Il Lance, Il Compte...C'est de la Magie!
by Hawerchuk on May 13, 2010 11:41 AM EDT
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PrintIf you haven't been over to the very best french hockey blog on the entire planet, I suggest you visit. Olivier Bouchard has been recording the Habs scoring chances since way back in October when they were just as bad as the Leafs. Here's how he scored the playoff series so far - game 7 will be posted soon:
| Team | Game | SCF | SCA | GF | GA |
| WSH | 1 | 19 | 35 | 3 | 2 |
| WSH | 2 | 16 | 23 | 5 | 6 |
| WSH | 3 | 17 | 24 | 1 | 5 |
| WSH | 4 | 21 | 22 | 3 | 6 |
| WSH | 5 | 17 | 21 | 2 | 1 |
| WSH | 6 | 20 | 36 | 4 | 1 |
| WSH | 7 | 16 | 28 | 2 | 1 |
| PIT | 1 | 14 | 16 | 3 | 6 |
| PIT | 2 | 7 | 22 | 3 | 1 |
| PIT | 3 | 10 | 19 | 0 | 2 |
| PIT | 4 | 11 | 25 | 3 | 2 |
| PIT | 5 | 18 | 22 | 1 | 2 |
| PIT | 6 | 16 | 19 | 4 | 3 |
| PIT | 7 | ? | ? | 5 | 2 |
| TOTALS | 202 | 312 | 39 | 40 | |
| Score% | 16.8 | 12.2 |
Drink that in: Montreal hasn't led its opponent in scoring chances in *any* individual game. Halak really saved their asses in round 1, and when his performance declined in round 2, Habs shooters found the 'en fuego' button. Either one of those features could continue, but that's not what I like to build my house of cards with.
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…this kind of thing has been going on for months.
Or at least so it seems. It’s not something I actually checked in any detail, so beware of confirmation bias here (though it might be fun to compile the Habs’ record when they outchance the other team and when they don’t). But it became a running gag on the blog that the Habs would be well-advised to suck, because that gave them better odds of winning than actually playing well. They had a stretch of games near the beginning of the season where they out-Corsi’ed their opponents (back when they were supposedly “as bad as the Leafs” because they lost one-goal games in regulation but won them in overtime) and came out of that with a losing record. And then that stopped and they started actually winning more.
Which led me to much railing against Jacques Martin, because the Habs’ roster does have strong 5-on-5 players (eg. Gomez) and I felt the strategizing was responsible for how much they got outshot. But then they won games.
It’s been a weird, weird season in Habsland.
mathman said:
though it might be fun to compile the Habs’ record when they outchance the other team and when they don’t.
Surely you know the answer to that already, no?
I’m surprised that nobody has done this with Dennis’ Oiler scoring chance stuff yet. The Oilogosphere is a unique crowd, but there are still plenty of dummies. I’d like to see Bruce hit this data, in the way only he can, then wrap himself in anecdotes and Hrudeyisms and take a run at Dennis.
Dennis can be a hilariously vicious bastard, we haven’t seen enough of that lately. I miss it.
Surely you know the answer to that already, no?
Frankly, the way this season has gone (and the way the Habs retreated into a shell all year when defending a lead), I wouldn’t be overly shocked if the end result proved to be the counter-intuitive one. I think I may go back through Olivier’s blog and count it out though.
Well, if the world is round, they should have done slightly better in the games that they were outchanced. That’s the way hockey works at this level.
Are you new?
Obviously that’s why I’d like someone really stupid but stubborn to test Dennis’ scoring chance stuff the same way and try to throw it in his face. Because it would be hilarious.
Sure, you could do that to Olivier. But Olivier isn’t as naturally confident or cruel, and not many people would be watching, so it’s no fun.
Define “new”? Actually, I’m not sure I’m getting what you mean with your post. Chalk it up to language problems maybe.
I’ve been reading and posting to Olivier’s blog religiously (I’m easily the most frequent poster over there in my French secret ID ;) ), heartily concur with Gabe’s assessment of it as the best French-language hockey blog on the planet, and have been following his scoring chances counts fervently. I wouldn’t be counting to try to invalidate his work, far from it. I haven’t been tabulating his data, so I don’t have the definitive answer and my impression of their record while outchanced and while outchancing may be biased; so I would go back and compile the data to make sure.
