answer to either of those two questions. Yeah, for sure. So what team has constantly won as, or maybe earlier on in the year,

especially maybe your model was down on a team for whatever reason, and then as the year has gone along, maybe it's adjusted and now you favor them more often. But I imagine like Columbus was probably messing up quite a bit early on. No, Columbus early on, I think I was the only person to say this team is not terrible. I think my hot take to start the year was this team would not be terrible. And it's so cold now because they're amazing. But I remember I had them favored against Montreal once.

They were at home, so that just made sense to me, especially since they weren't that bad in Montreal, I didn't think was that good. They were also starting Al Montoya, which is a big deal. and I got a lot of people my manager saying how was Columbus favor what's going on and I bet a lot on Columbus that night and I went to go get burgers

I didn't even pay attention my phone is blowing up and apparently Montreal's losing by like 10 and I'm like I think that's one of the I think that's one of the times where

I guess my profile just went up a bit because to start the year I had like I think like 2,000 followers and I have like 8,000's crazy You've been one of the big breakout stars I mean you're the most

popular dom on hockey twitter now. It is weird because the other dom is amazing for such a young kid and he sort of went quiet because he has school. He has important things to do. He's learning about stats. He's becoming a better person. I just say he's going to win every night. And apparently people just love these blue and orange charts.

Yes. Yeah, so I was high in Columbus, but the team that's screwed with me the most is definitely Ottawa. And I get yelled at. Yeah. when I release every Wednesday I release power rankings for

how my model views the league and this is what the probabilities are based on probably is that people like and then they see the power rankings like I don't agree with this which is funny because you like one, you don't like the other this is how the sausage is made and they see Ottawa

they're like I don't understand their playout probability is so high but they're so low and do you understand why they're winning because I don't really see it either Has, so has in your model, has it come around to them at all? Or has it just been like steadily at pacing along at the same level for throughout the year? Because I understand, you know, wild guys like Alex Burroughs and Victor Stalberg are necessarily these guys that in a vacuum are great players that should move the needle.

Like just based on who they were replacing. Like that team, at least on paper, makes more sense now as an actual NHL competitive roster. Definitely. Those two are guys who, if you put them on any other team, it'd be like, whatever. Yeah. Who cares? But when they replace a guy like Curtis Lazare, Chris Neal, suddenly Ottawa looks like a competent hockey team.

They've moved up a lot after the trade. Well, they were still steady down because Mark Stone was out, and I thought he'd be out for the year, but he came back. So they moved up, I think, pretty close to 500, which is the highest I've had them all year. And they're, they look like a slightly below average team where before I thought they were a bottom feeder. And it's funny because at the start of the year, the biggest bet I had for the over-under totals was on Ottawa.

Because I think their over-under was like 34.5. And I thought they would be a 40-win team, 39-win team. And that was the biggest discrepancy between my model and the bookmaker's totals. And it's just weird that the entire perception just switched where they suddenly became even better. than I thought they were and my model actually downgraded them and said that they should actually be maybe a little worse because of how much they're playing Lazar and Neil and Tom Pye was also not that great either. Chris Kelly. Yeah, Chris Kelly. I think Chris Kelly is the worst player by my model now

on the team. Just a huge drag on the fourth line. I don't know. I think he's been on the ice and like obviously some of this is just the fact that you know he did none no pucks are randomly bouncing in when he's on the ice so like it's a bit unlucky but I think he's been on the ice for like five senators goals and like 750 file and five minutes this year or something like it just like I don't understand how just yeah random luck a few that he's bounce in it's he's he's the definition of an offensive black hole yeah for sure um so yeah I guess the senator the senators are good and they've been really tricky because I know they're like especially they have a very vocal fan base online on play so it's like but I also think that they're pretty for the most part like realistic

and like to make fun of their own team a lot too so I don't know it I imagine for someone like yourself where, you know, you're going through this on a daily basis where you run, you run these probabilities and you tweet out the charts and then people just assume that that means, like that's like your subjective opinion of who you think is going to win as opposed to actually, you know, using logic and reasoning and various other things. But like, do you think that people in general struggle with what the numbers you're tweeting out actually mean? Because I found myself in dealing with more casual fans that,

