Whether you’re at the Sabres game, watching it on TV or reading about it the next day, there’s no shortage of data. You can see everything from penalty minutes and ice time to short-handed goals for each player.
But in every watercooler conversation or article about the game, there’s also a lot of hidden information. From guys who care about data — John H. Johnson, PhD, and Mike Gluck, authors of Everydata — here are a few things to keep in mind:
Know which data is being used. A game preview at Sabres.com noted that the Sabres “earned a point in eight of their past 12 games.” That’s a great run. But if you wanted an even more positive spin, you could say they had earned a point in four out of the past five games. These statements are both true — and both cherry-picked — which means they used anecdotal examples to make a point.
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Consider when you might want more information. How do you decide which goalie should start in net? If you don’t know anything about the Sabres and you just look at each goalie’s stats toward the end of last year, you’d see that Robin Lehner had a solid goals against average of just 2.14. But Lehner had played fewer than 30 minutes total at that point in the season, while the Sabres’ other goaltenders had played more than a dozen games each. If you’re trying to make a decision, make sure you’re basing your decisions on a large enough sample.
Understand that there may be multiple reasons for what you’re seeing. The team’s top goal scorers (as of mid-February) are all over six feet tall. But are they scoring goals because they’re tall? Or is their height simply one of the possible reasons why they’re successful — along with their speed, strength and skill? Just because there’s a correlation in the data doesn’t mean that one thing causes the other.
Be careful when making predictions. Last season, the Sabres somewhat unexpectedly beat the Philadephia Flyers in a shootout. Fans often make predictions based on past records and trends. But things change. Injuries happen. Pucks bounce. In this case, Brian Flynn (a player who had just five goals total that season) put one past Ray Emery — a goalie once recognized as one of the best in the NHL. These types of unknowns are exactly what make it so difficult to predict the outcome — and so exciting to watch the game.
