The Edmonton Oilers Should Fire Their Coach For Cowardly Waiting WAY Too Long To Pull The Goalie
Listen. In my two or so years blogging here I've written a grand total of one hockey blogs including this one and have watched about two and half hours of NHL hockey on TV this season so I know what I'm talking about here. The sad part is barely anyone else does when it comes to this. I'm one of the few maverick data nerds who knows puck when it comes to pulling the goalie.
So let's rip the Band-Aid off. Edmonton's coach should be fired for how he managed the end of Game 7. FIRED. Just because no one else would have done differently doesn't make it right either. Fire every coach then. Fuck it. This is ridiculous, cowardly, and downright boring as hell. While analytics was a cancer for baseball and basketball, hockey would be so much more intense to potentially watch 5-6 minutes of a chaos with everything in the balance. And it's the plus EV move to do so.
But boring ass convention is to wait until under two minutes to pull the goalie because that's what great grandpappy did and absolutely no one in hockey knows what they're doing. How do I know this? Because the quants have settled this years ago. It's no secret. It's all here available for everyone to read.
Obviously, I know there ain't a damn one of you going to actually read it so I'll do my job as a currently irate but still courteous blogger and give the important cliff notes. The quants took past history to calculate the following figures that will be later plugged into an equation:
- The odds of scoring a goal at even strength in any ten-second span is roughly .65%
- The odds of scoring a goal with a sixth attacker vs five is 1.97% for a ten-second span
- The odds of scoring a goal as the team with the goalie going against a six-man attack is 4.3% per ten-second span
Using these key pieces of information, the quants busted out the Good Will Hunting chalk boards and figured the odds of a team winning down one with 10 seconds remaining, 20 seconds, etc. in ten second increments until they found the point at which it's no longer advantageous to have the sixth attacker. That's what you see in the line graph above. Around the six-minute mark is the target time to pull the goalie so long as it makes sense situationally (ex: you have control of puck in opponents end).
Look, I had no dog in this fight other than rooting for McDavid. But this shit is infuriating. I'm officially putting this in my takes that make my fucking blood boil next to "hey, let's let quarterbacks slide, certainly nothing could go wrong there". We are all being robbed of a level of intesity rarely seen in the best game on earth in the playoff intensity department.
Now you might wonder why no coach actually does anything close to what the quants suggest if it's really accurate. The answer is pretty simple. Coaches are chicken shit, but also sorta smart from a selfish job-security perspective. No one is going to fire them for not doing the right thing. Unless some irate blogger who's seen multiple hours of hockey on TV this season (Game 7) starts a movement to get idiot hockey fans to see the light. But if they fail when doing the right thing, then the blame from the simpletons could be their doom.
So how do we break this cycle?
Fire the Oilers coach. Whoever he is. I don't even know despite the multiple hours of puck I've watched this year. But someone's gotta do something bold and send a message to the other chicken shit hockey coaches that playing like a wimp is not acceptable. And just think about how much more exciting that would be to watch. That rush the Oilers were on with 3-4 minutes left would have put the intensity level at 11/10 potentially for the rest of the game. And the Oilers were absolutely gassed at that point too. They needed the extra man. And from 5:00 to just over 1:00 when they comically finally pulled him there were ample spots to make the call. Pathetic. Cowardly.
FYI - In case you're wondering (because again, I know you didn't read the research paper) while the quants say to pull the goalie around 6:10 when down one goal, it's 13 minutes when down two and 23 minutes when down 3. LOL. Imagine saying fuck it, we're starting the third period with the extra man and going wild. That would be AMAZING. Oh, you don't want to give up a empty-netter at 18:00 left to trail by 4? Who fucking cares? You were losing anyway. At least you gave it a shot.
Unlike Edmonton. Oh well. At least grandpappy would be proud.