Either way, offense from defense isn't the big worry in this group. Finding effective even strength defenders and penalty killers is the main area of importance.
Here are the boxcars for the 11-12 blue:
- Ryan Whitney 50, 4-24-28
- Tom Gilbert 82, 5-23-28
- Cam Barker 66, 7-16-23
- Theo Peckham 70, 3-12-15
- Jeff Petry 50, 2-10-12
- Ladislav Smid 70, 1-7-8
- Taylor Chorney 38, 1-5-6
- Corey Potter 25, 0-5-5
- Andy Sutton 44, 0-3-3
- Taylor Fedun 3, 0-1-1
- Colten Teubert 4, 0-0-0
I enjoy doing the RE series and based on the number of page views they get it looks like it's a popular feature. I was surprised to see my predictions from last season show up in a recent article by David Staples at the Cult of Hockey the other day and even more surprised that David found a way to put my predictions near the top. :-)
All kidding aside, I want to make sure no one EVER enters a pool or bets a dime on any projection this blog manufactures. My methods are about as scientific as marmalade (well a little better than that) and the guys who get paid to do this stuff are way more qualified than me.
Hope you enjoyed the skaters RE. Goalies are next.
LT,
ReplyDeleteI'd like to say I think you are all wrong about the dmen. I'd love to be more optimistic than you. However, I don't see a lot of reason to believe they will deliver much more than you have indicated.
I can't wait to see what your thoughts are on Khabi. Will he hit new lows or shall I say lower lows ?
Good marmalade is hard to come by. It is a sweet sweet science.
ReplyDeleteI for one am really enjoying this series. Outstanding work.
ReplyDeleteLowetide this series over the last couple years has been quite the treat. Thanks and keep up the good work.
ReplyDeleteJust out of curiosity, are you going to be able to make it out to Penticton this September for the rookie tournament? It was absolutely fantastic last year. I got to see Hall score his first goal in the oilers crest and get an early look at Ebs and MPS. Its a great rink, great town, dirt cheap tickets and pretty great hockey. Well worth the drive.
Im taking my old man again this year (its kinda special to now buy and take him to hockey games)
@LT.
ReplyDeleteI've noticed over the years that your projections are almost without exception, 10% too high (both individually and for the team) and the Staples article confirms that for last season.
Likely a function of being a fan and expecting the best and there's nothing wrong with that.
So, it's likely we see the Oilers score 201 goals next season which will likely have them once again dead last in the WC.
@DSF,
ReplyDeleteI would have to disagree. This is the year LT covers his bets ... upwards and onwards we go ! Look out #13/15 !!!
Wahooo !!!
Too optimistic ? Ummm ... maybe.
@Regwald.
ReplyDeleteLT's PDO would indicate otherwise :)
@DSF,
ReplyDeleteNo, I can tell ... this is the year ... he's gonna be right !
:o))
@DSF,
ReplyDeleteBut seriously, I remember some of the rookie discussions last year about Hall and Eberle especially and how he was underselling them. Yet the results were, he wasn't.
I think it is hard to measure or guess that Hall misses games with an injury, likewise Ebs. Yes, you can guess on Horcoff and Hemsky now based on history, but for unknowns it is a crap shoot.
As always, love the series LT and especially the way you present it. The extra page hits from me at least are no doubt due to the solid comments of late as well (so a hat tip to the commenters and subtle moderation).
ReplyDeleteFor your analysis, I think it is better to measure over/under than how close the overalls are. I think this is the year half beat the RE - of course it is August... oh please let Ryan Whitney be healed for the season.
I'd be around here regardless of the series you are (or aren't) doing. But the RE series (in its various calendar appearances) is a nice look ahead/behind. Thanks for the efforts and keeping us in conversation fodder.
ReplyDeleteWhitney's drop might be balanced out by a regression to the NHL mean with regards to games lost due to injury. He's almost due to play 70.
ReplyDeleteWe should see some small improvement from Petry and Peckham, but Barker is a real wildcard. He should be better than Vandermeer, and at least it's a gamble on a younger player with good pedigree. He's also a player who might benefit nicely from Serdachny Schooling.
Gilbert should be Gilbert, and maybe even better and have an "up" season, perhaps benefitting from a healthier Whitney and more experienced kids.
