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Evaluating the Leafs Defensemen

By on January 26th, 2012

With the re-signing of John-Michael Liles the Leafs now have an abundance of defensemen signed under control for a number of years, many with big dollar contracts too.  We all have our varying opinions on the relative values of each of these defensemen but I thought it would be an appropriate time to take a closer look at them statistically.

Offensively

2011-12 HARO+ 2010-11 HARO+ 2010-12 HARO+ 2011-12 FenHARO+ 2010-11 FenHARO+ 2010-12 FenHARO+
JOHN-MICHAEL LILES 1.23 1.03 1.11 0.96 0.99 1.00
CODY FRANSON 1.20 1.06 1.10 1.05 1.05 1.03
LUKE SCHENN 1.10 1.08 1.08 0.85 1.02 0.99
DION PHANEUF 1.01 1.08 1.05 1.00 0.99 1.03
CARL GUNNARSSON 1.05 1.00 1.02 1.04 0.92 0.94
MIKE KOMISAREK 1.10 0.96 1.00 1.02 0.90 0.86
KEITH AULIE 0.90 1.02 0.99 0.78 0.86 0.89
JAKE GARDINER 1.18 0.94

The above list are my own offensive ratings (goal based and fenwick based) for 5v5 zone start adjusted (10 seconds) situations sorted by their year and a half (2010-12) HARO+ ratings.

The list generally fits with what we might expect though the one surprise is probably Luke Schenn being rated so highly offensively.  I had a debate with a few people last week where I suggested that Schenn is as good offensively as Phaneuf and got ridiculed for making that statement but the numbers do in fact support that.  The above are based on ‘on-ice’ numbers but individual stats make Schenn look good too.  This season Phaneuf has 2 even strength goals and 13 even strength points while Schenn has 1 even strength goal and 11 even strength points but Phaneuf has played more than 30% more even strength minutes than Schenn.  Last season Phaneuf had 5 goals and 17 points at even strength versus Schenn’s 5 goals and 21 points in 20% more minutes.  Combined Schenn has 6 goals and 32 points in 2237 ES minutes while Phaneuf has 7 goals and 30 points in 2207 ES minutes.  That’s awfully close offensive production if you ask me.  The difference in their overall totals is solely due to Phaneuf’s PP minutes and Schenn’s lack of them.

Getting back to the rest of the team, it is no surprise to see Liles and Franson at the top of the list.  They are known to be more offensive specialists and the stats bear that out.  The reverse is true for Komisarek and Aulie who are viewed as more defensive defensemen and that is the role they are assigned.  They simply do not produce much offense.  We only have half a season of Jake Gardiner, but so far so good.  While his fenwick offensive numbers aren’t crazy good, his HARO+ rating is very very good.  I think Gardiner is someone we can be cautiously optimistic will develop into a very good (maybe Liles-like) offensive defenseman.

For interest sake, here are the players raw offensive numbers for the last 2 seasons combined sorted by GF20.

2010-12 GF20 2010-12 FF20
LUKE SCHENN 0.88 12.62
CODY FRANSON 0.88 13.22
JOHN-MICHAEL LILES 0.87 12.66
DION PHANEUF 0.85 13.01
CARL GUNNARSSON 0.83 11.96
MIKE KOMISAREK 0.81 11.00
KEITH AULIE 0.81 11.41

Gardiner’s GF20 is 0.96 and FF20 is 12.62 so far this season.

Defensively

This is the defensive equivalent of the above offensive rating chart.

2011-12 HARD+ 2010-11 HARD+ 2010-12 HARD+ 2011-12 FenHARD+ 2010-11 FenHARD+ 2010-12 FenHARD+
CODY FRANSON 0.77 1.39 1.15 1.02 0.98 1.00
KEITH AULIE 0.71 1.22 1.05 0.89 0.87 0.85
DION PHANEUF 0.87 1.07 1.00 1.04 0.94 0.97
CARL GUNNARSSON 1.04 0.86 0.95 1.00 0.94 0.99
LUKE SCHENN 0.83 0.88 0.88 0.89 0.93 0.90
JOHN-MICHAEL LILES 0.85 0.86 0.87 1.00 1.00 0.99
MIKE KOMISAREK 0.78 0.74 0.76 0.90 0.93 0.95
JAKE GARDINER 0.94 0.97

There are definitely some surprises in the above list and there are probably some small sample size issues going on.  Franson looked awesome defensively last season but terrible this season when considering their goal based HARO+ numbers.  The same is true for Aulie, and to some extent Phaneuf while the reverse is true for Gunnarsson.  For each of them their Fenwick numbers are a little more consistent.

