Minnesota Gophers 2019/2020 Season Thread

[ARM]

Re: Minnesota Gophers 2019/2020 Season Thread

Anybody says anything differently does not follow RPI, a playoff team with Selander and 0-32-1 without.

Sure. But goalies aren't all-powerful. All goals allowed aren't the goaltender's fault, and the skaters have to do their jobs on both ends. Selander wouldn't have been able to help RPI to a playoff spot this year if her team was only going to score 21 goals.

 

[Still Eeyore]

Re: Minnesota Gophers 2019/2020 Season Thread

Anybody says anything differently does not follow RPI, a playoff team with Selander and 0-32-1 without.

I'm going to respond to Offsides Guy in a bit, but this comment is both misleading and irrelevant. Irrelevant because you can't formulate general principles based upon extreme outliers like Selandar. It's misleading because there was a lot more to Renssalaer's collapse than just losing Selander to graduation. In 2018-19, they scored 50 goals; in 2019-20, they scored 21. That's a much larger relative drop than the change from 88 goals allowed last year to the 122 this year. Lovisa Selandar couldn't have turned the 2019-20 Engineers into a playoff team. Had she still been around, she likely would have pushed Renssalaer from last in the ECAC all the way to last in the ECAC.

 

[FiveHoleFrenzy]

Re: Minnesota Gophers 2019/2020 Season Thread

Goalies are different just like pitchers are different in baseball - they play the one position on the team that can make more of a difference in a game than any other position. No single forward or D can, on a regular basis, impact the outcome of a game as much as a goalie playing hot or cold. Fairly or not, the goalie is the final line of defense regardless of the players in front of her and that makes the position that much more crucial than the others.

You are a better person than I am. I have let this particular poster get under my skin. Thank you for your response. And Reddington's response as well. RPI is a good example.

 

[FiveHoleFrenzy]

Re: Minnesota Gophers 2019/2020 Season Thread

I'm going to respond to Offsides Guy in a bit, but this comment is both misleading and irrelevant. Irrelevant because you can't formulate general principles based upon extreme outliers like Selandar. It's misleading because there was a lot more to Renssalaer's collapse than just losing Selander to graduation. In 2018-19, they scored 50 goals; in 2019-20, they scored 21. That's a much larger relative drop than the change from 88 goals allowed last year to the 122 this year. Lovisa Selandar couldn't have turned the 2019-20 Engineers into a playoff team. Had she still been around, she likely would have pushed Renssalaer from last in the ECAC all the way to last in the ECAC.

Give it a rest with the psuedo-intellectual word salad crap...

You were given reasoned answers but like I said, it doesn't matter because you don't give a crap.

 

[Still Eeyore]

Re: Minnesota Gophers 2019/2020 Season Thread

Goalies are different just like pitchers are different in baseball - they play the one position on the team that can make more of a difference in a game than any other position. No single forward or D can, on a regular basis, impact the outcome of a game as much as a goalie playing hot or cold. Fairly or not, the goalie is the final line of defense regardless of the players in front of her and that makes the position that much more crucial than the others.

It's important to understand the difference between descriptive statistics and predictive statistics. Yes, a goalie can have an outsize influence on a single game; we've all seen it. However, in general they do not have such an impact. It isn't something you can count on, and it's difficult to predict which goalies are likely to do so. Goalie performance is extremely volatile, and it doesn't correlate very well from one season to the next; just look at Kristen Campbell going from a .939 save percentage last year to .893 this year. Sydney Scobee jumped from last in the league to first, and a couple of other WCHA goalies saw a change of more than .02. Those are indications that a lot of the difference in goalie performance that we see is due to circumstances rather than ability.

