Eastern Conference Top-Six Reliance

After seeing this post on the Western Conference Teams, I decided to do the same exercise for the East. Here are the results, sorted by most reliance on top-6 (by TOI...yes, that is a bit of circular reasoning) forwards:

Semin: Best a Stopper?

Even if playing Semin in a defensive role sacrifices his even strength offense, he's one of the best two-way players on the team. Reduced offense should, furthermore, lower his cost, which could mean he could stay with the team past 2011-2012 for much less than the $6.7 million hit he'll put on the cap. Moreover, style aside for a moment, using Sergei Fedorov and Nicklas Backstrom as the statistical examples of Semin's ideal linemates, Laich better matches Fedorov's ability to "tilt the ice" (good relative Corsi with not-so-easy minutes) and put up points at 5v5 (a little under 2 pts/60) than Marcus Johansson, who would presumably center Semin if not Laich.

This all made me think of whether Semin is best suited to be a "heavy lifter." Playing him for offense may lead to some issues. For one, playing him on the 2nd line means the team has two lines for offense without enough offensive ice time to go around (one of the two will have to take mediocre or poor zone starts, one of the two will have to take moderately difficult ice time thanks to time-on-ice distribution patterns--opposing poorer, lower-TOI players won't be out there enough for both Ovechkin and Semin's lines) to use their abilities to the fullest. With Laich the next best forward on the team, then, it makes sense to play Laich and Semin together. Since Laich (and any other option to play with Semin) lacks that high offensive production ability, and since Semin's game translates better between offense and defense than for other Caps forwards (except for Backstrom, I'd say), why not play them in a role that forces them to play both offense and defense? And if your third forward is probably going to bring much more defense than offense, why not skew their usage to favor defense? It will also free up the top line to get ice time more like the Sedin twins than like Ryan Kesler.

I'm not sure I'd do it, but that sort of split would definitely be on my radar if I were coaching the team. Then again, if I knew anything about the game I'd be in it.

Ovechkin: Three Seasons

Again, "Team" is without Ovechkin on the ice. We see Ovechkin (and Backstrom) with a pretty bad stretch about a quarter of the way through the season, then his Corsi% (along with the team's) pick up during the losing streak, to stay high for the rest of the year. Ovechkin seems to have had a good start to the year, a bad stretch, and then a good stretch from game 50 onward, at 5v5 at least.

I like that Ovechkin's final half of the season was pretty strong here (aside from that blip in the 60s, which coincides with when Backstrom was hurt), but not how that seems to have come at the expense of the rest of the team. I suppose Ovechkin getting the prime offensive ice time is better than, say, Jason Chimera, but I'd like to see the rest of the team at least break even consistently (see "Corsi Off" on behind the net) as they have in previous years.


WOWY, all scores:



Wow (-y). Only four players show up with negative Delta1s (how much better their Corsi% is with Ovechkin than without Ovechkin), and only one has a positive Delta1 under 5%. Seven of the 20 players here have a Delta1 of at least 10%. The "w/Ovechkin" looks pretty stellar across the board, except for Schultz (~50%, "only"). That's odd, considering the next chart.

On Tom Wandell

I'd noted way back at the deadline that this dude on the Stars, Tom Wandell, looked very, very good by his Behind the net profile. To recap:

Middling competition. Best relative Corsi rating. Middling zone start. Cheap and young. Will get better as he gets better at faceoffs.

Looking at his WOWY, nothing stands out until the columns 15, 16, 17, and 29--Jamie Langenbrunner, Adam Burish, Toby Petersen, and Steve Ott, respectively, with ~20% Delta1s in their columns (Wandell was ~50% with each of them, ~43% without each of them). Either when these checkers played together they got some easier minutes, or they just played decent, break-even territorial hockey, which happened to be well above the normal caliber of play Dallas was getting last season.

Green Carries Himself

A quick look at Behind the Net leads to an interesting observation regarding Mike Green. The only Capitals defenseman within earshot is John Carlson, and all his most frequent defensive partners are well below him, three in the negative relative Corsi range. He must have been some sort of stellar, right?

The Growth of Nicklas Backstrom

Here are some of his important "underlying" numbers:



At first glance, I see increasing defensive responsibility for the young Swede, coupled with superior possession play. Backstrom may have topped out his offense, more-or-less, but with his ever-improving defensive play I think he may age like Saku Koivu (who, this last year at 36, was still taking tough assignments, along with Selanne), but with a bit more offense. If Backstrom and Ovechkin age like that, I'll be ecstatic.

