Team defense (11-12 Comparison)

[SnowblindNYR]

Another thing to consider is that LW is the weakest position in the league in general. It was a good position for a while, but not anymore. Hell historically it's the weakest position in the league.

 

[SnowblindNYR]

No it's not. It's inflating our stats while keeping every other team's the same.

Except, there's an actual reason to inflate our stats. Are we going to take away 10 randomly bad games from all teams that just had a slump? We're not taking away a slump, we're taking away a transition period. The Flyers are another team that has a great excuse and I HATE the Flyers. The Wings and Pens also have good excuses but for different reasons. If you can't see the difference between 10 games where our team was transitioning to a new coach and 10 games where the Bruins had a slump, for example, then you're just being stubbornly pessimistic.

 

[GoAwayPanarin]

You'd then have to remove 10 [bad] games from every other team, no?

If every team started the first 9 games of the season on the road and were going through a change in coaches/systems then yes.

Also, its not like I hand picked the ten worst games of the season and adjusted the numbers.

 

[aufheben]

You're comparing adjusted stats with non-adjusted stats.

If every team started the first 9 games of the season on the road and were going through a change in coaches/systems then yes.

Also, its not like I hand picked the ten worst games of the season and adjusted the numbers.

And here is the subjectivity. Removing our games based on what you think are good reasons, while every other team doesn't receive the same benefit.

 

[Bleed Ranger Blue]

No it's not. It's inflating our stats while keeping every other team's the same. Logical fallacy supported by subjective justifications.

Agreed.

And if you want to play that game, you'll have to ask yourself if the Rangers had a better 2nd half because they adjusted or if the competition subsided.

Total assumption on my part, Im sure the #'s geeks can confirm, but it seemed like the Rangers had an easier schedule in the last half of the season.

And if so, we now discount that while adhering to the notion that the Rangers were adjusting during the first part of the season? It doesn't add up.

 

[SnowblindNYR]

You're comparing adjusted stats with non-adjusted stats.



And here is the subjectivity. Removing our games based on what you think are good reasons, while every other team doesn't receive the same benefit.



Yeah, I'M the stubborn one in this conversation.

There are a handful of teams that for one reason or another played terribly for a stretch during the season that has to do with more than normal season fluctuation. Not every team dealt with the same adversity. The Wings would have been better without the injuries and if Nyquist played the whole season. The Pens would be better without all of their injuries. The Flyers had a coaching change. But that's not the case for all 30 teams. The fact that you completely ignore that is amazing. Hell, we played one of the best teams in the league to stalemate without our best player when our system was solid at the end of the season (the Avs), in fact we were a minute away from winning. Imagine playing without McDonagh to start the season. Getting used to the system was HUGE. Teams can overcome big injuries with a solid system. The Pens in 10-11 played most of the season without Malkin and Crosby and almost won a round. Adapting to the system was a HUGE deal.

 

[aufheben]

There are a handful of teams that for one reason or another played terribly for a stretch during the season that has to do with more than normal season fluctuation. Not every team dealt with the same adversity. The Wings would have been better without the injuries and if Nyquist played the whole season. The Pens would be better without all of their injuries. The Flyers had a coaching change. But that's not the case for all 30 teams. The fact that you completely ignore that is amazing. Hell, we played one of the best teams in the league to stalemate without our best player when our system was solid at the end of the season (the Avs), in fact we were a minute away from winning. Imagine playing without McDonagh to start the season. Getting used to the system was HUGE. Teams can overcome big injuries with a solid system. The Pens in 10-11 played most of the season without Malkin and Crosby and almost won a round. Adapting to the system was a HUGE deal.

It's a logical fallacy. Adjusting our stats for subjective reasons, and then comparing them to the rest of the league, who is unsurprisingly left untouched. It doesn't matter what your reasons are, you're comparing ADJUSTED stats to NON-ADJUSTED stats.

You yourself say that we're not the only team that dealt with adversity.

"If you take out 10 of the Ranger's games, they look better compared to the other 29 teams, who were left untouched, because...I think ____, _____, and _____". Yeah. No ****.

 

[eco's bones]

The Rangers defense this year is better than the 11-12 defense. McDonagh is a better player and still has room to improve. Staal is not--more or less due to injuries. Girardi and Stralman are about the same. Klein replaces Mike Sauer pretty well. Sauer was a bit more physical but Klein is a better skater. Moore or Diaz are not better than DZ was that year but both are much better than what DZ is now. I'd rank Moore slightly ahead of Diaz but I'm confident that either paired with Klein are going to be a good pairing.

