SAN JOSE, CA - JANUARY 16: Dustin Penner #27 of the Edmonton Oilers stands on the ice during their game against the San Jose Sharks at HP Pavilion on January 16, 2010 in San Jose, California. (Photo by Ezra Shaw/Getty Images) Content © 2010 Getty Images All rights reserved. via cdn.picapp.com

View full size photo »

Dirk Hoag at On The Forecheck has been crunching numbers to figure out who the most valuable players in the NHL are this year.  The results are not exactly shocking for this correspondent - Dustin Penner is the 9th-most valuable skater in the league.

Continue reading this post »

More photos » John Ulan - AP

14 days ago: The Edmonton Oilers' Andrew Cogliano, right, and Patrick O'Sullivan, centre, celebrate Gilbert Brule's, left, goal on the New Jersey Devils' Martin Brodeur during the second period of an NHL hockey game in Edmonton on Sunday, March 7, 2010. (AP Photo/The Canadian Press, John Ulan)

Browse more photos »

66 games into this sorry, lost season, the Edmonton Oilers stand, er, lie in 30th place overall, 6 points in arrears of dismal Toronto and fully a dozen points back of the 28th place Islanders. It's a standing they've earned on merit, given the Oilers also rank 30th in Goals Against and 29th in Goals For (shootout "goals" included cuz I'm too lazy to weed 'em out until season's end). This latter "achievement" took some time after a hot start which saw the Oil in the top ten offensive teams for quite a while. Today they rank (barely) ahead of Boston, and based on recent evidence such as 4 goals during the just-completed 3-game homestand it's easy to imagine the Oil hitting bottom in this dept. too when all is said and done.

The injury to Ales Hemsky is obviously a major contributing factor, as is the crash and burn of the Oilers' defensive corps which generated a lot of offence last year. Front-line scoring has been poor with only Dustin Penner having scored even 15 goals to date, while scoring depth has been spotty at best. Let's look at that scoring depth, in depth.

Up front, the expectations for scoring could crudely be divided into these groups:

Primary scoring: (Hemsky), Horcoff, Penner, Gagner

Secondary scoring: O'Sullivan, Nilsson, Cogliano, Brule, Potulny,  (Comrie), (Pouliot)

Checkers, plumbers and grunts: Moreau, Jacques, Stortini, (Pisani), (Stone), Jones

I've included Ryan Jones just because he appears on the Behind the Net data which is my primary source for this study. In all 17 Oiler forwards have played 19+ GP in 2009-10, with the five in brackets all having played fewer than 30.

Today I am going to focus on just the middle group, the guys who should be expected to provide secondary scoring. Comrie and Pouliot are excluded due to having played fewer than half the games, which leaves us with five players: Patrick O'Sullivan, Robert Nilsson, Andrew Cogliano, Gilbert Brule and Ryan Potulny. Apples and apples to at least some degree: each is 22-25 years old; each is between 5'10 and 6'0 and 180-190 lbs; each has a background of being a scorer. Some numbers on this quintet after the jump:

Continue reading this post »

via cdn.picapp.com

View full size photo »

The Ottawa Senators have climbed into 5th place in the Eastern Conference despite a goal differential of -8.  If the Oilers 7-7-1 record against the Eastern Conference wasn't a large enough indicator of how awful the East is this year, the fifth and eighth place teams in the East have negative goal differentials.  For a bit of contrast, the Kings are 5th in the Western Conference with a +25 goal differential. Even though the Sens aren't strong by the numbers, the run up the standings has stirred some excitement in Ottawa, excitement that was buoyed on by General Manager Bryan Murray's trade for playoff veteran Matt Cullen.

In an extreme case of excitement, Silver Seven, SB Nation's Ottawa Senators site, recently had a user-submitted FanPost comparing the 2010 team to the 2007 Stanley Cup Finals team.  The post was an interesting take and the writer's descriptions of the lines made me take a look at the underlying numbers in Ottawa this season and what I found was curious.  We dive into Gabriel Desjardins' Behind The Net and Vic Ferrari's timeonice.com after the jump.