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A scoring chances split by close/blowout will clear this up. I planned on doing something about that once the season was over, but this whole “getting blown out of the playoffs” thing is kinda dragging along…
The look on Malkin’s face last night; dude looked like Halak was having a threesome with his mother and his girlfriend on centerice.
Poor bastard will have to soothe his tears by rolling in piles of cash with his supermodel girlfriend, I guess.
I was talking about the regular season, of course. The playoffs are fucking nuts. Pittsburgh actually had 22 scoring chances (11 ES and 11 on the PP) in last night’s third period. I think the habs had that many SC for a whole game, oh, 5-7 times all season long?
There is obviously some form of method to the habs madness, but I just don’t get it. As Tyler noted in game 5, most of the time they aren’t even trying to get the freaking puck in the offensive zone.
I’ll agree that this is definitely not a sustainable way to play (at least not to be successful), and that’s not how I want to build my team either, but in the here-and-now, IF this run of luck/stars aligned keeps up for just a bit longer, it could net the Habs a Cup finals appearance – these are hard to come by, for any team, and should be embraced no matter how they came about.
Fair point
I’ll agree that this is definitely not a sustainable way to play (at least not to be successful), and that’s not how I want to build my team either, but in the here-and-now, IF this run of luck/stars aligned keeps up for just a bit longer…
Yeah, this is the underdog’s only hope for success, is it not? Certainly you don’t build your team to be outchanced; certainly you don’t coach with a “Hey, let’s go get outplayed out there” approach. But when it’s clear you’re the underdog for good reason, you go for counterattack-dependent, bend-not-break hockey and hope your goalie does a Halak. Jacques Martin knows that.
In other words, if the Habs focused on trying to outchance the two favorites they just beat in seven-game nailbiters, they’d likely have been blown out of the building. They’ve benefited from goaltending, luck, timely marksmanship, timely Fleury-fails, but I’d venture if they’d tried any other way, even luck couldn’t have saved them.
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If Montreal was employing a Minnesota strategy and we could actually see that they were forcing shots to the outside, then we could make this argument. But Montreal is allowing scoring chances from the same places as everyone else…
Is there any data on 3 on 2s and 2 on 1s
When you don’t forecheck aggressively you give up fewer 3-on-2s and 2-on-1s. I wonder how the percentages compare for 3-on-2s and 2-on-1s, vs offensive zone possession scoring chances from similar spots on the ice. Also does anyone keep track of 3-on-2s and 2-on-1s?
But Montreal is allowing scoring chances from the same places as everyone else…
And if they tried to go run-and-gun vs. Washington or Pittsburgh instead of playing passive and risk-averse, they’d be allowing even more, from even more dangerous positions.
I see the number of times Pittsburgh tried desperate wraparound-and-stuff attempts (BTW, do such chances register as a shot from inside?) last night, and I think, “Yes, this is the only way the Habs can do it. Hope to get an early lead, and hope Pittsburgh reacts with impatience and desperation that doesn’t pan out.” It’s not exactly brilliant, but it’s not like they can suddenly become something they are not.
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BTW, do such chances register as a shot from inside
The chance recorders have their own definitions for it and I don’t know which of them said it was like porn (can’t define it, but you know it when you see it) but generally speaking I don’t think anybody reasonable would categorize the average wraparound as a scoring chance.
Agreed, I was wondering about how that registers on the shot distance data. I guess that gets to a foggy area where you’re relying on the NHL scorekeepers judgment anyway.
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Oh, I see. Yeah I don’t have as extensive experience looking at the logs but the the wraparound shots from the logs I’ve looked at are recorded as close-distance shots (although I’ve heard they can be recorded more than a few feet out too… some shot recorders are on drugs).
I almost never did, personally. It depended…sometimes a wrap around would extend into the scoring field if the skater was open or good enough. But usually, it was a guy trying to stuff the puck in against the post from an impossible angle.
I really don’t understand why players do that, except maybe to get rebounds in the crease. This isn’t the 80s: goalies actually have the bottom of the net pretty well covered, unless they’re asleep at the wheel.