Center we don't have a legit 1st line center. Stepan is the best guy. A well rounded player but he has skating issues. Brassard is next best. To me Richards career is a ticking time bomb now. There are two things I pray for this year--a Stanley Cup (very unlikely to get that) and a healthy post playoffs Richards that we can and do amnesty this summer.

Rangers lack size on the wings. They lack grittiness. We are deeper throughout the lineup though and our defense is stronger. Our 4th line isn't a joke and we have a couple acceptable fill ins if someone gets injured.

A lot of how far we go will depend on Nash and St. Louis. Our defense and goaltending are amongst the best. If our best forwards produce we could go far.

 

[SnowblindNYR]

It's a logical fallacy. Adjusting our stats for subjective reasons, and then comparing them to the rest of the league, who is unsurprisingly left untouched. It doesn't matter what your reasons are, you're comparing ADJUSTED stats to NON-ADJUSTED stats.

You yourself say that we're not the only team that dealt with adversity.

"If you take out 10 of the Ranger's games, they look better compared to the other 29 teams, who were left untouched, because...I think ____, _____, and _____". Yeah. No ****.

We're not, I would be delusional to ever say that. But it's not a logical fallacy. A logical fallacy is including a 10 game stretch of a team that was adjusting to a coach. If you actually think that that wasn't a legit excuse for the horrible stretch then I don't know what to tell you. I guess 9-2, 6-0, and 5-3 back to back is a solid representation of this team.

It's like you're flipped a coin 81 times, and find out that the first 10 it actually was a rigged coin for heads. Sure I get that other teams dealt with some adversity but the Rangers' coin was more rigged than the vast majority of the league.

 

[aufheben]

We're not, I would be delusional to ever say that. But it's not a logical fallacy. A logical fallacy is including a 10 game stretch of a team that was adjusting to a coach. If you actually think that that wasn't a legit excuse for the horrible stretch then I don't know what to tell you. I guess 9-2, 6-0, and 5-3 back to back is a solid representation of this team.

It's like you're flipped a coin 81 times, and find out that the first 10 it actually was a rigged coin for heads. Sure I get that other teams dealt with some adversity but the Rangers' coin was more rigged than the vast majority of the league.

Tweaking our record based on subjectivity and comparing it to other untouched records isn't a fallacy, but keeping everyone's record untouched is the fallacy?

This is literally like trying to explain to someone how 2+2=5 is incorrect.

 

[SnowblindNYR]

Tweaking our record based on subjectivity and comparing it to other untouched records isn't a fallacy, but keeping everyone's record untouched is the fallacy?

This is literally like trying to explain to someone how 2+2=5 is incorrect.

It's a guide, it's not a perfect system. It just shows that the Rangers have been a good offense since the terrible but explainable start. I'm not sure anyone said we were the 8th best offense. It's just a guide to show that we were much better than 16th. Taking out the first 10 games and comparing it to all games for other teams is not a perfect system but it's a better representation than leaving those 10 games in.

Not using subjective interpretation of stats is how you get a poster saying that in a game the Rangers tied at 1, seconds after the Devils took a 1-0 lead, we lost because we gave up the first goal. Not taking context into consideration is how you get abuse.

 

[SnowblindNYR]

aufheben, I never pegged you as someone that didn't understand how important context is in stats. It's not a difficult concept.

 

[aufheben]

No it's not perfect, it's a trivial and fallacious number. You're applying a context the Rangers, and disregarding the context for every other team. It's complete nonsense.

'If you take out the first 10 games (which I think is fair) '

Distortion based on subjectivity.

'they're at 2.87 GPG which would place them 8th in the league. A 71 game sample size is pretty significant.'

Ranking our tweaked stats against untouched teams.

 

[SnowblindNYR]

No it's not perfect, it's a trivial and fallacious number.

So is our 16th position considering we had to deal with a coaching change, injuries, and a hellacious road trip to start the season all in one. The latter two not being so out of the ordinary, but considering the radical system change it just magnified it. If we got the same injuries and trip halfway through the season the results would be quite a bit different, at least in the amount of goals scored and given up. Including 10 games that were clearly a team adjusting to a coach is is trivial and fallacious, not excluding them. Excluding them is a guide and not perfect. Including them is completely deceiving. I can't believe you're too stubborn to understand the context of subjective interpretation of stats. There's a reason why there are analysts in Wall Street and not just computers. You actually need a brain and not a computer spitting out numbers.

 

[aufheben]

I understand applying context to stats, my problem is that you guys only do it to the Rangers to make them look better.

