Your conclusions were all wrong, Ryan...

Might be a third liner on the Red Wings. Hudler?

Honestly, I didn’t see your comment when I started the response. In fact, I didn’t notice it until last night when I went to check the link to make sure it was all still there.

Great minds and all..

I think the objection raised here is to the lack of context. For example, you make the following statement:

Bouwmeester is the defenceman who had the most ice time on a bad team in the NHL. Perhaps that explains his inclusion on this list, but it is alarming that he didn’t do enough to drive the Florida offence to have a better Corsi Number. Is that worth $6.6 million a year from the Calgary Flames? I am skeptical.

That’s fine and dandy, but you don’t make any reference to Bouwmeester’s workload – which is strange but stranger when you consider that Karlis Skrastins, his regular partner, is also on the list.

Here, for the record, is how many defensive zone draws – offensive zone draws the Panthers defense took:

Bouwmeester: +180
Skrastins: +134
Cullimore: +56
Ballard: +33
McCabe: +13
Eminger: +4
Boynton: -4

Notice anything funny about that list? Anything that might indicate why Bouwmeester and Skrastins were heavily in the red on the shot clock?

That’s one example. Your reference to Niedermayer/Moen vs. Perry/Getzlaf is another.

In any case, you attempt to draw conclusions based on Corsi as a stand-alone data, when Corsi can’t be used that way.

Your closing paragraph runs like this:

Most of the players who appear on the worst 20 Corsi Number list are bad players who were forced to play significant minutes on bad teams with few other choices. A few are players that I think are valuable, despite their poor Corsi Numbers. It is possible to be a good player who plays a lot of minutes in a largely defensive role on a bad team and have a bad Corsi Number. How much of this shows that the player is not doing well and how much shows the circumstances of where and how he plays is a largely open question at this point.

(bolding mine)

I’m sorry if I’m coming across as harsh; I don’t mean to. But the bottom line is that you’re trying to draw conclusions by using a contextual stat as a standalone measure, and when it doesn’t work you talk about how it’s “largely open to question” what percentage of it is circumstance and what percentage is poor play. It really isn’t. We know where these guys started each shift. We know the relative quality of the players they played against. We know the relative quality of their teams and teammates.

Without using that information, the “worst Corsi” list is useless, because it was never designed as a stand-alone statistic.

He played second level competition and had a zonestart that was 163 defensive starts easier than Bouwmeester.