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I think it comes down to: the game is fast. Same reason why players almost undoubtedly do not actually pick the exact placement of their shots when in the middle of a scoring chance. On-the-stick, off-the-stick.
Yeah, that’s the way I looked at it when the Oilers had their run. Nobody in their right mind thought the Oilers outplayed the Wings, but you take the win and move on. The ’06 Oilers were a better team than the Habs (admittedly, the Habs are healthier now than they have been). The Sharks have long been adored by eastern Canadian media, Duhatchek(sp?) has been picking them to win for a decade, but they were only favoured over the Oilers by a smidge, and the scoring chances were near even.
The Oilers were outplayed by the Ducks, no doubt. But they wouldn’t have been if they hadn’t been devastated by the flu … and it didn’t matter anyways, the hockey gods were fully on board by that point. I remember Hrudey predicting the Ducks to come back and win the series from down 3-0 or 3-1, and he’s usually an Oiler boy. But you could see it, the Oilers were being outplayed. On the drive home I caught a caller from Anaheim’s call to postgame talk radio … he was saying that the Oilers had been outclassed by the Ducks but had been lucky. The callers after him slammed the guy, but he was right. And in Game two the radio guys interviewed a celebrity, and ex 90210 guy I think. He claimed he was hoping for the Oilers, but I dunno. In any case he said “same as game one, the ice is tilted towards the Oilers end, then Edmonton gets one chance and it goes in”. That’s it in a nutshell. The Duck players were even worse with their “we were the better team” stuff. Again, they were right … but fuck ’em, four wins baby, and off to the Stanley Cup Finals. And if healthy the Oilers would probably have been the better team.
99% of Oiler fans at the time would have busted out hockey magic and imagined the Oilers playing a completely different system all year. Bullshit. The Toronto media were talking endlessly about the Edmonton trap, which they weren’t playing. To add to the irony Pat Quinn’s Leafs had been playing a hard trap all year, as well as a box and a man in in their own end … ALL FREAKING SEASON and these same experts hadn’t noticed (Paul Maurice had a great quip on this btw).
Enjoy it while it lasts, James. It turns out that the luck wagon has big fucking wheels. We fell hard in the finals … finally dominating an opponent and nothing will go in and the bounces only ever seem to go one way. These chances don’t come very often for hockey fans … I hope the Habs have a good run.
Damn Gabe, you’re the man.
I’m blown away that they outplayed the Sharks by that wide of a margin. Was it just a matter of the games not being tied very often?
I remember Dennis running the scoring chances for the first game or two in S.J … and they came out a lot closer than it seemed at the time it felt like the Oilers would never score again).
And Game 3 wasn’t recorded by the NHL, no? I know that MacTavish was trying to Run Smyth/Horcoff at Thornton all series, and Pronger too. The exception was G3, he ran with the Peca line and put Hemmer (he was a kid then) on the 94/10 line. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Fucking MacTavish outsmarting himself. Sometimes you just need to dance with the ones that brung you, and Horcoff and Smyth were doing everything but sharpen the skates at that point. Hell, by my count they outchanced Zetterberg in the first round with Staios/Spacek behind them … the rest of the team got murdered.
Anyhow, all the cats who imagined Peca was the ‘shutdown guy’ in the playoffs could have used the game as a bit of evidence, but for whatever reason (because of the double or triple OT maybe?) there was no data for that game. No shiftchart or play by play … or so I thought.
yeah, game 3 is missing from my database. I was at game 1? Or was it game 2. The one where the oilers were up 5-on-3 for two full minutes and two sharks players lost their sticks…They killed the penalty and got scored on 5 seconds later…
Man, that playoff run was awesome. I just miss the playoffs in general, it’s an extraordinary experience in Edmonton. I’ve been to see an FA cup final, and Brazil vs England at Wembley also … both of those trump an Oiler regular season experience (save the game with the brawl against Atlanta, Bishai fighting a guy on the Thrasher bench, goalies fighting (Conklin broke his hand iirc) and both ATL goalies getting injured so their net was empty for about the last five minutes, then Georges scores a goal at just the right time on the clock so everyone wins a free burger from McDonalds, to be claimed from the concierges after the game iirc (that was the most misguided giveaway plan ever) … but that was a ‘last days of Rome’ experience. Mad shit.
