Exceeding Expectations: Top Corsi Overachievers

by Hawerchuk on Mar 9, 2010 9:00 AM EST

One of the best ways to evaluate a player's performance is to count the amount of time his team and his opponets had the puck while he was on the ice. Nobody collects that data, but counting the total number of shots for and against while the player is on the ice is a good proxy for it. This shot differential has come to be known as the "Corsi number", after its presumed originator, Buffalo Sabres goaltending coach Jim Corsi. (We don't actually know who invented it, and Jim's not taking credit...)

One thing that's clear is that you can't use a Corsi number without context. If a player plays against soft competition and gets a lot of offensive zone draws, then he'll have a better Corsi than someone who starts in his own end against the other team's top line. One thing we can do is build a simple regression model for what a player's Corsi should be given his strength of competition and what faceoffs he lines up for. Here are the top 30 in the league in terms of exceeding their expected Corsi, all at 5v5:

#	NAME	POS	TEAM	CORSI+	CORSI	QoC	Off FO%
1	Goc	C	NSH	21.3	7.5	0.29	32.6
2	Erat	RW	NSH	18.4	10.8	1.11	43.6
3	Kesler	C	VAN	17.6	12.7	0.62	45.4
4	Zetterberg	C	DET	16.8	15.0	0.93	50.6
5	Raymond	LW	VAN	16.4	13.7	0.70	48.6
6	Lidstrom	D	DET	15.8	15.5	0.97	52.7
7	Datsyuk	C	DET	15.8	15.0	0.88	51.7
8	Boychuk	D	BOS	15.6	15.8	0.48	51.8
9	Weber	D	NSH	15.5	7.2	1.09	42.7
10	Keith	D	CHI	14.8	16.4	0.46	53.5
11	Samuelsson	RW	VAN	14.7	13.6	0.39	49.6
12	Ovechkin	LW	WSH	14.4	20.5	-0.81	55.0
13	Grabovski	C	TOR	14.4	20.7	-0.84	55.2
14	Bergeron	C	BOS	14.4	13.8	-0.10	48.7
15	Suter	D	NSH	14.2	6.0	1.30	43.6
16	Williams	RW	L.A	14.1	14.6	1.37	55.1
17	Madden	C	CHI	14.0	4.1	0.09	37.1
18	Marleau	C	S.J	13.7	9.3	1.72	50.0
19	Ponikarovsky	LW	PIT	13.3	17.0	-0.49	53.0
20	Legwand	C	NSH	13.2	2.3	1.41	40.2
21	Pavelski	LW	S.J	13.1	5.1	1.68	45.1
22	Hornqvist	LW	NSH	13.1	11.6	0.49	49.5
23	Holmstrom	LW	DET	13.1	19.6	-0.15	57.8
24	Ward	RW	NSH	13.0	-0.8	2.36	39.8
25	Polak	D	STL	12.7	-2.4	1.68	35.7
26	Toews	C	CHI	12.7	22.1	-0.02	62.1
27	Malhotra	C	S.J	12.4	5.4	0.60	42.7
28	Jackman	D	STL	12.2	-0.9	1.90	39.2
29	Rafalski	D	DET	12.0	13.1	0.84	54.0
30	Hossa	RW	CHI	11.8	22.3	0.59	65.6

It should be clear that the whole can be greater than the sum of the parts. Nashville has clearly found a couple of forward lines that are incredibly successful together - there's no guarantee that these players would do as well individually with other pairings. But separating the individual contributions of players who line up together almost all of the time is very difficult.

For completeness, here are the bottom 30 of the league:

#	NAME	POS	TEAM	CORSI+	CORSI	QoC	Off FO%
1	Brassard	C	CBJ	-11.4	-0.5	0.20	64.8
2	Stewart	RW	COL	-11.6	-12.7	0.45	49.9
3	Tavares	C	NYI	-11.7	-5.8	0.36	58.8
4	Mcleod	LW	COL	-11.8	-10.8	0.74	53.6
5	Bodie	RW	ANA	-11.9	-18.6	1.14	45.0
6	Brookbank	D	ANA	-12.0	-9.0	-0.17	53.1
7	Reinprecht	C	FLA	-12.0	-17.1	0.93	46.4
8	Talbot	C	PIT	-12.1	-4.6	-1.55	54.3
9	Kreps	C	FLA	-12.2	-20.9	0.57	40.3
10	Foote	D	COL	-12.4	-16.7	1.13	48.1
11	Mikkelson	D	ANA	-12.5	-10.2	0.95	56.1
12	Pisani	RW	EDM	-12.7	-11.9	0.52	52.7
13	Lapierre	C	MTL	-12.8	-16.6	0.82	47.6
14	Staios	D	CGY	-12.9	-14.4	0.75	50.4
15	Yip	RW	COL	-13.0	-11.2	-0.56	50.3
16	Fraser	D	N.J	-13.6	0.5	-0.36	67.0
17	Stillman	LW	FLA	-13.9	-15.3	1.06	51.7
18	Galiardi	LW	COL	-15.4	-17.3	0.17	47.9
19	Moreau	LW	EDM	-15.6	-19.5	0.81	47.4
20	Tucker	RW	COL	-15.8	-12.2	0.03	54.6
21	Festerling	D	ANA	-15.9	-7.4	-0.18	60.4
22	Halishuk	C	N.J	-16.3	-4.7	-1.44	60.0
23	Liles	D	COL	-17.6	-12.4	0.09	56.9
24	Wilson	D	COL	-17.7	-15.1	-0.79	50.5
25	Tambellini	LW	NYI	-17.7	-20.1	0.03	46.8
26	Sim	LW	NYI	-18.1	-17.4	0.06	50.9
27	Jacques	LW	EDM	-18.3	-20.3	1.26	51.5
28	Eminger	D	ANA	-19.1	-21.9	1.30	50.6
29	Strudwick	D	EDM	-19.3	-22.2	0.36	47.2
30	Garrison	D	FLA	-20.6	-14.5	-0.35	56.5

No big surprises here, but I would draw your attention to the number of Colorado Avalanche players on the list. The Avs have been fighting the percentages all season: they give up a ton of shots at 5-on-5 and get outshot, but they've had amazing goaltending and serious luck in the other team's end. Since their 14th game, they've essentially been even on goal differential, hardly what you'd expect from a team that could easily finish the season with 100 points.

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I find value in team Corsi numbers, but I find individual Corsi numbers to be extremely suspect. They lack a lot of context (zone starts, quality of competition etc).

You try to qualify some of that here with the Qual of comp, but I don’t think it’s clear how much those two things overall affect the individual Corsi and Corsi+ numbers.

I realize that being a COL fan may make me a little biased, but I’ve been extremely leery about individual Corsi for a while now, ever since Tyler Arnason’s Corsi and Corsi+ was far superior to Joe Sakic’s (who at the time had the worst on the team). Likewise, just watching Stewart this season it’s blatantly obvious he is not the worst player on the Avs, far from it. Either in his own end and, other than Stastny, probably helps create more shots than anyone else on the team.

I still have a hard time putting much stock at all into individual Corsi numbers.

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by Jibblescribbits on Mar 9, 2010 10:52 AM EST reply actions

Stewart is in the middle of the pack for the Avs, ahead of Mcleod, Foote, Yip, Galiardi, Tucker, Liles and Wilson. So I don’t see how the numbers contradict your observations.

by Hawerchuk on Mar 9, 2010 11:33 AM EST up reply actions

Stewart and Galiardi have been 2 of the Avs best players, based on my observations, and Yip has had a strong season as well. I would expect both of them to be closer to Stastny’s numbers.

I can’t imagine either Stewart or Galiardi are among the 30 worst players in the league. I can see Stewarts numbers being drug down a little, because he started the year horribly. But Galiardi’s make no sense at all. He’s one of the Avs best PKers, he’s extremely responsible defensively, and he’s been getting shots on net.

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by Jibblescribbits on Mar 9, 2010 11:50 AM EST up reply actions

The problem is that that Avs haven’t been getting shots on net:

http://www.behindthenet.ca/2009/new_5_on_5.php?sort=33&section=corsi&mingp=20&mintoi=10&team=COL&pos=

So when, as a team, you are 28-30 in the league in shot differential, you will have players with the worst Corsi in the league. One season doesn’t reflect true talent, but this is a team that depends on its goaltending to cover up a lack of puck control.

by Hawerchuk on Mar 9, 2010 11:59 AM EST up reply actions

But I’m talking within the same team here. Galiardi is a better player than some of the same members of his own team whose Corsi he is well behind.

I have my doubts about Corsi as a team stat as well. Not that it’s not useful, but I think it has some flaws. I think those flaws really manifest themselves when it comes to individual corsi.