All-in all though, Franson looks like he could be a more than respectable defenseman defensively.  His fenwick ratings are pretty solid and his 2-year goal ratings are very good.  On the other side of the spectrum, Komisarek looks awful, regardless of whether you consider goal ratings or fenwick ratings.  This is not good for a guy who doesn’t produce offense either.  Luke Schenn’s defensive numbers are a little better than Komisarek’s but still not great, but at least he is producing offensively.

Again, for interest sake, here are each defenseman’s 2-year raw defensive numbers.

2010-12 GA20 2010-12 FA20
CODY FRANSON 0.67 13.06
KEITH AULIE 0.73 15.36
DION PHANEUF 0.78 13.48
CARL GUNNARSSON 0.83 13.30
LUKE SCHENN 0.88 14.51
JOHN-MICHAEL LILES 0.92 13.05
MIKE KOMISAREK 1.02 13.75

Gardiner’s GA20 is 0.80 and FA20 is 13.83 so far this season.

Contract Status and Moving Forward

Phaneuf and Komisrek are signed for 2 more seasons at $6.5M and $4.5M cap hits respectively.  Liles and Schenn are signed for 4 more seasons each at $3.875M and $3.6M cap hits respectively.  Carl Gunnarsson is signed for another season at $1.325M when he becomes an RFA and will be due a substantial raise.  Cody Franson is set to become an RFA this summer and will deserve a sizeable raise from his current $800K salary.  Jake Gardiner has 2 years left on his entry level deal with a $1.1M cap hit and Keith Aulie is an RFA this summer.  The Leafs also have Korbinian Holzer, Jesse Blacker and others in the farm system ready to make a push for a roster spot on the Leafs in the next year or two.

The Leafs salary cap hit for their defensemen next season will be $21M plus whatever Cody Franson gets on a new contract which quite likely will be around the $1.5-2.5M range.  That would bring their expenditures on defensemen to $23M which actually isn’t all that ridiculous if the salary cap is $65+M.  That said, if they are looking to free up salary to spend on forwards and/or are looking to open up a roster spot for their young defensemen there are a few options.

The first option is to trade (if possible) Mike Komisarek.  He provides no real value to this team but then he will probably provide no value to any team so trading him might be difficult.  He also has a limited no trade clause limiting the number of potential trade partners as well.  He would be a perfect candidate to have his contract buried in the AHL (in actual dollars he’ll earn $3.5M in each of the next 2 seasons and coincidentally Jeff Finger’s buried $3.5M contract expires this summer) but he has a no movement clause which means he cannot be demoted.  The only option to get his contract off the books is via trade.

Another option is to trade Luke Schenn.  He provides some value to the Leafs with his offensive ability but that is not an area where the Leafs are lacking (most of their defensemen have offensive capabilities).  His poor defensive numbers make him expendable in my opinion and being young and on a reasonably priced long term contract he should have a lot of value on the trade market.  He could feasibly be used in a package to land the Leafs the big two-way forward they desperately need.

The other options are trading either Franson or Gunnarsson.  Neither would save the team as much cap space as either Komisarek or Schenn but both would have good value on the trade market.  That said, I would not be a proponent of this as I think they both provide good value to the Leafs, and are likely to provide good value for many years.  Gunnarsson has developed into a solid all-purpose defenseman and I think Franson has that ability too.

 

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Importance of Quality of Competition/Teammates

By on January 25th, 2012

Whenever I get into a statistical debate over which player might be better than another the inevitable argument that comes up is “yeah, but player A plays against tougher competition and gets tougher assignments” which is a valid argument to make.  But how valid?  The other day I looked at a simple, straight forward method for accounting for zone start differences (which can be significant) and today I thought I’d take a look at quality of teammates and quality of competition.

Whenever I browse through my stats.hockeyanalysis.com site or in my own database I have always been curious about the general lack of variation in the quality of competition and to a lesser extent quality of teammate stats (especially over multiple seasons of data) and I thought it would be worth while taking a look at it more closely.

My stats site has a number of metrics that we can look at but let me define a few.

  • GF20 – Goals For per 20 minutes of ice time.
  • GA20 – Goals Against per 20 minutes of ice time.
  • TMGF20 – Weighted average (by ice time played with) of teammates GF20
  • TMGA20 – Weighted average (by ice time played with) of teammates GA20
  • OppGF20 – Weighted average (by ice time played against) of opponents GF20
  • OppGA20 – Weighted average (by ice time played against) of opponents GA20

I also have the same stats for fenwick as well identified with an F instead of a G in the above abbreviations.

So, let’s take a look at a players offensive capabilities.  Things that would affect a players GF20 are the players own offensive talents, the offensive talents of his teammates and the defensive talents of his opponents.  We know that not all players have the same talent level, but what about the talent levels of his teammates and his opposition?  What is the variation among them?