there's this trouble realizing like what probabilities actually reflect where it's like it I understand people come looking you know we're quote unquote hockey experts so they come to us expecting some sort of certainty or direction or guidance on what's going to happen and it's you know it's not a very satisfying answer for us to be like it's kind of like a slightly weighted coin flip but it really could go either way underneath it yeah it's it's a lot dealing with people almost daily who see a team lose when they had a 60% chance and say you were wrong and I'm like I was not wrong I didn't say anything I said they had a chance they did not take advantage of that chance and they lost that was part of the that was the other part of the chart that you decided to ignore when

you thought 60 men 100 and I've had a lot of that throughout the year I also have if all the underdogs win in night which is rare but it happens I'll get people quote tweeting saying 0 for 3 or over 4 as if these three games are just mean so much when there's been like a thousand and like 1100 games by now played and most of the time when a team is at a 6% chance to win they win 6% of time so generally that's a good thing that I'm doing an okay job there's some I think recently a lot of teams between 65 and 70 have been losing for some reason so that's the only one where like it's a little like it's still in the range but it's lower than the 60 to 65 range

is that is that a full season trend or just more recently that's just uh more recently because there's fewer games that are that lopsided right it gets affected more by i guess recent outcomes well i mean i was looking because you post like the you sort of bin it based on um what the what the range of odds was and then how these games have done and i noticed there's like there's been one game of this season that was over 75% that was on the weekend that was like Washington versus Arizona and they were they were toying with my very certain projection and they were tied going to third and then they're like oh yeah we're Washington we're going to win yes um but then there's only like what i'm looking right here so there's only nine games this season that have been

over 70% even so it's like the most of them are between that 50 to 60 range and there's a lot that are even yeah 55 and um that seems like you know it's like the definition of really could go either way when it's like 51, 49 or 48 or every. And it just, it kind of reflects everything we say about hockey, how it's just so unpredictable, which is frustrating. But obviously, I mean, you know, if you're just playing, playing those odds over time and you'll, you'll have some sort of advantage, even if it's not necessarily as big of one as hope, like in basketball or something like that.

Yeah, like in basketball, you have a team with 80% 90% chance in hockey. If you're a really good team, you'll, like, the best team in the league will have a 60% chance on average. which doesn't seem that great, but it's a pretty big edge to have every night. And things like home ice and who you're playing will affect that. But on average, like a team like Pittsburgh will be around 60 most nights.

Yeah. So something that I get asked a lot by people in various forms, whether it's on Twitter or an email, is sort of asking about our pursuit as analysts of finding some sort of like a catch-all statistic that, you know, something like in war. in baseball, for example, where you can just like point to one thing and just be like, you know, this player contributed this much, this player contributed as much and just weigh them that way. You know, we have stuff like, like, don't tell me about how it's done.

The goals above replacement. You have your game score. I don't know. I don't even know where to start with this discussion because there was a big thing going on on hockey Twitter today. And I don't even know whether we should really just get into it or not. But it's like, I think you'd agree that, you know, it's still highly imperfect. No one has been arguing that it's this thing where you can like, you know, just point to two numbers and just be like, well, this player is definitely way more valuable than this other player. It's like a lot of the time.

Yeah. There's other contextual factors and other things to weigh. But at least it seems like it's a good start for where we're headed. I think that is where we're headed. You have the same thing in baseball and basketball where that's the start. starting point discussion and you can break it into why the number is the way it is. We're getting there right now with hockey, but you'll still have disagreements about where players rank and whatnot. I mean, I wrote something today about how good Nick Felino and Brent

saw it have been because they ranked really highly on Dawson's War. That's DTM's real name for those who don't know. So they ranked really highly and the guys at the Athletic, they have a new site in Cleveland and they want some Columbus Cotton, so they asked me to pitch some stuff in. So I wrote something today on Fleino and Saad. They ranked, I think, 16th

and 19th among forwards, something like that. And to me, that's really high for those guys because they're I think 55 point players, but given how much they drive play and how much we know that matters, it makes some sense why they be raided that high. I wouldn't personally put them there. Right. But I think,

