I hate to say it

[robertmac43]

Everything is a fluke, it's hockey.

 

[Torontonian]

Lol, you need luck to win in the playoffs, who would have thought........ You don't think its lucky Bob is playing at a .940 this playoffs when he's been a 900 goalie all season?

 

[Maplebeasts]

What a clickbait thread title. Though we didn't deserve to win our series against Tampa, we deserved to win our previous 4 series before that and lost all of them so I'm not complaining.

 

[myleafs]

Lose to Florida while looking like the better team for most of the series (outside of that stinker in game 3): No heart, soft, muskoka 5, trade the entire team.

Win against Tampa while looking like the worse team for most of the series (outside of that shiner in game 2): Fluke, injured their opponents, trade the entire team.

I did not see it like that at all.

 

[binop7]

Lol, you need luck to win in the playoffs, who would have thought........ You don't think its lucky Bob is playing at a .940 this playoffs when he's been a 900 goalie all season?

I mean he was paid 10M per year for a reason. He has won 2 Vezinas. This is not that surprising.

 

[TMLBlueandWhite]

Good Lord.

I'll never understand all this talk about luck in sports. A determinist would pish-posh it all away. Point out the cause and effect relationship of reality.

Let me ask you this:

If luck actually existed, if it really was just bad luck the team kept losing every year, why the hell would anyone want these guys anywhere near the team?

Shanahan and Dubas would have to be the unluckiest people in all sport. Anyone with even a modicum of belief in superstition would cross the road to avoid them if they were coming up the sidewalk. A black cat is luckier than these losers.

There isn't a charm lucky enough to change their fortunes.

 

[Racer88]

Lol, you need luck to win in the playoffs, who would have thought........ You don't think its lucky Bob is playing at a .940 this playoffs when he's been a 900 goalie all season?

Not luck at all. He has risen to the challenge and is playing some of his best hockey.
if things were just luck what would be the point of building a certain type of team, why not just wait until your luck comes around. Kinda like Dubas was in Toronto

 

[Notsince67]

Good Lord.

I'll never understand all this talk about luck in sports. A determinist would pish-posh it all away. Point out the cause and effect relationship of reality.

Let me ask you this:

If luck actually existed, if it really was just bad luck the team kept losing every year, why the hell would anyone want these guys anywhere near the team?

Shanahan and Dubas would have to be the unluckiest people in all sport. Anyone with even a modicum of belief in superstition would cross the road to avoid them if they were coming up the sidewalk. A black cat is luckier than these losers.

There isn't a charm lucky enough to change their fortunes.

I don't understand the point. Goals are low frequency events that have much higher frequency attempts. What part of basic probability don't you understand? Of course luck has a large factor goal to goal and game to game.

 

[notDatsyuk]

I suspect that the thread title is a lie - I'm pretty sure you are happy saying that.

 

[Torontonian]

I mean he was paid 10M per year for a reason. He has won 2 Vezinas. This is not that surprising.

Not luck at all. He has risen to the challenge and is playing some of his best hockey.
if things were just luck what would be the point of building a certain type of team, why not just wait until your luck comes around. Kinda like Dubas was in Toronto

He hasn't performed since he's signed that contract, all of a sudden 4 years later he's playing his best hockey ever, in the playoffs.. You don't think that's not lucky?

 

[TMLBlueandWhite]

I don't understand the point. Goals are low frequency events that have much higher frequency attempts. What part of basic probability don't you understand? Of course luck has a large factor goal to goal and game to game.

I'm confused.

It sounds to me like what you are saying is that scoring goals is not a repeatable skill. That it is a random event. Luck determines the outcome.

Even though Ovechkin won all those Rocket Rickard trophies.

I'm sorry, I'm no expert at hockey, but I thought these guys trained for years and practiced their shot for a reason. Now you are telling me they are luckier than everyone else. I mean, you're probably right. Ovechkin just lucked into all those goals.

It has absolutely nothing with his outstanding one timer that he practiced his whole life.

 

[barilko05]

It's not necessarily serious as it is facts. Facts don't care about your feelings my boy.

Fact: We beat Tampa and won the series. In a hundred years, that stat will remain a fact. As for everything that you think may have contributed to that win, or to a potential loss if those things didn't happen, that will remain mere speculation and not relevant to the only thing that matters.
We won.
Fact.
End of story.

 

[Notsince67]

I'm confused.

It sounds to me like what you are saying is that scoring goals is not a repeatable skill. That it is a random event. Luck determines the outcome.

Even though Ovechkin won all those Rocket Rickard trophies.

I'm sorry, I'm no expert at hockey, but I thought these guys trained for years and practiced their shot for a reason. Now you are telling me they are luckier than everyone else. I mean, you're probably right. Ovechkin just lucked into all those goals.

It has absolutely nothing with his outstanding one timer that he practiced his whole life.

Ovechkin aimed to score only 14% of his total shots on net?

 

[binop7]

He hasn't performed since he's signed that contract, all of a sudden 4 years later he's playing his best hockey ever, in the playoffs.. You don't think that's not lucky?

Again bro he won 2 Vezinas for a reason and earned that contract. This was always a possibility. People said price was trash too then he back stopped the habs to the finals.

