Icing Leaders, For and Against

by Hawerchuk on Apr 2, 2010 9:00 AM EDT

It's a funny thing - icing, which we normally associate with a weak defensive team desperately trying to clear the puck - does not seem to correlate very well with that image. The table below shows the percentage of icings that were committed by a given team. Edmonton has the best record - just 41.7% of icings in its games were by the Oilers - while New Jersey and Nashville find themselves at the other end of the spectrum.

Team	IceA	IceF	Pct
edm	239	171	41.7
pit	237	170	41.8
buf	235	176	42.8
ott	250	199	44.3
tor	261	211	44.7
bos	253	219	46.4
ana	209	183	46.7
cgy	269	240	47.2
det	209	187	47.2
mon	222	200	47.4
col	212	195	47.9
la	198	190	49.0
car	230	222	49.1
chi	220	213	49.2
dal	191	186	49.3
cls	227	226	49.9
van	215	216	50.1
nyr	244	246	50.2
pho	218	220	50.2
was	218	224	50.7
tb	211	232	52.4
phi	210	236	52.9
stl	224	255	53.2
sj	199	227	53.3
min	220	262	54.4
nj	198	236	54.4
nyi	213	261	55.1
nsh	206	261	55.9
atl	200	260	56.5
fla	166	280	62.8

Here are the players who've taken the most faceoffs following an icing call - "Def" means defensive zone draw; in other words, Stephen Weiss led the league in taking draws following his own team icing the puck:

Player	Off	Player	Def
Sidney Crosby	100	Stephen Weiss	75
Mikko Koivu	87	Tomas Plekanec	74
Antoine Vermette	87	Daymond Langkow	70
Jonathan Toews	87	Steven Reinprecht	70
Henrik Sedin	83	Nik Antropov	68
John Tavares	81	Paul Stastny	67
Paul Stastny	77	Kyle Brodziak	67
David Krejci	77	John Madden	67
Vincent Lecavalier	73	David Backes	66
Scott Gomez	72	Jay McClement	66
Stephen Weiss	71	Mike Richards	65
Jason Arnott	71	Martin Hanzal	65
Joe Thornton	71	Samuel Pahlsson	65
Travis Zajac	70	Henrik Sedin	63
Nik Antropov	69	Mikko Koivu	62
Matt Stajan	68	Jason Arnott	61
Jeff Carter	68	Ryan Kesler	61
Matt Duchene	65	Rich Peverley	61
Ryan Kesler	64	Marcel Goc	61
Olli Jokinen	64	Matt Stajan	60
Derek Roy	64	Jeff Carter	60
Jason Spezza	64	Chris Drury	60
Niklas Backstrom	63	John Tavares	59
Patrice Bergeron	63	Travis Zajac	59
Shawn Horcoff	63	Niklas Backstrom	59

The makeup of the two lists isn't very surprising. The guys who go on after a change are offensive forwards; the guys who are stuck taking the draw after their own team ices the puck are defensive centermen.

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Comments

defensive draws

Hey Gabe,
Great work. The list of centres taking defensive zone draws is extremely telling because that means it was their line that was on the ice for the actual icing. So you can see which forward lines were more prone to icings. So I guess it makes sense that they are defensive centres because they were probably being pinned in their own end by the other team’s top line, but it’s still a revealing look at which lines are being pinned.
I’ve often said it would be great if the league tracked icings by individual players, but barring that, this is a great alternative.
Arpon

by Arpon Basu on Apr 2, 2010 9:18 AM EDT reply actions

Actually, an interesting data subset would be the percentage of those icing faceoffs that were following a defensive zone faceoff. In other words, is Plekanec pinned in the defensive zone trough icings because he can’t swim upstream or because he keeps getting thrown out there for defensive zone faceoffs by Martin?

But that may be insignificant; the Qualcomp correlation Derek alludes to may be a more fruitful avenue.

by Olivier on Apr 2, 2010 10:26 AM EDT up reply actions

Qualcomp

Gabe,

To my eye, it looks like a strong correlation between the centres taking the defensive zone draws and qualcomp.

Editor of The Copper & Blue, and leader of The Cult Of Hartikainen.

by Derek Zona on Apr 2, 2010 9:44 AM EDT reply actions

Would not have picked the Oilers to be leading this list. Is this just an effect of the Oilers always trailing in the game, is the leading team more likely to ice the puck? On the other hand, Florida being at the bottom of the list makes a lot of sense to me. Even a good team like NJ being near the bottom makes sense because they trap a lot rather than forecheck, and you’re not likely to ice the puck against a trap.

by et_pitt on Apr 2, 2010 10:24 AM EDT reply actions

Would not have picked the Oilers to be leading this list. Is this just an effect of the Oilers always trailing in the game,

Tough to ice the puck if you never have it.

Editor of The Copper & Blue, and leader of The Cult Of Hartikainen.

by Derek Zona on Apr 2, 2010 10:54 AM EDT up reply actions 2 recs

Just a FYI- feel free to delete this

About half the players come up as red hotlinks and about half as black static text.
In the left column John Tavares comes up as John Tavares " align=“left” height="17">John Tavares Same with Matt Duchene

I get this in both Opera and Firefox

by DoctorMyBrainHurts on Apr 2, 2010 10:39 AM EDT reply actions

yeah, I get it too. they must only test the pages in explorer :)

by Hawerchuk on Apr 2, 2010 11:52 AM EDT up reply actions

hey, i fixed it manually. weird stuff

by Hawerchuk on Apr 2, 2010 11:54 AM EDT up reply actions

What about Defenseman?

Can you produce which defensemen were on the ice for the icings (faceoff after an icing). Last season, it seemed to me that Exelby was constantly dumping the puck down and taking the icing. Could be more of a defenseman stat than a forward stat.

All things Thrashers + stats: www.birdwatchersanonymous.com

by The Falconer on Apr 2, 2010 12:14 PM EDT reply actions

I built this from ESPN. I wish they told me who was on the ice.

by Hawerchuk on Apr 2, 2010 12:18 PM EDT up reply actions

Can’t the players on the ice be found with a time stamp in the play by play files? No one can change on an icing, so it would be a matter of merging the icing time stamps with who was on the ice for ensuing faceoff. Probably requires too much work.

All things Thrashers + stats: www.birdwatchersanonymous.com

by The Falconer on Apr 2, 2010 1:06 PM EDT reply actions