Unfortunately, false narratives are all too common in sports. People avoid statistics, evidence, and arguments in favor of a feel good story or something that "just sounds right." I'd like to look at one particular false narrative which is coming out of this series so far.

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A lot has happened in the past five days. We've gotten into a big-time brawl with the Flyers at the end of Sunday's game, and last night, John Tortarella made some incredibly inflammatory remarks to reporters which suggested the Penguins are a dirty team. Lots of discussions have followed, and both Rangers and Flyers fans online have been especially vocal about how their respective teams get screwed over because the Penguins are dirty, cheap-shot artists.

I think this whole conversation is stupid. All of these "things" (the brawl, the knee-on-knee hit) are extraordinarily small samples of action that get blown out of proportion. With everything blown out of proportion, internet tough guys come out of the weeds and emphatically proclaim, based on these minuscule pieces of evidence, that "the Penguins are dirty, Crosby is a whiner, and they better watch their back." No one actually attempts to compile a database of evidence that looks to what all of the players in the league are doing and how often they're doing it. Instead of using numbers and arguments, we resort to yelling, ad hominem's, and swearing.

The result is that the mainstream media continues to prove how stupid everyone on the internet is; they know that by replaying one clip of Crosby/Ovechkin/Orpik/Keith doing anything, they can slowly convince people "hey, this guy is dirty/whiny," while completely ignoring the other 99.9% of data that shows this player is just as normal as everyone else in the league. Overreacting to small bits of information is not the hallmark of a civilized group of people.

Given the outcry by some Rangers and Flyers fans as of late, my post this week will be simple and to the point: below the fold is a collection of videos that include dirty hits by players that played for either the Flyers or the Rangers at the time. The whole point of this exercise is not to have everyone else turn around with their own thread of Matt Cooke or Cindy Crysby videos. The point is to acknowledge that no organization is perfect, and moreover, that no player is perfect. The sooner collective fan bases can stop pretending they always get shafted on calls, or that somehow they're the only team in the league with an ounce of respect for the game, the sooner we can stop arguing over the bullshit and start watching all of the hockey.

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It was great to see the Pens win tonight, but also a little frustrating because it was simultaneously decided that all of the work the team has put in this year will get them no more than 4th place in the conference. Whether that is a tactical advantage (because Washington has been playing well as of late) isn't clear, but I was certainly hoping the Pens could clinch the top spot in the East.

Anyways, a recap and some thoughts on the game follow.

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First off, I very much appreciated the response after my first post (in a long time) last week. The comments were insightful and I'm ready to do it again.

Today I want to look at how to evaluate goalies. I want to think of this as a two-part discussion. First, I want to simply use logic, reasoning, and first principles in trying to decide which statistic provides the best indication of a goalie's talent. Next week, for the second part, I'd like to run some year-to-year correlations for different goalie stats - ES save percentage, wins, GAA, and shutouts - and see which appears to have the highest correlation.

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Hooks is doing a great job managing this blog, and in trying to make it more consistent and informative, he suggested that I provide one article a week, something of a "What GoPens! thinks" series. I thought it was a great idea, and so this will be the first installment. I don't yet have a catchy title for the series, but fortunately that's not a very serious problem.

Today I'm going to talk about situational metrics in the context of the Penguins defensemen this season. All stats are courtesy of NHL.com or behind the net.

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I came across an article by Josh Yohe today, which said:

Martin, who signed a five-year, $25 million contract with the Penguins in 2010, produced an indifferent campaign during his first season in Pittsburgh. The first six weeks of this season were borderline disastrous, as Martin seemingly was responsible for a goal against on a nightly basis while producing far less offense than expected.

The first claim, that Martin put together an "indifferent campaign" in 2010, is ridiculous. For one, Martin was an exceptional possession player, as he was 2nd on the team in on-ice Corsi. This is even more impressive given that he was doing this against good competition with a relatively average zone start. Indeed, dmen in this league who can skate against top players and out-possess them at the same time are a very valuable commodity. Perhaps the best indication that he had a very good year--and might have been the team's best dman--is that Dan Bylsma leaned the heaviest on Paul Martin at even strength, as he had the most ice time among all of the team's defensemen.

The second claim, that Martin has put together a "borderline disastrous" performance this season, is equally ridiculous. This season, Paul Martin once again has a very high on-ice Corsi. What makes this more impressive than last year, though, is that he's facing much stiffer competition, as he currently leads the Penguins dmen in quality of competition. Though not leading in time on ice this year, he is still racking up big numbers, as Bylsma has leaned heavily on Martin, Letang, and Orpik to eat up most of the team's minutes at even strength.

Yohe might say all of this doesn't matter because Martin isn't scoring enough. Yohe even suggests in the article that he is not scoring as much as expected. This claim has no basis in reality, though. Martin is scoring 0.56 pts/60 min of even strength ice time this year, and was producing at a nearly identical clip of 0.57 pts/60 last year. The season before that, which was his last season with the Devils, saw Martin score at 1.46 pts/60. But this is a highly dubious number to rely on, as Martin only played in 22 games that year. The year before, in which Martin played 73 games with the Devils (a much more reliable sample), saw him produce 0.59 pts/60, right in line with his production the last two years with the Penguins. The claim Martin isn't scoring as much as Josh Yohe thought he would only means Yohe never looked at Martin's stats.