The group have a decent chance to beat LT's expectations, I think. It's by no means a lock, but the odds aren't ridiculous either. It sure would be nice to see some improvement in the Top 4 though. Hopefully the Bogo Jet talks turn south and he can be sprung. Please gods.
Get Bogo, add Emery if he shakes loose after TC, and then have the same guys who operated on Wolverine's skeleton do Whitney, and the season could be a very interesting ride.
LT: With those predicted numbers, unless DD is schedule for ,930 and the MVP, we're looking like the creamsicle Buccaneers.
ReplyDeleteAin't gonna win another game.
DSF often puts me in mind of something I've read recently. How does he do that?
ReplyDeleteThis week I was reading a chapter from highly regarded statistician J. O. Ramsay on Computing Curves from Noisy Data (from Functional Data Analysis in R and MATLAB--don't leave home without it).
He writes "We tend, perhaps too often, to default to defining data fitting as the minimization of the sum of squared errors ... Of course, if we look closely we see that this error model is too simple [but it tends to work] so long as the true error distribution is fairly short-tailed and departures from other assumptions are reasonably mild."
Least squares is an error function that tends to accord fairly well with common sense, so he's talking about the purview of common sense.
In the category of "other departures" I would have to slate convex objective functions: where it sucks to miss the playoffs, but it sucks the hind banana to a mushy nub to finish ninth rather than 15th. Stanley cup, riotously good; deep Cinderella, fabulous; meek shall inherit the draft lottery ball, crack open a micro-brew six-pack; close-but-no-cigar in the final game of the regular season, Godzilla curb kick followed by a garrote wire to the flowering bulbs of masculinity.
In the category of "fairly short tails" I would not describe our injury parade as a Manx kitten.
In the face of convex objective function and injury tails discarded by blind mice, missing all your predictions 10% high is pretty much a meteorological coin flip. Consistent bias does not enter into this picture.
DSF's sentiment was covered by the words "We tend, perhaps too often ..." In other words, common sense works, except when it doesn't.
In the department of reasonable expectations about reasonable expectations, I think Lowetide is batting five hundred, with base clearing triples tilted toward rookies over veterans. That could either be a comment about Lowetide or a comment about Mr Dithers.
The vagaries of management on net performance could be worse, I suppose, if he was writing a series on reasonable expectations for coffee-drinking NDP MPs in the frozen Q. Layton could fill an entire short bus with poutine-addicted rookie call-ups, and there might not be a single Mordecai Richler in the entire bunch.
@ DSF:
ReplyDeleteHow you look at a list of projections that has LT splitting the difference between over and underestimating and every other forecaster - mostly MSM types like THN and McKeens - overestimating by a wide margin and come to the conclusion that he overestimates because he's a fan amazes me.
Here's the data again:
Person: Over/Under Margin of Error
Prospectus: 13/2 - 9.1
LT: 11/10 - 10.0
McKeen's: 14/5 - 10.7
Forecaster: 15/3 - 13.5
Katsaros: 14/2 - 14.6
THN: 13/1 - 16.6
Dobber - 19/2 - 18.3
LT was more pessimistic than everybody else.
Honestly, it's like you make this crap up.
LT, your RE series is always one of the best reads of the pre-season regardless of how accurate the final totals may be. Your humility in not taking yourself too seriously is refreshing.
ReplyDeleteFew things help pass the dreary month of August better than this.
I keep thinking "what if" for this season regarding the Oilers blueline. If 3.1 had done a better job addressing the blue this off-season, there might be more hope heading into TC.
Thanks again for one of the best reads on the Oilers.
While I appreciate the warning not to take this information with me on hockey pool day, you do realize you cover the Edmonton Oilers. For those of us in the very rare "only pick players named Ryan or Linus" pool, this warning is relevant. For the rest of you, it probably isn't necessary.
ReplyDeleteLT: With those predicted numbers, unless DD is schedule for ,930 and the MVP, we're looking like the creamsicle Buccaneers.
ReplyDeleteAin't gonna win another game.
You mean the team that changed its unis and then won the Superbowl in 2002?
You mean the team that changed its unis and then won the Superbowl in 2002?
