Some Pre-Playoff Thoughts
Kent Wilson
April 30 2013 03:34PM
Not exactly Flame related (well maybe a little), but here's some thoughts bumping around my head as the first round kicks off tonight.
- Thanks to the lock-out shortened season, there are surprisingly lousy teams who made the cut this year. Toronto is the top of the list - they have absolutely abysmal underlying numbers, their bench boss is half mad, and I can't imagine Nazem Kadri is going to continue to lead the league in PDO forever. He's a quality youngster, but he's not the next Crosby.
Calgary Flames Adjusted 2013 Possession Rates
Kent Wilson
April 30 2013 08:55AM
Another year is over and we're left to pick through the rubble a bit. The first order of business is evaluating the various skaters by possession - or the ability to drive play, which is one of the metrics in hockey that has a strong signal-to-noise ratio.
That said, we can correct corsi for a number of factors be better put it into context and up the level of confidence with which we can say the number is indicative of the player's ability and not some other factor (be it luck or circumstances). Two major issues with raw possession rate is zone start (or how often a player starts his shifts in the offensive zone) and quality linemates and opposition (playing with or against good/bad players).
FlamesNation 2013 Year-end Awards
Kent Wilson
April 29 2013 08:03AM
The Nation has decided to hand out (virtual) year-end hardware for each team across the network this season, and for every season moving forward. We'll share our votes and thoughts on the team's various MVP's and will open up voting for the readers to boot.
It was a rough season in Calgary, but that doesn't mean things were bad across the board. Here's who we deserved some recogination despite the lack of success...
Flames Finish 25th...
Kent Wilson
April 27 2013 08:47PM
...And are in line to draft 6th overall in the draft, absent an lottery enduced changes. Calgary has an 6.2% chance to win the lottery and pick first overall. It's also possible someone back in the order wins the thing, which would bump the Flames to 7th.
Mikael Backlund 2013 WOWY
Kent Wilson
April 24 2013 01:37PM
There's only two games left in the season and it's entirely possible Mikael Backlund won't take the ice again thanks to the team's efforts to lose as much as possible.
As a result, I'd like to use him to introduce With or Without You, an analytic technique I've employed in the past but one that might still be foreign to some people. It's a method of adding further context to a player's measures - in this instance, his possession rates. We'll be replicating this across the Flames roster in an effort to gauge each guy's performance this year as well as inform potential roster decisions/discussions down the line.