The above table shows the mean goal production (GF20) in blue along with lines representing + and – one standard deviation.  Also included is TMGF20 in green and OPPGA20 in red and their + and – standard deviation lines.  I have included data for one, two, three and 4 seasons of data and skaters with a minimum of 400 minutes of 5v5 ice time average per season.

As you can see, there is very very little variation in quality of opposition, almost to the point we can almost  ignore it.  The variation in quality of teammate is significant and cannot be ignored and while it seems to get reduced over time, it’s impact cannot be ignored even when using 4 years of data.

Here is the same chart except using fenwick stats instead of goal stats.

We see pretty much the same thing when we look at fenwick data as we do goal data.  There is very little variation in quality of opposition, but significant variation in quality of teammate.  What about on the defensive side of things?

Once again, the quality of opposition has very little variation across a group of players almost to the point that it can be ignored.

All of this tells us that when comparing/evaluating players, the quality of competition a  player faces varies very little from player to player and we should be really careful when we use arguments such as “Player A faces tougher quality of competition” because in the grand scheme of things, the quality of competition probably only has a very minor influence on Player A’s on-ice stats.  And if you think about it, this probably makes sense.  If you have a great offensive player, the theory is your opponents will want to match up their great defensive players against him.  But, at the same time you are trying to match up your great offensive player against their weakest defensive players.  When at home, you get the line matching advantage, while on the road your opponent does.  When all is said and done everything more or less evens out.

 

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Adjusting for Zone Starts

By on January 23rd, 2012

One of the biggest omissions in my player rankings is making adjustments for zone start differences.  We know that Manny Malhotra has a significant bias towards starting his shifts in the defensive zone and that his teammates Daniel and Henrik Sedin have a significant bias towards starting their shifts in the offensive zone.  The result is Malhotra will unfairly be penalized for giving up more shots and goals against simply because he starts more often in the defensive zone and the Sedins have a huge advantage in generating shots and goals because of how often they start their shifts in the offensive zone.  The question is, how much of an effect does it have and how do we adjust for it?

Over the past couple of weeks I have been pondering these questions and I thought of two potential solutions to the problem.  The first solution is to find some sort of adjustment factor based on zone start statistics.  I briefly pondered a few ideas but wondered if a uniform adjustment factor can be fairly applied to all players who have varying skills and talents.  I decided that I would take a look at my second idea first.

My second adjustment idea is really a simple idea and really isn’t an adjustment at all.  The idea is to just ignore any play that occurs during some stretch of time after an offensive/defensive zone face off.  After some length of time, any advantage (or disadvantage) one might get from starting in the offensive (or defensive) zone would be nullified.  Worst case scenario is we have to eliminate ~45 seconds after every offensive or defensive zone face off which would essentially nullify the whole shift.

So, with that in mind I took a look at 3 year (2008-09, 2009-10 and 2010-11) 5v5 statistics and did a comparison of four different lengths of time to ignore after an offensive/defensive zone faceoff – 0, 10, 20 and 30 seconds.  To evaluate what is going on I looked at each players fenwick for and against per 20 minutes and calculated the correlation between each time after faceoff adjustment.  Here is what I found:

FenF/20 FenA/20
5v5 vs F10 0.8639 0.8451
F10 vs F20 0.9882 0.9866
F20 vs F30 0.9870 0.9883
5v5 vs F20 0.8718 0.8368

5v5 is no zone start adjustment, F10 is ignoring 10 seconds after an offensive/defensive zone faceoff, f20 is ignoring 20 seconds after and f30 is ignoring 30 seconds after.  The numbers are r^2 for fenwick for per 20 minutes and fenwick against per 20 minutes.

As you can see, there is a somewhat sizeable difference between 5v5 and the F10 adjustment but there is very little difference between the F10 and F20 or F20 and F30 and there isn’t really any difference between 5v5 vs F10 and 5v5 vs F20.  All of this tells me that any advantage (or disadvantage) a player gains because of their zone stars occurs during the first 10 seconds after an offensive or defensive face off.  After that, only the players talent matters and there is no benefit to removing more data from our analysis.

Wanting to confirm this works for a single season of data I decide to take a look at Manny Malhotra and Henrik Sedin’s stats from last season.

Malhotra FenA/20 Sedin FenF/20
5v5 14.16 15.39
F10 12.49 13.31
F20 12.44 13.66
F30 12.24 13.71

This confirms what we witnessed with the correlations using 3 years of data.  By ignoring the first 10 seconds after an offensive/defensive zone faceoff we can eliminate any benefit/penalty a player may get because of his zone starts.  When I finally get around to updating my stats site I intend to include F10 data as well and I think this is a simple enough solution to abandon any attempts at any other zone start adjustment technique.