ReplyDeleteSo what you're really saying is that the team should release new third jerseys? What a coincidence, Darryl Katz was just suggesting the exact same thing. The new arena can't come fast enough!!¡
Combining F and D for 11-12 I've projected the Oilers to score 223 goals this coming season.
ReplyDeleteSad to see the goal story end here. I've always wanted an Oiler goalie to pot one.
Still can't believe CuJo never did.
Just for kicks:
ReplyDeleteIf the Oilers hope to have a sniff at the playoffs, and LT's 223 goals prediction is right, then we'll need to allow, at a maximum, 223 goals against. If we maintain our respectable shots against count of 2600, that means we need a team SV% of .914. DD posted a .916 last season, so it's not beyond the realm of possibility...if he starts all 82 games.
With regard to Emery, I don't see anything in the CBA that prevents Emery from signing with another club despite agreeing to attend Chicago's TC on a tryout basis. Am I missing something?
Anyone taking odds on who scores more goals, the combined Oilers D, or Visnovsky?
ReplyDeletereico: what Emery calls the team he plays for
JW: Beat me to it. Well said.
ReplyDeleteSo is Alex Plante dead in the water as an Oilers prospect? I know Teubert is the shiny new thing.
ReplyDeleteBy the boxcars they're pretty even with Plante showing a little more of a nasty streak.
I also get the feeling the Oilers value Teubert a little more. They look almost identical as prospects with Plante being a year older.
I think Teubert still has to pass Plante on the depth chart to get to the Oilers but maybe I'm wrong.
I think if Teubert-Passing-Plante-on-the-Depth-Chart was a race done on skates, it would be no problem for the sprightly young Colt. Horses are faster than Plants. Sorry. Just are. But skating isn't everything, so it will be interesting to see what happens this season. A recent trade against 1st rounder... hard to say who gets the organizational push.
ReplyDeleteJW:
ReplyDeleteIt's not that DSF is trying to make anything up. He 'read' Staples' article and concluded that LT overestimates.
Scary eh.
From Daryl Reaugh. Look at the Oil blood gushing through his veins.
ReplyDelete2. Other Than Your Own, The Team You Can't Help Rooting For
Edmonton Oilers. That "Once an Oiler, Always an Oiler" thing is hard to shake. Drafted by them, popped my NHL cherry in orange and royal blue, witnessed a lot of hockey greatness there, relished calling Stars-Oilers series when the Oil were so inferior on paper yet were all the Stars could handle on the ice, and, all of the quality people and characters who have and/or do work for them. Current King of the Oilers, Kevin Lowe, is a terrific human and I wish him well.
Link below:
Daryl Reaugh
Ducey:
ReplyDeleteYeah but also the only team to ever gain nothing out of a 1st overall draft choice (Bo)
This morning I realize I could have shortened my post from yesterday down to "Dude, grab a pair of outliers, and think again." Problem is, I never know what I wanted to say until after I've said.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteYea, but then we'd think someone had hacked your username. We wouldn't even have to google anything to figure out what you were talking about!
ReplyDelete(Seriously, who knew what a "Manx kitten" was?)
Good day,
ReplyDeleteI'll join the choir and sing your praises, Lain. I love your RE series. Ditto any time you pull out your player levels currently a click away.
Being an Edmonton girl I make my marmalade in January when the available citrus is the juiciest. It takes three days to fully develop the bitter, and when the cooking is complete I let it stand for about 20 minutes, stir in some brandy and then I jar it. yum freaking yum
Since you're away, Lain, you may have missed Gregor's interview with Tom Renney yesterday. He sounds more like management than a coach, and though he whispers sweet "Gilmours", I won't trust him till he shows us he knows what the **** he's doing behind the bench. He's got holes, for sure, but he's also got a bunch of big brains who know when they are being outcoached.
L8r
Louise
Not that there's a need to state the obvious, but it's good that this blog is calorie free. Reading Lt is part of a healthy breakfast--at least for me. :P Love the RE series, of course.
ReplyDeleteReading between the lines, I guess I'm going to have to find an alternate form of entertainment (to watching the Oil) between January and the draft lottery. Why Jan? That's about where my tolerance for watching losing hockey games reaches its limit.
BTW good to see Woodguy back.