think most people would think they're like like I'm just trying to think of like the average fan they'd think that there may be low tier first line forwards maybe even like high second line but with war saying maybe they're elite forwards maybe the actual answer is somewhere in the middle and there's something that we miss all watching yeah from these players so even if you don't think they're as good as war says in with their war being that high maybe they're better than we think they're I think that's part of the discussion that it brings to the table when you put all together. And the thing is, we're always putting these things together in our head. We have these, like, I know DTM likes to call them smushing systems because of some, I think,

a tweet or a blog post by Tom Tango one time. But we do, we have models in our heads of how good we think all these players are based on the stats we look at. So someone who looks at points a lot will think these players are good, these are the points. Someone who looks at Korsi will say these players are a little bit better than their points. looks at both, we'll say, well, this guy's good, but he has this, this, you know, I'm saying, so we do these mental things in our head to weight players, and all war is is putting an actualized weighting system on those things. And it's the same thing with a game score, which I did, which was just put a weight as

much as they are worth in goals. So a goal would be equal one. There's a first assist on 95% of goals, so they're worth 0.95. Second assist was like, I think, 60%. So that's how I basically did it. It was very simple and not even that mathematic, but it ended up working out pretty good based on who it turned out at the top. And basically, these systems, they're not meant to be perfect. They're meant to already, I guess, put together everything we already think is important into one number.

Right. well i'm glad you brought up the brand inside example because i remember like you know i've been a big fan of his game for a while but especially earlier on this year um like he wasn't on that columbus top power play unit that was just destroying right so if you just sorted based purely on uh all situations point totals yeah he wasn't necessarily that high like he was whatever 30th or 40th or whatever but then like if you sort it but just five and five five points he was like a top five guy and it was just it was funny seeing like how dominant he was being at five-on-five with both goal and shot differentials and then that he also wasn't like benefiting from that from that power play so like it's it's tough you have all these different

things you got to weigh but I think that the interesting next logical thing you got to consider here is whenever we come up with a new metric or a new thing we're looking at how do you weigh the the discrepancy between let's say that you know it's pretty easy if you if you have a metric and it tells you sydney crosbie and patrice berger on our one too it's like well that makes sense i you know i that passes a sniff test i agree those guys are very good but we also already kind of know that those guys are very good at hockey whereas sometimes you might whatever you're looking at there might just be like

one name that you didn't expect or one team where it's like hmm like i i went into this with this perception of how this team or player was performing and whether it's more positive or more negative, this metric is sort of making me challenge my beliefs or making me wonder what's going on here. Do you think, like, you see what I'm saying? Sometimes it's kind of tough, like, to know, when you're trying to figure out the validity of a new stat,

whether something surprising is something we should be considering more, or whether it means that the stat itself is kind of fraud with errors. It's definitely an interesting question because you'll get things like Mark Sheafley above, Matthew Perrault, which some people on Twitter took offense to. But when you see those results, it should make you think about A, whether it's true, or B, is there something wrong with a stat? Or C, is there something I'm missing? D, is there something the stats missing? And I think the answer is probably somewhere in the middle. There's something these players are doing that makes them

good at this stat, but there's something, I guess, that we already know about these players that say maybe it shouldn't be that big a discrepancy. I had another point. Yeah, well, no, I think, I think that's a good point about evaluating what we're missing, especially, like, if you're trying to kind of grow as an analyst and figure out what's going on with the NHL product more, just looking at, I'm always fascinated by stuff that does challenge your beliefs rather than just confirming everything you believe because then, like, That's when people ask me, like, what's the role of analytics in hockey?

What do you get from these numbers? It's like, I would love to watch every single game and every single player for every single second they play in a season. But I understand like the human limitations and even limitations of our like our brains and our eyes. Like even if you're watching a game very closely, there's all this positional stuff or a small little of the factors that you're not even capturing while you're watching it. So I think that, you know, if you see a player or a team that's,

way higher or way lower than you would have expected. Like the way I approach that is that means that the next time I'm going to go out of my way to try and dig a bit deeper or watch more closely to try and figure out what's happening as opposed to just being like, well, that doesn't make sense. This is stupid and then just completely ignoring the stat for the rest of the time.

