Leafs Stats

[princedpw]

I've always thought it would be nice to have a thread were we can discuss various Leafs stats, including advanced stats such as Corsi, Zone Starts, Quality of Competition and others... so here it is.   

One recent post I found quite interesting was from Pension Plan Puppets which summarized Leafs shot locations visually.  See here:

http://www.pensionplanpuppets.com/2011/6/29/2249985/leafs-shot-locations-individual-breakdowns

One interesting thing you can observe is the effectiveness and discipline of the Kulemin-Grabbo-MacCarthur line.  They never shoot from bad angles and rarely at any significant distance.  Kulemin's shots form the most dramatic picture.  You can take a ruler and measure the maximum angle at which he will take a shot completely cleanly.

I also found Bozak's shot distribution interesting.  He got quite a lot of shots from the good areas right in front of the net.  Maybe he was a little unlucky not to have scored more last year.

Kessel on the other hand, just blankets the O-Zone with his shooting.  I think when he goes on those long droughts it's because he's not getting his shots from in close.

Here's the overall team shot chart -- not as interesting as the individual break downs.

http://www.pensionplanpuppets.com/2011/6/28/2244730/2010-11-toronto-maple-leafs-shot-and-goal-locations

 

[princedpw]

In an effort to keep this thread alive in a small way, here's another interesting article that summarizes some of leafs advanced stats over the last year.  In particular, it's adjusted Fenwick:

http://theleafsnation.com/2011/7/22/adjusted-toronto-maple-leaf-fenwick-numbers

Not surprisingly, Grabovski leads the team in these advanced stats that count shots for vs. against while a player is on the ice.

 

[ZBBM]

It might be useful to give a brief summary of all the advanced stats you mentioned.  I never heard of "Fenwick" (except with the BoSox) until clicking the link.

 

[princedpw]

It might be useful to give a brief summary of all the advanced stats you mentioned.  I never heard of "Fenwick" (except with the BoSox) until clicking the link.

Here's a nice explanation of Fenwick and Corsi, which are very closely related:

http://www.matchsticksandgasoline.com/2011/7/29/2290643/understanding-advanced-stats-part-one-corsi-fenwick

Corsi is the plus/minus amount of shots directed at a net while at even strength-blocked shots, shots high and wide, shots that hit, shots that get tipped, etc. A player who has a positive Corsi has more shots directed towards the opponents net while he is on the ice at even strength then shots directed towards his own net under the same criteria. All 10 players on the ice are used when calculating this metric.

For example, if Mark Giordano is +7 in Corsi over the course of the game, that means he & Flames players he was on the ice with at even strength directed 7 more shots towards the opponents net then were directed by the opponents towards the Flames' net.

Fenwick is almost the exact same as Corsi, but it doesn't count blocked shots-the reason for this is that it is entirely possible that blocking shots is a skill, and not just a series of random events.

 

[ZBBM]

It might be useful to give a brief summary of all the advanced stats you mentioned.  I never heard of "Fenwick" (except with the BoSox) until clicking the link.

Here's a nice explanation of Fenwick and Corsi, which are very closely related:

http://www.matchsticksandgasoline.com/2011/7/29/2290643/understanding-advanced-stats-part-one-corsi-fenwick

Corsi is the plus/minus amount of shots directed at a net while at even strength-blocked shots, shots high and wide, shots that hit, shots that get tipped, etc. A player who has a positive Corsi has more shots directed towards the opponents net while he is on the ice at even strength then shots directed towards his own net under the same criteria. All 10 players on the ice are used when calculating this metric.

For example, if Mark Giordano is +7 in Corsi over the course of the game, that means he & Flames players he was on the ice with at even strength directed 7 more shots towards the opponents net then were directed by the opponents towards the Flames' net.

Fenwick is almost the exact same as Corsi, but it doesn't count blocked shots-the reason for this is that it is entirely possible that blocking shots is a skill, and not just a series of random events.

Thanks!  Everyone acknowledges that bare +/- is a terribly flawed stat, so these are interesting alternatives.  OTOH the simplest metrics tend to stick (see Dow-Jones for example).