 

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State of Brian Burke’s Leafs

By on January 18th, 2012

Brian Burke joined the Leafs in November of 2008.  When he joined the Leafs he insisted he has no interest in a 5 year rebuild and expected he could make the team competitive much sooner.  Let’s evaluate how Burke has done in his tenure as GM of the Maple Leafs.

2007-08 2011-12
GAA 3.08 (27th) 3.03 (27th)
SV% 89.3 (29th) 90.1 (24th)
GFA 2.74 (11th) 2.98 (6th)
PP 17.8% (15th) 20.6% (4th)
PK 78.0% (30th) 74.4% (30th)
Points 83 (12th in east) 89 (projected, 9th)

Their overall offense is slightly better but their defense is the same sad defense we had prior to Burke.  They are in the playoff hunt this season, but they are a dismal 13-15-3 in their last 32 games and showing little signs that if they can somehow squeak into the playoffs they can threaten to win a round.  They have just 7 wins against teams currently in the playoffs and the only playoff team they have defeated since December 5th is the Detroit Red Wings.

Up until recently I have been a supporter of Brian Burke but to be perfectly honest he is growing weary on me.  Yes, the team is younger, but no, it is not very much better.  Yes, there is greater prospect depth, but I am doubtful any of them have the potential to become game changers in the NHL (i.e. dominant core players).  He seems to think he has one of the best coaches in the NHL and gave him a contract extension but he also has talked recently about how he thinks his team is a playoff team and is only a player or two away from seriously challenging to be a top team that can make a lengthy playoff run.  He loves to talk about how the Phaneuf trade changed the franchise around, but since the Phaneuf trade the Leafs are just 72-62-19 or the equivalent of an 87 point team.  In the 6 seasons post lockout 87 points would get you 11th, 12th, 11th, 11th, 10th, and 10th.  I don’t know about you, but I am not satisfied with a 10th-12th place team, or even a 9th place team.

Other Leaf fans like to talk about how young this team and the rebuilding process isn’t complete (despite Burke insisting he had no interest in a 5 year rebuild) but lets look at their ages and experience.  I have included the top 18 skaters in total ice time this season and top 2 goalies.

Player Age GP
Dion Phaneuf 26 515
Carl Gunnarsson 25 155
Phil Kessel 24 419
Joffrey Lupul 28 494
Jake Gardiner 21 38
John-Michael Liles 31 557
Luke Schenn 22 275
Nikolai Kulemin 25 278
Mikhail Grabovski 27 284
Tyler Bozak 25 155
Tim Connolly 30 660
Clarke MacArthur 26 328
David Steckel 29 351
Cody Franson 24 171
Matt Frattin 24 38
Joey Crabb 28 111
Mike Komisarek 29 492
Matthew Lombardi 29 473
James Reimer 23 55
Jonas Gustavsson 27 88

Only Gardiner, Schenn and Reimer are under age 24.  The majority of the team is aged 24-26 with a few players in their late 20′s and Liles topping out at 31.  There are 12 players with 250+ games experience and 7 with 400+ games experience and only 4 players (both goalies, Frattin and Gardiner) have fewer than 100 games experience.  This isn’t a team filled with rookies with little or no experience, it is a young team but with a fair bit of NHL experience with the majority of players in their prime years or just entering their prime years.  Am I really expected to buy into the fact that this mediocre team of 24-29 year olds will suddenly become a great team of 26-31 year olds 2 years from now?  I am not so certain.

Furthering that challenge is that Grabovski, Liles and Gustavsson are UFA’s after this season and after next season Connolly, Lupul, Lombardi, MacArthur, Armstrong, Bozak, and Steckel are UFA’s.  That is 7 of your top 13 skaters in terms of ice time becoming UFA’s over the next 2 summers plus a handful of others.  This doesn’t appear to be a core of players that can win now and a good chunk of the core could walk away as free agents should they choose to.

All this begs the question, where do the Leafs go from here?  Do they stick with this core, re-signing the UFA’s and hope for the best, or do they admit that this completely revamped (from 3 years ago) team is only marginally better, still can’t keep the puck out of their own net, and may in fact need another significant overhaul?  And if it is the latter, should we leave that up to Burke?  To be fair, it is probably too early to pull the plug on this current Leaf team but from my perspective if Burke insists the problem is not the coach and the mediocrity continues, I am not sure how much longer we Leaf fans should wait.

