Wednesday, July 4, 2012

Alex Ovechkin's assists

Ovechkin's assist totals: 54, 26, 47, 54, 59, 53, 27. At ES, 23, 25, 32, 27, 36, 36, 17. Over the last five years in ES primary assists/60, that goes .97, .81, 1.30, 1.08, 0.39. I'm skeptical Ovechkin took such a big step backward in his play that he "deserved" to lose about half of his ES assists. In other words, I think 27 assists is a severe underestimate of his "true talent" for the 2011-2012 season.

Given that differences from ~league average in on-ice shooting percentage, outside of the exceptional cases, stem from a player's individual shot location, not the shot location of his linemates, and given Ovechkin shot 10.9% at fives himself but as a team he got 8.75% on-ice shooting, it might be worthwhile to see just how well his support was converting, and whether that rate is egregiously low or high.