Dear Advanced Statisticians, The Leafs Are Here To Play
Posted 11:14 PM ET | Comments 4
The Toronto Maple Leafs are 6-1 to start the season. All of last season people were predicting the Leafs "puck luck" to dry up. Apparently their scoring percentage was too high and it was not a number that they could maintain. We shall see about that.
The truth is the Leafs do in fact get out shot a large majority of the time and normally that leads to losses among other teams in the NHL. Yet somehow the Leafs manage to continue winning. For some reason I keep hearing Rick Ross yelling "All I Do is Win."
Yes there are many signs that Toronto will regress, myself being a little skeptical. However they have continued to find ways to win under Randy Carlyle. Coincidence? I guess we shall see.
Last year, after so many years of failure to make the post-season I may have been very incline to agree. This year though, I'm not so sure. This Leaf squad has managed to win despite key injuries throughout the lineup including the win tonight without top-6 wingers James van Reimsdyk who was injured tonight and David Clarkson who is out with a 10 game suspension.
Some popular Leaf media outlets suggested that the Leafs would be lucky have a .500 record over their first 10 games without Clarkson and that was before forwards such as Nikolai Kulemin and JVR went down.
They just keep finding a way to win. It truly is shocking to see.
I certainly didn't expect such a hot start from Toronto. I doubt any popular sources would have predicted this. The Leafs have defied the advanced statistician who continue to babble on about puck possession stats (which in my mind is very much mislabeled since it does not in fact take into account the amount of time a given team possess the puck) who continuously predict them to go into a deep spiral.
Yet thus so far they continue to impress. It is fantastic the results they have produced over the first seven games of the season and if this is any indication of things to come it would be amazing. While I don't see things going quite so swimmingly throughout the season, I expect big things from a very potent Leafs offense, especially once they get healthy.
The truth is the Leafs do in fact get out shot a large majority of the time and normally that leads to losses among other teams in the NHL. Yet somehow the Leafs manage to continue winning. For some reason I keep hearing Rick Ross yelling "All I Do is Win."
Yes there are many signs that Toronto will regress, myself being a little skeptical. However they have continued to find ways to win under Randy Carlyle. Coincidence? I guess we shall see.
Last year, after so many years of failure to make the post-season I may have been very incline to agree. This year though, I'm not so sure. This Leaf squad has managed to win despite key injuries throughout the lineup including the win tonight without top-6 wingers James van Reimsdyk who was injured tonight and David Clarkson who is out with a 10 game suspension.
Some popular Leaf media outlets suggested that the Leafs would be lucky have a .500 record over their first 10 games without Clarkson and that was before forwards such as Nikolai Kulemin and JVR went down.
They just keep finding a way to win. It truly is shocking to see.
I certainly didn't expect such a hot start from Toronto. I doubt any popular sources would have predicted this. The Leafs have defied the advanced statistician who continue to babble on about puck possession stats (which in my mind is very much mislabeled since it does not in fact take into account the amount of time a given team possess the puck) who continuously predict them to go into a deep spiral.
Yet thus so far they continue to impress. It is fantastic the results they have produced over the first seven games of the season and if this is any indication of things to come it would be amazing. While I don't see things going quite so swimmingly throughout the season, I expect big things from a very potent Leafs offense, especially once they get healthy.
Good teams find a way to win, while teams like Mtl and Ottawa always have excuses why they lost. A penalty that want called or the refs had it in for them...
Corsi is lame..big whoop they got only 18 shots againts Minny, the had 4 pk in the 1st period alone and thats how minny plays..its the 4 goals scored againts Minnys 1 is all that counts...6 -1 now LOL
Ok the stats are just that and can be spun any way you want really. Wonderfull thing about the numbers.Other than the breakaways which, hey Reims bailed your butts out last night, the shots were not really all that high percentage. Not to mention the Leafs yes are high in giveaways, but as mentioned last night also are high on takeaways too. Seems they give it then get it right back in mosty cases. Good goaltending and a team focus to competing is what wins games and the Leafs continue to have that. They do not give up out there and they are proving the naysayers wrong by it. That said, against better teams like Detroit and Boston etc you have to have better puck control and limit mistakes. This is a young team learning and growing and will only get better as time passes. They are just at the start of being a dominant team. Patience, something the marketplace is not known for, is the simple order of the day here.
Here is an interesting quote from Carlyle, Leafs fear their house of cards will soon collapse. "6-1 is only a stat."