FN Mailbag – March 6, 2015 (late edition)

Time again for the FlamesNation Friday Mailbag. This week we have a grab bag of unrelated items, ranging from the Flames lacklustre collection of defensive prospect to the futures of Hiller, Ramo and Mikael Backlund. 

Let’s dive in.

I assume by “valuable” you mean “insightful”. I am dubious the Giordano injury is going to be considered anything but a disaster in the long run, even if the club has been initially successful in the short term since he was injured. There’s no surprises on the Flames blueline so far – we knew TJ Brodie was great and I’m not sure the perception of Dennis Wideman, Kris Russell and Deryk Engelland is going to appreciably change in the long run. 

Ortio’s injury might be useful in that it forced the club to give Ramo another shot, resulting in his recent outburst of quality plan. Unfortunately, the only way that will be a long term benefit to the club is if they can re-sign Ramo and trade Hiller for a nice return in the off-season. Otherwise all it does is drive up Ramo’s price as a UFA this summer. 

 

Unless Backlund demands a trade or an exorbitant salary during contract negotiations, he’ll be a Flame next year. He’s a selke quality player on the defensive side of things and his just okay offensive numbers means he should be relatively cheap to keep around. There’s no reason for the club to move on from him. 

A lot of moving parts in the crease at this point. Joni Ortio is probably ready to make the jump to NHL back-up so it doesn’t make sense to have 3 tenders with one-way deals on the roster. Whether the putative starter ends up being Hiller or Ramo will depend if you can trade the former for a good return and if the latter is willing to re-gin on a decent value deal.

If I was forced to guess, I’d say the Flames will go with Hiller/Ortio as the duo next season, with Ramo walking.

No, nor was popularizing them a goal. It was niche topic being kicked around by some curious hobbyists. Even when it started to catch on with other bloggers and amateur writers, none of us really imagined it would go much further than that. 

Aside from Monahan and maybe Gaudreau, almost certainly less. In general, kids are more error prone and more “high risk” than veterans. Hartley will get more and more conservative with his roster decisions the closer a potential playoff spot gets.  

I think Gaudreau be a Calder finalist but not the winner. Filip Forsberg is a shoe-in to take the prize absent some kind of epic collapse or injury.  

We’ll assume that means they’re picking around 15, which makes predicting anything extremely difficult. I can only assume they’ll go best player available whoever comes up, though they may prioritize a defenseman given their organizational weakness on the blueline. Some names to keep in mind: Carlo Brandon, Timo Meier, Thomas Chabot and Jeremy Roy. 

Unless the Flames land an Olli Maata in this year’s draft and Tyler Wotherspoon turns out to be ready to usurp Deryk Engelland next season, Calgary has a long way to go in rehabbing their prospect depth on the blueline. We’re still not really sure what Culkin and Kulak are just yet, but chances are neither is a sure thing to be an NHLer, let alone a quality one.   

Unless Brad Treliving can make some deals to bring in at least one 22-24 year old who is a good bet to play, it will take the Flames several years to re-stock the cupboard.

The truth is there will always be a segment of fans who dislike stats. Maybe because they are counter to their preconceptions of the game or maybe because they just don’t care enough to learn about them, which is fair enough. 

There is also generally a significant latency period between paradigm shifting findings or scientific insights and public acceptance, for a variety of reasons. Some are actually rational and adaptive – if every new thought was granted immediate legitimacy, society would be taken in by every con man or half baked concept out there. 

Of course, it’s also true that a lot can be lost in translation between the finding, the communication of it and the  to public consumption and adoption. 

More specifically, the caveats and nuances are often simplified or papered over in the journey from “aha! moment” to general understanding. As illustrated in this Jorge Cham comic:

Similarly, the debate about the validity or utility of advanced stats is often rife with misunderstandings or disagreements due to improper information and/or framing of the theory. These will eventually be resolved if a) these new stats continue to prove to be useful in the long term and b) they continue to infiltrate and influence media around the game.