In addition to this, the lack of bigger numbers from Martin during his time with the black and gold is largely due to the lack of production from his teammates. Martin's on-ice Sh% this year is a very low 4.74%, good for last among the team's dmen. Last year, he was in the middle of the pack of on-ice Sh%. The point, though, is that Martin has no control over his teammates shooting percentage, so their inability to put the puck in the net when he is on the ice cannot be a reason to critique Martin's level of play. If his teammates were scoring more, there would be more assists to go around, and Martin would look better than the points suggest. We see evidence for this in his 22 game season with the Devils in 2010. There, where he was scoring at more than twice the rate he is currently at, Martin was fortunate to be the recipient of an incredibly high on-ice Sh% of 11.73%, far and away the best among Devils dmen that year. Those high numbers (which Martin had nothing to do with) led to him racking up way more assists than usual. Once his on-ice Sh% dropped, so did his points, but that is no reason to think Martin has been underwhelming.

The last refuge for Josh Yohe might be that Martin has had mediocre to poor +/- numbers. Last year he was only a +9, and this year he's at a -6. This argument, however, has no merit. Many in the blogosphere have been aware that +/- is useless and driven largely by factors individual players have little control over. This article by Gabe Desjardins is simply one illustration of that point. The lesson of this is to ignore +/- and focus on possession, which is a much better indication of player quality. JLikens at Objective NHL has done research here and here which demonstrates the utility of possession metrics, and Gabe Desjardins has also written at length on the usefulness of Corsi and Fenwick as predictors of future success. Realizing that possession is the critical stat, one can see that Martin has been a very important, and effective, player for the Penguins the last couple of years.

Ultimately, there is really no evidence Martin has been indifferent to disastrous in his performance with the Penguins; the numbers indicate quite the contrary. Penguins fans deserve better than this. Since journalists are supposed to do their research and have keen eyes for the game, statements like the one above do hockey and its fans a disservice. At best, Yohe was just being lazy. At worst, he is clueless.

I've read a number of articles and online threads about the PIT-DEN game over the last 24 hours, and more than a few people on both sides are complaining about the officiating. I propose that everyone stop complaining about officials because they're ultimately meaningless.

Too many people seem to forget that professional football is played by very strong men on a large field while running at incredibly high speeds. They're wearing lots of equipment and routinely making split-second decisions. There are 22 people on the field at any one time (not including referees), which means there are literally thousands of individual events that happen each game. We should realize that the replays we see on TV over and over again--which the media use to create their handpicked narrative for a game--are not the only things happening. Lots of other players were doing things while the replays show the WR and DB jockeying for position.

The picture then becomes even more complex when we realize this game is governed by a complex maze of rules that address everything that might potentially happen during a football game. Referees have to constantly wrestle with enforcing a rule as it is literally written or judging an infraction by how it's usually enforced (which always differs from how it is actually written).

Putting these this together, it's silly to complain about the referees in any given game. They miss calls on both sides all the time. Yesterday was a perfect example. A quick whistle on the potential fumble and facemasks on Tebow went undetected, as well some PI early in the game by Broncos CBs and the constant holding on James Harrison. This is not unusual: any athletic event with so much action and so many rules will have a ton of missed calls and iffy penalty flags. We would see this if we actually sat down and watched game tape for an entire game, paying attention to every event and every interaction that happens on the field each play. Some defensive back is always holding, interfering, or obstructing a receiver, and as is too obvious for most Steelers fans, every offensive line in the NFL commits at least one penalty on every play! Lambasting the refs for being biased or incompetent misses the point that so much more than the one or two plays we saw on TV occurred in that game.

And of course, no one is unbiased. Team A thinks the refs had it out for their players, while Team B can't stand the favorable treatment Team A's players got. These differences in opinion happen all the time; the Steelers Broncos game was not the first game where questionable calls on both sides were made, and it certainly won't be the last.

As long as the NFL remains as fast-paced as it currently is, and as long as it operates in the context of a 244 page rulebook, bad calls and missed calls will happen. The point is not to get wrapped up in this because so much else is going that we never even see. Play hard and kick ass; stop bitching.

Go Steelers!

The Penguins came into this game without a lot on the line today, and were probably just hoping to make it out of Atlanta without any injuries. Yet they played their game for the first two periods, and with help from Brent Johnson and Lady Luck, they were able to beat the Thrashers, close out the regular season with 106 points, and head into the playoffs with some cherished momentum. Below are some links with relevant statistics:

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With the suspension of Matt Cooke for the remainder of the season and first round of the playoffs, many, including myself, thought the league was serious about eliminating head shots from the game. I haven't heard any Penguins fan defend Matt Cooke's hit on Ryan McDonagh, mainly because the hit was indefensible, and exactly the type of play that needs to be eliminated from the game. After speaking out on the danger of head shots, and why the NHL needs to move beyond them, Mario and Ray Shero told Cooke he has two options: change or get out. Suffice it to say this is more than any other NHL team has ever done when it comes to addressing one of their players after a controversial hit. 