That brings up what I had in my mind and then forgot and then we remembered. But if the stat comes out and almost everything makes sense, like you have the top five and it's all the guys you'd expect and then you keep going down list and there's one guy who sort of makes you think about what he's doing with these players

if the rest of it is good there's probably a good chance that he belongs there and if not why wouldn't he and then you'd want to I guess pay attention more when you see him to think why he would yeah I mean something I'm interested in is

stuff like individual shot rates for example especially for players that might not necessarily be household names that are playing a lot and I remember last season like whenever he'd sort by the guys that were generating the most shots uh-huh edgekin of course and max patcher ready and like all the all the regular stars that score the most goals and then there was like victor harvinson who was like fourth in the league or something and I think that you know just if you were just sorting by raw numbers or if you were just a casual fan at home you would never even think that he belongs in that class and of course you know he doesn't you can't just extrapolate that and

and say, well, if Rickardson, he plays 20 minutes a night, he's going to keep shooting this much, he can keep scoring, like, Ovechkin. But it gives you a good insight to, well, maybe if he starts playing with better players and starts playing more and gains his coach's trust, the counting stats are common. And sure enough, this year he's playing, and on the first line, he's paying a lot with guys like fours, is bringing Johansson, and all of a sudden,

if he hasn't already, he's going to score 30 goals. Like, he's one of their most productive players, and it's just kind of cool seeing it rewarded like that. You guys can't see this at home, but as soon as Demetri, you started talking about, this. I started smiling and nodding because I knew this would be about Victor Arvinson, and I love Victor Arvinson so much. I picked him up in fantasy hockey. I think two guys in my league were picking up him dropping him, and I'm just sitting there waiting, I'm like, next time he gets

dropped, I'm picking him up, and he has not left my team. He's a perfect human being. I love him so much. Yeah, definitely with Arvinson last year, there was signs that he could be a lot better than he was. I he had that many points, but you see he's getting all these shots. He's doing the same thing in the HL. And then you put him with good players and suddenly he's almost a 60 point player. Yeah. Like it's just incredible. But do you think that, I mean, I'm not sure how much work has been done on this.

And maybe it's something we should be focusing on a bit more. But like how, how neatly you can extrapolate that where like a guy can be doing really well in this, you know, more limited sheltered role. But then it's dangerous sometimes. to also just kind of expect that all of a sudden you can just put him into the top of the lineup and it might kind of stretch him a bit thin and I think that like a good example of that is last I checked like someone like Mark Barbario

for example was really struggling lately in Colorado was he and I think I think at least I might be wrong on. Actually I haven't looked so I don't know but I know that he's playing a ton right like he's playing like 17 5 on 5 minutes a night or something like that there and I just wonder you know he's probably not

a workhorse number one defense that should be eating up all the team's minutes. It stands to reason that guys sometimes if you ask them to do too much or play above their head, their rate stats are going to drop quite a bit, and I just kind of wonder where you find that balance. I think it's especially tough on defense because you see so many times a guy in like the third pair who looks like he's killing it, like his course he's like 65% or something, and then he moves up a little and suddenly he's not doing so hot.

And I feel like the natural thing to do would be to think that it's something with the competition he faces. And I feel like that's something that we've discovered, then dismissed, then reencumbered. It's just it. Dusted it off a bit. Yeah. Continuous circle of does quality of competition matter? And I feel like some people are a little too close-minded in dismissing it because the way we measure competition right now is, is kind of silly.

We use like time on ice or whatever. Right. I guess it goes back to the war thing. Like if we can't, I don't think we should be dismissing quality of competition until we can measure competition properly, which I don't think we're doing at this current time. I know last year I was looking at the Leafs

because Hunwick was a guy that everyone was so on board for when he was signed like, oh, his course he was like plus five with the Rangers. Playing like third pair of minutes. He suddenly is the team shut down defense with Morgan Riley. and he's getting absolutely destroyed. And that's not all quality competition. He played on a different side.

