Quarterfinals Game 5: Avs at Sharks

The super cool winged wheel?

He invented inventing.

Teh Jimmuh!!!!

LoL! This is good stuff.

oh man, here come the character accounts…

*hits Vlassic in the neck.

what is your point? should we not be frustrated at the bad luck which caused us to lose games? do you want us acknowledge the Sharks should have swept us or something?

this is ridiculous.

The pucks hit referees and linesmen every single hockey game. There have been several bounces off refs/linesmen that have gone the Sharks way in this series as well. Counting this as help from the hockey gods is totally asinine.

You can troll without sounding like an asshole. Saying things that are designed to evoke an angry response, no matter how calmly they are said, is still trolling.

I’m not saying you’re doing that, but you’ve certainly been contrarian just for the sake of being contrarian. The whole “hitting after icing is illegal, but after the whistle is judgement” from yesterday , when you didn’t even see it, is pretty borderline…

That’s the second time I’ve seen you use that as an excuse. Was it really Avs “fans?” I didn’t read the whole thread, but I saw one possible pro-Avs trolly comment in the thread where you busted out your “Avs fans bought a great Canadian team” argument.

Also, you seem like a pretty sharp guy – aren’t the newspaper comments just generally dumber than the comments on the SBN sites? Have Avs fans been trolling over there? Does one troll justify your silly comment about us rooting for this team?

Of course Avs fan are going to be biased in their opinions about how this series has gone There will be time for clear-eyed reflection afterwards.

Saw that you said you can be a troll when you want to. Seems like you like attention, because you get plenty of it over here. Fair enough, it’s your choice.

Sorry but Jimmy made the save no point.

It back fires on me though when we watch the Caps and i cheer for Ovie because if they are wearing their red jerseys my son says “No daddy you don’t root for the bad guys they are wearing red they are the bad guys booooo”

That whole thread made me a bit sick to my stomach. They want to BCS the playoffs.

Gabe (Hawerchuk) isn’t a Calgary fan.

I though “lazy and dumb” was what they called their top line?

Law School taught me the opposite.

yeah, after reading through the whole thing i just had to close the window so i didn’t start arguing too, i think mike, jibbs, and seesix have it covered.
that and i really wouldn’t have anything constructive to add to the conversation

sounds like some folks (and I haven’t been over there to look and will almost certainly refrain from doing so) need a refresher on the definition of R^2.

See. The stats do predict the outcome, for the other 29 teams in the league. The Avs are an anomaly this season, so in that sense I’d disagree with your point #3.

And I don’t think Gabe (Hawerchuk) a has ever said Corsi is perfect, but it is a good reflection of puck possesion, which, in theory, is a good indicator of team skill.

RO attributes too much of the other (goaltending, special teams) and lumps it all into luck for my taste. That’s where my biggest disagreement with him has been.

You’re not giving me much credit!

When you’re talking about “outcomes” are you not talking about statistics? Goals For, Goals Against, Shooting Percentage, Save Percentage, Winning Percentage – you mention these statistics all of the time.

Analysis (by many people) shows that it’s very difficult for a team to get consistently outchanced but win anyways. That’s why NHL coaches and GMs spend so much time recording chances – they make a coarse estimate of the quality of the chances (good vs excellent), but it’s largely identical to what Scott Reynolds does.

I’ve looked at chance quality; I don’t find that it’s tremendously predictive of goal scoring. I’ve looked at good goaltending – it obviously helps teams exceed expectations. I’ve looked at high shooting percentages to determine whether they’re sustainable; they’re not.

I look at the 40% of winning that is not explained by the data we have on hand and I see a role for things we don’t record, and for luck. I’ve made this clear numerous times.

We have differing viewpoints. But neither you nor I have any way of knowing to what extent your point #3 is correct. As I’ve mentioned numerous times before, I invite you to come up with testable theories to explain how the game works and we can discuss them.

I like stats, but having them presented as the be-all-end-all and in an incredibly biased manner makes them feel far less credible than they would be otherwise. Besides, the fact that our team has thrived over a full season, numbers be damned, shows that there are other factors – which unfortunately we can’t prove because it seems like numbers are the only things they accept as proof. (Protip: It isn’t that hard to actually watch a few games, maybe they should try it!)

Is it really any less lazy to blame luck whenever the stats come out wrong? Because the Avs must be shitting horseshoes and four-leaf clovers to have scored the 6th-most goals in the league on pure fluke alone. Maybe Dan Boyle scored most of them for us, then, because clearly Chris Stewart’s 64 points are a statistical aberration and Duchene picked up his 55 on pure chance. The team’s 95 points? Each and every last one of them a figment of our poor, misguided imaginations. After all, in a parallel universe, we’re a 12th-place team, right?

Also, Salei as one of our best defensemen? If R O had done the slightest little bit of research, he would’ve realized he played 14 games this year and was even a healthy scratch while we were losing. It’s clear as day that this guy hasn’t looked at any stats other than the ones that paint a negative picture of our team. That’s okay, though. I’d also be wrapped up in butthurt jealousy if we’d missed the playoffs to a terrible team of AHL players with no business in the big league too.