 

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History of Poor Defensive Teams making Playoffs

By on January 15th, 2012

Not sure what led me to look into this but I took a look at poor defensive teams making the playoffs in the eastern conference.  Over the past 3 seasons there have been just 6 teams to make the playoffs in the eastern conference with goals against averages greater than 2.80.  They are:

  • Tampa Bay Lightning (2010-11):  2.80
  • Ottawa Senators (2009-10): 2.80
  • Pittsburgh Penguins (2009-10):  2.82
  • Montreal Canadiens (2008-09): 2.88
  • Washington Capitals (2008-09):  2.89
  • Ottawa Senators (2007-08): 2.92

Over the past 4 seasons there have been a total of 26 teams with gaa’s above 2.80 and just 6 of those made the playoffs (37.5%).  There have been 18 teams with gaa’s above 2.90 and only one team (the 2007-08 Senators) made the playoffs (5.6%).

What is interesting is that right now there are currently 4 teams in eastern conference playoff spots with goals against averages above 2.80.

  • Washington Capitals: 2.85
  • Philadelphia Flyers:  2.90
  • Toronto Maple Leafs:  3.03
  • Ottawa Senators:  3.07

There are actually only 6 teams in the eastern conference with GAA’s under 2.80 so at least 2 of them over 2.80 would have to be in the playoffs.  Those under 2.80 are the Bruins, Rangers, Penguins, Canadiens , Panthers and Devils.  If history is any indication that means Pittsburgh should be able to climb back into the playoff picture and who knows, maybe there is hope for the Canadiens (wouldn’t bet on it though).  But regardless, it appears there will be a few teams making the playoffs in the eastern conference with gaa’s above 2.80, and maybe even one or two above 3.00.  The only eastern teams to make the playoffs with a gaa above 3.00 post lockout are the Tampa Bay Lightning in 2006-07 (3.11 gaa) and 2005-06 (3.07), Carolina Hurricanes in 2005-06 (3.11) and Philadelphia Flyers in 2005-06 (3.04) but offense was significantly higher in those seasons.  Particularly in 2005-06 when only 5 teams had sub 3.00 gaa’s in the east, all making the playoffs.

I should also point out that of the teams that made the playoffs with a GAA above 2.80 in the past 4 seasons, both Ottawa teams missed the playoffs the following season, Tampa is certain to do so this season and Montreal squeeked into the playoffs in 2009-10 with just 88 points, the lowest point total for a playoff team post lockout.  Bad defensive teams don’t generally see much success and should they achieve some it is seemingly not a positive predictor of future success.

 

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Schenn vs Van Riemsdyk: Do you make the trade?

By on January 14th, 2012

There has been a lot of talk over the last 24 hours about the possibility of the Maple Leafs trading Luke Schenn to the Philadelphia Flyers for James van Riemsdyk?  Personally, I’d seriously consider it and probably do it, but lets take a look at the numbers.

Luke Schenn

HARO+ HARD+ FenHARO+ FenHARD+ Ozone%
2011-12 1.19 0.85 0.94 0.83 45.7%
2010-11 1.05 0.89 1.02 0.94 51.1%
2009-10 1.19 0.85 1.05 0.96 51.7%
2008-09 0.97 0.82 1.06 0.89 53.2%

For those who don’t know what these numbers are they are my all-encompassing (mostly) hockey rating stats.  HARO stands for Hockey Analysis Rating Offense and is an offensive rating for the player based on goals scored.  HARD is the defensive rating based on goals.  The Fen ratings use fenwick stats (shots + missed shots) to calculate the ratings instead of goal stats.  For these ratings anything over 1 is quite good (above average) and anything less than 1 is not so good.  The above ratings are for 5v5 even strength situations.

The one thing these stats do not take into account is zone starts (I have a plan to fix this in future versions of my ratings but haven’t coded it yet) so I have included the Ozone% which indicated how frequently the player started in the offensive zone vs the defensive zone.  >50 means more starts in the offensive zone than the defensive zone and <50 means more starts in the defensive zone than the offensive zone.

So, for Luke Schenn we actually find his numbers quite consistent.  Strangely he has been a pretty solid offensive defenseman but a pretty weak defensive defenseman which is the opposite of what he was projected to be when drafted.  His FenHARD+ rating has dropped significantly this season from the previous 2 seasons but that can be fully explained by the fact that he has had significantly more defensive zone starts this year from previous years.  The same is true for his drop in HARO+.  When we factor in his zone starts he has been extremely consistent over the past 2 1/2 seasons (his rookie season was a little weaker).  That lack of progress is what concerns me most about Schenn.  If he can’t significantly improve his defensive ability his overall value going forward is limited to a #4-6 defenseman.

James van Riemsdyk

HARO+ HARD+ FenHARO+ FenHARD+ Ozone%
2011-12 1.13 0.84 1.07 0.99 54.0%
2010-11 1.29 1.02 1.08 0.93 49.6%
2009-10 1.05 0.97 1.13 0.99 52.9%

Van Riemsdyk’s fenwick ratings have been extremely consistent over the past 2 1/2 seasons with the fluctuations observed in them almost solely due to the fluctuations in his Ozone%, particularly for the fenwick ratings.  Overall he appears to be an above average offensive player and a somewhat weak defensive player, not all that different from Schenn.  Last season was clearly a good season for him with a bit of a drop off this season.

