GDT: Sabres vs Kings 7 PM ET - TV:MSG Radio: WGR550 - 2024-25 Home Opener!

[Gras]

The analytics are based on the underlying assumption of average shooting skill/finish and average goaltender performance.

The Sabres are shooting like really awful crap right now. But outside of that one save from Markstrom in game 1, I don’t think they’ve really been getting “goalied”.

We heavily out chanced the Kings last night, nearly shutting them out from any chances at 5v5 in the 1st and 2nd periods. But we’ve got no finish in us right now at all.

McCloud had one last night on a wrap around, though I think if it was on his forehand he probably scores there.

 

[Havok89]

Yeah, rewatching that Dahlin play again today makes me sick.

 

[Jim Bob]

The puck luck has been beyond bad for the top 2 pairs.

 

[toddkaz]

It's a weird stat because staring 0-3 shouldn't be met with well only 5 teams have done it and made the playoffs, there are so many different factors that play into a teams success. I would expect a lot of playoff teams might lose 3 or 4 in a row this year.

Considering Ottawa handled Florida, I wouldn't say it is a given that we will be 0-4, but we will see

But statistically speaking those are the odds.

You can spin it any way you want but thats how statistics work.

If Buffalo goes 0-4 and loses to Florida it's only gonna get worse.

The good news is they can always buck the trend.

If only 20% of teams make the playoffs after starting 0-4 then statistically speaking Buffalo has a 20% chance of making the playoffs.

I would imagine betting sites will adjust towards these statistics especially the more games played that go in that direction.

You have a lot of confidence in this team you should go bet on Buffalo to make the playoffs if they lose to Florida. You will make a killing.

 

[Doug Prishpreed]

View attachment 915259

The puck luck has been beyond bad for the top 2 pairs.

What about ES?

 

[Jim Bob]

What about ES?

 

[Doug Prishpreed]

View attachment 915264

Funny, all the complaining about Joki and he seems fine

 

[DapperCam]

To my eye the defense has looked fine. It's the forwards that don't seem to realize the season has started.

 

[sabremike]

The most infuriating thing about last night was the failure to get the game into OT to at least earn a point. Not compiling loser points killed us last season, they have to learn how to get games into OT when it's tied late.

 

[SundherDome]

Ottawa is a far better team than us IMO. They just had historically bad goaltending last year. Their GM went out and fixed it by getting ullmark despite ullmark not wanting to go there. Then Their GM was able to extend ullmark.

I honestly don't feel like we are in the same class as Ottawa with good goaltending. We don't have a Tkachuk or a stutzle.

I'd disagree there. Ottawa's defense is a big liability. Also 8.25 for Ullmark is rough.

 

[Doug Prishpreed]

View attachment 915264

xGF% is a really bad stat to use for defensemen IMO. For starters, every source seems to calculate it differently.

Natural Stat Trick has Dahlin with a 30% xGF% without Joki, and a 56% with him at Even Strength, for instance, which isn't representative of their actual play quality.

Line Stats - Natural Stat Trick

 

[Sabre the Win]

View attachment 915259

The puck luck has been beyond bad for the top 2 pairs.

Puck luck? or just terrible execution?

I get the saying behind puck luck but skating thru life hoping on luck to get you thru it is not sustainable.

All players need to will it.

We've have been complaining about bad puck luck forever now. No more excuses.

 

[Ace]

I don’t know who can watch these top six forwards play the last three games and say it’s some mystical puck luck and not a complete lack of finishing talent. The Cozens line is a disaster. Full stop. No luck involved. Tage hasn’t hit a net on purpose all year. Greenway interfered with a goalie in Europe and he got a lucky goal. His only one. Tuch is catching his own rebound away from full incompetence out there. Shit..I’d say his goal was luck too. Benson actually did get unlucky because time ran out and I’m not even sure the puck luck stats count it because it didn’t happen in the course of the game clock.

So who is getting so unlucky? McLeod, Greenway, Krebs and the 4th line?

I’ve got news for you. They aren’t unlucky. This is who they’ve always been. Something isn’t luck when it’s happening for years and years.

You know whats luck? Dylan Cozens shooting 14.7 percent in a contract year.

That’s luck

 

[pasaluki]

Honestly the Sabres played well objectively especially in the 2nd.
But thats what's already so demoralizing...

It's by far their best effort and level of play so far and it's unworthy of even a single point.

 

[BFLO]

xGF% is a really bad stat to use for defensemen IMO. For starters, every source seems to calculate it differently.

