hockeyfan1
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herman said:
Fine then. Call Dubas and tell him "Show Willy the money!".
Contracts for the Big-3
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Fine then. Call Dubas and tell him "Show Willy the money!".
Heroic Shrimp
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hockeyfan1 said:herman said:
Fine then. Call Dubas and tell him "Show Willy the money!".
And definitely don't say, "show him the willy".
Highlander
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Great article by Tulloch, I think we should get the deal done, we can shed Marleau and Gardiner next year and sign Willie @ 7.25.
Didn't realize Matthews line was getting outscored. Not good.
And who wouldn't love to see Kapi-Matthews-Willie
Didn't realize Matthews line was getting outscored. Not good.
And who wouldn't love to see Kapi-Matthews-Willie
Highlander said:
It is a good article and I enjoyed it. However, there are a couple of hidden assumptions that go undiscussed.
The reason to compare skaters using points (or corsi or whatever) *per minute* rather than using aggregate stats is that one assumes that points/minute is fixed and that total points is easily computed as:
points/minute * minutes
So the idea is that "if only Nylander had played more minutes, we can scale his points up linearly and see what he might have achieved. Damn you, Babcock!"
However, I suspect this isn't true. I mean, certainly, it isn't true at the extremes -- if you play a guy 30 minutes then he gets tired and his points/minute will drop off. However, I also suspect it isn't true even in less extreme situations and that the Leafs (and other teams) know this and that is part of the reason why they play guys fewer minutes than they could. For example, last year in the playoffs, I just checked and Matthews played just 17:32/game (he played 20:18 the prior year). Marner played 17:02/game in the playoffs last year.
There's no chance the Leafs and Babcock weren't doing everything they possibly could to win but my guess (based entirely on this circumstantial evidence), was that if they played more they would become a little less effective. We know they have a lot of sports science guys and it seems likely that they study phenomena such as optimal playing times. None of that is public so we don't know how it works but, again, I'm guessing that playing in the 17 minute range actually maximizes their productivity pretty effectively, at least in the team context. Every minute you go above 17, might decrease a guy's points/minute significantly.
I'm definitely not saying *for sure* that playing more wouldn't generate a few extra points --- that's not my point at all --- just that it isn't completely certain that it will, and I think it would have been nice if the author had pointed out this assumption explicitly. Playing more in the first period might tire out a guy and decrease his effectiveness in the 2nd and 3rd, or playing more overall in a single game might tire a guy out for games later that week, rendering him significantly less effective.
Babcock's and the Leafs analytics department are not idiots and they want to win. The playoffs are the highest leverage situation. Matthews is clearly the Leafs best player. If Babcock thought he could sustain his effectiveness for 20-21 minutes/game, I can't imagine he wouldn't be playing more.
Highlander said:
One other point -- someone in the comments of the article made a very interesting observation. The article compares Matthews with Nylander and shows that Matthews effectiveness drops off a lot without Nylander. This seems to indicate that Nylander is a very important component of Matthews success. Indeed, Matthews Corsi numbers this year are pretty terrible (small sample size warning!). The natural conclusion is that Nylander is very valuable.
Interestingly, though, the comment points out that Matthews numbers also drop off dramatically without Hyman:
To me, this suggests that these with-you/without-you numbers are not telling the whole story. It seems likely that there's some other hidden variable. That when Matthews is playing with Hyman (or without Nylander) that there's also something else going on. For instance, maybe he plays without Nylander more on the road where the opposing coach can choose the matchup. Maybe he starts more often in the defensive zone. I have no idea. Or maybe Hyman really is the greatest and a better player than Nylander and Babcock's right. But I'm suspicious the stats aren't telling the whole story here.
Kin
New member
princedpw said:
I don't think this is true. I think "the idea" is to present points in as context neutral a setting as possible if points are then going to be used as the single largest factor in determining a player's value and, as a result, his compensation.
Let's use your example. Let's say you have four forward lines on a team and they each get 15 minutes of ice time per night. Is that the optimal configuration for a team? Probably not but if you're Team Canada and can roll 4 full lines of all-stars it might be. In all other situations a coach will have to weigh fatigue vs. the skills of the players available to him.
This will obviously vary wildly from team to team. A player on a team with three very good scoring lines(say, the Leafs) might not be as effective at 18 minutes a night than at 16 minutes a night but he'll still be effective enough to score some points. What a coach will have to decide then is whether Slightly Fatigued Player A is more likely to contribute with a goal than Rested Player B. What this obviously does is create a schism between a fallible, human coach occasionally having to decide what is in the best interest for his team and what may generate the most points for Player A. But the determining factor there is only partly Player A's ability and partly Player B's.
What that obviously leads to is a situation where Player A might not score as many points as someone on another team but not through any deficiency of their own but rather just because of the decision(right or wrong) of his coach.
I think we can all agree that the difference between a player potentially registering a point while on the ice and a player doing so on the bench is infinite. When a player is on the ice obviously their expected points per minute will vary with fatigue being a factor I don't think "Sports Science" however is any where near effective enough to tell us how that actually manifests itself at 16 minutes or 17 minutes or whatever for various players. There are far, far too many variables.
There might be some information about how various players respond to fatigue physically but again, how that translates into ice time decisions made by coaches isn't "unclear" it's almost certainly not based on anything much better than a slightly informed hunch that is also dependent on the number of options a coach has for him.