 

[TakeTheBody]

The Leafs beat the Lightning because the best goalie in the world wasn't even the best goalie in Florida. The Leafs lost to Florida because BOB is still playing like the best goalie in the world.

 

[TMLBlueandWhite]

Ovechkin aimed to score only 14% of his total shots on net?

It's clear you are just making argument for the sake of argument.

You ask me what I don't understand about probabilities, but you seem to lack an understanding of basic science.

And reality.

Ovechkin takes aim, he shoots. That shot requires a certain amount of force, the stick needs to be adjusted properly, etc. for the puck to come off his blade at 100mph and aimed at the net. Hopefully without hitting a defenseman or goaltender in between.

Everything about that shot is intentional.

It's all cause and effect and explained by basic
science. No luck involved. No need for a rabbits foot or four leaf clover.

Good shooters are good shooters because they are good shooters.

Not because they are luckier.

I'm surprised I even have to explain that to you.

 

[hockeywiz542]

Is Leafs' poor playoff performance just bad luck, a fundamental flaw, or a bit of both?

Are the Leafs consistently the victims of postseason bad luck, or are they a team that isn't simply isn't constructed for the playoffs?

theathletic.com

For me, this is the first question the new general manager of the Toronto Maple Leafs must answer: Is the core, as constructed, good enough to win?

That’s a bit of a loaded question and one that can spawn a dozen side questions about how reliable the Leafs’ top-end players like Mitch Marner and Auston Matthews can be in crunch time. Both players have just wrapped up their third consecutive playoffs where they scored fewer points per game in the playoffs than their season average, and while that isn’t uncommon across the league (especially since scoring declines in the playoffs with the absence of bad teams to pick on), neither player has broken out offensively in a way that Leon Draisaitl, Matthew Tkachuk, or a host of others seem to in any given spring.

Another thing that happened for a third consecutive playoffs? The team that defeated the Leafs wound up sweeping their next opponent en route to the Stanley Cup Final. It would be one thing if the teams that beat the Leafs kept falling flat on their faces in the ensuing round, but the opposite effect happens: The Leafs seem to bring out the best in their opponents. In fact, in four of five years of the Kyle Dubas regime, the team that defeated the Leafs went on to play in the Final (though three of those teams lost, and we don’t know about the Panthers yet).

It’s overly simplistic to say the Leafs are the victims of bad luck in the postseason, though they have had some, particularly in one-goal games. Since 2021, the Leafs have actually outscored their opponents 75-72 in the playoffs, but are 11-14 over that span. Fifty-six percent of their games have been decided by one goal, and they’ve come out on the losing side more frequently than not in those games (6-8), but before you start to think that’s a reflection on the players, keep in mind that the worst team when it comes to one-goal games in the playoffs in recent years is Edmonton, despite how strong Draisaitl and Connor McDavid have looked in consecutive playoff runs. Sometimes you just don’t get the bounces at the right time.

It’s also overly simplistic to say that the Leafs team isn’t constructed for the playoffs, even as they’ve struggled for offence, particularly late in the series. The Leafs have averaged 3.6 goals per game early in the series, compared to just 2.0 goals per game in elimination and closeout games. Before you think that’s a reflection on the team as constructed, however, keep in mind that the Tampa Bay Lightning, who won the 2021 Cup and played for the 2022 Cup, have similarly struggled in those situations, scoring 3.5 goals per game early in a series, compared to 2.1 goals per game in closeout series.

In all likelihood, the answer as to whether the Leafs merely get unlucky in playoff time or are fundamentally flawed probably lies somewhere in the middle, and it’s difficult to prove one way or another. Teams don’t often have the luxury of being able to play long enough to discover whether luck in one-goal games or bad goaltending was the result of random distribution or some tangible, tactical flaw in how the team was built.

One idea I was kicking around was whether the Leafs were actually a good enough team to even be considered playoff disappointments. After all, with the exception of the 2021 season, a 56-game affair played entirely against six other opponents, Toronto hasn’t won a single division title, and finished second in its division just twice, since Auston Matthews was drafted. Over the last three complete seasons, Toronto has seen three rivals from the Atlantic Division win a Presidents’ Trophy over that span, but the Leafs have yet to have that one season where everything falls into place.

Even then, the year-to-year consistency achieved by the Leafs is nearly unprecedented. It’s easier for good teams to underperform in the playoffs compared to bad teams (nobody would have bat an eye if the Panthers, a 92-point team, were out in overtime of the fifth game to the Bruins in Round 1), and the success the Leafs have had over the last three seasons in the regular season is astounding. In the salary-cap era, a team has only earned 110 points per 82 games or better in three consecutive seasons three times: these Leafs, these Carolina Hurricanes, who have similarly gone through playoff heartbreak, and the Detroit Red Wings who did it in four consecutive seasons from ‘05-06 to ‘08-09.

 

[Notsince67]

It's clear you are just making argument for the sake of argument.

You ask me what I don't understand about probabilities, but you seem to lack an understanding of basic science.

And reality.