 

[princedpw]

Thanks!  Everyone acknowledges that bare +/- is a terribly flawed stat, so these are interesting alternatives.  OTOH the simplest metrics tend to stick (see Dow-Jones for example).

There are many more advanced stats you can read about, but I do find that they suffer from the problem that it is difficult to relate their meaning to real events in a game in an intuitive way.  For example, "quality of team" (QOT) measures how good the people you play with are.  If your  QOT is high then you are playing with good players.  If your QOT is low then you are playing with bad players.  Naturally, if player A and B score the same number of points but A has a much higher QOT then all other things being equal, one would expect that B is the better player (he produced the same with inferior support).  The problem with QOT is that one sees QOT scores that look like 1.035 or .0662 or -.235.  How do those numbers relate to the number of goals or assists your linemates get or how many goals or assists they prevent?  I have no idea.  So seeing a raw QOT score is just about meaningless for me.  Quality of competition (QOC) is analogous to QOT but measure the skill of your opponents. 

 

[Tigger]

Here's a small excerpt from a Q and A style 'about stats' page from behindthenet talking about QOC. Decent read.

'Quality of Competition' is a flawed statistic because it penalizes good players who play against other good players.

This is definitely a flaw in a "first-order" Quality of Competition calculation. When people calculate Power Rankings in football (or Chess ratings) they run a recursive algorithm so that good players or teams aren't penalized when they play against others with the same skill level. We could calculate a recursive version of Quality of Competition that would solve this problem, but it's computationally cumbersome. Quality of Competition still gives us a lot of insight, particularly into the NHL's few checking lines.

...

Why are all these statistics separate? Why isn't there one statistic that combines every aspect of a player's game?

Baby steps. After thirty years of baseball analysis, there still isn't agreement on how to evaluate player performance. For example, every MLB team uses its own proprietary fielding metrics, and on many players, they don't agree. Hockey is decades behind, and for now, we're still trying to figure out what we even want to know about hockey players.

It's not that I haven't thought about it, but the risk of generating meaningless statistics is very high. So for now I'm leaving it up to hockey fans to decide how they want to weigh the relative importance of teammates, opponents, drawing penalties and man-advantage play.

 

[hap_leaf]

I sometimes take a look at the TSN power rankings just out of curiousity, to see where the Leafs position on this chart.

They have risen from #18 last week to #9 as of Nov. 28.
http://tsn.ca/fantasy_news/rankings/nhl/

For the most part, I do not give much credence to the idea, especially if you don't know Scott Cullen's exact science behind drumming up the numbers.  A general explanation is given which goes into weighing factors such as who is in the lineup, individual player stats, divisional strength and recent results.   
Whatever the stats behind it, it is nicer to see the Leafs in the upper class of the rankings than always in the bottom 5 as I have seen all the time the last few years that I have checked.   
Do you give any merit to this ranking?  Does it accurately reflect the Leafs in that segment of time in relation to the other teams?

 

[groundskeeper willie]

I sometimes take a look at the TSN power rankings just out of curiousity, to see where the Leafs position on this chart.

They have risen from #18 last week to #9 as of Nov. 28.
http://tsn.ca/fantasy_news/rankings/nhl/

For the most part, I do not give much credence to the idea, especially if you don't know Scott Cullen's exact science behind drumming up the numbers.  A general explanation is given which goes into weighing factors such as who is in the lineup, individual player stats, divisional strength and recent results.   
Whatever the stats behind it, it is nicer to see the Leafs in the upper class of the rankings than always in the bottom 5 as I have seen all the time the last few years that I have checked.   
Do you give any merit to this ranking?  Does it accurately reflect the Leafs in that segment of time in relation to the other teams?

I don't pay any attention to them, and after seeing you post that they went from #18 to #9 in one week strongly implies to me it is pretty meaningless.

 

[cw]

Mirtle: What advanced statistics say about the Leafs start

Wouldn't swear by all those numbers but Mirtle does a nice job adding some comments to give them some context.