Continue reading this post »

via cdn.picapp.com

View full size photo »

It's en vogue to bash Shawn Horcoff for his play this year, and the more ignorant media types bash his "seven million dollar cap hit", but allow me to mount a defense of the man.  Bear with me while we dive into some advanced stats after the jump.

Continue reading this post »

More photos » David Zalubowski - AP

Edmonton Oilers centre Shawn Horcoff, left, and right winger Fernando Pisani, right, have combined with captain Ethan Moreau to form one of the most expensive checking lines in the game. Unfortunately their performance to date has been nowhere close to commensurate with their steep cap hits.

Browse more photos »

Ten games ago Pat Quinn rearranged his line combinations, breaking up long-standing trios of Shawn Horcoff with Patrick O'Sullivan and mostly Jean-François Jacques, and Ethan Moreau with Andrew Cogliano and mostly Zack Stortini. He united Moreau and Horcoff with fellow veteran Fernando Pisani of no fixed line, and tasked them with the assignment of hard-matching against the opponents' top trio. The three have lots in common:

• all are vets of the 2006 Stanley Cup run with a history/reputation for playing tough minutes; 
• all are members of the core leadership group -- Moreau wears the "C", Horcoff and Pisani both an "A";
• all are somewhat to very expensive, collectively accounting for a cap hit of $10 MM (Horcoff $5.5 MM, Pisani $2.5, Moreau $2.0)

Ten million bucks seems like a lot for a checking line; surely by putting all his veteran eggs in one basket Quinn could rely on a stabilizing defensive posture. The trio had a promising start when they hard-matched against Vancouver's red-hot Sedin-Sedin-Burrows trio on January 20, holding them off the scoresheet at even strength. Unfortunately, Vancouver's powerplay was clicking on all cylinders, scoring three goals with the man advantage, including the game-winner in overtime. The end result was yet another Oilers loss, but the performance of the new MPH line was considered a qualified success.

So, ten games later, how has that experiment been going anyway? The short answer is, not well. But this is me, so you're going to get the long answer anyway.

Continue reading this post »

In this post, I talked about the inverse relationship between Corsi and Zonestart as a discussion point on context in microstats.  The graph lent a visual to a not-so-obvious relationship for some.  Below is a chart that shows a more obvious relationship. Without enlarging the chart, do you have thoughts on what this represents?  The scale on the Y-axis is marked in tenths.

We'll get back to that chart in a moment. 

Continue reading this post »

via cdn.picapp.com

View full size photo »

Late last year I wrote a an article about Tyler Kennedy and his amazing underlying stats.  At the time Penguins were in full turnaround mode and the accolades were going to Sergei Gonchar on his return from injury.  But Kennedy was effective even when Gonchar was down.  In fact, he was at times the most effective Penguin on the ice.  The conclusion was as follows:

Barring injury, given his age and his game, it's not a stretch to see the new Teke as a 20-25 goal man on the right wing for stretch of five to seven seasons. Someone in the Penguins scouting department deserves some serious praise for this find -- Teke looks like a guy that is going to get 750 games in this league. Players like Kennedy - those that get the puck going in the right direction and make their teammates better while staying completely under the radar aren't easy to find...

Kennedy remained strong through the playoffs and Bylsma hard-matched the Cooke - Staal - Kennedy line against the best the opposing team could muster as often as he could.  I remain convinced that Dan Bylsma is either tracking his own advanced stats or using Vic Ferarri's site.  Though Kennedy has been banged up this year, the trend continues.  He's taking the tough assignments, taking the bad starting position and he's outshooting and outscoring once again.  Pittsburgh's new "Teke" continues to show his versatility and effectiveness.  Below the break is an updated look at Kennedy's underlying stats and his effect on his teammates.

Continue reading this post »