John Garett shootout selections advice

Ryan Cousineau <rcousine DeleteThis @sfu.ca> wrote in
news:rcousine-BAAA7C.19313814012008@[74.223.185.199.nw.nuvox.net]:

>> My main objection to this is that you seem to leave game-time
>> pressure out of the equation. All my life I heard THOUSANDS (tm
>> leaves nation) of anecdotes about players that are the best of the
>> team in training and do not perform at the same level at game time...
>
> I'm going to make a barefaced assertion:
>
> Those anecdotes are mostly lies.
>
> There is some element of truth in it for certain player comparisons.
> It might be a decisive factor in a type of player known as "AAAA" in
> some sports: a star at the highest minor-league level, but not able to
> stick in the major leagues.
>
> However, almost everyone on an NHL team is beyond that level. They've
> already, repeatedly, faced pressure to perform. If they had not
> succeeded already, then they wouldn't have made it to the NHL.
>
> I would also think that facing one of the best goalies in the league,
> repeatedly, in practice, before a bunch of your peers who know you
> best and will judge you the most harshly by your performance, is a
> substantial amount of pressure.
>
> I am open to the idea that such psyched-out players exist and are
> messing up in our shootouts, but I think that statistical variance is
> a much more likely problem. To be brief about it: the number of
> in-game shootout attempts by any Canuck is so small that assessing
> their ability to score in shootouts using those numbers is folly.
>
> We're talking Larscheid-levels of retardation if you try to assess
> skill from this tiny sample:
>
> Here's a TinyURL to the Canucks 2007-2008 Shootout stats:
>
> http://tinyurl.com/2uvqgq
>
> 8 goals distributed among four skaters. Another 7 players who are
> blanked for the season. Team percentage is 8/30, a .267 average.
>
> If I cared enough, I'd learn statistics and tell you what the
> confidence interval was, but a first-cut guess is "low."
>
> Note that team shooting percentages currently range from 8.3% to 83.3%
> this year. That is such a ridiculous variance that it virtually
> guarantees that shootout percentages are mostly random noise. I'd be
> suspect about making any assessments from current shooutout stats,
> though goalie shootout save percentages are more durable, since one or
> two goalies will typically do all the work for a single team, and thus
> see many more shootouts than any shooter.
>
> What I'm saying is that your suggestion is statistically unknowable,
> and that tallying practice attempts is about the best information
> available.
>
> If you wanted to test my theory, here's what I'd do: go and gather as
> many year-end stats as you can about shootout performance. Use number
> of shots taken as a "confidence" value, which indicates how good the
> coach thinks the player is at shootouts. See if that is correlated to
> the player's performance (in other words, that players who take more
> shootout shots have higher shootout percentages, on average, than
> players who take fewer shots).
>
> --
> Ryan Cousineau rcousine DeleteThis @sfu.ca http://www.wiredcola.com/
> "My scenarios may give the impression I could be an excellent crook.
> Not true - I am a talented lawyer." - Sandy in rec.bicycles.racing
>
>

Once again, I believe you are too quick to dismiss the importance of
pressure on performance. The fact that this is a rather difficult
phenomenon to quantify does not mean is not out there!

I believe that in this case, in order for the data to be accurate it
needs to be extracted only from game-time performance - and we all know
that the sample is too small.

For that reason, practice time performances can only be one of a series
of factors that aids the coach in making his decision; others being for
instance, his subjective evaluation of the player's talent and his
estimate of the player's ability to deal with pressure (the old mythical
player that gives his best performance when the game/season/etc is on
the line)

In this last sense - and as a side note - Naslund performance in the
shutout really worries me. He seems encumbered by the responsibility,
rather than prodded by it. It makes me wonder whether the captaincy
isn't smothering the player.
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