For example Foote’s Q of Comp is 1.13… I’m not really sure how Corsi or Corsi+ adequately encapsulates that.

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by Jibblescribbits on Mar 9, 2010 2:00 PM EST up reply actions

Corsi+ = Corsi + m1*QoC + m2*OZ%. It’s linear regression…It ain’t perfect.

Given the data that’s collected today, Corsi is pretty much the most useful metric in hockey. It essentially captures how much of the time a team has puck possession. Individual players are heavily-impacted by who they play with and against. No one has figured out how to resolve that yet. We’re 20 years behind baseball, what can I say?

Galiardi may be a better player than Yip, or whoever, but there’s a difference between observed performance (merely a sample of a player’s career) and true talent.

by Hawerchuk on Mar 9, 2010 2:35 PM EST up reply actions

Oh i definitely am not saying that “What I observe is the truth”, and I recognize the value behind Corsi for sure It’s a useful metric, especially in a team sense, but I think it still has some deficiencies that limit it’s overall effectiveness. My problem with it is that it’s too often being used as kind of a “magic” stat that encompasses everything, and I’m not sold on it. (It doesn’t take into account Goaltender play, or special teams play for example. I don’t think those can be ignored).

Individual Corsi has even more deficiencies IMO, and I just haven’t found it all that useful so far, and there just seem to be some cases where I look at it and say “You know, that can’t possibly be right”. Arnason over Sakic was one that stands out in my mind for sure. Maybe It’s just the experimentalist in me, but at some point if the theory doesn’t match the observations… you change the theory.

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by Jibblescribbits on Mar 9, 2010 3:32 PM EST up reply actions

I don’t understand your frustration with shot-counting. Sakic’s 5-on-5 play was pretty bad in 2007-08 (3.48 GA/60, ten worst in the league) and he faced the other teams’ top lines. Arnason reached the pinnacle of his abilities (he was a -1 on the season) played against dead-enders like himself.

There’s no reason that think that a bad player having his best season against 4th liners can’t put up better numbers than a good player having his worst season against 1st liners. The other team had the puck more when Sakic was on the ice than when Arnason was. This is a snapshot of a small part of their careers.

by Hawerchuk on Mar 9, 2010 5:57 PM EST up reply actions

That’s the whole point, Arnason was playing against 4th liners, Sakic against 1st liners. I would bet that Sakic took more defensive zone starts than Arnason by a wide margin as well.

A stat that’s supposed to be a measurement of total value (and maybe that’s my misunderstand of what the stat is supposed to show) is clearly undervaluing players who start in their own zone, and play against tougher opponents. And it over values players who are weak in their own zone, therefore are only starting in their attacking zone because they aren’t trusted to play defense. I find it to be incredibly misleading when trying to place a value on how important a player is to his team, which is my biggest problem with it.

I see the same in Galiardi. The guy has constantly played in his own zone, and is put out there for defensive situations. His Corsi hurts for it

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by Jibblescribbits on Mar 9, 2010 9:22 PM EST up reply actions

And I realize you mention that you can’t use Corsi without context in the text of the article, but I think (actually I know, because I’ve been a part of enough technical presentations) when these stats are presented with qualifiers, such as those, those qualifiers tend to get overlooked.

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by Jibblescribbits on Mar 9, 2010 9:24 PM EST up reply actions

Really? Can you give me an example where someone claimed that Corsi is the only stat you need to look at to evaluate a player?

Take a look at Lowetide’s player evaluations – he’s always looking at quality of competition and linemates. Vic Ferrari is the guy who stressed the importance of zone starts, and Tyler Dellow showed how zone starts affect Corsi.

Corsi is the single-most important variable we have at our disposal to evaluate a team’s true performance. This isn’t some weird idea I pulled out of my ass – it is a concept developed and used by NHL coaches and general managers. I hate to appeal to authority, but these guys know a hell of a lot more about hockey than any of us, and as far as I can tell, they also know virtually everything that we know.

by Hawerchuk on Mar 10, 2010 12:52 AM EST up reply actions

I’m not saying team Corsi isn’t useful. Not even close to that. At all. I’m not really sure how when I say “I think its a bit overvalued” it gets turned somehow into an anti-Corsi kind of thing, but that’s certainly not the intention.

Look, Corsi correlates at the team level to to an r² value of ~.55 at the team level for EV goals. There’s a ton of variables i there that keep that value from being higher, (Goaltender play, coaching styles/shot selection, luck, etc). .55 is strong, but it’s not overwhelming by any stretch of the imagination.