In some other discussions I have compared van Riemsdyk to Joffrey Lupul, just a little bigger.  So let’s take a look a Lupul’s numbers and see how they compare.

Joffrey Lupul

HARO+ HARD+ FenHARO+ FenHARD+ Ozone%
2011-12 1.59 0.68 1.07 0.82 50.0%
2010-11 1.09 0.78 0.93 0.79 47.4%
2009-10 1.32 0.96 0.95 0.96 50.8%
2008-09 1.15 0.83 1.01 0.87 44.4%

Lupul’s seems to be a perfect example of a high risk high reward player.  His offensive numbers are quite good, a little better than van Riemsdyk’s, but his defensive numbers are quite bad, especially over the past 2 seasons.  His offensive numbers have jumped quite a bit this season but his offensive ratings from 2008-09 to 2010-11 had him as an above average offensive player so maybe this season isn’t all that surprising given he is probably playing with better players and given more offensive roles.  Also, his ratings from 2008-09 to 2010-11 are quite comparable to van Riemsdyk’s over the past 2 1/2 years (though van Riemsdyk has benefited more from more offensive zone starts).  Compared to Lupul I think we can say van Riemsdyk is slightly below him offensively (particularly if Lupul’s performance this season is sustainable), and slightly above him defensively.

In the end whether you trade Schenn for van Riemsdyk comes down to each teams need and whether you project improvement in either of them going forward.  Right now Schenn is probably a #4-6 defenseman on most good teams and van Riemsdyk is a second line winger on a team with good depth up front.  The reason I make the trade is Schenn has been given big minutes and top 4 defenseman roles in the past but hasn’t shown he can be that.  Van Riemsdyk has never really been give top line duty or been given top PP unit duty so we don’t know whether if given that opportunity he could have a break out season, much like what Lupul is doing this season.  Plus, I think a line of Van Riemsdyk-Grabovski-Kulemin could be an interesting combination of size and skill and 2-way ability, even more so if Colborne replaces Grabovski down the road.

Update:  Apparently Van Riemsdyk is now out with a concussion so the idea if trading Schenn for van Rymsdyk right now is a moot point, but the analysis (concussion aside) is still valid.

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Tim Thomas vs Tuukka Rask

By on January 12th, 2012

There is a post over at Backhand Shelf today that lists 10 backup goalies that have out performed their #1 counterparts.  It is an interesting read but it may be a perfect example of how simple statistics don’t tell the whole story.

The first pair of goalies on the list are the Bruins Tukka Rask vs Tim Thomas.

Backup: Tuukka Rask (10-4-1, 1.59 GAA, .945 SV%)
Starter: Tim Thomas (17-7-0, 1.99 GAA, .938 SV%)

Now both goalies have exceptionally good numbers but on the surface you would probably conclude that Rask has superior numbers to Thomas and on the surface you would be correct.  But dig a little deeper and things may look a little different.

A few days ago I was wading through some statistics and made an interesting observation about the Bruins handling of these two goalies.  Specifically, Tukka Rask gets far easier starts than Tim Thomas.

Rask Thomas
Opp. Record 265-257-72 511-418-123
Opp. Points % 1.013 1.088
Opp. Points/82gms 83.1 89.2
Opp GFA 2.55 2.77
Opp Sh% 8.66% 9.29%

Thomas’s opponents have a better record, have a better goal scoring rate and have a better shooting percentage than Rask’s and generally speaking it isn’t very close.  Boston has the highest goals per game average in the NHL.  The next 6 teams are Philadelphia, Vancouver, Detroit, Toronto, Chicago and Ottawa.  Of Rask’s 14 starts he has 2 starts (14.3%) against those six teams, one against Toronto and one against Detroit.  Thomas has 25 starts, and 9 starts (36%) against those six teams (3 vs Toronto, 2 vs Ottawa, 2 vs Philadelphia, 1 vs Chicago and 1 vs Vancouver).

When you take Rask and Thomas’s individual numbers on the surface it appears that Rask has out performed Thomas but when you dig deeper and look at the quality of opposition it is far less clear that Rask has outperformed Thomas and in fact it may be the other way around.

(On a side note, the combined record of all of Boston’s opponents is just 776-675-195, the equivalent of an 87 point team so it seems they have had a fairly easy schedule thus far. )

 

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The Onus of Blame now falls on Burke’s shoulders

By on December 27th, 2011

So we found out over Christmas that Ron Wilson got his wish and got a new contract.  With that the onus of blame for any failures this Leaf team has now clearly falls on Brian Burke’s shoulders.  Specifically, I am talking about the Leafs horrid penalty kill.

