Stat Nerd Culmination: The Curious Case of Cam Fowler and the Role of Advanced Stats

Having looked at all of these statistics as they relate to Cam, it's time to start talking about the Qualitative versus Quantitative conundrum. I think if you looked at Cam from a purely Qualitative standpoint, meaning just by watching his games and not checking his numbers, you would probably think of him like a Jack Johnson. He might be seen as a guy whose mistakes don't out-weigh his offensive contributions, a PP quarterback who should be relegated to third line minutes in even strength situations to limit the damage he can do to the team defensively. You would see glaring turnovers, misreads, and Cam getting overpowered by the occasional big body up front.

If you look at Cam quantitatively, you would see a player who drew some of the toughest assignments on his team and still managed to drive play forward so that his team was taking more shots on goal than it faced while he was on the ice. I'd see a player who was a little unlucky in terms of goals for and against while he was on the ice. I'd see a player who was the 15th most valuable defensemen in the league last year in terms of moving play forward for his team. I'd see a player who struggled offensively and would be likely to see an offensive uptick.

I believe both of these players are Cam Fowler. One shows the intricacies and nuances of his game, particularly where he struggles, and one shows the overall positive effect he had on the team that can only be seen by stepping back and looking at the big picture. Both viewpoints are necessary. I believe it's seeing the forest and the trees. Quantitative analysis in hockey allows us to look at the forest, to see the bigger picture. Qualitative analysis allows us to discuss particular nuances as they happen and dissect an individual player rather than his role and overall effect on the team.

The major problem is that people misunderstand what sports statistics actually tell us. They measure effect; they do not tell us cause. However, measuring effect is not useless. Corsi cannot tell us the quality of shots given up, because the quality of a shot is a biased interpretation based on the person watching. I've seen Teemu Selanne bury a ton of shots taken from horrible angles, especially on the PP, and I've seen Bobby Ryan pull up between the circles and shoot so high it goes around the boards and back up ice as a turnover. However, no matter how poor the quality of shot, if you spend enough time in your zone the puck will inevitably go in. Also, depending on who you read, there's an argument out there that scoring chances, i.e. the quality of a shot, is in fact not relevant to predicting scoring, as shot metrics such as corsi and fenwick are equal if not better predictors.

There will always be anomalies; this is sports. However, understanding these trends gives us larger predictability for how players and teams will perform. PDO is a perfect example. Since it has been proven that PDO regresses to 1000, we can monitor our team shooting and save percentage to see if we are operating at a sustainable level. Yes, good teams will not regress as far as others, but some stats are not sustainable. The Ducks are shooting at 13% right now, and that is contributing to a large plus/minus in terms of 5-on-5 play. We have a team save percentage of 92.8 that might be closer to a true value. This gives us a PDO of 1059, tops in the league as of Feb 11. At the same time, the Ducks are 28th in shots taken.

PDO tells us that the combined number of 1059 is going to regress towards 1000, so where will the Ducks feel the pinch. My best guess would be shooting percentage as that seems the most outlandishly high. The league average in shooting percentage is currently 8.1%. Meanwhile, the league average save percentage is 91.8%. That means we are closer to league save percentage average and farther from league shooting percentage average. Therefore, our shooting percentage is the most likely to fall down. That means that no matter who is flinging the puck on net, unless the overall volume of shots we are taking drastically increases, we will see a drop in the 3.25 goals per game we are posting right now.

If you've ever taken an introductory comm course, your instructor should have talked to you about the process of perception. If he/she didn't, slap that person the next time you see him/her. I won't bore you with the details; I will only say that the first step in the process is selection. We choose to focus on certain phenomena for various reasons, but we choose nonetheless. We've all emphasized good traits of players we liked and downplayed traits we don't through the course of watching a game. Hockey is a fast moving sport and it's impossible to absorb everything that's happening 100% of the time. Statistics allow us to augment that viewpoint and enhance our overall understanding of the game. It allows us to fill the gaps on things we are missing. It helps us to look at a great start and identify the places we need to improve, or to recognize that a players few mistakes might not out-weigh his overall contribution to the team.

I encourage all of you to pursue a deeper understanding of advanced hockey statistics in order to further augment your own perceptions and advance your overall understanding of the sport and how it operates. It is impossible to look at the game today and think that observation alone will tell us everything we need to know about a player. That's an arrogance even I won't approach, and I'm arrogant.