I think he was a left-left thing or whatever. But I thought it was interesting that everyone loved Hunwick and Marensen going in, and then suddenly they hate Hunwick, and Marensen they love. And he's getting sheltered minutes, and then when he moves up, he suddenly starts playing worse. So I thought it was interesting. So I looked at competition using points last year. and as it turned out, Riley and Hung Rip were getting way tougher minutes than someone like

Merencian. And it was actually correlated pretty well with just plain old time and ice. So if you see a guy playing 15 minutes, it's probably safe to assume that he is getting those sheltered minutes compared to a guy getting first pairing minutes. Yeah. Yeah. No, that's definitely something that, I mean, I guess it's, it allows us to keep having jobs and doing this stuff

because obviously if you could just figure it out that easily then it would make us pretty replaceable. But what else that we want to talk about here? Okay, so something I noticed anecdotally

and I'm not sure I haven't really had the time or put in the effort to totally dive into this deeply and check how it compares the past years. But it feels like teams are getting much more bunched together

with regards to shot shared 5-on-5 where you know you still have teams like the abs and the coyotes at the bottom or they're like 44 or 45 and then you have teams like the bruin and the kings who are around 55 but it seems like there's like at least 15 to 20 teams that are in this like 49 and a half to like 50 yeah on 52% range and I'm just wondering you know a is that a sign that teams are getting smarter and all start a kind of all cart starting to kind of focus on similar things and realizing, you know, that they should be changing the way they're playing. And then B, does that mean that there's less of an advantage there?

Or does it mean that it kind of goes the other way where now every single little bit of competitive advantage you can find is maximize that much more just because the wiggle room between like the teams that have no idea what they're doing and the teams that are super smart and cutting edge is shrinking by the year, it seems like. Yeah, there's definitely, I have noticed that there's this big gap. between L.A., Boston, and then the rest, and then Colorado, Arizona. But it's a tough question because when everyone is so close, it means that you need to find edges somewhere else.

Right. And that might be finding someone like sustainable shooting in SaperSend, which has always been, I think, in years past where we've always dismissed someone with a high PDO or whatever. But I feel like with Corsi, I guess, shrinking, to start looking at other ways to get goals and we look at LA this year and they're once again not scoring because their players are not good at scoring and they have this dominant coursey and you have to wonder maybe get someone who can score maybe change the system a bit from what

you're doing and well they got Ben Bishop and Jerome McGillan yeah yeah Jeremy didn't he scores like his first goal yesterday and got in a fight yeah yeah yeah McGillow special yeah um I think Jerome McGillow was actually one of the lowest war players for Gtm and I know my model he does not rank very highly either so it was good acquisition and like physically like the guy can't even move around anymore like i've been joking for a few years now that you know if he gets the spot it gets the puck in his brand and butter spot he still knows what to do with it but like you actually need someone to like actively like wheel him around on the ice to get to those spots so the king's found someone who fits their identity of very slow yeah person no but i mean so like i think since

2013 over the past four seasons now there's five teams that have shot either at seven or below seven 10 and 5-on-5. And it's the kings, the sabers, the devils, the hurricanes, and the coyotes. And, you know, a lot of those teams have been really, really bad for that time. And I think the other thing that you'd say about those teams is that, you know, most of them, for the most part, have lacked finishing talent and actual ability to put the puck in the net. And I don't think that this is the irritating part of the discussion, but also then, like, fun nuance for us to keep the discussion going,

where Coursy obviously isn't the be all end all. I don't think anyone ever argues that it is. And the problem you get into is that, as you mentioned, we haven't necessarily found a very sustainable method of continually having high shooting percentage and high safe percentage. So what do you think the next, let's assume this trend keeps going and teams keep bunching together like this and there's so little separation between most of the teams.

Like, what do you think the next thing we're going to be looking at is? Do you think it's going to be, we're going to find out that there's certain ways to consistently shoot higher than the league average? Or what do you think it is? I definitely think there's ways to consistently shoot higher. I mean, we see a team like the Rangers doing it every year. Do you think it's mostly just kind of like that counterattack style a bit? It might, I mean, they're doing something, right? We don't really understand what it is, but they're doing something.

