Archive for the ‘Analysis’ Category

5 issues that led to one big overtime problem for the New York Rangers last night

Posted by Justin Bourne under Analysis on May 17, 2013

New York Rangers v Boston Bruins - Game One

The Bruins overtime winner last night was a beauty of a goal, but it left me scratching my head a bit. The play on the offensive side of the puck was obviously great, but how do you end up in situation where Patrice Bergeron, Brad Marchand and Jaromir Jagr have a 2-on-1/3-on-2 on Anton Stralman and Mats Zuccarello?

Well, I came up with five reasons. Well, four true reasons and one “that could have been done better.”

In the interest of not clipping 23453452 screenshots, I’m going to highlight those.

Here’s the goal: Read the rest of this entry »

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Perfect Patrice

Posted by Cam Charron under Analysis, Boston Bruins on May 17, 2013

Toronto Maple Leafs v Boston Bruins - Game Seven

It takes a lot more than goal scoring to win a hockey game. Well, that’s not entirely correct, but it takes a lot more than finishing ability to win a hockey game, and the only stats that appear in a boxscore that are to be trusted are goals and assists.

Patrice Bergeron is good at those things, but he’s also good at all the other things that aren’t recorded in the traditional boxscore, the things you could, until about six years ago, only really see with your eyes. Patience in the neutral zone and impatience in the defensive zone, Bergeron doesn’t like to play too many seconds on the ice without the puck on his stick, and that’s a damn good thing, because there aren’t many players better in the game with the puck on their stick.

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Slumping Seguin getting chances, but running out of time to score

Posted by Cam Charron under Analysis on May 13, 2013

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By one measure, Tyler Seguin has been the most dangerous player all series for either team.

It comes as little consolation to the young star however. The Toronto Maple Leafs have converted on a much higher number of chances than the Boston Bruins, and the Leafs’ most dangerous player—Phil Kessel—has found the back of the net three times already in the series.

I’ve long thought that a playoff series, or even a playoff run, should not change your opinion of a player. If you thought that Seguin was a player coming into the series, you should probably still think that Seguin is a player, regardless of his results from the first six games.

For those catching up (and if you’re reading hockey blogs, I presume you’re past that stage) the Maple Leafs, heavy underdogs against the Bruins in the first round, have come back from a 3-1 deficit to tie the series 3-3 after 2-1 wins in Games 5 and 6. Game 7 on a quick turnaround runs tonight, and it seems as if there are lots of people prepared to bury the Bruins.

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The Islanders are underdogs, but better than given credit for

Posted by Cam Charron under Analysis, New York Islanders on May 06, 2013

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The Canadian Press called it a “surprising split“. The New York Times called the win “surprising“. Scott Burnside suggested that it was because “hard work sometimes trumps talent“.

Perhaps it is the hard work, but there is still a lot of talent on the Islanders roster. Their top six has four first-round picks. They have another first rounder on their third line centred by a player who has been an AHL scoring machine since 2006. There is a lot of skill, even if they aren’t all house-hold names. A couple more performances like they had in Game 2 or 3 of their series though, and maybe a few analysts will begin to credit the Islanders for being a real good hockey team. It’s not just a playoff thing—they’ve been good for a while.

Other than an ill-timed penalty against a deadly Penguins powerplay, the Islanders have out-played the Pens in this series. They out-shot Pittsburgh 31-20 at even strength in the third game and appeared to beat them in scoring chances. In three games, they have out-shot the Penguins 86-61 at even strength.

This shouldn’t have been surprising going in. The Islanders this season were 11th in Hockey Analysis’ Corsi Tied in the NHL and 11th in Behind the Net’s Fenwick Close. Pittsburgh in the same measures were 17th and 15th. The Islanders do have a significant five-on-five advantage that could have been easily picked up on coming in. Read the rest of this entry »

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Shot charts and playoff teams

Posted by Cam Charron under Analysis, Charts on Apr 29, 2013

yea, he's good

yea, he’s good

There was a pretty interesting graphic that circulated online after the conclusion of the Boston and Ottawa game. It was a chart simply looking at shot differential standings, highlighting the teams that made the playoffs.

I didn’t have access to the raw numbers used by Frank Dumais, who put the chart together. However I was able to copy and sort of duplicate every season since 2008 from stats.hockeyanalysis.com and do a similar thing. These are only even strength statistics, but I’ve highlighted all the playoff teams:

shots diff 1 Read the rest of this entry »

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Presidents’ Trophies and Hart Trophies – Thoughts on the Blackhawks and the MVP race

Posted by Cam Charron under Analysis on Apr 26, 2013

"Party at Kaner's house!" "Cool, we celebrating the Presidents' Trophy?" "Nah, we're celebrating... Wednesday."

“Party at Kaner’s house!” “Cool, we celebrating the Presidents’ Trophy?” “Nah, we’re celebrating… Wednesday.”

The Presidents’ Trophy is so a good award

Something bugged me when the Chicago Blackhawks clinched the best overall record in the National Hockey League. They didn’t seem proud of their accomplishment in the slightest.

Jonathan Toews:

“It’s not that important. Of course, we want to be the best. We’ve put ourselves at the top throughout the entire season. We want to stay there. But that fact it’s called the Presidents’ Trophy, it doesn’t mean a whole lot to us. We’re preparing ourselves for the postseason, and that’s the most important thing right now.”

North American sports analysis weights too much on the success of teams in the post-season “when it counts” or what-have-you. Playoffs though, are like at the end of a long game where one team has decisively won 4-2, tacking on an overtime period to the end of said game and giving the win to whichever team scores first, even if it was the team losing heading into the OT period.

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How did the sixth place New York Islanders come to be?

Posted by Cam Charron under Amazing, Analysis, New York Islanders on Apr 22, 2013

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There are a lot of highly-enjoyable storylines to follow during the playoff chase. During the Game 48-to-Game 82 stretch in a normal season, a couple of teams that don’t belong fall out of the chase (last season it happened to be the Minnesota Wild and the Toronto Maple Leafs) but this season there’s some added excitement because teams that specifically don’t belong are in the chase.

The Toronto Maple Leafs will make the playoffs for the first time in nine years—the playoff team with the worst shot differential numbers since the 2002 Montreal Canadiens, as per Elliotte Friedman at Hockey Night in Canada. The hockey blogosphere is abuzz with the success of the new-look Columbus Blue Jackets, or “New York Rangers West”, or quite simply “Lumbus” and as of Sunday night, they hold a slippery grip on the 8th spot.

The more games are played, as in, if there were a normal season, I think those two teams might fall out of the race. I’d be a little worried about the Anaheim Ducks. That being said, some math is being re-written this season. I wrote over at my PDO post on NHL Numbers last week that:

after 40 games or so games, we should expect just 5% of the teams in the league to be outside 1.025 or .975 (great work here by Snark SD). The actual number is 23%, as this is officially a silly season and has made an absolute mess of things.

So it’s not the low number of games that is keeping Anaheim and Toronto in the playoffs, Pittsburgh and Chicago picking up points like gangbusters, and Florida unable to make a save while the New Jersey Devils could become the best team to miss the postseason probably ever. There’s something else happening this season. Perhaps the short turnaround, the extra days off, the more four- and five-game weeks is giving an added boost to certain teams. Who knows.

I don’t like it. Let’s start the playoffs.

Hopefully the New York Islanders were in them.

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