Natural Stat Trick has Dahlin with a 30% xGF% without Joki, and a 56% with him at Even Strength, for instance, which isn't representative of their actual play quality.

Line Stats - Natural Stat Trick

View attachment 915288

Even strength includes empty net situations, which is what is blowing up Dahlin’s xGA w/o joker.

Empty net goals are worth a lot of xGA since they have such a high likelihood of going in.

Edit: Dahlin and Joki have played zero minutes together with an empty net. Power and Dahlin are usually paired together at that point.

 

[dire wolf]

I get the saying behind puck luck but skating thru life hoping on luck to get you thru it is not sustainable.

All players need to will it.

We've have been complaining about bad puck luck forever now. No more excuses.

That's not how hockey works. Puck luck is a very real thing. Goals are statistically random or "noisy" events. Over the course of a season, the rate of scoring from certain areas tends to even out for any particular player (and even that isn't totally true). That is why advanced statisticians the look at things like shot quality and scoring chances instead of goals. The goals are fluky and unpredictable. The shot events are not.

Auston Matthews has a career shooting percentage of around 16.5%. So, only 1 in every 6 shots he takes becomes a goal. Whether any particular shot becomes a goal is a random event. Even for the league's best goal scorer, the chances of scoring are small. This isn't basketball.

Because there are a relatively low number of scoring attempts in any particular game (i.e., small-ish sample size), it is possible in a particular game for the random outcome of goals to deviate significantly from the expected outcome. Last night, the Sabres had bad puck luck. They scored fewer goals than you would expect given the shots and chances they had. I think that was obvious from the eye test.

[By the way, I'm sure you know all this already. I don't mean to be didactic. But all the doom and gloom in this thread is a bit over the top. They played well last night at 5v5 and had shit luck. (The PP is a different story)

I don’t know who can watch these top six forwards play the last three games and say it’s some mystical puck luck and not a complete lack of finishing talent. The Cozens line is a disaster. Full stop. No luck involved. Tage hasn’t hit a net on purpose all year. Greenway interfered with a goalie in Europe and he got a lucky goal. His only one. Tuch is catching his own rebound away from full incompetence out there. Shit..I’d say his goal was luck too. Benson actually did get unlucky because time ran out and I’m not even sure the puck luck stats count it because it didn’t happen in the course of the game clock.

So who is getting so unlucky? McLeod, Greenway, Krebs and the 4th line?

I’ve got news for you. They aren’t unlucky. This is who they’ve always been. Something isn’t luck when it’s happening for years and years.

You know whats luck? Dylan Cozens shooting 14.7 percent in a contract year.

That’s luck

Jim Fox (Kings' color commentator) had a good point last night. Once it became clear that Kuemper was having a great game and was so positionally sound (and huge), the Sabres started trying even more than usual to pick corners and edges, which is what led to all the posts and shots going wide. So, basically, it was a product of Kuemper being a wall.

 

[littletonhockeycoach]

That's not how hockey works. Puck luck is a very real thing. Goals are statistically random or "noisy" events. Over the course of a season, the rate of scoring from certain areas tends to even out for any particular player (and even that isn't totally true). That is why advanced statisticians the look at things like shot quality and scoring chances instead of goals. The goals are fluky and unpredictable. The shot events are not.

Auston Matthews has a career shooting percentage of around 16.5%. So, only 1 in every 6 shots he takes becomes a goal. Whether any particular shot becomes a goal is a random event. Even for the league's best goal scorer, the chances of scoring are small. This isn't basketball.

Because there are a relatively low number of scoring attempts in any particular game (i.e., small-ish sample size), it is possible in a particular game for the random outcome of goals to deviate significantly from the expected outcome. Last night, the Sabres had bad puck luck. They scored fewer goals than you would expect given the shots and chances they had. I think that was obvious from the eye test.

[By the way, I'm sure you know all this already. I don't mean to be didactic. But all the doom and gloom in this thread is a bit over the top. They played well last night at 5v5 and had shit luck. (The PP is a different story)


Jim Fox (Kings' color commentator) had a good point last night. Once it became clear that Kuemper was having a great game and was so positionally sound (and huge), the Sabres started trying even more than usual to pick corners and edges, which is what led to all the posts and shots going wide. So, basically, it was a product of Kuemper being a wall.

I liked you better when you were caustic, snarky and sarcastic........ lol

 

[Tatanka]

That's not how hockey works. Puck luck is a very real thing. Goals are statistically random or "noisy" events. Over the course of a season, the rate of scoring from certain areas tends to even out for any particular player (and even that isn't totally true). That is why advanced statisticians the look at things like shot quality and scoring chances instead of goals. The goals are fluky and unpredictable. The shot events are not.

