Well, well, well, look at the verbiage employed in this Puck Daddy piece regarding the state of Toronto Maple Leafs under Mike Babcock. Puck Daddy commits hockey heresy; Corsi and Fenwick are rolling over in their graves at the mere mention of the following while we at Hockey Free For All love that our mantra is seeping its way into the “almost mainstream.”  Is it our imagination, or did we just read this:

<<<Now, there remain some obvious deficiencies where the Leafs are concerned here. Obviously possession, high-quality chances, and shots are all way, way up, but the goals aren’t appreciably better than they were last year (when they were putrid), and the penalty differential is destroying the Leafs because their penalty kill is among the least-successful in the league.>>>>

And this.  THIS?

<<<<It can go on like this, but it goes to show that if you can make even marginal improvements in your “for” numbers, but significantly reduce “against,” your numbers quickly go from bad to good.>>>>

Wait a minute, this implies that….gasp….breathe…..settle…..shots and possession stats don’t necessarily lead to goals?  It is the net penalty margin that is “destroying” the Leafs?  If you don’t allow goals, its the same as scoring them?  Of the 1000 things I thought I would read today, this did not make the list.

Notably, I would have made this comment on the Puck Daddy message board, but for some reason I can’t understand, I have been banned/censored from comments on his articles by Yahoo!  I think it was because one of their writers, who shall remain nameless and shameless, essentially photocopied our piece regarding the Leafs rebuild and I called him out on it.

What we have noticed is that as the season wears on, the predictive nature of the Advanced Bracton approach is being validated, save for roughly four outliers.  With pieces like this one by Puck Daddy, the lexicon of how hockey is discussed is changing.  Not a bad five months work!