Yet another reason to love Alex Burrows

According to the data at The Forechecker Alex Burrows has drawn more penalties than any other player in the NHL (with 67). Of course he's also comitted his share, but overall he's +18 in "penalty plus/minus" (penalties drawn minus penalties comitted). The Canucks converted on 17% of their powerplays this season, so that's 11 extra goals that they got because of Burrows' antics. This is especially impressive because most of the players around Burrows on that list are the top offensive forwards in the league, who force opponents into comitting penalties to stop them because they're so good offensively. Burrows drew more penalties than any of them(while also getting far less ice time) just by pissing guys off. So, you know, well done there.

The best division in hockey this year...

These numbers represent the ammount of points the average team in each division had if you ignore games against division oponents(adjusted for an 82 game schedule).

Atlantic:97
Northeast:95
Northwest:94
Pacific:92
Central 91
Southeast:80

So it seems the Atlantic was the best division in hockey. More than that, this data gives us more prespective on just how mind-blowingly bad the Southeast is.

Which teams overachieved this season?

This is a bit long-winded so please bear with me.

You know how Bill James figured out that a teams won/loss record was directly connected to its total runs for/runs allowed for the season? Well there's no reason that the same thing shouldn't apply in hockey. In fact, if you graph the ratio of each team's goals for to its goals allowed against its points total for the past 3 seasons you get this fun little formula: 76.73X+13.27, where X=(total gf/total ga). Punch in your team's value for X and you should get a reasonable estimate of its points that season.

The principle behind this is pretty simple (it works the same for the ratio, but i'll use the difference between gf and ga in the example coming up). If team A outscores its opponents by 0.5 goals a game, it should do better than team B, who gets outscored by 0.5 goals a game. Luck may fuck with this of course. For example, team A could win one a game by 5, then lose the next three by 1 each, while team B could lose a game by 5, then win the next three by 1 each. In this situation team A stilll outscores its oponents by an average of 0.5 goals a game (5-1-1-1)/4=0.5, while team B is still gets outscored by 0.5 goals a game, but nonetheless team A goes 1-3-0 while team B goes 3-1-0.

If you assume that such variations are due to luck (i.e. that teams can't purposely apportion the goals they're going to score across different games as it suits them), then over the long run these breaks should even out, and a team's record should end up quite close to the record predicted by the formula. If a team's record is a lot better than its goals for/allowed would indicate, this is probably due to luck rather than some intrinsic ability on the part of the team to apportion its goals. Thus, the team is overachieving and its results should get worse as its luck evens out. Indeed, the four biggest "overachievers" last season based on this formula were Vancouver, New Jersey, Dallas, and Atlanta (all had many more points than the formula would indicate) and all 4 took a step back points-wise this year. (Of course it doesn't always work. The formula said Pittsburgh overachieved last year too.)

So who overachieved this year and is due for a step back next season? Without further ado here's what each team's record would have been this year based on the formula above, compared with its actual record.

Well I'll be Jiggered

The Forechecker has taken a look at the goalies doing better when they face more shots issue, and it seems like there isn't too much of an overall trend to speak of. Three other guys (Roloson, Kolzig and Khabibulin) show increases in save percentage when they face more shots, but that's it. Marty Turco shows a downward trend.

Interestingly enough, two years ago when he was in Florida, Luongo showed no increase in his save percentage as he faced more shots. The trend only started occuring when he joined the Canucks. His backups so far on the Canucks also show the same increase when facing more shots. Sabourin last year had a 0.931 save percentage in games where he faced 25 or more shots, and a 0.872 in games where he faced less than 25. Sanford so far this year: 0.927 when facing 25 or more, 0.819 when facing less than 25. So maybe it's the team not the goalie.

Something Strange

I don't really know how to preface this right so I'll just say it. If you divide up Luongo's stats last season between games where he faced less than 25 shots and games where he faced more than 25 shots you get something kind of weird:

His save% in games where he faced less than 25 shots: 0.888
His save% in games where he faced more than 25 shots: 0.931

What the fuck, huh? This is probably too big a difference to attribute to chance. It seems like Louongo actually plays better the more shots he faces(In fact, if you just look at games where he faced 40 shots or more, his save% is an even higher 0.941) This is a bit counter-intuitive. I think a lot of people might have guessed that he'd do better with a lighter workload. Then again, we've all heard announcers say that goalies play better when they get a lot of work.