I feel like there's certain plays that they might be doing that are repeatable, that lead them to that area. And I think what Ryan Simpson is doing now, the passing project, he's looking at all these different types of shots, how productive they are, how repeatable they are. And I think that's the next step for what we're going to find. It helps when someone is tracking every game like he is, but it also helped if the NHL actually got those tracking cameras they promised. and that would help a lot. Yeah, I mean, so just from like Ryan's work and the work of, you know, someone like Steve Aliquette and stuff, like we know, we know basically that shots that come from passes directly behind the net are generally higher, higher scoring opportunities. We know that passes they go across the Royal Road, east-west, probably increase their shooting percentage.

And we know that when the goalie has two guys in front of him screening them that, you know, intuitively that makes sense that he's probably going to stop a smaller shooting. share of those shots. So yeah, I think that we still, unfortunately, like, even all of Ryan's data is still in the infancy stages of it where we only have a few seasons now. And so it's like, we don't necessarily know how much of it is actually repeatable skills, which is going to be the big, I think that's going to be like the big leap if you find out that there's certain players or certain systems that can actually just keep doing this stuff from here to you.

Yeah. I think the other thing is, like, for, just from like, scouting perspective, like, that might be one of the reasons why we see teams not be able to sustain these high shooting percentage because they might be doing these things that lead to more effective chances, but then another team might see these things happen and scout what they're doing what their system is and they might go into a bit of a cold streak because of those things. That's just me guessing what might be a thing, but I feel like it's just such a complicated thing that we don't fully understand at this point.

Yeah. So, I mean, what if you are running the Kings right now? What are you? What are you doing? This is a tough question. Definitely punt most of their bottom six plug guys who don't do much and find guys who can score. Because I'm assuming that Sutter has a great system that can teach anyone how to courseie. and if you just put a guy you can score with those guys,

you might get them a little over 7%. Right. I don't even know whether they add now, like 5, 6. No, it's like it's 6.1 or something. I feel like it had a 5 at one point. So this is what I wonder. Like, do you think that, you know, maybe not NHL teams,

but maybe people like you and I, do you think we sometimes get into the trouble of undervaluing like actual goal scoring ability? because sometimes it's easy to become a infatuated with, you know, shot metrics and guys that are always disrespected or underrated by talking heads on TV. So we kind of sometimes go above and beyond to overcompensate and be like, Mark Harcabello is actually the best playing in the world. But I wonder, like, you know, at the end of the day, it is goal,

I feel like goal scoring ability or the ability to set up goals. They're real skills. And, like, you know, you see how cheap a guy. like Thomas Vanek has been for the past few years where he's bouncing around and you know you wouldn't then when you watch him play he's not very impressive anymore he looks pretty slow and he's not an analytics darling but he's also

consistently you know contributing goals in some capacity and I wonder if you know the kings should theoretically be able to find a couple guys like that they could just plug in for cheap that would be able to be a massive step up from the Trevor Lewis's of the world like a Jonathan Marsha so yes well it goes back to

the war thing where you have to have a system that weights everything appropriately. We can talk about a guy's coursey, or we can talk about a guy's points, but in your head we're just sort of weighing them sort of arbitrarily. And that's sort of the thing why I wanted something with game score, which is I was watching basketball, and I realized that LeBron James is the greatest thing I've ever seen in my life, and I was reading everything about him, and I stumbled on something called Game Score for Basketball.

So I'm like, has anyone done this for hockey? quick Google search, no, I'm going to steal it. And so the main goal was, yeah, basically. The main goal was people either, when they watch a game, they're like, this guy was the best because he looked good, this guy was the best because he got two points, this guy was the best because he was a plus 30 coursey, and I want to put the last two together to see if they confirm the first one.

