2011-12 Minnesota Wild Compared to Past Teams: Which is a Better Comparison?

Is doing it pretty much solely on shoots for and against(corsi, fenwick, etc). They only are using one style of metric.

There we go, my version of falling off would be to finishing 7th or 8th. I guess i was thinking we were trying to see if the wild would finish the league where we are now. I think thats where the confusion came in.

I intended no dickishness… truthfully. I honestly think the Oilers of this year more accurately match the comparisons to the Avalanche team of two seasons ago. Right now, the Wild do honestly remind me of last year’s Preds. No disrespect intended in that assessment.

Bryan knows that I’m not being a dick to him. I do like to tease him a bit about getting wordy, but that’s his job. And, if you’re referring to my little throw away joke at the bottom about ‘thumbing my nose at the Oilers’, you need to relax a bit. I like that Oiler team, and I believe they have all the potential to be excellent for years to come if they can hit on a solid defensive scheme and get, or keep, solid goaltending. The joke is mostly aimed at my cousin, who visits this site, and who bet me a “good nose thumbing” that the Oilers will finish as a better team than the Wild this season. I cited system, buy-in, defensive structure, and goaltending. He cited Goaltending and scoring.

Or, in a much less wordy way. Dude, relax. I was just trying to post a light and good humored post that included a little analysis and my conclusion that if the Wild can maintain it’s solid defensive play with good goaltending, then the team will most likely, almost assuredly, make the playoffs this year.

reasons. The argument that the Wild are this year’s Dallas finds an interesting counterpoint when viewed with other teams that got off to hot starts this season. And those teams being the Oilers, or if you want, this year’s Dallas. My response wasn’t about the Oilers either, it was about evidence that what the Wild are doing is, at this time, remaining remarkably consistent, and they have recently added more scoring. Where as, when goal tending hits some inconsistency, through injury or inconsistent play, and there isn’t a strong and steady defensive commitment, results tend to dip more markedly.

While I agree with you that many people seem to be ignoring the historical numbers of what happens to teams that are sitting in the #1 spot after 30 games, what annoys me more is that the position on the Wild has changed to “Well, they’ll win less down the road, but they’ll still probably make the playoffs because they had a very, very hot stat to the season… but, we’ll still be right that the Wild aren’t very good.”

As if making the playoffs this year, after missing for 3 in a row, with a new coach and a bunch of young guys moving into the team for the first time, isn’t an unmitigated success for the Wild, I don’t know what is. Certainly there are anomalies. Teams can play above their talent for stretches of time. But, I do believe this, the Wild seem to be getting more consistent, and the offense seems to be opening up and diversifying. Does that mean the Wild will maintain their same winning percentage? I do doubt that. It isn’t likely. But, I do believe that this team, this coach, the collection of men who seem to be playing as a cohesive unit, are for real this season. Heck, that alone, when compared to last season, is a success.

The underlying cause of this is that painfully little game data is recorded, at least publicly. It’s hard to come up with a stat that includes shot quality when the only people who are tracking shot quality are a small collection of semi-organized bloggers doing it subjectively.

Maybe in ten years we’ll have some of the same sorts of data that have sprouted in baseball in the last decade. It’s harder in hockey but I doubt it’s insurmountable technically; it might be economically.

Because by your definition of success the team would have to not only maintain what they can control, their own winning, but they’d have to also have something completely out of their control, the Canucks record outside of the Wild vs Canucks games, go in such a way that they finish above the Canucks.

You would be better served to say, “If the Wild is successful at maintaining their current winning percentage/pace, it’s not via corsi…” I’d be more than happy to agree with that assessment.

Winning the division is not solely dependent on the Wild and how they finish the season, but also depends on how the Canucks finish the season. Conversely, what if the Wild do win the division, but both the Canucks and the Wild tail off badly, and while winning the division the team’s point total puts it at 7th in the West, would you still say they ‘maintained their success’?

Also, what do you mean by success? Do you only mean being first in the league in points, the conference, their division? Is maintaining their success tied to their specific winning percentage current and the one at the end of the season?

It’s a cop out because you’ve made a faulty logic statement and tied any notion of success to not only the team’s ability to win but also a position in a division that also depends on other teams’ play outside of any games played directly against the Wild. You’ve made an argument on what quantifies ‘success’ for the Wild that only partially accounts for what they have control of, their own game, but also includes how whole other teams finish their season.

man, my brain is not working today…