Open-Ice Hits

by Hawerchuk on Oct 11, 2009 7:45 PM EDT in Statistics

Most hits occur along the boards. No big surprise there. But how many hits is "most"? I classified any hit inside the red area below as an open-ice hit:

Approximately 75% of all hits occur within 10 feet of the net or the boards, while less than 5% happen in "open-ice." After the jump, the league leaders in open-ice hits...

This table includes both 2007-08 and 2008-09. There isn't much overlap between the two lists - the hitters are big defensemen and aggressive forwards; the guys who get hit include a lot more playmakers and scorers. I was surprised to see both Darcy Tucker and Sean Avery in the top 12 for taking hits - perhaps there are a lot of players in the league who are gunning for them in open ice.

Hit For	#	Hit Against	#
Dustin Brown	47	Alexander Ovechkin	46
Douglas Murray	39	Evgeni Malkin	37
Keith Ballard	33	Sidney Crosby	31
Alexander Ovechkin	30	Dustin Brown	26
Garnet Exelby	28	Derek Roy	22
Brooks Orpik	27	Ales Hemsky	21
Dion Phaneuf	27	Ryan Kesler	21
Cory Sarich	26	Tuomo Ruutu	21
James Wisniewski	25	Alexander Semin	20
David Backes	25	Valtteri Filppula	20
Toni Lydman	24	Darcy Tucker	19
Ed Jovanovski	23	Sean Avery	19
Niklas Kronwall	23	Scottie Upshall	19
Ruslan Salei	22	Matt Stajan	19
Chris Phillips	21	Brooks Laich	19
Dan Girardi	21	Loui Eriksson	19
Martin Hanzal	21	Chad LaRose	18
Dan Hamhuis	20	Mike Richards	18
Freddy Meyer	20	Devin Setoguchi	18
Ryan Malone	20	Alex Kovalev	17
Brent Seabrook	20	Corey Perry	17
Anton Volchenkov	19	Mikhail Grabovski	17
Shane Doan	18	Mike Ribeiro	16
Hal Gill	18	Erik Cole	16
Brendan Witt	18	Patrick O'Sullivan	16
Andreas Lilja	18	Maxime Talbot	16
Colton Orr	18
Steve Ott	18
Tuomo Ruutu	18

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Comments

Not surprised to see the big Pens and Ovie up there in big hits against, probably due to their bullseye on their back and massive ice time. I’d be curious to see where they’d rank though on a /60 basis.

by Moneypuck on Oct 12, 2009 1:07 AM EDT reply actions

It’s nice to see Ovie up there on the hits for list, not just the hits against list!

"My face is my mask."

by Jake Shapiro on Oct 12, 2009 2:55 AM EDT reply actions

Riffing off your last post a bit, are you just looking at road hits here?

by Scott Reynolds on Oct 12, 2009 5:54 AM EDT reply actions

These are total hits. I’m guessing this data has both huge x-y bias (like shots at MSG) and huge rink bias. So I put it up mostly to show who was being credited, not necessarily who I believe is skilled at open-ice hitting.

I think hits, giveaways and takeaways are total dead ends at the moment. The recording of them is horrendous, particularly the reputational aspect involved in awarding them. Until the league acts to standardize them, I don’t see much we can get out of them on an individual level. (Though of course we can see what their impact is on in-game play.)

by Hawerchuk on Oct 12, 2009 12:17 PM EDT up reply actions