Canucks Have Been Unlucky So Far -- Good Article

[JamesB]

Right now the Canucks are in 29th place out of 30 NHL teams in the league standings. And the only team behind them, Arizona, has two games in hand. The Canucks are on track for 69 pts. this season, about 25 points less than would probably be needed to make the playoffs. Why?

 

I have been critical of Benning and I have participated in the Benning vs. Analytics narrative. But maybe that is wrong and maybe Analytics is on Benning's side. Here is a good article from Omar at the Daily Hive:

 

Do Jim Benning and Trevor Linden pour over advanced stats for hours each day?

Let me explain.

On Friday, when Benning went into full positive spin mode, telling TSN 1040 the Canucks were only three wins out of first place in their division, jaws dropped across Vancouver.

Canucks fans aren’t clueless – five of the team’s seven wins had come after regulation time, and their record on the road was 1-6-1. Saying the team was just a few wins out of the playoffs, while mathematically true, felt like more than a stretch.

But here’s the thing – in Saturday’s Provies, Jason Botchford revealed Canucks players are receiving full advanced statistics packages after every game.

And looking at some of those stats, including expected goals, you’ll see that based on how they’ve been playing, Vancouver actually deserves more wins.

The results show that as both Benning and Linden have said many times, they’ve been a competitive team this season.

1. Expected Goals vs. Actual Goals

Expected goals is a measurement that’s been developed and refined by several in the analytics community. The calculation done by Emmanuel Perry at corsica.hockey includes a number of factors including shot type, distance, and angle.

The result is an educated approximation of the number of goals a team should score in any given game.

The reasons teams don’t score the “expected amounts” include randomness, bounces, special teams, and goaltending.

The chart below shows the difference between each team’s expected 5 vs. 5 goal differential and its actual goal differential as of Monday’s games (I used score and venue adjusted numbers in all cases).

(Open it in a new tab to view the image in full size)

Teams at the left of this graph have a lower number actual goals than expected goals, while teams at the right have more actual goals than expected goals.

What it shows is that Vancouver, Ottawa, and St. Louis have played much of the season at a certain level, while the scores haven’t shown it. Conversely, Chicago, the Rangers, and Montreal have been getting all sorts of puck luck, making them look like world beaters.

With Corey Crawford, Henrik Lundqvist, and Carey Price in net (and playing extremely well so far) for those three good teams, it makes sense they’re at that end of the spectrum. It also shows how reliant their results have been on goaltending.

After creating this chart, I looked at expected goals game-by-game through Vancouver’s schedule so far, and the results were more stark. The team’s record would be 10-8 (in one game both teams had a dead even xG, so I didn’t include it), rather than the actual 7-10-2.

2. PDO vs. expected PDO

You’ve probably heard of PDO as it’s one of the most well known advanced statistics. You can find an explanation here, but to keep it short, teams’ PDOs have been shown to regress to 100 as the season goes on.

You can see the current PDOs (as of Tuesday’s games) of NHL teams here:

As you can see, Vancouver has the lowest PDO in the league. History has shown that teams with low or high PDOs through the first quarter will come back to 100 as the season goes on.

For the Canucks, that means they’ll have a better shooting percentage and a better save percentage – which should translate into wins.

So what does all this mean for Canucks fans?

It means they’re better than a 65-point team, and if they keep playing how they have been, they could compete for one of those final playoff spots.

Which is exactly what you wanted to hear, right?

 

Omar

Daily Hive Vancouver sports writer

 

 

 

I find this pretty convincing. Based on this article I would expect "regression to the mean" in the remainder of the season. In this case that means improvement, not regressing.

I am still not sold on the Benning strategy. What the article tells me is that Canucks might "succeed" in the mission of competing seriously for a playoff spot and being a mediocre team in perpetuity. But they are not as bad as the results suggest so far and might actually achieve what Benning and Linden set out as the target for this year.

[Fateless]

Where's the "all of the above" option for the poll?

[JamesB]

3 minutes ago, Fateless said:

Where's the "all of the above" option for the poll?

Good point. Yes, all the above are relevant. But, to address your point I have edited the question to ask about the MOST IMPORTANT reason, and there is only one of those (barring ties).

[apollo]

Great article. I've noticed this while watching... we've deserved much better fate. 

Another thing contributing to this is the league evidently fixing games against us. But this isn't new or anything. 

I hope before the Sedins retire or I die I see a fairly officiated season for the Canucks. They certainly deserve a fair crack. 

 

I still expect us to make the playoffs. 

[CanadianRugby]

Terrible ownership & management has nothing to do with luck.

[oldnews]

Horrible shooting percentage - partly stick-squeezing and partly not enough net traffic, etc - but will level out at least somewhat, as will sv% imo.

In addition, if we hold on to the existing depth on the blueline, I don't think we'll have quite the long valleys we did last year.

Net positive possession team - quite promising.

Much better defensive hockey as a group - few shots and attempts allowed - promising.

Not as worried as some people.

 

Can go either way imo.   Luck balances out, get our Tanman and Badger back - and onwards we roll.

Lose another player or two, particularly long term, start exhausting the guys we do have to lean on, etc - trouble competing.

