from Travis Yost of TSN,
One of the big reasons hockey analytics have really exploded in recent years is their ability to forecast mean reversion well in advance of the rest of the industry.
The two most prominent examples of that were the 2011-12 Los Angeles Kings and the 2012-13 Toronto Maple Leafs. That Kings team was marked as a sleeping giant by many who were paying attention to their underlying numbers, arguing that their middling performance in the standings wasn’t quite indicative of their true team talent. On the other side, you had the 2012-13 Maple Leafs – a team marked as unfathomably lucky and bound for long-term failure.
Simple understanding of what is and isn’t repeatable talent can go a long way in forecasting future success/failure, and it’s one of the big reasons why so much attention is paid to stats like Corsi%. Controlling possession at even-strength correlates well with winning long-term and, most importantly, is a repeatable skill. Scoring on a high percentage of shots also correlates well with winning, but it’s prone to major fluctuations and exhibits very little repeatability over long samples.
Alternatively: a team with great Corsi% can bank on having a great Corsi% in a follow-up year.
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