Now going down to an individual level just adds even more variables (Quality of Competition, zone starts, Quality of Teammates, face-off %). That doesn’t make the stat useless. (I may have been a bit strong in my previous criticism) but it certainly means I’m going to take it with a huge grain of salt.

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by Jibblescribbits on Mar 10, 2010 1:00 PM EST up reply actions

But the very point of Gabe’s post here is to correct for those factors…

by JLikens on Mar 9, 2010 10:51 PM EST up reply actions

Understood

And I think it’s a good attempt, just not sure it goes far enough yet. (That’s not a knock on Gabe, at all, but more just a symptom of how immature hockey stats really are.)

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by Jibblescribbits on Mar 10, 2010 1:01 PM EST up reply actions

Galiardi has 47.9% offensive zone face-offs, which is neither here nor there. Hannan and Quincey go out for just 41% O-zone faceoffs and they have better Corsis against tougher competition.

It looks like he went out a lot with Ryan O’Reilly as his center and O’Reilly has been brutal on O-zone faceoffs this season, which will affect Galiardi’s numbers. (As a winger, Galiardi is not blameless.)

But Galiardi also has a 1042 PDO at 5-on-5 this season, one of the higher figures on the team. So his plus-minus is luck-driven in a big way.

by Hawerchuk on Mar 10, 2010 12:44 AM EST up reply actions

great stuff

i’ve thought about doing something like this for a while. glad you beat me to the punch. :)

any way you could make the full list sortable and available on BTN?

by sunnymehta.com on Mar 9, 2010 11:01 AM EST reply actions

Let me put it on the list

by Hawerchuk on Mar 9, 2010 11:33 AM EST up reply actions

cool.

btw, did you use a different regression equation for F than for D? it might make sense to, no?

by sunnymehta.com on Mar 12, 2010 10:52 AM EST up reply actions

I used the same one. I looked at D and F separately before and I didn’t find that the coefficients were substantially different, but I didn’t look at these rankings with D and F split. It does make sense to do that though, even if the difference appears to be small.

by Hawerchuk on Mar 16, 2010 1:56 PM EDT up reply actions

An interesting variation is looking at the home/road split of the Corsi/ZoneStarts duo. Being that a coach doesn’t have as much control on the matchups on the road, it’s a pretty useful way of spotting who’s soft, who’s drawing the tough assignments, etc…

by Olivier on Mar 9, 2010 11:18 AM EST reply actions

Yeah, I’ve been thinking about putting that together for a long time…Yet another item for the list!

by Hawerchuk on Mar 9, 2010 11:34 AM EST up reply actions

Makes me feel better about buying a Marcel Goc Olympic jersey.

by Sam Page on Mar 10, 2010 8:29 AM EST reply actions

Agreed: Great Stuff

Despite the difficulties you’ve stated, can you please incorporate Quality of Teammates into the expectations, too?

After that, adding in shot quality would make this the ultimate statistic, in my view.

Of course, one’s ability to exceed expectations is related to the quality of the competition. That is, someone who is expected to have a terrible Corsi is in a better position to dramatically exceed expectations than someone expected to have a good one.

I’d also add that readers be careful to interpret the stat properly. A bad result doesn’t necessarily mean the player is bad. Literally it only means that the the shot differential (and therefore, puck possession) is worse when he’s on the ice than it should be. Concluding that the player sucks is one possible explanation for that, but there are others – perhaps a player is primarily used in lead-holding situations where he’s asked to allow shots from the outside, but to just dump it in and pin it along the boards when in the offensive end to kill time.

by Rob Vollman on Mar 10, 2010 10:23 AM EST reply actions

perhaps a player is primarily used in lead-holding situations where he’s asked to allow shots from the outside, but to just dump it in and pin it along the boards when in the offensive end to kill time.

Or, maybe he’s just getting dominated territorially by his opposition.

“Allowing shots from the outside” is the classical criticism of Corsi from people whose favorite players aren’t flattered by Corsi. Reality dictates that there aren’t many situations where a player’s primary role is to “allow shots from the outside”. Rather, players with bad Corsi overwhelmingly spend a ton of time in their own zone. There’s a lot of context that goes into why that happens but “shots from the outside” isn’t one of them.

by R O on Mar 10, 2010 11:53 AM EST up reply actions

Hey Gabe, I noticed Goc was heavily outperforming his zone shift starts and there’s two things that I think of.