Nothing touches Oiler playoff hockey though, just a terrific experience. Really unique. Not in the old days though, I saw a game of the finals vs Philly in the 80’s, and it was as boring as church in the colisseum.
Fuck these grand rebuilding schemes that involve tanking in the regular season for a few years in a row (a la Atlanta, Columbus, Minnesota, Pittsburgh and Washington) and stumbling upon a superstar at the draft lottery (a la Pittsburgh and Washington). Just give me playoff hockey every year. In with a chance, that’s all I ask.
Fuck these grand rebuilding schemes that involve tanking in the regular season for a few years in a row (a la Atlanta, Columbus, Minnesota, Pittsburgh and Washington) and stumbling upon a superstar at the draft lottery (a la Pittsburgh and Washington). Just give me playoff hockey every year. In with a chance, that’s all I ask.
Amen.
I’d ask that they also make the playoffs on merit, after all it’s not very much fun to watch 50-60 games in the regular season where the players are spending all their time hemmed in. Plus the ass and sphincter muscles could use a rest come April.
after all it’s not very much fun to watch 50-60 games in the regular season where the players are spending all their time hemmed in.
I beg to differ.
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by Jibblescribbits on May 13, 2010 5:07 PM EDT up reply actions
I dunno, YMMV of course but I can only imagine that it’s fun in a “bend-over-because-this-is-gonna-hurt-before-it-helps” way.
The most fun I’ve ever had watching the Flames in recent memory was 08/09 when lines 1-3 owned the puck like no tomorrow. And it’s not much fun to watch games against the Sharks or Wings where the Flames get outchanced horridly and eke out a win on the back of some fortunate guesses by Kiprusoff, not when there’s another Sharks/Wings game penciled in some time later in the season.
This was one of the most fun season’s I have ever watched. Not because the team was as good as the ‘00-’01 or ‘’99-00 Avs, but because after last season, it was just nice to finally win. I didn’t really care how they did it.
Last season was a nightmare of bad luck and just no fun. Watching a fresh young team of kids, who were overwhelmed more often than I want to admit, eke out wins was a welcome respite from last season.
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by Jibblescribbits on May 13, 2010 5:43 PM EDT up reply actions
To add to the irony Pat Quinn’s Leafs had been playing a hard trap all year, as well as a box and a man in in their own end … ALL FREAKING SEASON and these same experts hadn’t noticed (Paul Maurice had a great quip on this btw).
Ron Wilson’s made the same comment to the effect that the Toronto media don’t ask him or write about Xs and Os because they would expose their ignorance.
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That's Too Funny
I like Ron Wilson. He’s a dink, but I like him. I think that if any of us had to listen to the media idiots ask the same stupid shit, over and over, we’d get pissy too. In fairness, Wilson used to try to explain to the media (at least the local guys here) why their question was insane. This lead to his universal hatred amongst Edmonton media. I think that all of Barnes, Spector and Jones still refer to him as “the man who invented hockey”.
Instead of being snarky with the way they presented him in their articles, all of those guys would have benefitted greatly from actually trying to learn a bit more about the game they were writing about.
Also, when Wilson was in San Jose he went on a terrific stretch where he gave two answers to every question, and they were completely contradictory. Both answers couldn’t possibly be right. I was hooked on the podcasts for a while there, hilarious stuff. If I lived in San Jose I would have checked to see which answers the media were quoting. 100 to 1 they were grabbing the insane, Hrudeyesque Hockey Majick® alternative answers.
Dave King was at the opposite end of the spectrum … he’d look Brownlee in the eye and feed him the quote he thought he wanted to hear. Minutes later he’d answer the same question completely differently to Strachan, because Al clearly wanted a different quote for his piece.
King is universally loved by all media guys. No wonder. To me King is a bigger asshole than Wilson though, and by an order of magnitude. Wilson is trying to affect change in his own aggressive and impatient way, King is placating fools.
I don’t know what to make of Wilson. I think he terrorizes his players enough that it could impede success.
One anecdote I loved – Jeff Finger took a puck in the face and had to get stitches during the game. The reporter asked Finger if he was considering getting a shield; he said no. Then they asked Wilson. He said something to the effect of “I want Finger wearing a shield. I don’t want to have to roll five D for seven minutes ever again.”