Auston Matthews has a career shooting percentage of around 16.5%. So, only 1 in every 6 shots he takes becomes a goal. Whether any particular shot becomes a goal is a random event. Even for the league's best goal scorer, the chances of scoring are small. This isn't basketball.

Because there are a relatively low number of scoring attempts in any particular game (i.e., small-ish sample size), it is possible in a particular game for the random outcome of goals to deviate significantly from the expected outcome. Last night, the Sabres had bad puck luck. They scored fewer goals than you would expect given the shots and chances they had. I think that was obvious from the eye test.

[By the way, I'm sure you know all this already. I don't mean to be didactic. But all the doom and gloom in this thread is a bit over the top. They played well last night at 5v5 and had shit luck. (The PP is a different story)


Jim Fox (Kings' color commentator) had a good point last night. Once it became clear that Kuemper was having a great game and was so positionally sound (and huge), the Sabres started trying even more than usual to pick corners and edges, which is what led to all the posts and shots going wide. So, basically, it was a product of Kuemper being a wall.

Ok I'll play. Last year Jake Guentzel scored 30 goals. 27 came from within the house. The area 2 feet outside each post to the top of the circles. He lived there. More importantly he instinctively went there and operated there. With the exception of Benson, a second year player, most on this team couldn't find the house with Google maps, much less thrive there. The problem with this team isn't skill. Plenty can shoot. It is they can't be effective in the areas where it matters most. The team does not attack the goal. Rather they rely on a point based approach where the puck consistently is moved from the higher danger proximity to a lesser one with no real idea of how to get it back into the house. And as I said Benson is the only one truly effective playing there. So yes statically pdo will normalize, but it likely will not make a difference if the focus isn't to increase probability by playing in the high danger shot areas. Jmho.

 

[dire wolf]

Ok I'll play. Last year Jake Guentzel scored 30 goals. 27 came from within the house. The area 2 feet outside each post to the top of the circles. He lived there. More importantly he instinctively went there and operated there. With the exception of Benson, a second year player, most on this team couldn't find the house with Google maps, much less thrive there. The problem with this team isn't skill. Plenty can shoot. It is they can't be effective in the areas where it matters most. The team does not attack the goal. Rather they rely on a point based approach where the puck consistently is moved from the higher danger proximity to a lesser one with no real idea of how to get it back into the house. And as I said Benson is the only one truly effective playing there. So yes statically pdo will normalize, but it likely will not make a difference if the focus isn't to increase probability by playing in the high danger shot areas. Jmho.

Shot map says otherwise:

 

[MarkusKetterer]

Shot map says otherwise:

View attachment 915394

How the hell was there a shot from the Sabres directly behind the net?!

 

[Tatanka]

Shot map says otherwise:

View attachment 915394

Proves my point. They don’t know what do there. The shots were into the chest. One and done. They couldn’t finish. Watch a cycle and the first instinct when they get possession is to cycle to the point. The map is representative of all shots which include rush chances and the penalty shot. But as a team they are not skilled at playing the greasy close quarter game. With few exceptions.

 

[Gras]

How the hell was there a shot from the Sabres directly behind the net?!

McCloud wrap around I'd wager on

 

[Panthaz89]

So tired of the "they should have won" and the "they got goalied". I am a stats guy but you can't just lean on the stats all the time like they capture every single aspect of the game. This team gets "goalied" more often than most teams. Every year there are a dozen games where we joke about making a back up look like prime Hasek. At a certain point in time you need to stop just assuming every goaltender we face becomes super human and you need to acknowledge something is wrong with the way they play. Maybe its not captured in the stats, but something is still wrong.

I would guess that its still the lack of net front presence. If other teams get 11 scoring chances in a period the opposing goaltender is screened for most of them. He has to fight to see the puck. I would guess for ours, Kuemper probably had a clean look at most of them.

And posts? Tired of the posts excuse. You missed. Don't care anymore that a bunch of players almost had one. I hate the excuse when leaf fans use it for why matthews should have a billion more goals and I hate it when it is used to excuse our players. They missed the net, that's it. Doesn't matter if its a post or if they missed by 8 feet.

I never really get the goalie argument pretty much every shot we took the goalie could clearly see coming if we were forcing anything he would be on his back sprawling or would only see the back of jerseys. Our only goal was a rebound directly off his glove.

 

[BFLO]

Shot map says otherwise:

View attachment 915394

Uh… the shot map shows that 8 out of 77 corsi’s were “from the house”. Thus proving Tatanka’s point.