Ovechkin takes aim, he shoots. That shot requires a certain amount of force, the stick needs to be adjusted properly, etc. for the puck to come off his blade at 100mph and aimed at the net. Hopefully without hitting a defenseman or goaltender in between.

Everything about that shot is intentional.

It's all cause and effect and explained by basic
science. No luck involved. No need for a rabbits foot or four leaf clover.

Good shooters are good shooters because they are good shooters.

Not because they are luckier.

I'm surprised I even have to explain that to you.

Are you trying ro redefine the word luck now?
You disagreeable types sure like to redefine a lot of English words.
R^2 never needed to be invented to measure randomness of shooting at the net and not scoring I guess....similar to your argument.

 

[TMLBlueandWhite]

Are you trying ro redefine the word luck now?
You disagreeable types sure like to redefine a lot of English words.
R^2 never needed to be invented to measure randomness of shooting at the net and not scoring I guess....similar to your argument.

Now we're going to fall back on randomness in sports?

I imagine next will be an appeal to a higher power.

Seems a bit of a stretch to think that someone benefits from something so intangible as "luck". I didn't re-define the term luck. Because I don't believe in it.

Hocus pocus mumbo jumbo.

Stochastic processes, random walks, and quantum reality are the imagination of those with a philosophical bent. It has no grounding in reality and should be avoided at all costs. Falling back on "luck" to explain results in sports is ignoring the reality of Newtonian physics.

I'm sorry, but everything is continuous and not discrete.

Calculus >>>> Statistics & Probabilities

 

[Notsince67]

Now we're going to fall back on randomness in sports?

I imagine next will be an appeal to a higher power.

Seems a bit of a stretch to think that someone benefits from something so intangible as "luck". I didn't re-define the term luck. Because I don't believe in it.

Hocus pocus mumbo jumbo.

Stochastic processes, random walks, and quantum reality are the imagination of those with a philosophical bent. It has no grounding in reality and should be avoided at all costs. Falling back on "luck" to explain results in sports is ignoring the reality of Newtonian physics.

I'm sorry, but everything is continuous and not discrete.

Calculus >>>> Statistics & Probabilities

Without getting into a huge debate about how wrong and specious your claims of luck being hocus pocus, I suggest you brush up a bit on randomness and chaotic systems. Furthermore, even physics acknowledges the probabilistic states of quantum particles.
You are advocating for something akin to a metaphoric flat earth. It just isn't true.

 

[TMLBlueandWhite]

Without getting into a huge debate about how wrong and specious your claims of luck being hocus pocus, I suggest you brush up a bit on randomness and chaotic systems. Furthermore, even physics acknowledges the probabilistic states of quantum particles.
You are advocating for something akin to a metaphoric flat earth. It just isn't true.

Sure.

And somewhere in the multi-verse the Leafs have won a Stanley Cup and I get the respect of my wife and kids.

In the meantime I guess we have to agree to disagree.

I don't hold a Nobel prize and I assume you don't either. I prefer to stay grounded in the tangible. Euclidean geometry and Newtonian physics.

All this talk of quantum processes seems a little too Star Trekkie for my liking.

 

[danny90]

When assessing the team's roster, this must be considered seriously. TB did outplay them mostly in the games I saw.

They badly outplayed Tampa and Montreal in previous series and got goalied by Bob against Florida. Should all that be considered or?

 

[danny90]

Sure.

And somewhere in the multi-verse the Leafs have won a Stanley Cup and I get the respect of my wife and kids.

In the meantime I guess we have to agree to disagree.

I don't hold a Nobel prize and I assume you don't either. I prefer to stay grounded in the tangible. Euclidean geometry and Newtonian physics.

All this talk of quantum processes seems a little too Star Trekkie

The fact is hockey is closer to roulette than chess in the skill-luck continuum. Randomness in sports has been studied, tested , and quantified And hockey is very luck based and in the playoffs it seems to be even more so.

I mean he was paid 10M per year for a reason. He has won 2 Vezinas. This is not that surprising.

Damn if you expected this you could have won a lot of money as people who professionally do this did not expect it at all and it’s very surprising

 

[danny90]

Good Lord.

I'll never understand all this talk about luck in sports. A determinist would pish-posh it all away. Point out the cause and effect relationship of reality.

Let me ask you this:

If luck actually existed, if it really was just bad luck the team kept losing every year, why the hell would anyone want these guys anywhere near the team?

Shanahan and Dubas would have to be the unluckiest people in all sport. Anyone with even a modicum of belief in superstition would cross the road to avoid them if they were coming up the sidewalk. A black cat is luckier than these losers.

There isn't a charm lucky enough to change their fortunes.

I think you are confusing superstition with probabilities.

 

[TMLBlueandWhite]

The fact is hockey is closer to roulette than chess in the skill-luck continuum. Randomness in sports has been studied, tested , and quantified And hockey is very luck based and in the playoffs it seems to be even more so.


Damn if you expected this you could have won a lot of money as people who professionally do this did not expect it at all and it’s very surprising

If the playoffs were random, the odds of the Leafs losing six first rounds in a row are 1.5%.

The odds of Tampa winning 11 rounds in a row are 0.05%.

Unbelievably, both teams beat the odds.

What are the odds of that happening?