That’s funny. Usually the media here don’t go quite that crazy until the playoffs. Then you’ve got full articles on an injury to a fourth line player who logs about six or seven minutes a night and is indistinguishable from the guy in the pressbox who will replace him.
The Toronto media would try the patience of a saint, methinks.
I remember a live tsn presser from TOR, back when Quinn was still running things. It was with regards to Berard’s eye injury I think. They kept asking Pat the same question over and over and over, using slightly different wording. Clearly they were all looking for a quote that fit their articles just a little bit better. Pat wouldn’t oblige, he was starting to go red after a while, but he didn’t bend.
Quinn used to bust out scoring chance numbers all the time in TO as well, he didn’t do that here. I was hoping he would, with Dennis tracking, we would have been able to call bullshit pretty easily. I think that Vigneault stretches the limits of reason with the scoring chance numbers that he busts out, it will be good if a Canuck fan starts tracking them next year. And the guy in Philly that Laviolette replaced (Stevens? Gordon?) that cat was flat out making up scoring chance and zone time stuff, I’m sure. Whenever Philly looked bad in the playoffs, that guy would pull an uncheckable stat out of the air that proved the naysayers wrong. Always smelt iffy.
Martin quipped about scoring chances a few times this year; the numbers were far lower than mine but the proportions were the same. But he rarely use them in pressers.
It’s actually pretty apparent the SC stuff is driving part of his decision-making tough. Metropolit and Lapierre were used on the PK for most of the first quarter of the season, just as Carbonneau used to do last year. Both were getting murdered out there, while Gionta-Gomez and Moen-Pleks were lights out. So somewhere in november, they call up Pyatt and White, shove both on the PK and Metro-Lapierre never saw a single second of PK ever again.
That’s the kind of stuff the SC project allows you to pick up. I just love it.
The media overestimates chances.
But early in the season, Quinn said his chances see 1 goal per 4.
It’s about half the ratio of what every one of us has tracked
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I remember a live tsn presser from TOR, back when Quinn was still running things. It was with regards to Berard’s eye injury I think. They kept asking Pat the same question over and over and over, using slightly different wording. Clearly they were all looking for a quote that fit their articles just a little bit better. Pat wouldn’t oblige, he was starting to go red after a while, but he didn’t bend.
This might just be revisionist history but the TO media used to do that with Wilson. While they still do it once in a while since he unloaded on Howard Berger I can only remember MAYBE a handful of times when they asked the same question twice.
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Interesting things...
In that ridiculous Game 6 vs. Washington, Montreal somehow still managed 20 scoring chances for despite allowing over 50 shots on goal and blocking 41. Somehow in that game, they had their second best offensive performance.
I did think that as the series got longer vs. Pitt, the play got more even. This suggests what I was seeing had some accuracy to it.
Of course, in Round 3, the Habs (in theory) should be able to play the opponent more evenly.
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I’m a bit scared by the Flyers, as they are ‘catching fire’ right about now and that can’t be good for Montreal.
On the other hand, their goaltender is weak and that plays right into the Habs strategy so far: very high team sh%, partly based on below-average goaltending.
The Flyers have had the benefit of playing against one of the worst offensive units in the Eastern Conference. When a thin pulse falls dead, it’s hard to win games. I’d be pretty interested to see how the Habs match up against Philly. A series against Boston could be a real snoozer, though…
The Flyers have had the benefit of playing against one of the worst offensive units in the Eastern Conference
The Flyers haven’t played the Habs yet.
Boston was the worst offensive team in the regular season.
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by Karina on May 13, 2010 5:14 PM EDT up reply actions
No, Boston scored the fewest goals in the regular season. There’s a difference, there will be teams that just shoot cold for an entire season even if they get more than their share of chances. And if you’re not already dominant on a Chicago-level (to use a recent example) then it’s hard to overcome poor shooting luck.
There is something to be said for being good enough to be in a position to pull off these upsets.
In the last ten years they’ve been in the playoffs twice as often as they’ve been out. That’s no mean feat when you never get top-5 picks (the last time Mtl “earned” a top-5 pick, there were only six teams in the league).
