Eklund Rumor: Leafs in on Cam Fowler

[xxreact9]

JVR is a 30/30 power forward with plenty of productive years ahead of him. He's worth more than a second pairing defenceman in my opinion, with all due respect to Fowler.

JVR has scored 30/30 one singular time in his entire career.

Fowler has played on a cup contenders top pairing every single season since entering the league.

How can you actually make this statement? Come on man

 

[Ziggdiezan]

Can you and all leaf fans pls stop saying Gardiner is a top-4. He just isn't.

I get he's a good skater and looks flashy to your eyes. But he isn't a top-4. He's an egregious -38 over the last 2 seasons. By comparison, Dion utter Phaneuf was only a -15. He only earned 17 mins/game last year on a team that is screaming for help on D. By comparison, Matt absolute Hunwick averaged over 18.

He's also God awful in analytics. Not awful just because he's a leaf, but awful relative to his teammates. He also by no means has difficult match ups in comparison to the leafs top pairing over this span.

In every single metric on earth other than "he looks fast and good", Gardiner is an offensively oriented 3rd pairing defender at best. He played forward for a lot of his life and will probably never develop the defensive instincts to excel at the position. He has a good toolbox, but that is it

Not worth anything more than a shakehead

 

[Hisch13r]

Why? Do either Gardiner or Rielly play RD?

 

[Mr Hockey*]

Why? Do either Gardiner or Rielly play RD?

Rielly can but he is just now learning the defensive side of the game. Best to leave him on the Left.

 

[kb]

Can you and all leaf fans pls stop saying Gardiner is a top-4. He just isn't.

I get he's a good skater and looks flashy to your eyes. But he isn't a top-4. He's an egregious -38 over the last 2 seasons. By comparison, Dion utter Phaneuf was only a -15. He only earned 17 mins/game last year on a team that is screaming for help on D. By comparison, Matt absolute Hunwick averaged over 18.

He's also God awful in analytics. Not awful just because he's a leaf, but awful relative to his teammates. He also by no means has difficult match ups in comparison to the leafs top pairing over this span.

In every single metric on earth other than "he looks fast and good", Gardiner is an offensively oriented 3rd pairing defender at best. He played forward for a lot of his life and will probably never develop the defensive instincts to excel at the position. He has a good toolbox, but that is it

Fowler is worse.

 

[LEAFANFORLIFE23]

Can you and all leaf fans pls stop saying Gardiner is a top-4. He just isn't.

I get he's a good skater and looks flashy to your eyes. But he isn't a top-4. He's an egregious -38 over the last 2 seasons. By comparison, Dion utter Phaneuf was only a -15. He only earned 17 mins/game last year on a team that is screaming for help on D. By comparison, Matt absolute Hunwick averaged over 18.

He's also God awful in analytics. Not awful just because he's a leaf, but awful relative to his teammates. He also by no means has difficult match ups in comparison to the leafs top pairing over this span.

In every single metric on earth other than "he looks fast and good", Gardiner is an offensively oriented 3rd pairing defender at best. He played forward for a lot of his life and will probably never develop the defensive instincts to excel at the position. He has a good toolbox, but that is it

You lose ALL credibility when you bring up +\- +\- is garbage because you can be good defensively if you have a goalie that can't stop a beach ball or you have awful line mates

guess what happens to your +\-


it goes in the toilet and then it gets **** on.

+\- is awful

 

[wandering goat]

Why? Do either Gardiner or Rielly play RD?

Rielly plays RD on the Leafs out of necessity. He played LD in the WC with Chris Tanev and they worked great together. That's what we're missing, unless Zaitsev turns out amazing, so I wouldn't want to give up JVR without getting the position we actually need.

 

[Artorius Horus T]

This trade would doom the Leafs,for good.
Fowler is so over rated.

JVR is way better as a forward,what Fowler is a defeseman.

Sensational rookie season,after that...
a whole lot of hype,with almost zero improvement to this day.

