Kr55 wrote on Tue, 16 March 2021 15:43

Here is last year's Bear Staples stats (the bottom half): Guess on the defensive side similar, but the other way he was helping out more. I remember a guy last year that was able to make lots of good little plays in his own end to get a pass off to start the breakout. I'm not sure what the threshold is for D contributing to good chances, but maybe that counts if it leads to a great chance on a rush. I don't think he is making the same kinds of plays this year, and that was his big value last year. He did a lot of the passing for Nurse on that pair, when there wasn't an opportunity for Nurse to skate the puck out. I guess comparing that top half to the more current stats, Bear hasn't made a single play to help create a chance since March 5th, hehe.

Staples analysis is so flawed. I remember this being a lively point of conflict when ol' Mudcrutch was lighting up twitter with long flame wars. This analysis isn't particularly useful when it relies on A) a single person's subjective views as to what is and isn't a mistake - especially someone with as unreliable an opinion as David Staples, and B) such a weird skew between forwards and defence. Clearly, Staples believes there's critical defenceman errors on almost every goal against - so they get much higher results on that side of the puck.

Mistakes and contributions aren't well defined - he was giving a the same mark for a player standing in front of the goal and providing a partial screen as he was for actually shooting the puck in the net. I have no idea what he constitutes as a mistake or how minor those need be to be counted.

I believe he's also only counting stats when they are related to a goal, which means that the vast majority of the time on ice isn't being tracked here and major flaws or great plays are ignored because they don't end up in the back of the net, while on a long shot that goes in, despite being a terrible chance, he's still potentially counting errors that are almost meaningless.

Staples numbers are the worst fancy stat ever. +/- is more telling.

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