It is a little troublesome to see how he seems at the mercy of his teammates and the percentages on the power play. I guess Jacques Martin had it right--the Caps' PP does truly revolve around Ovechkin.

And rolling Corsi segments, 10 games each in length:

Apologies on the messed-up x-axis scale. They are the segment-ending game numbers, 1 to 81 (the game sheet for the shutout win over Carolina early in the season for whatever reason wasn't published online).

We can see that in the middle of the season and towards the end were when Backstrom was strongest. In the middle of the season, though, we likely have score effects inflating Backstrom's ratio--he'd see a lot of ice time with the Caps trailing, which would be often when you lose 8 in a row--whereas score effects have the opposite effect at the end, deflating Backstrom's numbers. He fell off a bit around Game 70, which is around the time of his thumb injury.

Perhaps surprisingly, perhaps not, the Caps as a team had their strongest possession weeks before the system change, and despite Backstrom (and likely Ovechkin as well) not exactly dominating territorially (I think much of the Caps' success can be attributed to their newer defensive look, which teams were not prepared for, and more favorable percentages). The aggressive "run-and-gun" seemed to deteriorate over time, on the other hand...next season Boudreau will truly test Boudreau's mettle in terms of making adjustments, as other teams have now had the time to prepare for every look he's given them.

On a side note, the Caps' Fenwick and scoring chance ratios look stronger than Corsi ratios. The Caps went on a tear post-deadline in Fenwick. I just opted for the larger-sample Corsi metric.

Corsi Rankings

Just a data dump. You can access the lists here as well.

More on Hamrlik and Halpern

En Attendant Les Nordiques was kind enough to publish scoring chances (top left, link to a Google Doc spreadsheet), though at this point it's only updated through ~60 games.

I looked at MTL's scoring chances with either on the ice at 5v4, 5v5, and 4v5. Like the data at behindthenet.ca, this includes empty-net situations (e.g. 6v5 is counted as 5v5).

Link to my spreadsheet. For the 5v5 scoring chance WOWYs, I included only players with at least 50 chances with Hamrlik/Halpern. The dataset for scoring chances is unfortunately about only half as big as that of Corsi.

I'll assume that the Habs' TOI distribution on special teams stayed constant throughout the season, since I only have data until the end of winter.

Per the data, the Canadiens had 171 5-on-4 scoring chances for, 212 4-on-5 scoring chances against. Hamrlik was +79, -73, while Halpern was +2, -80. Per BtN, the Habs spent 443.7 mins at 5v4, meaning they averaged a scoring chance every 2.59 minutes. They spent 518.7 mins at 4v5 (the most in the league), which means a scoring chance against every 2.45 minutes. Again, this is full-season: it's not the Habs' true rate (which was higher, as they gave up that many chances over 3/4 of the season), but the comparison between Hamrlik's rate and the team rate should hold true if my assumption is correct.

Hamrlik clocks in with 201.45 minutes played at 5v4 (roughly), meaning the Canadiens with old #44 on the ice were creating chances at one every 2.55 minutes: a hair above average on that team. Halpern played only 9.36 minutes at 5v4, 4.68 minutes per chance, below average in small sample. He also played 165.6 minutes at 4v5, giving us 2.07 minutes per chance against. Competition and zone start don't exactly give him an excuse for such poor numbers compared to his team (though in a small sample they aren't that reliable; aside: Gionta with a 4v5 zone finish above 50% is spectacular). Hamrlik played 143.78 minutes at 4v5, at 1.97 minutes per chance. Above average. Looks like he'll be a legitimate option on the power play and can eat minutes on the Caps PK, given the team's rotation. I'm not so sure Halpern can take minutes on special teams, which means more PK time for the rest of the group in order to make up Gordon's PK time.

One more note on the PK--winning the draw may not be that important. If the coaches and management realize that, the PK shouldn't miss a beat without Gordon.

Alzner vs Carlson

I had a feeling that Carlson would get more ice time when the Caps are trailing, skewing his numbers positively. I did an Alzner WOWY, but limited my dataset to score-tied Corsi events only.

Link. I removed all players with whom Alzner did not have at least 100 Corsi events with. That got rid of every defenseman except for Carlson. Yeah, you could say they played together a lot.