What I really want to know is wether this is just a fluke for Luongo, or wether it's a more general principle that applies to all goalies. If it does actually apply to all goalies, then it's pretty significant. Based on this, teams may want to rethink the belief that getting as many shots on net as possible is a good thing, for example. The problem's that I lack the necessary Excel/data mining skills to approach this in a systematic manner, so I really can't prove anything conclusively. If anyone who does wants to give it a shot, please, be my guest.

Another thing I should mention is that even if it's established that goalies generally have higher save percentages in games where they face a lot of shots, this doesn't prove that facing more shots actually causes them to play better. There's also the possibility that games where they face a lot of shots are fundamentally different(more shots=lower shot quality, perhaps?), and goalies don't actually do better in these games because they face a lot of shots, but for other reasons(again, shot quality). To test which of these posibilities is true, it might be good to divide shots faced by goalies between "early game shots" and "late game shots" and compare their save % between those two shot types(i.e. compare goalies save% for the first 25 shots they faced in every game to their save % in the shots faced after shot 25) . If it's facing lots of shots that makes goalies better, then the "late game shot" save percentage should be significantly higher. Again, I lack the skills to do this myself, but it might be a nice little diversion for someone who knows what they're doing. (Thinking about it more, I guess there's a good chance that someone has already done this and I'm just wasting everyone's time. If anyone's seen anything like this done on another site please let me know in the comments.)

Canucks Points Per 60 Mins Stats

I really, really wish there was some place to find these easily on the net. Anyway, here they are, for 43 games into the season. By the way don't take the pp/60 numbers for Isbister, Cooke or the other guys who don't get a lot of pp time too seriously because of the small sample size.

Division-Adjusted NHL Standings

Ever wonder how much playing in a strong/weak division has affected your team in the standings? Well here's what the Western conference standings would have looked like last year if you ignore divisional play (taking only the 50 non-division games each team played and expanding the rate at wich they gained points in those 50 games into a full 82 game schedule). Sorry, my excel/word are currently messed up, so I couldn't put these into a graph.

Team Actual Points Division Adjusted Points Difference
Detroit..........113.......103....-10
Nashville.......110......107.....-3
Anaheim.......110.......110......0
San Jose........107.......115.....+8
Dallas.............107.......95.....-12
Vancouver....105.......115.....+10
Minnesota.....104......102....-2
Calgary..........96..........97....+1
Colorado........95..........92....-3
St Louis.........81..........87...+6
Columbus......73..........77....+4
Edmonton.....71..........80....+9
Chicago.........71..........69....-2
Los Angeles..68.........72....+4
Phoenix.........67.........72....+5

So, if you don't like looking at that graph type thing up there, here's what the Western Conference standings would have looked like if you ignored divisional play:

1. Vancouver (115)
2. San Jose (115)
3. Anaheim (110)
4. Nashville (107)
5. Detroit (103)
6. Minnesota (102)
7. Calgary (97)
8. Dallas (95)
9. Colorado (92)
10. St. Louis (87)
11. Edmonton (80)
12. Columbus (77)
13. L. A. (72)
14. Pheonix (72)
15. Chicago (69)

As expected, Detroit benefits quite a bit from its easy division, getting roughly an extra 10 points from facing its easier division opponents. Dallas is the team most helped by its weak division (or strong divisional play, depending how you want to look at it) gaining a whopping 12 points. In contrast, Vancouver, Edmonton and San Jose are all hurt the most by their division schedule, losing 10, 9, and 8 points because of their divisional record. Despite changing teams' point totals by up to 12 points, though, division schedules did not change who made the playoffs. Every team that made the playoffs using the regular points sytem still makes it using their division-adjusted point totals.

DISCLAIMER- What I did is only meant to compare how well teams did within and outside their divisions. It is in no way meant to provide a fairer version of the standings that ignores differences in schedule (instead of playing Columbus twice as much as a regular team, Detroit doesn't play them at all in these standings, so we're not improving things just moving them to the other extreme). This is meant as a fun little exercise and nothing more.

One thing these numbers are good for, however, is figuring out what the best division in hockey was last year, basically by adding up the points that the 5 teams in each division had versus non-division opponents (adjusted for 82 games). Here are the results:

Northeast: 494
Northwest: 486
Pacific: 464
Central: 443
Atlantic: 441
Southeast: 413

It seems that the Northeast did in fact have the Northwest beat just slightly as the best division in hockey last year, although I guess you have to take into account that they play in the weaker Eastern conference.

