It's this latter point I chose to explore recently. Having a lot of shots blocked or go wide while you're on the ice can also be a sign of weakness - for example, the defender that gives the puck away at his own blueline would get credit under such an assumption if the shot during the resultant break-away happened to miss the net.
It strikes me, therefore, that a measure of total shots against/60 will give us an idea of the relative strengths or weaknesses of a given player versus his teammates and, perhaps, the rest of the league (the lower the better).
Here's what I found for Flames defenders last year. All numbers are ES, of course:
click to enlargeKeep in mind these numbers are absent context (quality of competition, quality of linemates, starting position). That said, this initial look passes the sniff test I think. The ranking roughly accords with who were the best to worst defenders on the club last year (in my estimation at least). I think if we were to map something like this on top of contextual factors, the rate becomes more meaningful. For example, Reggie's number is middling on the team, but given the fact that he faced the toughest opponents and started in his own end the most, his number becomes more impressive.
I haven't carried out this exercise for any other team, so maybe this is all coincidental and Im not really measuring anything here.
What so you folks? Useful? Not useful? Should it be applied to forwards as well? I'd like to see how some of the other clubs turn out...
PS - ES shot totals found via timeonice.com.
7 comments:
hmm where do you get the es toi totals from?
stats.hockeyanalysis has everyone listed with a slightly lower number than on your list.
The data seems to back what we saw last year. I have to wonder how much of Phaneuf's numbers are due to injury? Can you run the year prior and compare?
BTW, love your blogs. Don't always agree but you always have an opinion based on reason and not emotion. Keep it up.
i used es toi data from stats.hockeyanalysis.com and shots from vics site and got these results for columbus d-men:
commodore: 50.1/60 (1st qc)
hejda: 49.1/60 (1st qc)
klesla 47.2/60 (3rd qc)
tyutin 41.7/60 (2nd qc)
backman 40.6/60 (5th qc)
russel 38.8/60 (6th qc)
methot 38.6/60 (4th qc)
Shep:
I got the ice time totals from NHL.com.
One of the issues here may be the fact that Vic's site counts all ES situations (3on3, 4on4 etc). I don't know if "even strength" at NHL.com means all ES or just 5on5.
Anon:
Appreciated. Feel free to voice your disagreements in the future - I'm far from infallible so other viewpoints are appreciated.
With Phaneuf, I'd say injury is probably a significant contributor. If he improves this season, we'll know for sure.
I do think that you're doing some good work here Kent (in terms of measuring defensive ability) and that it would work just as well for forwards as it does for defencemen.
The assumption that players do not have a substantial effect on Sv% is being challenged by Gabe right now (I disagree with him) but assuming that your assumption there is correct the next logical place to look is shot volume.
I'm not sure what value the work you're doing will have until the contextual numbers are factored in, but this is certainly a good place to start.
Thanks Scott. I may apply this method to the entire Flames team at some point, just to see how things come out. In addition, if Gabe somehow susses out significant player contribution to SV% (link?), I don't know if it would necessarily negate what I'm allegedly capturing here anyways: afterall, deterring high quality shots as well as shots in general are both aspects of defensive play.
I agree that context is needed to make this type of thing meaningful: not just quality of competition and zone starts, but league-wide total shot rates, team shot rates, etc.
I don't think your idea would be negated if Gabe (or anyone else) can demonstrate that Sv% can be impacted by players other than the goalie on a consistent basis. Not at all. Only that it would make the overall analysis of defensive ability more complicated since some guys, conceivably, might allow more shots than average but fewer than average scoring chances per shot while others might allow fewer shots than average but higher than average scoring chances per shot. Anyway, this is the link to Gabe's recent work in this area:
http://www.behindthenet.ca/blog/2009/07/do-defensemen-influence-save-percentage.html
It's interesting stuff and certainly calls for an explanation. To be honest, I'm a little befuddled by it at this point.
Post a Comment