It's also the case that the difference in performance between the best and worst goalies in the league is significantly narrower than the gap between the best and worst forwards. This year, Scobee had the highest save percentage in the conference at .933. Campbell had the worst, at .893. On average, WCHA teams faced about 30 shots a game. (All stats are conference games only, to avoid problems from unequal nonconference schedules, though even in the conference, Wisconsin has a significantly easier schedule than St. Cloud State, since they don't have to play themselves.) That means Scobee would have been just over 1 goal a game better than Campbell had they each played behind an average defense.

Daryl Watts had 49 points in WCHA games. The lowest scoring best forward in the conference was Klára Hymlárová of SCSU, who had 14 points. That's a difference of about 1.5 points per game, which is significantly wider. That's not very satisfying, because of double counting goals and assists, but a forward's impact goes beyond just goals scored, so that alone isn't a great measure, either.

So let's look at each team's best line. Trying to determine what Wisconsin's top line is hard, but it felt to me like Watts/Roque/Shirley probably played together more often than any other combo, and they combined for 50 goals. SCSU's top line of Hymlárová/Theodosopoulos/Cvar scored 20. That's a difference of 1.25 goals a game. Even though we've jammed all of Wisconsin's top scorers together, the difference between the second lines is even greater in relative terms, though less in absolute numbers: Mauermann/Pettet/Curl had 21 goals, while Bigham/Nyland/Rasmussen had 6.

And if we look at things at the team level, there is a bigger spread in goals scored than in goals allowed. Wisconsin led the WCHA with 97 goals scored in conference play; St Cloud scored 32. St Cloud allowed the most goals in the conference, with 98; Minnesota allowed the fewest, with 40.

Any way you cut it, your top goal scorers make more of a difference to a team's success than top goalies. The analogy to pitchers in baseball is correct in the influence a goalie can have on a given game; it's incorrect in that this effect is much more predictable and repeatable with pitchers.

 

[Still Eeyore]

Re: Minnesota Gophers 2019/2020 Season Thread

Give it a rest with the psuedo-intellectual word salad crap...

You were given reasoned answers but like I said, it doesn't matter because you don't give a crap.

You're welcome.

 

[Offsides Guy]

Re: Minnesota Gophers 2019/2020 Season Thread

It's important to understand the difference between descriptive statistics and predictive statistics. Yes, a goalie can have an outsize influence on a single game; we've all seen it. However, in general they do not have such an impact. It isn't something you can count on, and it's difficult to predict which goalies are likely to do so. Goalie performance is extremely volatile, and it doesn't correlate very well from one season to the next; just look at Kristen Campbell going from a .939 save percentage last year to .893 this year. Sydney Scobee jumped from last in the league to first, and a couple of other WCHA goalies saw a change of more than .02. Those are indications that a lot of the difference in goalie performance that we see is due to circumstances rather than ability.

It's also the case that the difference in performance between the best and worst goalies in the league is significantly narrower than the gap between the best and worst forwards. This year, Scobee had the highest save percentage in the conference at .933. Campbell had the worst, at .893. On average, WCHA teams faced about 30 shots a game. (All stats are conference games only, to avoid problems from unequal nonconference schedules, though even in the conference, Wisconsin has a significantly easier schedule than St. Cloud State, since they don't have to play themselves.) That means Scobee would have been just over 1 goal a game better than Campbell had they each played behind an average defense.

Daryl Watts had 49 points in WCHA games. The lowest scoring best forward in the conference was Klára Hymlárová of SCSU, who had 14 points. That's a difference of about 1.5 points per game, which is significantly wider. That's not very satisfying, because of double counting goals and assists, but a forward's impact goes beyond just goals scored, so that alone isn't a great measure, either.

So let's look at each team's best line. Trying to determine what Wisconsin's top line is hard, but it felt to me like Watts/Roque/Shirley probably played together more often than any other combo, and they combined for 50 goals. SCSU's top line of Hymlárová/Theodosopoulos/Cvar scored 20. That's a difference of 1.25 goals a game. Even though we've jammed all of Wisconsin's top scorers together, the difference between the second lines is even greater in relative terms, though less in absolute numbers: Mauermann/Pettet/Curl had 21 goals, while Bigham/Nyland/Rasmussen had 6.