Habs fans can take pride in their never having been rotten enough to earn a player like Crosby or Ovechkin.
Habs fans can take pride in their never having been rotten enough to earn a player like Crosby or Ovechkin.
Funny, they’d turn around and laugh at the Leafs for the exact same thing.
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No, we laugh at the Leafs because when they are that bad, they trade away the pick.
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We could also laugh at the Oilers, who managed to finish dead last with a cap team.
I mean, how do you do that?
But we won’t do that. Because we are classy.
That or we are busy rioting.
Hey, at least there is entertainment value in pulling for your team down the stretch to avoid the ignominy of trading away a #1 overall. So far so good, with the #2 this year, #4 in ’97 and (my personal favourite) trouncing the Nords by a whopping 11 points in 91 to avoid a tragic Kurvers/Lindros deal.
Well, that IS funny to you guys and I’d laugh too but it’s funny to see sisu try to portray the Habs as valiant for always being in that middle ground that keeps them from ever actually competing for the Cup.
And let’s not forget that Toronto’s four runs to the conference finals have been consigned to the dustbins of history as ‘not competing for the Cup’. Let’s see how this fluke run by the Habs will get treated. I’ll bet that it’s ‘building the foundation for a champion’ this summer.
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I’m just pumped because Michael Cammalleri gets the big stage he’s always deserved, and he’s justifying every minute of it.
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by Bettman's Nightmare on May 13, 2010 12:46 PM EDT reply actions
He's visibly superior.
When I’m just watching casually and someone on MTL makes a nifty play in their own zone to breakout or someone makes a nice turn with the puck, I ask myself ‘who was that’? and its usually Cammalleri. He’s just good.
Is there any chance, any at all in this universe or any other, that your opinion is at all affected by the fact that Cammalleri is finishing his chances at a Mario-Lemieux-like level this playoff season?
Regardless of his playoff finish, which is admittedly unsustainable, this is a guy who had seasons of 18, 20, and 22 ESGs in three of the last four seasons, the latter despite missing time. I think there’s a pretty good chance he’s at least a little bit good.
Sure
His playoff shooting percentage is 25% this Spring. During the regular season it was 11.9%. For his career it’s less than 9%. He’s an average shooter on a ridiculous hot streak that he didn’t match once during the regular season.
But it’s probably just heart and grit that’s helping him finishes these chances.
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Huh?
Camalleri’s career shooting percentage is 12.3%, and he’s a guy who takes a lot of shots. 25% is way too much, obviously, but it’s not like Cammalleri being a good goal-scorer is some kind of weird-ass one-year novelty.
I’m not sure how one can call Cammalleri an “average shooter” except in the sense that practically every forward is clustered around 12%, including Alex Ovechkin. He’s a 30-35 goal scorer, typically, so he’s well above average as a goal-scorer.
Funny thing is, if he was managing 30-35 goals a year on less than 9% shooting percentage that would indicate he’s driving shoots for a lot more which, in some ways, would actually make him better.
There are shots and there are shots. Cammalleri is getting a ton of scoring chances. Well, not these days, but overall he is by far the best chances getter on the team with Gionta. What a coincidence, I know.
Watching Guerin last night was painful. Dude can’t get to the crease on time anymore. The Guerin and Knuble are the ones being driven to the periphery by the habs.
Sorry
Mis-read that he was 9% for his career.
He’s a 30-35 goal scorer, typically, so he’s well above average as a goal-scorer.
He’s done it twice in seven seasons. He’s not exactly a perennial 30 goal man. This streak he is on would have seen him score 54, 64, 53, 75 goals in his last four years. He’s good but not anywhere near this good.
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The guy is 27. He has had five full seasons, all since the lockout, in which he scored 26, 34, 19 (in 63 games — still a 25-goal pace, and despite an abnormally low 9% shooting%), 39 (15%, but he had the shots), and 26 (in 65 ganes, which is a 32-goal pace). More to the point, he’s been getting 200+ shots consistently, 250+ on healthy years.
If you don’t think he can regularly score 30 goals in his full healthy seasons, then it’s blind Hab hate talking. The guy is good for 250-300 shots per 82 games, and that’ll give him his 30-35 goals every year. You might see him dip to 25 or crack 40 occasionally.