2 pros:
-forwards skating with the puck
-neutral zone passing

What it means is, he can carry the puck from the d
and pass the puck to your team mates in the neutral zone,
he does both with excellent manor though, so that IS
a huge plus,but otherweise he is almost* useless.

* he has a neck of surprising you thou,but unfortunately
his brilliance (read; surpriseness) comes way too rarely to be usefull

As a defenseman, you should be able to do a lot more than that

 

[Machinehead]

http://hockeyanalysis.com/2015/03/21/zone-starts-and-impact-on-players-statistics/

"At the micro level yes, the location of face offs impacts outcomes. On the macro or aggregate level they are minimal."

https://puckplusplus.com/2015/01/20...-lot-on-their-own-not-that-much-in-aggregate/

"While each individual adjustment factor seems to be quite large when compared to the On-The-Fly weights, after we apply these factors to each player’s seasonal results from the past 5 years we see that the effect of the adjustment is small for most of the league: 80% of the players saw their numbers move up or down by less than 0.5%, and only 79 of 3275 qualifying players showed a delta either way of more than 1%."

http://hockeyanalysis.com/2013/03/14/do-zone-starts-really-matter/

"All of this is to say that coaching strategy (at least player usage strategy) is probably not a significant factor in the statistical performance of the players or the outcomes of games"

The zone start garbage was debunked like three years ago, but people who don't pay attention to advanced stats -surprise, surprise- are just starting to notice and are trying to use it now.

 

[Blitzago*]

Can you and all leaf fans pls stop saying Gardiner is a top-4. He just isn't.

I get he's a good skater and looks flashy to your eyes. But he isn't a top-4. He's an egregious -38 over the last 2 seasons. By comparison, Dion utter Phaneuf was only a -15. He only earned 17 mins/game last year on a team that is screaming for help on D. By comparison, Matt absolute Hunwick averaged over 18.

He's also God awful in analytics. Not awful just because he's a leaf, but awful relative to his teammates. He also by no means has difficult match ups in comparison to the leafs top pairing over this span.

In every single metric on earth other than "he looks fast and good", Gardiner is an offensively oriented 3rd pairing defender at best. He played forward for a lot of his life and will probably never develop the defensive instincts to excel at the position. He has a good toolbox, but that is it

You should probably not comment when you have zero clue about what you're talking about.

Not even being a Toronto fan, he is easily a 3-4 right now.

But keep spewing garbage with the little knowledge you have.

 

[Artorius Horus T]

Some you of you debunk his low negative +/-
and give you every possible reason why he has a big - number.

But there is a real reason why his number is so poor,
his front and back of the net defending is out straight horrible
after 7 seasons he still makes those idiotic mistakes
in his own end,his read of the game in that area is just so poor.
Doesn't block shots,doesn't hit,doesn't take penalties

He is soft for a guy who is 6 foot 1 and change who weighs 210 pounds.

 

[Ducks in a row]

This trade would doom the Leafs,for good.
Fowler is so over rated.

JVR is way better as a forward,what Fowler is a defeseman.

Sensational rookie season,after that...
a whole lot of hype,with almost zero improvement to this day.

2 pros:
-forwards skating with the puck
-neutral zone passing

What it means is, he can carry the puck from the d
and pass the puck to your team mates in the neutral zone,
he does both with excellent manor though, so that IS
a huge plus,but otherweise he is almost* useless.

* he has a neck of surprising you thou,but unfortunately
his brilliance (read; surpriseness) comes way too rarely to be usefull

As a defenseman, you should be able to do a lot more than that

Fowler rookie season he was most productive offensively but if you think he hasn't improved much as a player then your crazy. He is better defensively then he was. In the playoffs in his career 4 goals 20 assists 24 points in 49 games being a +9 averaging over 23 min a game. He is a better player then he gets credit for.

