Taylor Chorney - Not As Bad As We Thought

all of this is crazy confusing i get zones starts but what the heck is a corsi an how is it supposed to track player value?

Corsi is the attempted shots for your team – the shots attempted against your team while you are on the ice.

It doesn’t matter if Chorney is as bad as we thought or not. He is not going to be able to help the Oilers in the next two years on the big club’s array of rearguards. He is too chaotic and too one dimensional to be part o the short term plans (Kurtis Foster is taking up his offensive defenseman / PP specialist playing on the bottom pairing with a two year contract). If the Oilers do end up using him it will be in a long time, most likely just before he becomes a UFA.

So what to do? I say trade him . . . I have suggested that the Oilers have too many forward prospects and not enough defensive ones (and this is no secret). I am suggesting that the Oilers go shopping for a dman that will actually help the Oilers over the next two years, instead of running in place.

I think a package of Cogliano, Chorney (or Hartikainen or Petry), and Calgary’s 2011 third round pick should be able to attract some kind of interest on the trade market. (yes, I know it looks like the Oil trading a pile of unwanted parts for a shinny new bauble: but Cogliano is a good young player, Chorney or the other prospects are high reward gamble, and a third rounder is a valuable tbarginning chip near the trade deadline or draft day). The Oilers need a defensemen and need one badly.

Dallas hasn’t singed Grossman or Niskanen yet. Is Jack Johnson from the Kings either that defensively blind or that much of a prima donna that he would not be useful. Is Erik Johnson of the Blues a possibility? (while I don’t know if either of those four are worth the entire package above, but it should be explored).

Nick Shultz or Brent Burns from the Wild could be targeted: they are in the Gilbert/Whitney age range and could play seconding pairing for the next couple years. What would it cost to get Ryan Suter from the Predators? More then the package above I am guessing.

What about Tomas Kaberle? Is that package enough to get him (I’d say so), but is it a non-starter because Karberle is a UFA next season. Maybe the draft picks could be altered (say a 4th round 2012 pick if the Oilers do not sign Kaberle and a 2nd round 2012 pick if they do, and drop the 2011 picks completely) to get this deal done.

What about a package of Tom Poti and Karl Alzner for the Cogliano, Souray, Petry, and a second? That sends 5.175 million to Edmonton and 7 million to Capitals (5.4 for souray and 1.6 for Cogs). Washington gets a power play defense man in Souray (to go along with Green), a Cheap(ish) offensive winger in Cogliano, plus parts. There is multiple defense men still on the free agent market for the Caps to pick up for about 1 million dollars (plus who wouldn’t want to play with Ovie): that would replace Alzner for cheaper then his contract. Edmonton gets a veteran on a 1 year deal in Poti, and an upgrade over Petry in Alzner (in terms of both the player and when it will be ready for the NHL).

OK, why have I step into the deep end? Because the Oiler’s defense is terrible and needs to address as soon as possible. There is no hope for Chorney right now and there might never be hope for the kid in Oiler silks. He needs to be purged from the Oilers’ system, and the oilers need a trade (for the drama and the necessary blueliner).

Derek, I’m not too sure what you’re saying here about Chorney. I agree he faced some very difficult circumstances, but I don’t think that means he’s any good. In terms of his pairing with Strudwick, it looked on the ice like they were dragging each other down, rather than one guy dragging down the other, and I think the numbers are pretty supportive of that. I’d also be interested in a chart similar to Bruce’s on ZoneFinish tracking expected Corsi by various starting positions. It would be interesting to see if such a chart conforms (generally) to the 0.6 Fenwick / 0.8 Corsi rule, or if it suggests some kind of modification. I have a feeling the latter may be true especially since Vic and Gabe apparently calculate ZoneStarts differently.

Wow JFJ is bad.

On the other hand, some team would do well to pick up Nigel Dawes and Robert Nilsson for peanuts this summer.

•The full season players that improve the most are Shawn Horcoff, Ethan Moreau, Dustin Penner, and Fernando Pisani.

… which is just another way of stating this:

Toughest ZoneStarts:

Horcoff 0.453
Moreau 0.453
Penner 0.456
Pisani 0.464

I think the word “improvement” is quite misleading. What you are calling an “improvement” I see as an “adjustment” for ZoneStarts. With that adjustment Ethan Moreau’s Corsi number isn’t quite as bad as it appears, but it still Sucks.

Put it this way, following the same principle I introduced in this article: Given his ZoneStarts, Moreau should have an “Expected Corsi/60” of -2.69. In reality his Corsi/60 was -22.99. My interpretation is that ZoneStarts can be blamed for ~12% of his terrible Corsi, and the other 88% can be blamed on terrible hockey.

One thing your analysis supports though, is the observation that JFJ was even worse than Ethan Moreau last year. Which is saying a mouthful right there.