So it's not "Stupid Babcock, look at what he prevented Nylander from achieving" but rather "Nylander's value needs to be isolated from Babcock's decisions to be fairly judged".
This is sort of the pinning undercurrent of these whole negotiations. Babcock thinks Nylander helps the team in its current form more as a winger so, to some people, that means that Nylander should agree to an 8 year contract where by virtue of Babcock's decision he is a winger. Babcock uses Nylander in a way that affects his point totals in some arguable way, therefore Nylander should agree to a contract that is a reflection on Babcock's decision/other options.
But if we're getting at a player's true value, and certainly what his value will be over the next 8 years, then people are going to want to try and see Nylander independent of those decisions. Not everyone will reach the same conclusions obviously but it's a reasonable way to try and assess the player and his comparative impact on a context-neutral situation.
herman
Well-known member
Reasons why Nylander's minutes were suppressed: Babcock, in development mode, deployed players in specific roles for specific situations.
Kadri was the hard-match centre, paired with Rielly-Hainsey/Zaitsev. Komarov and Brown and eventually Marleau were relied on to wing for Kadri in these situations. The 4th line was the backup for shutdown situations, which is why Babcock was never satisfied with any of the centres until we spent a 2nd rder for them.
Matthews, Nylander, Marner, Bozak, JvR were the goal-getters, unless Babcock was in the mood to feed Matthews some matchup minutes, buddied up with Gardiner and the third pair (for safety, haha).
When the Leafs were in the lead, Babcock would swap out Nylander for Brown towards the end of the game. Bozak and JvR would ride pine. If the Leafs were trailing and looking for goals, the 4th line saw no ice, Hainsey and Zaitsev and Polak played minimally, while Matthews-Nylander would double shift.
Needless to say, the Leafs held a lot of leads last season, and Nylander's minutes took a dip. The Marner PP unit was also on fire, so they got the lion's share of the minutes until the last few games when Babcock tried to juice unit 2 with more reps. Nylander scoring 61 pts again with diminished PP time (and success) and 20 games sans Matthews is a clear progression on an already stellar rookie season.
Kadri was the hard-match centre, paired with Rielly-Hainsey/Zaitsev. Komarov and Brown and eventually Marleau were relied on to wing for Kadri in these situations. The 4th line was the backup for shutdown situations, which is why Babcock was never satisfied with any of the centres until we spent a 2nd rder for them.
Matthews, Nylander, Marner, Bozak, JvR were the goal-getters, unless Babcock was in the mood to feed Matthews some matchup minutes, buddied up with Gardiner and the third pair (for safety, haha).
When the Leafs were in the lead, Babcock would swap out Nylander for Brown towards the end of the game. Bozak and JvR would ride pine. If the Leafs were trailing and looking for goals, the 4th line saw no ice, Hainsey and Zaitsev and Polak played minimally, while Matthews-Nylander would double shift.
Needless to say, the Leafs held a lot of leads last season, and Nylander's minutes took a dip. The Marner PP unit was also on fire, so they got the lion's share of the minutes until the last few games when Babcock tried to juice unit 2 with more reps. Nylander scoring 61 pts again with diminished PP time (and success) and 20 games sans Matthews is a clear progression on an already stellar rookie season.
Hobbes
New member
That same deployment tactic is going to push Matthews' corsi numbers down in that end-game lead-protecting scenario since that tends to be a lot more passive and surrender a much higher number of (hopefully low danger) shots and generate far fewer because F3 is almost never allowed to enter the OZ.
Nik the Trik said:
I agree ? it would be nice if we had a good way to assess ?true talent? of a player independent of context. Hockey makes it pretty difficult. We know already that raw points/minute ignores a variety of bits of context like strength of teammates and zone starts. However, those kinds of context are discussed often. I haven?t seen the effect of fatigue discussed much. As a result, I don?t know how it affects points/minute figures. I?d be fascinated if someone analytically minded explored it. If they did, we might find that lower-minute players appear slightly better than they are when compared with higher-minute players on a points-per-minute basis. Or we might not.
Exactly. I wonder what the magnitude of the effect is? The article doesn?t discuss this possible factor, but takes for granted it has no effect. A good scientist explains the limitations of their models.
Kin
New member
princedpw said:
Well, keep in mind fatigue would just be one of many factors. I guess we could say a player in his 19th minute is going to be at his most tired but given that the extra minute is likely to be near the end of the game couldn't it also be when his adrenaline is going pretty hard?
Also, rhe fatigue works both ways. That 19th minute is also when the opposition is likely to be at their most tired.
Honestly, I dont even know how you'd start trying to quantify that.
Nik the Trik said:
It may work like that or it may not. To fit in the extra minutes, one probably plays more shifts in each period. More shifts over the same amount of time in the first may have an impact on how well one plays in all of the 2nd and all of the 3rd, depending on how recovery works.
If I were running the leafs, I?d certainly be trying to figure this out. They easily have the means to do it ? there?s all kinds of things they could be measuring of their players as they vary their ice time over the course of the season, or several seasons. On the face of it, it is kind of shocking that Matthews only got 17 minutes/game in the playoffs last year.
In other news, the current game really sucks right now.
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