First off, I’ve seen Goc good so it’s not out of the realm of possibility that he’s a puck moving machine.

Secondly though, I took a peek on NHL.com and Goc is a top 30 faceoff man (modest though, 52.6% doesn’t strike me as a huge material advantage given that I’ve estimated about a 3 goal difference at EV for a 60% team vs. a 50% team over 82 games). So maybe he just gets sent out for a lot of Dzone faceoffs and his shifts don’t tilt toward his own net as much as his faceoff splits imply.

by R O on Mar 10, 2010 11:58 AM EST reply actions

The individual face-off thing is key – I noted that above about TJ Galiari. His center was Ryan O’Reilly, who stinks. I’m not sure whether we need to normalize every face-off taker to 50% on top of normalizing them for zone. Winning face-offs is a key Corsi skill.

by Hawerchuk on Mar 10, 2010 12:33 PM EST up reply actions

Interesting notion. On the Flames, Daymond Langkow has a strong corsi despite a tough zone start and a lousy F/O percentage. One wonders how much it would improve further if he was at least a 50% guy.

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by Kent Wilson on Mar 10, 2010 2:09 PM EST up reply actions

Maybe for driving Corsi from shifts that start in faceoffs, but the margins for faceoff ability seem small especially because they have to be combined with other skills to truly impact possession driving (although it stands to reason that players with faceoff ability might tend to be harder on the puck in general).

I was driving at something different though. What if guys like Goc are used as faceoff specialists, i.e. they get a lot of defensive zone shifts that start in faceoffs but aren’t shifted over the boards on the fly as much when the puck’s moving into their zone.

Such a player would overwhelmingly be playing tough minutes anyway since no matter how you slice it a defensive zone shift is tough to handle. But, the degree of toughness would be exaggerated.

I can’t think of anyone on the Flames who are used like this but I think the Oil have rotated through a lot of centres that have had this kind of usage and I can imagine that this is a pretty realistic usage for some centres around the league. Not many I suspect, I mean common sense dictates that players you can trust for key defensive faceoffs are players you could probably also trust for defensive duties in general. But, at the margins, I suspect there are a handful players being used more defensively in shifts that start in faceoffs than shifts on the fly.

And in any case, for the guys at the margins like Goc who are really really outperforming their ZoneStart, you have to think that at least some of that is these players just being damn good at moving the puck north. So it might be a moot point.

by R O on Mar 10, 2010 2:32 PM EST up reply actions

Speaking of faceoffs, I remember this old article of yours that showed the effect of a lost and/or won faceoff on shots against. Do you have the data to show the reverse (the effect on shots for based on a won or lost faceoff in the defensive zone)? I was having a conversation with David Staples where he raised this issue.

by Scott Reynolds on Mar 11, 2010 10:37 AM EST up reply actions

It’s identical.

by Hawerchuk on Mar 11, 2010 11:27 AM EST up reply actions

but obviously inverted

by Hawerchuk on Mar 11, 2010 11:27 AM EST up reply actions

Is it actually identical? I would have thought that shots-for would be much less extreme than shots-against since you need to carry the puck out of your zone and into the other team’s zone before getting a shot. This doesn’t make sense to me at all. Just to make sure I asked the question right, it’s, “if my team starts in my defensive zone and my team wins the faceoff, what is our shot rate like?” And you’re saying the answer is the same as if my team started in the offensive zone and won the faceoff?

by Scott Reynolds on Mar 11, 2010 2:29 PM EST up reply actions

Ok, I see what you’re saying. You want to know the shots for following a DZ draw.

I used to have that posted on my other site. Can’t find it for the moment. I will re-run the numbers for you.

by Hawerchuk on Mar 11, 2010 6:46 PM EST up reply actions

His center was Ryan O’Reilly, who stinks

More than a slight exaggeration there. O’Reilly is a strong defensive-forward who is key on the PK and is the Avs second strongest F/O guy next to Stastny. (Granted, that’s not saying much as that’s a huge weakness for the Avs which is probably more than a little responsible for that ridiculously high shots against average.) He clearly has hit the “rookie wall” but you can’t say that a 19-year-old rookie who plays on the 3rd line and has 22 points, 2 short handed goals, and 2 game winners stinks.