 

[Inferno]

The Rangers defensive system is average to mediocre, when we're actually defending.

i think the reason the numbers are what they are is because of our OFFENSIVE system.

We've got the puck more.

The other team has the puck less.

The other team gets fewer chances to put pucks on net.

When they do have the puck, we get caught scrambling around all over the place. Teams that can possess the puck as well as us destroy our defensive system to pieces. the slot is wide open WAY too often.

Our defense could be a lot better. Our offense is whats skewing the numbers imho.

 

[aufheben]

So is our 16th position considering we had to deal with a coaching change, injuries, and a hellacious road trip to start the season all in one. The latter two not being so out of the ordinary, but considering the radical system change it just magnified it. If we got the same injuries and trip halfway through the season the results would be quite a bit different, at least in the amount of goals scored and given up. Including 10 games that were clearly a team adjusting to a coach is is trivial and fallacious, not excluding them. Excluding them is a guide and not perfect. Including them is completely deceiving. I can't believe you're too stubborn to understand the context of subjective interpretation of stats. There's a reason why there are analysts in Wall Street and not just computers. You actually need a brain and not a computer spitting out numbers.

My problem isn't that you're excluding our stats, it's that you're leaving EVERY other team untouched.

 

[SnowblindNYR]

I understand applying context to stats, my problem is that you guys only do it to the Rangers to make them look better.

Considering, we're not actually doing an official report and using it as a guide, I don't think anyone is willing to sit through and think of all of the issues some teams faced. If you want, you can take away some games from Philly, Detroit, and Pitt. But leaving the 10 games is even worse than taking them out.

 

[Inferno]

aufheben.

i bet if you ran the stats readjusted to removing the first 9 games of every team in the NHL, it would still be pretty much the same thing...our EVERYTHING improves.

 

[SnowblindNYR]

The Rangers defensive system is average to mediocre, when we're actually defending.

i think the reason the numbers are what they are is because of our OFFENSIVE system.

We've got the puck more.

The other team has the puck less.

The other team gets fewer chances to put pucks on net.

When they do have the puck, we get caught scrambling around all over the place. Teams that can possess the puck as well as us destroy our defensive system to pieces. the slot is wide open WAY too often.

Our defense could be a lot better. Our offense is whats skewing the numbers imho.

Yeah, too bad they're not sitting in their zone all game blocking shots. That's a TRUE defensive team.

 

[McDunna with Fries]

I think another point to add along with everyone else's here is that offensive is the best form of defense. We have some SOLID puck possession lines. Our 3rd and 4th lines almost always have the puck. If we always have the puck, the other team can't score. Simple as that.

edit: unless Kreider beats Lundqvist, but that only happened once!

 

[SnowblindNYR]

You can't be a good puck possession team without being good in your zone. Because we're able to play in our zone, we don't spend much time there.

The Hawks and Sharks are two of the best puck possession teams in the league. Outside of the outlier 9-2 game, we allowed 4 goals total in 3 games against these teams. Hell the Bruins had one really good offensive game against us when Lundqvist was **** and people's perception has changed. People seem to think we gave up 5 goals in each game against them. We gave up 5 goals in the first 2 games. It was our offense was the problem in those games (not finishing, not talking about possession).

 

[aufheben]

aufheben.

i bet if you ran the stats readjusted to removing the first 9 games of every team in the NHL, it would still be pretty much the same thing...our EVERYTHING improves.

That's fine, my point was that ranking a tampered stat against untampered stats produces a meaningless number. It's a fallacy. Although I'm sure if it was -31- and not me who pointed it out, they'd all be singing his praises.

 

[OverTheCap]

The Rangers defensive system is average to mediocre, when we're actually defending.

i think the reason the numbers are what they are is because of our OFFENSIVE system.

We've got the puck more.

The other team has the puck less.

The other team gets fewer chances to put pucks on net.

When they do have the puck, we get caught scrambling around all over the place. Teams that can possess the puck as well as us destroy our defensive system to pieces. the slot is wide open WAY too often.

Our defense could be a lot better. Our offense is whats skewing the numbers imho.

That's a fairly accurate assessment of our defense... we have the puck a lot so we don't have to defend as much, but when we do our coverage isn't great. Slot coverage has been one of my biggest gripes this year.

 

[True Blue]

No it's not. It's inflating our stats while keeping every other team's the same. Logical fallacy supported by subjective justifications.

Not to mention that saying things like "most teams did not have to deal with what the Rangers had to deal with" is nothing but an excuse to use creative statistical methods.