 

[Ducks DVM]

http://hockeyanalysis.com/2015/03/21/zone-starts-and-impact-on-players-statistics/

"At the micro level yes, the location of face offs impacts outcomes. On the macro or aggregate level they are minimal."

https://puckplusplus.com/2015/01/20...-lot-on-their-own-not-that-much-in-aggregate/

"While each individual adjustment factor seems to be quite large when compared to the On-The-Fly weights, after we apply these factors to each player’s seasonal results from the past 5 years we see that the effect of the adjustment is small for most of the league: 80% of the players saw their numbers move up or down by less than 0.5%, and only 79 of 3275 qualifying players showed a delta either way of more than 1%."

http://hockeyanalysis.com/2013/03/14/do-zone-starts-really-matter/

"All of this is to say that coaching strategy (at least player usage strategy) is probably not a significant factor in the statistical performance of the players or the outcomes of games"

The zone start garbage was debunked like three years ago, but people who don't pay attention to advanced stats -surprise, surprise- are just starting to notice and are trying to use it now.

Is there any work looking at if the score of the game has a correlation to any of this?

 

[Machinehead]

Is there any work looking at if the score of the game has a correlation to any of this?

Not in conjunction with zone starts to my knowledge but score effects are huge. That's where you wanna go if you wanna find context, as opposed to zone starts.

That, and quality of teammates.

That's why (since it's been brought up many times in this thread) Rangers fans still like McDonagh even though his raw stats aren't great. The Rangers lead an abnormal amount of time because they score a lot and get goaltending, so his score effects are ****. Plus, he plays with Dan Girardi, so his QoT is absolutely embarrassing.

And I still think he's overrated regardless, but that's just me.

 

[Nithoniniel]

Some you of you debunk his low negative +/-
and give you every possible reason why he has a big - number.

But there is a real reason why his number is so poor,
his front and back of the net defending is out straight horrible
after 7 seasons he still makes those idiotic mistakes
in his own end,his read of the game in that area is just so poor.
Doesn't block shots,doesn't hit,doesn't take penalties

He is soft for a guy who is 6 foot 1 and change who weighs 210 pounds.

Even if you ignore the problems with +/-, you're still incorrect. Compared to his team over his time in the league, he's on for less goals against than average. The team doesn't score as well with him on the ice though. Simply put, he ends up negative because while he doesn't get a lot of minuses, he gets even fewer pluses.

 

[LeafingTheWay]

Some you of you debunk his low negative +/-
and give you every possible reason why he has a big - number.

But there is a real reason why his number is so poor,
his front and back of the net defending is out straight horrible
after 7 seasons he still makes those idiotic mistakes
in his own end,his read of the game in that area is just so poor.
Doesn't block shots,doesn't hit,doesn't take penalties

He is soft for a guy who is 6 foot 1 and change who weighs 210 pounds.

That's not true at all. As a Gardiner fan and being into analytics, I've realized that watching hockey makes a person extremely biased. If you already think Gardiner is prone to making bad plays, you're actually actively looking out for his bad plays during the season. It's highly likely that you'll pass over his many perfect small plays because they're 'small' and to the human eye, small plays are not interesting enough to be remembered in the long term. It's the big plays that are remembered. Gardiner, Stralman, Hjarmlsson, etc are never going to be remembered for their big plays. Heck they won't even be appreciated until playoff exposure or they make a random big play (Guarantee Hjarmlsson, Stralman wouldn't have gotten appreciated at all if Chicago and then NYR/Tampa didn't make it deep in the playoffs).

And get this, this is funny to me: People pass over on the majority of small plays. So Riellys many bad small plays defensively don't get remembered, while Gardiners many small good plays don't get remembered. In the long run (I.e end of season), people remember the macro events. They remember 1) Big plays 2) Rielly played top pairing more D starts, while Gardiner played 2nd pairing

I can't wait till the Leafs make it into the playoffs and then people finally understand. He's a low end #2 but gets talked about like he's a #4.