The NHL was afforded a golden opportunity last night to demonstrate they aren't inconsistent, misleading, and downright stupid. Todd Bertuzzi provided the league with some fertile suspension soil:

Todd Bertuzzi destroys Ryan Johnson (via NHLArchive)

That is a hit to the head. His arm and elbow are raised as he comes in, and he ends up hitting Ryan Johnson so hard that he was unable to continue the play on the ice. Referees stopped play, and trainers came out to check on him. Bertuzzi wasn't simply a careless offender: no player's arm or elbow is raised that high when he is coming in for a hit, unless he intended to have his arms there. In sum, this was an intentional hit to the head. It was dangerous, and no different from the dangerous and reckless hits we've come to know Matt Cooke for. 

So what does the league do? Decide that a five minute major and ten minute game misconduct is enough. This isn't an instance where the league should be weary of a heavy penalty because the player in question is a first time offender. Bertuzzi is well known for his disciplinary issues. As an aside, I don't see any logic in the NHL's constant obsession over one's status as a repeat offender. The league has gone on record too many times to count saying it is only concerned with one thing: protecting player's safety. With that in mind, an elbow to the head is no less dangerous because it comes from a player who hasn't done it before. Crosby wasn't hurting any less, and the Penguins weren't less disadvantaged, because David Steckel doesn't have a history of dirty htis. Concussions are concussions, and hits to the head are hits to the head. If the league was serious about enforcing these rules and protecting player's from bad hits, they would stop this buffoonery and punish people severely for hits to the head, regardless of whether they have done this before. 

There really is no way to explain this other admitting that s liam was right: Matt Cooke was unfairly targeted as the only "dirty" player in the league, and received a suspension that is disproportionate to the other punishments the league has handed out for similar incidents. This is the same inconsistency we've seen from the NHL for so many years. The only reason Cooke was suspended so long was because he was the flavor of the day; he's had a public year in terms of hits, and it was cliche to use him as the poster boy for all the bad things about the NHL. In other years it might have been Alex Ovechkin, Steve Downey, or Sean Avery. But this year it was Matt Cooke, and he unfortunately drew the part of playing the sacrificial lamb. 

It looks like there is a narrative developing among some Pens fans that this team simply can't beat the trap, and that Pittsburgh's loss to the Islanders was the template the league was searching for on how to beat the Penguins. People like Seth at Empty Netters, and both SlayerGhaleon and RLM140 here at Pensburgh, have been the few that I've seen so far question the Penguins' ability to beat the trap. As a note, I only cite these individuals because I don't want people to think I'm imagining this.

After the jump, I'll try to show why I think this narrative is inaccurate, and why the Penguins have been more unlucky than uncoordinated the last five games.

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I was reading Empty Netters this morning, and Seth had linked to a recap from last night's game in which Erik Karlsson said the following:

I think we showed (Sunday night) that we have a really good team

I assume that Karlsson speaks for the rest of the locker room when he says the Senators think they have a good team. It's difficult, however, to find that good team somewhere outside of quotes, as the Senators' 16-17-4 record and -22 goal differential argue pretty forcefully that the Senators are indeed not a very good team. This isn't surprising since they don't do a great job of controlling the play (they're 16th in team Fenwick) and sign guys like Sergei Gonchar to bloated deals.

But I thought that this quote by Karlsson illustrates what the Penguins will continue to deal with this season: a bullseye on their backs. Sitting atop the East and riding the league's hottest player means every team, every night, will be gunning for a win. I doubt the Penguins will encounter too many opponents who can't get their feet moving, and the Pens need to adjust to this. They can't drop games to bad/mediocre teams in the East (like the Senators or the Rangers) if they want to win the Atlantic at the end of the year. I'd like to say that the Penguins have had experience dealing with this since they played all of last season coming off their Cup win. But they fell into inconsistency pretty quickly into last season, and never got the chance to really serve as that measuring stick for other teams. This season is different so far, and I thought Karlsson's quote really highlights the pressure that will be on the Pens every night for the rest of this season. 

First off, I hope everyone had a safe and merry Christmas today! Since I'm done with school for now, I thought it'd be good time to put up a post for the first time in a while.

Let's jump...

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First things first: I'm really excited to be posting again! It hurts to know that I'm not able to hang around here as much as I was this summer, but Hooks, Frank, Justin and everyone else have been doing a fantastic job keeping this the best Penguins blog on the web. Even though I'm not posting as often, I do come here at least once a day to see what's going on, and I especially enjoy reading everyone's post-game thoughts that get posted in the comments section after each game.

And without further ado, here we go...

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