And that's what I tried to do last year in the Stan Cup finals. I posted some charts and said, this makes sense. no one yelled at me so I'm like I'm on the right path and that's what I've done I guess for most this year and I've posted them for every leaf game and I rarely get yelled at so I feel like it's done its job of saying who played well there's there's some instances where like I look at it and I'm like Mitch Marner was amazing and his game score is terrible and it's because he's type of guy who always has the puck on a stick and he doesn't just shoot it right away right like if we had something like pass or shot assist like Ryan Simpson is tracking He'd probably look a lot better than he does. Yeah, kind of like a Jonathan Drew at. So just league-wide, though, have there been any specific players you can think of that have either been much better by Game's Corps

than you would have thought heading into it or maybe inversely, like, a guy that you would think is pretty good. Or general perception of him would be this guy's a really good player, but for whatever reason he just doesn't come out with favorably on it. Well, the first guy that comes out really good is Victor Arfanson. Yes. Because he shoots a lot. That's music to my yours and the listeners of this podcast.

He shoots a lot and I think he has one of the best courses on Nashville. So he actually comes out as I think the top forward on that line with Ryan Johansson, Phil Porterlin, which is amazing to me. Is he better than those guys? I'm not sure, but he clearly belongs with them, I think, at least. Connor Shiri also looks good, but that's because it's hard to suss out. Crosby, the Crosby factor. Yeah, I mean, Shiri and Jake Gensel.

especially lately like every time i sort by anything they're like near the top and it's it's you know just purely from watching them uh i think both guys are legitimately good players in their role right but it's pretty clear that if they were playing even with like a philkessel on like a third line or whatever like they probably wouldn't yeah looking like the league's best players like that's probably the crosbie effects very real yeah definitely um should we talk about the leaps a bit i feel like we're in toronto i have you and in the house, in the studio? If you'd like.

Where are you out with them? Because I know that, you know, you've been a fan of theirs, I'm assuming for pretty much your entire life. Like, now that you're getting more into this as a profession and working in hockey, like, is, as it died down a little bit? Are you still as, as passionate as you once were? I actually wrote about this sometime in December, January. And because this is my profession, it sort of had to die down.

down naturally and with the Leafs being absolutely terrible. It was sort of perfect timing for it to die down. And then they hired Kyle Dubus and they sucked completely for last year. I don't, I think I watched maybe like half the games last year because they were just tough to get through. And then they draft the year before they drafted Marner, so I knew the good things were coming. And then they got Austin Matthews and in no way shape or formed. I think Austin Matthews would be as good.

as he was. Like, I thought he'd be great, but just watching him, the things he does with the puck is just incredible, and it's not so much that I love the Leafs more now. It's that I love watching Austin as much as possible, and he happens to be on...

You guys are on a first name basis? Yeah. You and Austin? Me and Austin. And he just happens to be on the team that I watch the most because I watch at home with my dad. Right.

And I guess it's sort of my... I don't want to be... to say passion, but it's sort of, I guess it's the right word. My passion for the Leafs crept back up, even though I'm supposed to be an unbiased observer of the game, but I mean, it's hard, and I think it'd be better to be honest about, I mean, we all grew up watching hockey, we all had a favorite team to lie to ourselves and say, yeah, I don't like this team anymore. It's kind of silly.

A guy like Sean McDonough has made a career of depressive leaf takes, and now nice leaf takes because they're actually good. Yes. Yeah, that's where, I feel like that's where Oilers fans are at these days. They're like, they're still trying to kind of like, it's like a, it's like a newborn finally learning how to like walk. And just like trying to figure out what to do with themselves. They don't even know what to do anymore. Yeah.

All right. Let's get out of here. Do you want to plug some stuff? Where can people find you? Where can they check out your work and do that stuff? You can find me on Twitter. I used to have a very catchy Twitter handle by Change It to My Real Name, which you probably cannot spell. So I'm going to spell it out for you.

I think, yeah. Well, I think, I think if you, honestly, if you just type in Dom, I feel like you're probably one of the first people that comes up. Probably. Dom, L, U.S.Z, and I think you'll get there. Yes. And it's a really long name. You're that guy. Yeah.

And you write at the hockey news, the athletic, Leafs Nation, and at a daily fantasy site. Sweet. Well, thanks for taking the time to chat, man. And let's not wait another 155 after you do this. Thanks for having me. The Hockey P-D-O-Cats. with Dmitri Filipovich. Follow on Twitter at Dim Filipovich

and on SoundCloud at SoundCloud.com slash hockeypediocast.