A Corsi-centric Discussion of Advanced Stats
Kent Wilson
November 19 2012 02:58PM
Justin Bourne and I got together to discuss a few things in the realm of hockey analysis recently. The full thing can be found here at Backhand Shelf, but here's a taste of the back and forth:
Kent Wilson:
Perhaps we could discuss this from your latest “Thoughts on Thoughts” piece: “Guys who lose a lot of puck battles end up with poor Corsis, and with the (slight) rise in the prevalence of that stat, I think those guys are going to be more exposed than ever.” Is this something you intuited or is it something that’s been studied? I, personally, assume there could be a relationship there and in fact have thought it would be great if we could track puck battles to see if they correlate with possession (like the way Eric did with zone entries).
Allsvenskan NHL Equivalence
Kent Wilson
November 05 2012 02:18PM
Flames fans are probably happy to hear that their team's 23-year old center Mikael Backlund is tearing the cover off the ball in the Allsvenskan so far this season (10GP, 8 goals, 19 points, 1.9 PPG). The significant caveat being, of course, that the Allsvenskan (or SWE-1) league doesn't appear to be all that good. As Graham Wiswell put it on twitter after viewing a few highlights:
@kent_wilson Good for Backlund, but uh... That level of hockey looks like a minor step up from beer league
— Graham (@WiswellMRU)
On Picking Fourth Liners
Kent Wilson
October 29 2012 04:02PM
Justin Bourne recently wrote about the confusing, fuzzy line between players who make the show and others who plumb in relative obscurity forever on its edges. His notes on role perception, attitude, personality and effort as critical issues for guys at the bottom end of the rotation caused me to theorize a bit on the psychological underpinnings of the observed preferences of coaches and GM's for tough guys with team first attitudes.
Parity, Profit and Competing Incentives
Kent Wilson
October 02 2012 08:47AM
A few things became clearer in the wake of Graphic Comments' three part series on the effects of the prior NHL CBA: that the NHL grew rapidly, but unevenly; that different owners actually have vastly disparate incentives, and that the current labour negotiations don't seem to be focusing on the leagues truly meaningful issues.
Flames Forwards Shot Rates - Part 2, Expected Goals
Kent Wilson
September 14 2012 02:56PM
In the first part one of the series, we looked Flames forwards shot rates, mostly with a view to putting the top guys rates in context, both from a team and league perspective. It took me three tries and some helpful comments to ultimately get the chart right, but I blame excel for that.
The follow-up builds on that base to illustrate the effect of possession on individual shot (and goal rates) at even strength as well as gross on-ice totals and ultimately goal differential. This exercise puts some flesh on the bones of corsi/possession theory for those who wonder about the practical applications of that sort of advanced analysis.