The 2009-2010 Colorado Avalanche: People can stop waiting for these kids to hit the wall. They won’t.

by NurseBeachie on Mar 14, 2010 9:47 PM EDT up reply actions

This is outstanding work, Mr. Desjardins, although I’m mildly suprised it took until now for you to do this. I do have a question regarding something in your back-and-forth with Jibblescribbits:

Corsi is the single-most important variable we have at our disposal to evaluate a team’s true performance. This isn’t some weird idea I pulled out of my ass – it is a concept developed and used by NHL coaches and general managers. I hate to appeal to authority, but these guys know a hell of a lot more about hockey than any of us, and as far as I can tell, they also know virtually everything that we know.

Is this true? Do you think most teams use this kind of thing? There are still holdouts in baseball, AFAIK, and, as you said, baseball’s much further along in this battle.

by Passive Voice on Mar 11, 2010 2:04 AM EST reply actions

It’s possible some teams are in the dark. But scouts invented the concept of league equivalencies decades before it ever occurred to me or anyone else. Teams have collected shot totals and scoring chances for decades too. It was just luck that Vic Ferrari was listening to the radio and he caught an interview with Darcy Regier and another one with Jim Corsi.

by Hawerchuk on Mar 11, 2010 2:51 AM EST up reply actions

Oh, and I didn’t do this before because I was spending too much time searching for the holy grail of Corsi and I didn’t bother to publish the intermediate steps that make sense.

by Hawerchuk on Mar 11, 2010 2:53 AM EST up reply actions

Can you provide a link to your methodology for Corsi+? It just seems odd to me that Goc’s value gets inflated that much by his QualComp & Faceoff splits.

Bringing up one question in particular, if you bring QualComp into the equation, why not bring QualTeam?

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by Dirk Hoag on Mar 11, 2010 1:26 PM EST up reply actions

Qualcomp relies on a large number of opponents who are each insignificantly-affected by playing against player A. But player A’s qualteam is influenced by a bunch of players who play with him. Sometimes players play together so much that you can’t figure out who’s responsible for what.

by Hawerchuk on Mar 11, 2010 2:20 PM EST up reply actions

I’ll buy that… how about the Faceoff splits? How do those factor in on a practical basis? I have observed that Goc will be used for defensive draws, and come off for a quick change as the play moves through center ice, but his difference between Corsi and Corsi+ seems suspiciously large.

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by Dirk Hoag on Mar 11, 2010 3:02 PM EST up reply actions

Goc will be used for defensive draws, and come off for a quick change as the play moves through center ice

Does he get shifted a lot to take on tough comp in general? Even on the fly?

I thought Legwand and Ward played a bunch of tough min for NSH. I don’t know if Goc plays with them regularly but if he doesn’t then there’s no way that Goc’s icetime is as tough as his faceoff splits imply (even though they’re still tough besides).

by R O on Mar 11, 2010 8:22 PM EST up reply actions

No, Smithson plays with Legwand and Ward. Goc’s QualComp (as seen above) is tough, but not the toughest by a long shot. He does get lots of defensive-zone draws, but I’m still surprised by that Corsi+.

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by Dirk Hoag on Mar 12, 2010 9:20 AM EST up reply actions

If Goc’s total shifts were really split 33-67 then I would say that he plays absolutely the most brutally tough minutes on the Preds even with some QC difference between him and Legwand. That’s the opposite kind of split that you see with forwards with the gameplan built around them, it would be hell to play in.

What I’m speculating though is that Goc gets thrown out for a lot of D-zone draws but not the commensurate proportion of shifts on the fly where the puck’s moving back into the Dzone. I’m basing this based on how much he’s on the good side of the puck and the fact that he’s a terrific faceoff man, both kind of suggest (but in no way imply, which is where I’d like your input) that perhaps Goc is being used primarily for his faceoff winning ability.

by R O on Mar 12, 2010 10:04 AM EST up reply actions

Toews

I am surprised at just how much Toews is protected. I thought he was a quality defensive forward, but his QoC and Off FO%, ofr a guy who’s getting Selke consideration looks that that of a guy the coach doesn’t trust defensively.

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Jibblescribbits: C'mon over and waste some time

by Jibblescribbits on Mar 12, 2010 9:37 AM EST reply actions

Chicago has complete territorial dominance, so all of their players are going to have high OZ%. And Toews is 4th on his team in QoC – the problem is that Chicago has destroyed the teams in its own division on the shot board, so it looks like their competition is weaker. Even Corsi QoC can still get messed up.

by Hawerchuk on Mar 12, 2010 12:46 PM EST up reply actions