And if we look at things at the team level, there is a bigger spread in goals scored than in goals allowed. Wisconsin led the WCHA with 97 goals scored in conference play; St Cloud scored 32. St Cloud allowed the most goals in the conference, with 98; Minnesota allowed the fewest, with 40.

Any way you cut it, your top goal scorers make more of a difference to a team's success than top goalies. The analogy to pitchers in baseball is correct in the influence a goalie can have on a given game; it's incorrect in that this effect is much more predictable and repeatable with pitchers.

First, I am honored to have received a six-paragraph response from you. I take that as I posted something thoughtful for a change!

Second, I'm not the numbers guy you are so I respect your statistical approach (I majored in English & Philosophy) but I still disagree for a couple of reasons. First, the idea of goalies being the most important has been around since the earliest days of the sport. And, while I realize that just because something is often said doesn't make it statistically true, players have been saying the same thing forever. The majority of players will tell you who is in goal for the game has the biggest impact on the team's confidence that day. Team confidence doesn't show up in stats but absolutely impacts wins and losses. Also, coaches seem to think goalie is most important as it seems most of them talk about building their teams from the net outward. If they felt scoring was the most important key to success, they would build their teams in the opposite fashion.

Then there's the timing of games. Playoffs is most important time of the year and it's typically when scoring drops significantly as teams scheme ways to take away top scorers. This leads to goalies often being seen as the linchpin to championships. Watts scored a boatload of goals this season but came up empty yesterday and it Braendli who was the difference in the game.

 

[FiveHoleFrenzy]

Re: Minnesota Gophers 2019/2020 Season Thread

You're welcome.

You're not...

 

[FiveHoleFrenzy]

Re: Minnesota Gophers 2019/2020 Season Thread

It's important to understand the difference between descriptive statistics and predictive statistics. Yes, a goalie can have an outsize influence on a single game; we've all seen it. However, in general they do not have such an impact. It isn't something you can count on, and it's difficult to predict which goalies are likely to do so. Goalie performance is extremely volatile, and it doesn't correlate very well from one season to the next; just look at Kristen Campbell going from a .939 save percentage last year to .893 this year. Sydney Scobee jumped from last in the league to first, and a couple of other WCHA goalies saw a change of more than .02. Those are indications that a lot of the difference in goalie performance that we see is due to circumstances rather than ability.

It's also the case that the difference in performance between the best and worst goalies in the league is significantly narrower than the gap between the best and worst forwards. This year, Scobee had the highest save percentage in the conference at .933. Campbell had the worst, at .893. On average, WCHA teams faced about 30 shots a game. (All stats are conference games only, to avoid problems from unequal nonconference schedules, though even in the conference, Wisconsin has a significantly easier schedule than St. Cloud State, since they don't have to play themselves.) That means Scobee would have been just over 1 goal a game better than Campbell had they each played behind an average defense.

Daryl Watts had 49 points in WCHA games. The lowest scoring best forward in the conference was Klára Hymlárová of SCSU, who had 14 points. That's a difference of about 1.5 points per game, which is significantly wider. That's not very satisfying, because of double counting goals and assists, but a forward's impact goes beyond just goals scored, so that alone isn't a great measure, either.

So let's look at each team's best line. Trying to determine what Wisconsin's top line is hard, but it felt to me like Watts/Roque/Shirley probably played together more often than any other combo, and they combined for 50 goals. SCSU's top line of Hymlárová/Theodosopoulos/Cvar scored 20. That's a difference of 1.25 goals a game. Even though we've jammed all of Wisconsin's top scorers together, the difference between the second lines is even greater in relative terms, though less in absolute numbers: Mauermann/Pettet/Curl had 21 goals, while Bigham/Nyland/Rasmussen had 6.