 

[LEAFANFORLIFE23]

That's not true at all. As a Gardiner fan and being into analytics, I've realized that watching hockey makes a person extremely biased. If you already think Gardiner is prone to making bad plays, you're actually actively looking out for his bad plays during the season. It's highly likely that you'll pass over his many perfect small plays because they're 'small' and to the human eye, small plays are not interesting enough to be remembered in the long term. It's the big plays that are remembered. Gardiner, Stralman, Hjarmlsson, etc are never going to be remembered for their big plays. Heck they won't even be appreciated until playoff exposure or they make a random big play (Guarantee Hjarmlsson, Stralman wouldn't have gotten appreciated at all if Chicago and then NYR/Tampa didn't make it deep in the playoffs).

And get this, this is funny to me: People pass over on the majority of small plays. So Riellys many bad small plays defensively don't get remembered, while Gardiners many small good plays don't get remembered. In the long run (I.e end of season), people remember the macro events. They remember 1) Big plays 2) Rielly played top pairing more D starts, while Gardiner played 2nd pairing

I can't wait till the Leafs make it into the playoffs and then people finally understand. He's a low end #2 but gets talked about like he's a #4.

I love Gradiner but he's a #3 not a #2

 

[Ducks DVM]

Not in conjunction with zone starts to my knowledge but score effects are huge. That's where you wanna go if you wanna find context, as opposed to zone starts.

That, and quality of teammates.

That's why (since it's been brought up many times in this thread) Rangers fans still like McDonagh even though his raw stats aren't great. The Rangers lead an abnormal amount of time because they score a lot and get goaltending, so his score effects are ****. Plus, he plays with Dan Girardi, so his QoT is absolutely embarrassing.

And I still think he's overrated regardless, but that's just me.

That needs to be done to validate those conclusions, because as you said the effects are huge. It's pretty lazy thinking to average times when teams are trying to generate shots with those when they aren't, then say that there's no effect based on zone starts. There may not BE a difference in results, but it's pretty shoddy work to just assume that there isn't. That's my main issue with advanced stats in hockey - an assumption is made without necessarily checking all the facts, and it becomes dogma.

 

[JetsHomer]

Can you and all leaf fans pls stop saying Gardiner is a top-4. He just isn't.

I get he's a good skater and looks flashy to your eyes. But he isn't a top-4. He's an egregious -38 over the last 2 seasons. By comparison, Dion utter Phaneuf was only a -15. He only earned 17 mins/game last year on a team that is screaming for help on D. By comparison, Matt absolute Hunwick averaged over 18.

He's also God awful in analytics. Not awful just because he's a leaf, but awful relative to his teammates. He also by no means has difficult match ups in comparison to the leafs top pairing over this span.

In every single metric on earth other than "he looks fast and good", Gardiner is an offensively oriented 3rd pairing defender at best. He played forward for a lot of his life and will probably never develop the defensive instincts to excel at the position. He has a good toolbox, but that is it

There is just soooo much wrong with this post? +/- as evidence of anything? Gardiner only played 17 minutes a games? Gardiner is 'awful' at anaytics? Especially relative to teammates? Literally all of these claims are factually inaccurate. Most are true of Cam Fowler oddly enough, but Jake Gardiner? Nah

 

[4thline]

http://hockeyanalysis.com/2015/03/21/zone-starts-and-impact-on-players-statistics/

"At the micro level yes, the location of face offs impacts outcomes. On the macro or aggregate level they are minimal."

https://puckplusplus.com/2015/01/20...-lot-on-their-own-not-that-much-in-aggregate/

"While each individual adjustment factor seems to be quite large when compared to the On-The-Fly weights, after we apply these factors to each player’s seasonal results from the past 5 years we see that the effect of the adjustment is small for most of the league: 80% of the players saw their numbers move up or down by less than 0.5%, and only 79 of 3275 qualifying players showed a delta either way of more than 1%."

http://hockeyanalysis.com/2013/03/14/do-zone-starts-really-matter/

"All of this is to say that coaching strategy (at least player usage strategy) is probably not a significant factor in the statistical performance of the players or the outcomes of games"

The zone start garbage was debunked like three years ago, but people who don't pay attention to advanced stats -surprise, surprise- are just starting to notice and are trying to use it now.