Ron Wilson was one of, if not the, top paid coach in the NHL.  He is paid like one of the best coaches in the NHL and he was given a contract extension so clearly Brian Burke doesn’t believe Ron Wilson is the reason for the Leafs PK failures.

So, if Ron Wilson is not the problem it must be the players.  Clearly Burke believes the players are getting a good message from Ron Wilson so either the players have tuned Wilson out or they just don’t have the skill level to implement Ron Wilson’s PK plan.  If the players have tuned out Wilson you have two options, fire Ron Wilson or get new players who will listen.  Ron Wilson wasn’t fired and there is no indication that the players have tuned out Wilson or that Burke thinks a mass overhaul of the team is deemed necessary.  So, if it isn’t the coach and the players haven’t tuned out the coach then it must only be the talent level of the players.  These are Burke’s players so if they are a failure it is a problem created by Burke and Burke’s problem to fix.

This is Burke’s team now.  These are his players and his coach and everything to do with this team now has his stamp of approval.  Everything good, and bad, with this team is now Burke’s doing.  Burke talks confidence about this team and how it only needs tinkering but I don’t share that same optimism,  The team is clearly better and is a definite contender for a playoff spot but I wish I had more optimism that there is a viable path towards cup contender without major upgrades at several positions.

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The Leafs Offensively: Who is good and who is not.

By on December 16th, 2011

This will be the final part of my unplanned 3-part series on who is good and who is not on the current Leafs team.  The first was about the penalty kill and the second was defensively.  Today we look at the players offensively.

The Defensemen

Player Name GFA FenF20 Ozone%
DION PHANEUF 2.4 15.22 60.2%
KEITH AULIE 2.25 14.24 61.9%
JOHN-MICHAEL LILES 2.79 13.85 46.1%
CARL GUNNARSSON 2.1 13.42 56.1%
CODY FRANSON 2.37 13.2 47.2%
JAKE GARDINER 2.25 12.79 54.3%
LUKE SCHENN 2.49 12 47.3%
MIKE KOMISAREK 2.82 10.95 40.8%

Included in the table above are goals for average (goals for per 60 min.), fenwick for per 20 minutes and offensive zone faceoff percentage which gives an indication which players start most frequently in the offensive zone.  There really isn’t too much exciting going on here.  For the most part the defensemen’s FenF20 is driven by their Ozone%.  The r^2 between FenF20 and Ozone% is 0.60 so there is a pretty tight correlation.  The only deviation is Liles who generates more offense than his Ozone% indicates he should.  The r^2 is 0.80 if we don’t include Liles.  So offensively, it seems Liles is the only defenseman who is able to drive the play significantly more than any of the others.  Looks like he might be worth keeping around.  Let’s get his name on a contract extension.

The Forwards

Player Name GF20 FenF20 Ozone%
PHIL KESSEL 3.36 14.91 51.3%
MIKHAIL GRABOVSKI 2.79 14.67 57.6%
JOFFREY LUPUL 3.6 14.5 50.2%
NAZEM KADRI 3.54 14.13 48.1%
MIKE BROWN 1.2 14.13 49.5%
TYLER BOZAK 2.97 13.97 49.3%
NIKOLAI KULEMIN 2.46 13.68 53.4%
DAVID STECKEL 1.26 13.21 48.6%
CLARKE MACARTHUR 2.97 12.92 56.3%
MATT FRATTIN 2.07 12.64 49.5%
TIM CONNOLLY 2.43 12.63 46.1%
MATTHEW LOMBARDI 2.46 11.94 54.1%
PHILIPPE DUPUIS 0 11.65 50.0%
JOEY CRABB 2.34 11.57 56.1%
JOE COLBORNE 3.33 11.29 50.0%
JAY ROSEHILL 0 10.6 43.1%
COLBY ARMSTRONG 0.87 10.41 51.3%
COLTON ORR 3.21 9.65 22.2%

Unlike the defensemen there is very little correlation between the Ozone% and FenF20 (r^2=0.0395) which means there is no rhyme or reason to where these guys are starting on the ice.  Joey Crabb can’t seem to drive offense and yet has an Ozone% of 56.1%.  The best offensive line of Kessel-Lupul-Bozak start about 50% of the time in the defensive zone while our supposed defensive specialist Philippe Dupuis starts half the time in the offensive zone.  What’s that all about coach?  Aside from those oddities it is kind of what we’d expect.  Offense is driven by the Kessel and Grabovski lines.  Generally speaking, there aren’t too many surprises in regards to how the Leafs are performing offensively.  The only surprise might be Mike Brown rating so highly.  This is pretty abnormal for him so probably just small sample size issues going on.