And if we look at things at the team level, there is a bigger spread in goals scored than in goals allowed. Wisconsin led the WCHA with 97 goals scored in conference play; St Cloud scored 32. St Cloud allowed the most goals in the conference, with 98; Minnesota allowed the fewest, with 40.

Any way you cut it, your top goal scorers make more of a difference to a team's success than top goalies. The analogy to pitchers in baseball is correct in the influence a goalie can have on a given game; it's incorrect in that this effect is much more predictable and repeatable with pitchers.

Blah, blah blah... Just say you don't agree and you're right about everything. That would save you some typing.

 

[Timothy A]

Re: Minnesota Gophers 2019/2020 Season Thread

and it Braendli who was the difference in the game.

I disagree with this. OSU's overall team D was the difference in the game, they were almost flawless. Braendli had no big saves in the game. UW missed 3 great looks high when they missed the net. Soup had 2 big saves and allowed 1 on the 3 breakdowns in UW's team D.

 

[Offsides Guy]

Re: Minnesota Gophers 2019/2020 Season Thread

I disagree with this. OSU's overall team D was the difference in the game, they were almost flawless. Braendli had no big saves in the game. UW missed 3 great looks high when they missed the net. Soup had 2 big saves and allowed 1 on the 3 breakdowns in UW's team D.

We must have watched the game differently. OSU's D were good but Braendli stopped double the official scoring chances that Soup did and the small group with whom I was watching the game mentioned Braendli saved their bacon at least a few times.

 

[Timothy A]

Re: Minnesota Gophers 2019/2020 Season Thread

We must have watched the game differently. OSU's D were good but Braendli stopped double the official scoring chances that Soup did and the small group with whom I was watching the game mentioned Braendli saved their bacon at least a few times.

A scoring chance doesn't = big save (in my head). Do official scoring chances count missed nets on great looks?

 

[Offsides Guy]

Re: Minnesota Gophers 2019/2020 Season Thread

A scoring chance doesn't = big save (in my head). Do official scoring chances count missed nets on great looks?

Honestly don't know the answer to that one.

 

[Hockeybuckeye]

Re: Minnesota Gophers 2019/2020 Season Thread

I disagree with this. OSU's overall team D was the difference in the game, they were almost flawless. Braendli had no big saves in the game. UW missed 3 great looks high when they missed the net. Soup had 2 big saves and allowed 1 on the 3 breakdowns in UW's team D.

Our D's PP kill was a game saver but I thought we didn't do a very good job stopping UW's stretch passes all the way up the ice which there seemed to be quite a few of.
Also helpful Coach Muzzy really pushes over the boards quick on the changes. The men's teams look like slow motion compared to them.

 

[Reddington]

Sure. But goalies aren't all-powerful. All goals allowed aren't the goaltender's fault, and the skaters have to do their jobs on both ends. Selander wouldn't have been able to help RPI to a playoff spot this year if her team was only going to score 21 goals.

Those are good points and certainly the correct arguments to make as I have made the same arguments, but it is hard to quantify a hot goalie. The other team gets frustrated, they tend to send the house trying to score and then boom a 2&1 the other way. Or the d knowing the goalie can stop a breakaway can jump in. And the confidence it gives your team that you have a brick wall in net.

 

[ARM]

Re: Minnesota Gophers 2019/2020 Season Thread

Those are good points and certainly the correct arguments to make as I have made the same arguments, but it is hard to quantify a hot goalie. The other team gets frustrated, they tend to send the house trying to score and then boom a 2&1 the other way. Or the d knowing the goalie can stop a breakaway can jump in. And the confidence it gives your team that you have a brick wall in net.

True, and I agree. But I also think it supports the goalie being viewed as a part of the team -- albeit, a very crucial part -- as opposed to there being the rest of the team, and separately, the goalie.