Looking at their numbers breakdown (which I linked to above), with the two separated, Alzner probably faced tougher competition than Carlson, and with worse zone starts than Carlson. Yet, the only Corsi% advantage Carlson could muster (with a small sample size caveat) was only 2.2%.

Even if I bought it earlier, it's fair to say Carlson was not carrying Alzner. In fact, I'm not even so sure Carlson is a better even strength defenseman anymore. He has more scoring ability, but Alzner looks just as capable of tilting the ice in the Caps' favor.

Note how much better Bradley, Hendricks, Gordon, and Steckel were (with the score tied) with Alzner on the ice. Wow. Granted, they probably faced harder zone starts, but also lesser competition. I hope Green/Wideman-Hamrlik can provide similar support to their forwards.

Brouwer WOWY

Direct link. I used full season data, unadjusted for scorer bias, regardless of score and location. Only 5v5 events were counted. Empty net events were excluded.

Laich vs Semin

The Caps' second line wingers this past season were fairly exceptional. Brooks Laich played tough minutes, beat them, and as a result received Selke attention. Meanwhile, Alexander Semin too played tough minutes, and almost came out with the best relative Corsi rating among Caps forwards, trailing Alex Ovechkin and Nicklas Backstrom. While they didn't score as much as in years past, Laich and Semin drove the play in the right direction.

With Brooks Laich looking like he'll be an unrestricted free agent in a few days, and Semin a UFA a year from now, it's critical to know how much credit each deserves for their success at puck possession, considering how often they played together. Did they each share the burden of their heavy lifting? Did Laich benefit from extended periods of dominance from Semin? Did Semin benefit from Laich's attention to defense?

Where is the Cause and Effect?

I was poking around with numbers at behindthenet.ca to see whether skilled players may affect shooting percentage.

I pulled information from all four seasons' worth of data, and using the filters of minimum 40 games played (for durability), forward (since I'm looking at offense), and at least 12 minutes of 5on5 time on ice per game (top-nine forward, roughly), I got this interesting graph:

The regression line indicates that for every extra minute of TOI/60 these players get, their on-ice shooting percentage increases by half a percent. I'm not sure how I'd go about doing a significance test or confidence intervals here, given different amounts of time on ice for the players, but 814 isn't exactly a tiny sample, I don't think.

To put that in perspective, Alex Ovechkin was on ice for 66 goals for at 5 on 5, the Caps shooting 9.09%. With the Caps shooting an extra half percent, he'd have been on-ice for 70 goals. Account for the extra minute of time on ice and that goes up to 74 goals. Those 8 goals are worth about 1.5 wins, which is not insignificant, though not a giant difference, either.

So what is cause, and what is effect? Are the coaches giving the guys with high on-ice shooting percentage more ice time, or are the coaches simply giving their best players lots of ice time, during which they shoot a high percentage?

Unfortunately, I'm having to manually align the rows for year-over-year correlations, so I'll have those at a later date.

tGAETAN

User "Gould Old Days" at Japers' Rink did a post on a concept called GAETAN. I built on his idea a little here.

Caps Zone Starts in the Playoffs

From a purely numbers standpoint, the attribute of playoff hockey that stands out to me the most, as compared to regular season hockey, is plain aggressiveness by coaches. Coaches match lines and pairings more aggressively. Guys who before got a little ice time each game start getting none at all, while guys who were playing 22 minutes a night play over 25 and maybe close to 30 (for the 1Ds). A leading team will go into a tougher defensive shell when ahead, and probably earlier in games, too (though the Tampa Bay Lightning are an exception to this rule). Team Corsi differences get amplified for those that are capable of "elevating their game" (like the Pittsburgh Penguins this year). Starting goalies start getting every game instead of getting a day off once every five games or so. And so on.

I think the playoffs are a useful tool not only to enjoy watching hockey, but also to see what coaches really think is the best strategy to win. While during the regular season a team may sacrifice some success to instead develop players (see Marcus Johansson and faceoffs, or Tyler Seguin) and chemistry, once the playoffs come around, the team will ice what it thinks is its best team, with the most aggressive winning strategy.

Under this assumption, let's look at what Bruce Boudreau really has thought of his lineup in April 2008, 2009, 2010, and 2011. All information from behind the net.

