The Copper & Blue, an Edmonton Oilers community

Eric T has an excellent finding over at NHL Numbers that show that scoring chances are actually correlated with generating shots through (Fenwick). Consider this post (and the comments) a must-read for now. More on Adam Oates later tonight.

A lot of dedicated, admirable people gave their time for recording scoring chances over the last few years, so it's tough for me to see these results on one hand. On the other, it reiterates previous studies that have suggested that the "shot quality" argument has no legs. Great work from Eric T., and more importantly great work from all those scoring chance counters. We couldn't have done this without you.

I think this is probably one of the better articles on statistics I've seen in the debate, if only because it explores both sides fairly well. I will say this, though: whatever your angle on this thing, try to avoid the assumption that hockey statisticians haven't explored the many, many potential confounding factors. If there's anything that overthrows the argument for Corsi, it's going to be shot quality (I believe the Challenge is still on, right Gabe?), not "heart" or "determination" or "enigmatic Russians." Well, maybe the Russians...