 

[Puckdrop14]

I disagree with this. OSU's overall team D was the difference in the game, they were almost flawless. Braendli had no big saves in the game. UW missed 3 great looks high when they missed the net. Soup had 2 big saves and allowed 1 on the 3 breakdowns in UW's team D.

Minnesota and Wisconsin shoot a lot and the majority of those shots are not all that difficult but you have to stop them. In both games, I give the edge to the OSU goalie. They were outshot in both games and won both in OT. What more can you say. I would also give them the edge on team defence as well because they have Jincy Dunne. Now when it comes to the next game, I can’t see Minnesota losing again but it will come down to how well their goaltender plays.

 

[Still Eeyore]

Re: Minnesota Gophers 2019/2020 Season Thread

First, I am honored to have received a six-paragraph response from you. I take that as I posted something thoughtful for a change!

You engage with the autistic guy at your own peril.

Second, I'm not the numbers guy you are so I respect your statistical approach (I majored in English & Philosophy) but I still disagree for a couple of reasons. First, the idea of goalies being the most important has been around since the earliest days of the sport. And, while I realize that just because something is often said doesn't make it statistically true, players have been saying the same thing forever. The majority of players will tell you who is in goal for the game has the biggest impact on the team's confidence that day. Team confidence doesn't show up in stats but absolutely impacts wins and losses. Also, coaches seem to think goalie is most important as it seems most of them talk about building their teams from the net outward. If they felt scoring was the most important key to success, they would build their teams in the opposite fashion.

There's been enough ideas that have been around since the beginning of the sport (in pretty much every sport) that have turned out to be wrong that I don't consider that to be particularly useful evidence. Batting average is not the most important offensive stat in baseball. Defense doesn't contribute any more to winning championships than offense does. Conventional wisdom isn't always wrong, but it is wrong often enough that it's tough to rely upon.

That so many things have been shown to be incorrect despite "everyone" saying that they are important, that it's hard to know what to do with a statement that something "doesn't show up in stats but absolutely impacts wins and losses." Why should I find this convincing? As it happens, I don't find this case to be implausible, but I'm not sure that it gets you to where you want to go. Confidence is a fickle thing, and confidence in a particular goalie often isn't predicated on their ability as a goalie. It can come from personality elements. It can be based upon that goalie being "hot," but the problem with hot streaks is that they are descriptive but not predictive; it's easy to see in retrospect that a goalie is hot, but that doesn't tell you anything at all about whether they are going to continue to be hot. There have been a lot of studies on this, and they all say that the best estimate of how a goalie is going to perform in their next game is their save percentage over approximately the last 6,000 shots they've faced, and not how they have done in the last few games. (And, for what it's worth, no goalie faces anything close to 6,000 shots in a four year college career, which is why their career save percentage is so volatile.) Saying that it's important for a team to have confidence in their goalie is both unverifiable and not really a statement about the actual abilities of a given goaltender.

Then there's the timing of games. Playoffs is most important time of the year and it's typically when scoring drops significantly as teams scheme ways to take away top scorers. This leads to goalies often being seen as the linchpin to championships. Watts scored a boatload of goals this season but came up empty yesterday and it Braendli who was the difference in the game.

Sure. That happens. But the question is whether or not this is something that you can predict ahead of time, or only note after the game is over. To what extent is attributable to the quality of the goalie, and to what extent is it a combination of outside circumstances and a one day performance that is out into the right hand tail of the distribution of that goalie's overall performances?

Here's a piece from 538 that looks at the problem of goalie volatility and how that makes it hard to even figure out who the best goalies are. Obviously, it pertains to goalies at the NHL level, but the same basic problem exists at all levels. It at least partially disagrees with me offensive variation is more important than save percentage variation in winning games, though it breaks things down in a way that is hard to pin down one way or the other. At the same time, it argues even more strongly that a lot of what we perceive as goalie quality is actually circumstantial: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/a-hot-goalie-isnt-a-better-goalie/

 

[Offsides Guy]

Re: Minnesota Gophers 2019/2020 Season Thread

You engage with the autistic guy at your own peril.



