Edmonton Oilers Lines & Pairings - Possession Optimal Edition

Michael Parkatti has been turning out some oustanding work both here and at Boys on the Bus, his personal site. His latest project is crunching numbers to find the best possible lineup that Ralph Krueger can put on the ice.

My objective is to create a lineup which maximizes the average player-with-player Corsi of each line and each defensive pairing. I’ll use integer mathematical programming, and use Excel to set up my calculations. To start, I needed a massive player-with-player matrix to cover the entire season. I completed this part of the analysis yesterday using stats from http://stats.hockeyanalysis.com. To be included in my matrix, two players needed to have played at least 9 minutes of play together, good for about 10 shifts or so.

Taylor Hall - Ryan Nugent-Hopkins - Jordan Eberle
Magnus Paajarvi - Sam Gagner - Nail Yakupov
Teemu Hartikainen - Shawn Horcoff - Ales Hemsky
Ryan Smyth - Eric Belanger - Ryan Jones

Nick Schultz - Justin Schultz
Ladislav Smid - Jeff Petry
Ryan Whitney - Mark Fistric

The amazing thing about the optimal lineup? The overall gains in possession.

Click through to see breakdown and the final predicted outcome at Boys on the Bus.