The Noon Number

Good times.

Since I’m useless when it comes to advanced stats, I’ll be the one to ask the stupid question.

These are great stats and the Caps are snakebit?

My take? “This is all they have been able to do with some pretty outstanding puck luck? It could get real ugly once that luck runs out…”

But feel free to take the optimistic read: “Dale Hunter is, just a handful of games into his first season coaching professional hockey, a phenomenal head coach whose team has been able to drive up both shooting and save percentages, and it’s only a matter of time before they turn around the possession numbers and start dominating the League.”

hunter clearly knows how to coach the goalies.

I’ve been critical too, but his size & toughness might help against SJS-non?

Let me put it another way – if the Caps had been a 1000 PDO team under Hunter, their goal differential (currently +3 under Dale) would be 21 goals worse, or -18. That’s more than half a goal per game… and would likely have meant we’d already be resigned to them missing the playoffs.

:: gulp ::

In reading some of the links on PDO, there are a few instances in which people are discussing players who are playing below the “average” hopefully “regressing” to the mean. Does anyone else take issue with that terminology? If you’re performing below the mean, and you start performing closer to the mean, haven’t you progressed to the mean?

You can look at this one of several ways:

*The Caps were very unlucky under Boudreau
*The Caps have been very lucky under Hunter
*The Caps were unlucky under Boudreau and have returned to a more normal “luck distribution” under Hunter – since 1021 is much more in-line with the Caps’ past PDOs.

The one ray of hope I can see is that perhaps the Caps’ are starting to get a better handle on the system over the last five games. They’ve been getting more SOG and not getting killed in the shot differential dept., excluding the Florida and Montreal games which they won in blowout fashion.

I put this in the same basket as Neil’s 17.4% number from the Clips today: if the Caps continue to play as they have played, they aren’t a very good team and they most likely don’t make the playoffs. That much was pretty evident to anyone who watched the games with even a hint of objectivity. You just don’t win many games when you get fewer than 20 shots.

I do think there’s some nuance that you can add to the analysis, though. They were horrid, just putrid, at the start of Hunter’s tenure. I feel like they’ve played a bit better in the last 3-5 games. Are they trending up? Or is it just a blip?

But as to the basic premise of the stat, that the Caps have had a good helping of puck luck during DH’s tenure, yes that agrees with what my eyes have told me.

More perspective on this PDO -

Caps PDO in the MTL playoff series was 972. (Ugh). That means that MTL’s PDO was was 1028. And they did that with a 10.4 Sh% and a .925 Sv%. Hunter’s Caps are at 9.9/.922 for a PDO of 1021.

In other words, over 1,000 shots-for, those Habs would have seen four more shots go in; over 1,000 shots-against, those Habs would have made three more saves. Over 2,000 shots on goal, those Habs would have seen 7 more shots go in their favor than Hunter’s Caps have.

2,000 shots is roughly 36 games based on Hunter’s average total SOG/game so far.

So seven goals in 36 games, or one every five games.

Meaning that Hunter’s Caps have only been slightly less puck-lucky than the Habs in that seven-game series, a series in which most observers had Montreal as incredibly lucky to have won, given the shot differentials.

In many ways, those Habs were what Dale’s Caps have been. It’s really not a recipe for long-term success.

A PDO regression to the mean could be mitigated by improved puck possession numbers, right? So while we can expect a smaller % of Caps’ shots to go in, and a higher % of opponents’ shots to go in, things should even out if the Corsi/Fenwick ratios improve. And the Caps might have turned a corner the past few in the Corsi/Fenwick/scoring chance department.

Whether the corner has really been turned…

JP and Rob Parker were pointing out that just because Thomas has a high save % doesn’t mean Boston has to have a low shooting percentage. So, in other words, how can save % be the best measure of goalie performance but yet PDO be almost completely luck?

As I understand PDO, it has to even out across all teams, I don’t see anything in the logical construct of that stat that says it has to even out for each individual team. Why can’t a team sustain a higher than average SV% and at least an averagae SH% (i.e. Boston)? Or more simply, how can an individual team’s SH% be connected to it’s SV%? Why would they have to jointly regress to a PDO of 1000. That makes zero sense to me. I get that the league has to regress to 1000 but I don’t at all see how one team’s PDO has to do that. Am I missing something?