 

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The Leafs Defensively: Who’s good and who’s not.

By on December 15th, 2011

Yesterday I took a look at the Leafs players on the PK to see who has seen good result and who has seen bad results when they have been on the ice.  Today I do the same thing but look at 5v5 situations from the defensive side of things to see if there is any consistency between 5v5 and the PK.

The Goalies

Player Name GAA SV%
JAMES REIMER 1.41 94.6%
JONAS GUSTAVSSON 2.58 91.3%
BEN SCRIVENS 2.82 90.6%

Interestingly, this is the exact opposite as we saw on the PK where Reimer had the worst save percentage and Scrivens had the highest.  We should have more confidence in these numbers so it is quite possible that Reimer’s poor results are primarily luck driven.  The question is, how much can he improve it?  Last year on the PK Reimer had an 85.6% save percentage which while is much better than this seasons 77.3% still is not good.  He ranked 34th of 40 goalies last season on the PK while he was 6th of 48 at 5v5.  Last year Reimer had a 93.3% 5v5 save percentage so he is actually better this season at 5v5.  Is it sustainable?  Time will tell.

The Defensemen

Player Name GAA FenA20
DION PHANEUF 2.40 12.11
CARL GUNNARSSON 2.25 12.24
CODY FRANSON 2.37 12.51
KEITH AULIE 4.50 12.74
MIKE KOMISAREK 2.34 13.38
JOHN-MICHAEL LILES 2.55 13.77
JAKE GARDINER 1.86 14.82
LUKE SCHENN 2.19 16.63

For those regular readers, I believe players can drive shooting percentages (especially) and suppress oppositions shooting percentages (less so) but we are below the threshold of where small sample size issues outweigh the benefits of doing a goal analysis over a fenwick/corsi analysis.  So, when ranking players defensively we should focus on fenwick (for now).

Ughhh.  While Schenn’s GAA isn’t the worst (it’s actually pretty good relative to his teammates) his fenwick against is awful.  Significantly worse than his teammates.  While Schenn has had a slight bias towards defensive zone faceoffs it isn’t enough so to justify this difference in fenwick against.  Liles, Franson and Komisarek had a higher percentage of defensive zone faceoffs and had better results.  Taking it to a league level, of the 166 defensemen with 250 minutes of 5v5 ice time this season Schenn ranks second last in fenwick against per 20 minutes.  Only Derek Morris of Phoenix is worse.  In the summer I wrote an article about how poor Schenn is defensively and there isn’t a lot in the numbers above to change my opinion any.

Phaneuf, Gunnarsson and Gardiner were the primary offensive zone players which explains in part why Phaneuf and Gunnarsson lead the list but also show that Gardiner still struggles defensively as is often the case with a rookie.  Hopefully, unlike Schenn, he’ll improve with experience.

The Forwards

Player Name GA20 FenA20
MIKE BROWN 1.62 10.36
COLBY ARMSTRONG 2.61 10.7
DAVID STECKEL 2.13 11.02
NAZEM KADRI 3.54 11.78
CLARKE MACARTHUR 2.76 11.79
PHILIPPE DUPUIS 0.81 11.83
JAY ROSEHILL 1.41 12.02
MIKHAIL GRABOVSKI 1.68 12.24
MATTHEW LOMBARDI 4.29 12.97
MATT FRATTIN 1.5 13.2
JOEY CRABB 2.64 13.32
TIM CONNOLLY 1.62 13.53
NIKOLAI KULEMIN 1.98 13.68
JOE COLBORNE 2.79 14.43
PHIL KESSEL 2.46 15.47
JOFFREY LUPUL 2.82 16.47
TYLER BOZAK 2.82 16.57
COLTON ORR 0 20.38

Kessel, Lupul, Bozak – score a lot of goals, give up a lot of goals.  The three of them have very high fenwick against relative to their teammates.  This isn’t unsual for offensive players (high risk, high reward), but the best players in the league find a way to accomplish both offense and defense (i.e. Datsyuk).  The second line of Grabovski, MacArthur and Kulemin seem much more defensively responsible, but surprisingly they have a higher percentage of offensive zone starts than the Kessel line so they should have better numbers, but maybe not to the extent they do.  Brown, Steckel and Dupuis do seem like pretty solid defensive players 5v5.  Those fenwick against numbers for those three are quite good relative to the rest of the team, and the rest of the league.

Overall the Leafs are a decent enough defensive team at 5v5.  Especially once you look past the Kessel-Lupul-Bozak line up front and Schenn (and to a lesser extent Gardiner) on defense.  For some strange reason though, that hasn’t translated very well to the PK.  Why they suck so bad on the PK is pretty dumbfounding.