H2H Corsi, Game 4

Another year, another playoff loss. But hey, if the Caps have a 1/30 chance of winning it all any year, they have a 49% chance of winning it once in 20 years. So we probably don't have to wait all that much longer!

H2H Corsi, Game 3

I'm glad I missed this one.

H2H Corsi, Game 2

I added in zone start differentials as well. My numbers may not agree with those given by Timeonice since TOI counts 4on4 events, whereas I do not.

H2H Corsi, Game 1

It's natural to be nervous after this game. I am, too. But trust me on this: if the Capitals play each of the rest of the games of this series like this one, they'll win the series. Sometimes, the bounces don't go your way, and that was pretty evident tonight. At any rate, the Capitals got pretty deflated around the middle of the second, thanks in part to some undisciplined play, and probably in part after giving up a late tally in the third. Tampa's puck control along the boards in their defensive zone seemed to improve dramatically when they were ahead (compared to score-tied or trailing), and that was frustrating to watch. Obviously, the Caps' PP needs be better, but on the whole, it was just one game.

I'll panic if the Caps fall behind by two games. Again, one game is just that--one game. Even if the Caps are 70% favorites over Tampa, that just means we expect Tampa to take one of two half the time. Win game two, take one or two in Tampa, come back and win at Verizon Center, and voila.

Preview: Conference Semifinals

Same deal as last time. You can check out my previews for the first round: Caps-Rangers, East, West, Corsi.



Blind Corsi: Lightning in 6, Flyers in 6, Canucks in 6, Sharks in 7.

I'll have more on the Capitals and Lightning in a later post.

Bruins-Flyers is an interesting series. Both teams are deep up front, but the Flyers have more top-end talent. The Bruins are thin on the blueline, and while the Flyers are deeper, without Pronger, that's not exactly saying much. Boston has the best goaltending tandem in the NHL, though. While neither Bs special teams unit stands out, the Flyers' PP is pretty bad (so you now know why they brought back Pronger in such a rush), but their PK, first round lack of efficiency notwithstanding, is excellent. The Flyers will have to win this series at even strength, and given how good they were in round 1, I think that's how it'll go. The Flyers will find some average goaltending from either Boucher or Bobrovsky, and their superior forward corps should beat Boston. It won't be easy, especially with great two-way players like Bergeron, Chara, and the certain Vezina winner Thomas defending the other net, but Flyers in 6.

Vancouver-Nashville may be lopsided. If Nashville is to be competitive, Pekka Rinne needs to play like a Vezina finalist, Roberto Luongo must not, and Nashville's special teams must be solid. The Predators also need to show good discipline so as to avoid Vancouver's power play. I'm confident Shea Weber and Ryan Suter, along with David Legwand, can stop the Sedins, but I'm afraid Barry Trotz will run into the same issues as Joel Quenneville--matchups in Vancouver. Quenneville was forced to separate Keith and Seabrook--having one of his studs against Sedin-Sedin/Kesler is better than none, and in Vancouver it was "none" more often than not--and while Jonathan Blum has progressed into a solid defenseman, Cody Franson and Shane O'Brien are less reliable, and Alain Vigneault will, no doubt, be looking to exploit that matchup. Asking for Rinne > Luongo, a special teams hot streak, Franson and SOB playing the best series of their careers, and Mike Fisher to best Ryan Kesler is an awful lot. The Predators are tough, resilient, deep, and balanced, but not as good as Vancouver. Canucks in 6.

San Jose-Detroit should be an excellent series. I'm looking for plenty of scoring, lots of skill, lots of speed, great puck possession, you name it. It's Vancouver-Chicago minus a bit of the history and minus the goaltending. The Sharks didn't drive Corsi very well against Los Angeles, but dominated scoring chances. Meanwhile, Detroit ran Phoenix into the ground (except with Phoenix on the power play), and that was without Henrik Zetterberg in the lineup. Johan Franzen should be ready to go for Detroit, but with without a game-changing Zetterberg in the lineup, I can't see Detroit topping the NHL's best team since the turn of the calendar, especially without home ice. Sharks in 7.

Caps-Rangers Head-to-Head Corsi and TOI

Zone start tallies still don't work, so I didn't include those, and Corsi data still seems to miss one event per game for some reason. At any rate, here's what I have, and I added in head-to-head even-strength time-on-ice numbers (ripped from Vic Ferrari's timeonice reports). I also added in black bars to help separate the "cells" (forward lines) from each other.