Statistically valid findings, but scientifically assbackwards process. There's a reason important research is conducted with experimental control and clinical trials that trump the raw epidemiological data.

Taking a clearly shown fundamental relationship, introducing a myriad of uncontrolled confounding variables, then failing to model an adjustment for the fundamental relationship doesn't invalidate the relationship, it means that the adjustment model isn't up to snuff.

 

[garyturner3]

Can you and all leaf fans pls stop saying Gardiner is a top-4. He just isn't.

I get he's a good skater and looks flashy to your eyes. But he isn't a top-4. He's an egregious -38 over the last 2 seasons. By comparison, Dion utter Phaneuf was only a -15. He only earned 17 mins/game last year on a team that is screaming for help on D. By comparison, Matt absolute Hunwick averaged over 18.

He's also God awful in analytics. Not awful just because he's a leaf, but awful relative to his teammates. He also by no means has difficult match ups in comparison to the leafs top pairing over this span.

In every single metric on earth other than "he looks fast and good", Gardiner is an offensively oriented 3rd pairing defender at best. He played forward for a lot of his life and will probably never develop the defensive instincts to excel at the position. He has a good toolbox, but that is it

Wow. It's hard to even know how to respond to this it's just so far gone. If it's not a troll job I have serious concerns for this poster.....

 

[LeafingTheWay]

I love Gradiner but he's a #3 not a #2

I shouldn't be numbering, but then what's Rielly? A #4 right now?

To me, a #2 should be able to carry any partner he's given and produce average-good results when put in difficult usages (So: ****** QoT, hard zone starts, etc). Gardiner's done that for a while now, contrary to what people 'remember'. A #1 should be able to play in the same situations above as specfiied but produce dominating results (I.e Doughty, Karlsson, Keith, Hedman, Subban, Vlasic, Brodie, etc).

 

[CommaSynapse]

I shouldn't be numbering, but then what's Rielly? A #4 right now?

To me, a #2 should be able to carry any partner he's given and produce average-good results when put in difficult usages (So: ****** QoT, hard zone starts, etc). Gardiner's done that for a while now, contrary to what people 'remember'. A #1 should be able to play in the same situations above as specfiied but produce dominating results (I.e Doughty, Karlsson, Keith, Hedman, Subban, Vlasic, Brodie, etc).

I generally agree with your definition, but my only concern is if your #1 is more defense-oriented, it's going to make it far more difficult to have those dominating results. I think it's possible a #1 could end up looking like a #2 or #3 depending upon how they're deployed and the particular defensive system the team employs.

I think these are good guidelines to have the conversation, but I think you could make a case for some types, as a lot of the ones you listed are more like offensive guys with good defensive games.

Just as a homer example...Ryan McDonagh. A seasons or two ago, he was in the conversation as a top-10 d-man in the league when Girardi was playing well and he had more of an offensive leash to really play his game. Now, he's generally out of that conversation, but he also brought the Rangers to the cup finals and multiple deep playoff runs as a #1 with a declining Dan Girardi as his predominant partner. Certainly, he is looking more like a #2 despite very much being a #1 calibre player.

Honestly, I'm just out of it at work and nit-picking for the sake of conversation. Apologies!

 

[HockeyGuruPitka]

I'd love Fowler on the leafs but because this is from Eklund it's almost certain we aren't actually in on Fowler..

 

[Liferleafer]

I'd love Fowler on the leafs but because this is from Eklund it's almost certain we aren't actually in on Fowler..

True...but other than the "Days of our Vesey Lives" soap opera, what the Hell else is there to talk about?