What's wrong with Markus Naslund (Part 2)

Welcome back to the ongoing series that tries to figure out just why Markus Naslund's production has been wavering the past two years. Today we're going to look at the issue of linemates and try to assess how important the loss of Bertuzzi was in downgrading Naslund's play. At first glance the effect seems pretty large. The fine folks at The Canucks Genome Project blog have helpfully put together a chart of Naslund's production with and without Bertuzzi which I'm now going to shamelessly rip off. The short version is this: Naslund's ppg with Bertuzzi:0.93 Naslund's ppg without Bertuzzi: 0.52. Of course this doesn't necessarily prove anything. Bertuzzi only played with Naslund when Nazzy was at the peak of his career. Naslund's stats during his peak years are gonna be higher than his stats before that with or without Bertuzzi. Nonetheless, I think there's something to this theory, and that Bertuzzi was a huge part of Naslund's sucess. This old article from The Sporting News explains why as well as anything else:

Naslund is not big and leaves the banging to power forward linemate Todd Bertuzzi. Naslund can win a battle for a puck but is best when playing with a linemate who can go into the corners and feed him the puck. Because he thrives most often in open ice, he is not as successful if his space is limited. Teams can contain him by crowding him.

As we all know, Naslund's greatest skill as a player is his shot. But in order to use this skill he needs some sort of room out there, and that's exactly what Bertuzzi, with his big frame and his ability to battle guys provided. Without someone like him making room Naslund found himself under more pressure from defensemen and less able to get a shot off effectively. Maybe that's why last season Naslund attempted the fewest shots he has since 1998-99(2.7 per game, down from an average of 3.58 per game his previous 4 years), and had his lowest shooting percentage since 1999-2000, scoring on only 10.8% of his shots. Another huge piece of evidence in support of his theory is the fact that Naslund's effectiveness has declined at even strength but remained the same on the powerplay. Room isn't as big an issue on the powerplay, so it's logical that his effectiveness would remain the same there.

So here's where we are so far: Naslund's drop in effectiveness can be blamed in large part on the lack of a big man like Todd Bertuzzi who can go out there and make room for him to get his shot off. More to come, including hopefully a more detailed analysis of Naslund's shots at ES and on the PP to see if this theory holds up.

What's wrong with Markus Naslund (Part 1)

Welcome to the first of what may be many installments in a series looking into why exactly Markus Naslund's performance has slipped the past two seasons. For starters I wanted to check wether some of his decreased production could have been caused simply by shrinking ice time rather than poorer play. To take ice time out of the equation we can look at his production in terms of points per 60 minutes of ice time. Here's how those stats look for the past five years for both even strangth and on the powerplay.

First here's his even strengh stats:
Season Even Strength Points per 60 mins ES ice time
2006-07: 1.70
2005-06: 2.14
2003-04: 3.01
2002-03: 2.55
2001-02: 3.05

As you can see, there's a sizeable drop-off in the last 2 years to match his overall decrease in production. But now look at his powerplay stats:

Season Powerplay Points per 60 mins PP ice time
2005-06: 5.13
2004-05: 5.56
2003-04: 4.41
2002-03: 7.31
2001-02: 4.86

Surprisingly, these stats show that Naslund's powerplay effectiveness hasn't declined one bit. Hell, aside from his great performance in 2002-03 his last two years have actually seen his powerplay stats improve slightly. So, strangely enough, it seems that Markus Naslund's stats have dropped off exclusively because he's playing worse at even strength, while his powerplay effectiveness has remained exactly the same throughout the last 5 years, through both the good times and the bad. Weird. I can't really think of an obvious reason for this, but I have to say that this rules out many possible explainations about Markus's poor performance, or at least makes them less likely. More to come on this in the future.

Canucks forwards' stats adjusted for ice time

The title pretty much says it all. For those that may be curious, and since these stats are way harder to find than they should be, here's the points per 60 mins of even strength and powerplay ice time for most of the Canucks' forwards last season. (I apologise for the bad quality, click on the picture for an image of marginally better yet still crappy quality)

Biggest surprise here is how similar everyone's stats are except for the Sedins and Nazzy(on the pp anyway). According to this Smolinski and Linden are pretty much the same guy, for example, even though one ended up with 44 points the other with 25. Shows what increased ice time can do.