There's been enough ideas that have been around since the beginning of the sport (in pretty much every sport) that have turned out to be wrong that I don't consider that to be particularly useful evidence. Batting average is not the most important offensive stat in baseball. Defense doesn't contribute any more to winning championships than offense does. Conventional wisdom isn't always wrong, but it is wrong often enough that it's tough to rely upon.

That so many things have been shown to be incorrect despite "everyone" saying that they are important, that it's hard to know what to do with a statement that something "doesn't show up in stats but absolutely impacts wins and losses." Why should I find this convincing? As it happens, I don't find this case to be implausible, but I'm not sure that it gets you to where you want to go. Confidence is a fickle thing, and confidence in a particular goalie often isn't predicated on their ability as a goalie. It can come from personality elements. It can be based upon that goalie being "hot," but the problem with hot streaks is that they are descriptive but not predictive; it's easy to see in retrospect that a goalie is hot, but that doesn't tell you anything at all about whether they are going to continue to be hot. There have been a lot of studies on this, and they all say that the best estimate of how a goalie is going to perform in their next game is their save percentage over approximately the last 6,000 shots they've faced, and not how they have done in the last few games. (And, for what it's worth, no goalie faces anything close to 6,000 shots in a four year college career, which is why their career save percentage is so volatile.) Saying that it's important for a team to have confidence in their goalie is both unverifiable and not really a statement about the actual abilities of a given goaltender.



Sure. That happens. But the question is whether or not this is something that you can predict ahead of time, or only note after the game is over. To what extent is attributable to the quality of the goalie, and to what extent is it a combination of outside circumstances and a one day performance that is out into the right hand tail of the distribution of that goalie's overall performances?

Here's a piece from 538 that looks at the problem of goalie volatility and how that makes it hard to even figure out who the best goalies are. Obviously, it pertains to goalies at the NHL level, but the same basic problem exists at all levels. It at least partially disagrees with me offensive variation is more important than save percentage variation in winning games, though it breaks things down in a way that is hard to pin down one way or the other. At the same time, it argues even more strongly that a lot of what we perceive as goalie quality is actually circumstantial: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/a-hot-goalie-isnt-a-better-goalie/

Your research is impressive and, while I'm sure accurate, simply dives into this way more than I imagined doing. I read the fivethirtyeight article and, honestly, what stood out most to me was in the opening. "During the regular season, save percentage (the generally accepted shorthand measure of goaltending effectiveness) explains a higher proportion of team performance than any other fundamental factor1 in hockey.2 In the playoffs, the emphasis on goaltending only intensifies; save percentage is easily the most important determinant of a team’s goals-per-game differential in the postseason.3 A hot goalie really is the key to a successful playoff run." This is basically what my gut has always told me and, though they go deep into the statistics of why this may not be as mathematically predictable as some think, it reinforces what many us "know" to be true in spite of the deep dive into the numbers (I know, I know, you should never ignore the numbers).

Circling all the way back to the beginning, I predict a close game between OSU and MN on Saturday that OSU will win because Braendli will play better then Scobee in the end. We'll see!

 

[ARM]

Re: Minnesota Gophers 2019/2020 Season Thread

Circling all the way back to the beginning, I predict a close game between OSU and MN on Saturday that OSU will win because Braendli will play better then Scobee in the end.

For the season, the two goalies have the same save percentage. Scobee has allowed a couple of more goals, but she's played more games. I guess one could argue that OSU has played the tougher schedule, and that is why the two goalies appear so close. That could be countered by saying Minnesota has the deeper offense (although the Buckeyes' top line is playing better now than Minnesota's.)

Really, this is so close that anyone who says that they "know" what will happening is guessing. If the game goes like Saturday's 1st period, UM will win. If it goes like OT did, OSU will win. But it will probably be somewhere in between, so I have no idea.