[The Bookie]

Surprised  PDO has bottomed out so quickly. When I looked a couple weeks ago, they were slightly below average for shooting percentage and slightly (very slightly) above for goaltending. Overall PDO was around 20th-22nd in the league at the time (I think -this is just from memory).

 

Although that was before the beating they took from the Rangers, which I would guess is the big re ason for the dip. That was one of those games where I could actually feel the ice tilt against their favour halfway through the game.

[Honky Cat]

I still maintain that poor drafting from 2005-12 is the reason for the poor performance...All of the other reasons presented are completely valid (coaching,luck,underperforming etc),but there is no answer for the void of talent due to poor drafting (and a succession plan for the 1st line)....It's easy to point fingers at Linden,Benning,WD,but righting a sunken ship is just not done in two years.

[baumerman77]

Practically all teams that finish at bottom of the league are the worst teams AND unlucky. Some times a very bad team finishes atop their divison when they shouldn't of even made playoffs (Colorado a few years back). Sometimes a very good team doesn't make the playoffs when they should (2015 LA Kings). My point is that yes, there is a regression to the mean but with only 82 games in a season some teams still end up being more lucky or unlucky than expected. 

[CeeBee51]

1 minute ago, Honky Cat said:

I still maintain that poor drafting from 2005-12 is the reason for the poor performance...All of the other reasons presented are completely valid (coaching,luck,underperforming etc),but there is no answer for the void of talent due to poor drafting (and a succession plan for the 1st line)....It's easy to point fingers at Linden,Benning,WD,but righting a sunken ship is just not done in two years.

Yeah, when it's half way to the bottom it's pretty hard to keep it from going any further down. 
 

[JamesB]

9 minutes ago, baumerman77 said:

Practically all teams that finish at bottom of the league are the worst teams AND unlucky. Some times a very bad team finishes atop their divison when they shouldn't of even made playoffs (Colorado a few years back). Sometimes a very good team doesn't make the playoffs when they should (2015 LA Kings). My point is that yes, there is a regression to the mean but with only 82 games in a season some teams still end up being more lucky or unlucky than expected. 

This is a good point that I should have mentioned in the OP. The odds are that the Canucks will be luckier in the rest of the season than they have been so far. But there is no guarantee that luck "evens out" over a single season. And getting to the Stanley Cup finals usually requires being good AND being lucky.

[baumerman77]

3 minutes ago, JamesB said:

This is a good point that I should have mentioned in the OP. The odds are that the Canucks will be luckier in the rest of the season than they have been so far. But there is no guarantee that luck "evens out" over a single season. And getting to the Stanley Cup finals usually requires being good AND being lucky.

Not to mention that the other teams who will "regress up" are already ahead of us in points. I highly doubt we get close to competing for a playoff spot unless we are over 101.5 PDO to end the season.

[Heretic]

The players suck more than:

 

[JM_]

Neat. Good post. I suppose "bad luck" and "under performing" go hand in hand somewhat.

 

I am a believer in the idea of shot quality, e.g., if a goalie has to deal with a snipe from a Panarin vs. an Etem. Some guys can pick corners just that little bit better or quicker and we're not seeing a lot of that out of Baer or Granny. Benning's said it a few  times this year that we need also more net presence. A big body like Jakes near the crease would be pretty helpful, so hopefully if he finds his game we'll see him back at some point and that should help, and Rodin should provide that extra bit of sniping we're lacking.

 

 

[-AJ-]

I enjoyed the article. I do believe that are record will likely improve, barring any major moves by management in player or staff personnel, but I'm still not counting on playoff hockey. I'm not counting it out, but I wouldn't bet on it.

[khay]

Interesting. But I don't buy the expected goals argument. What is the statistical significance of xG of 1.9 for the Canucks vs xG of 1.55 for the opposition (e.g., versus Ottawa the where we lost 3-0)?

 

It doesn't tell you much unless the Canucks have been dominating the xG by at least 1 goal in the games that they lost. In that case, we can completely attribute the losses to luck and that things will be different. Otherwise, it could be that the other team with xG of 1.5 might, more often than not, score two goals because they have high precision finishers. The Canucks on the other hand, with 1.9 xG usually scores 1 because they have low precision when it comes to finishing the plays.

 

[Odd.]

OT wins are the reason why we're currently at 29th rather than deadlast. Without all of those comebacks/OT wins, this team would be sitting far behind than Arizona is currently.

[FijianCanuck]

3 minutes ago, Odd. said:

OT wins are the reason why we're currently at 29th rather than deadlast. Without all of those comebacks/OT wins, this team would be sitting far behind than Arizona is currently.

This! Also we have the worst goal differential in the league at -20. 

[10pavelbure96]

I swear we lead the league in weak shot attempts. It's a nearly impossible stat to measure, but I think we spend the highest percentage of time while in the offensive zone, on the perimeter, in the entire league. When Horvat decides to split the d and make a rush on net we talk about it like he's Pavel Bure.  And while Bo is promising and probably my favourite player on this team right now, it's evident that our expectations are very very low. Just watch highlight packages from around the league to see what we are lacking.  

 

That being said I'm pumped for Brock and juolevi and I still have faith that Virtanen will pan out and I like the progress of Horvat and our D. Goaltending is by far our strong suit, I still believe that management has a plan and that it will work out. 

[Chris]