And no, nobody believes he can shoot 25% over his career or that he can keep it up for long. Weird things happen on a small sample size. But that doesn’t mean he’s not an excellent goal-scorer in general.
Yeah, I’m pretty sure Cammalleri has above-average finishing ability. His SH% is suggestive enough, and when you watch him that shot of his has to be feared. The windup on one knee, and the puck really doesn’t have to be dead centre in his wheelhouse for him to get it off with velocity, at least it wasn’t so when he put pucks on net for the Flames.
Here’s what I have for Cammo sh% vs expected sh% at EV:
2008-09: 8.0 actual vs 6.0 expected
2007-08: 4.3 vs 6.1
2006-07: 5.6 vs 5.6
2005-06: 6.6 vs 6.7
Four-season average over 811 shots – 50 goals, 49.4 expected based on location. Probably just average finishing, no?
Hunh, well I’ll be damned. Not many players have his shot, I figured for sure he would bury his shots better than average. I stand corrected.
Oh look at that MathMan
In your face!
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You said he was a perennial 30 goal scorer. He is not. Averaging things out so he would have or could have been a 30 goal scorer doesn’t change the fact that he isn’t. He is a good scorer.
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How do those chances break down in terms of leading/trailing? Obviously, a lot of it is probably talent disparity, but after watching Game 7 last night, I wonder how much of that is score effects, also.
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Yes and no. Montreal led the majority of minutes in their series against the Caps — they led games 5-6-7 almost entirely, and practically all of game 2 as well. The Caps only held leads for significant amounts of time in games 3 and 4, and they traded leads in game 1. I’ll see if I can dig up the numbers that came out after Game 6 — and we’ll add 40ish minutes for the Habs in game 7 — but the Habs definitely had a massive edge in “time leading”.
I have no idea how it shakes out for the Pens series though.
These were the totals for the series after Game 6 (from Eye On The Prize):
Series Totals: ES: 147:36 WLT: 55:34 MLT: 170:40
Then for game 7 add 19:30 of equal score time and 40:30 of Montreal lead (and nada for the Caps of course) and it comes down to:
Time tied: 167:06
Washington Leading: 55:34
Montreal Leading: 211:10
That’s a rather sizable edge in Montreal’s “leading time” — almost 50% of the entire minutes.
Clearly it’s not as bad as it seems for Montreal. I think Gabe listed teams with 55% or more Fenwick (score tied) and the WSH-MTL series didn’t make the grade. So the ass-ownership wasn’t as severe as it appears at first blush.
MTL must’ve really been sitting back with the leaf though, and early. And WSH must have been coming in waves. And doubt Martin does that if he has more faith in his roster, he never did in Ottawa.
On the flipside, WSH was not that great as a team in the regular season. Even though Tyler’s analysis suggests that Ovechkin and whoever he played with were dominant (that matches the stuff on the ice).
The really damning thing was against Pitts though, MTL just got owned and with a vengeance. Although the thing Gabe listed including PP events, and that’s a place where Malkin can exert a lot more influence. Gonchar too.
Oh, they did. Did they ever. I wanted to scream at Martin for sitting back so damn much — and with slim leads —because I thought for sure it would blow up in his face, but in the end it didn’t. So that’s good luck and good execution right there, but that’s where I figure they made their hay percentage-wise in the WSH series.
As soon as they have the lead, well, the only thing they don’t concede is the inside of the net. For the rest, they fall back as far as they can, until the 5 position players have their asses bonking on Halak’s pads.
Quite painful to watch.
But I think we shouldn’t roll Special Teams and ES scoring chances together.
When you read the actual logs...
It’s quite funny, actually.
Take Game 6, the one at the top of the page. After 1, the score is tied at 1. Montreal has a 4-3 lead in chances.
Then Period 2 starts. Montreal gets the first scoring chance, but then they allow 9 straight, 6 of them on the PP, 5 of them on the same PP shift. Pittsburgh gets 1 goal (finally). They get one more chance, and then Montreal comes back and scores on their first chance in over 9 minutes. Pittsburgh gets the next 2 chances after the goal, then Montreal scores again. At this point, the chances in the game are 14-7 Pittsburgh but the score is 3-1 Montreal.
Oddly enough, from here on in, Montreal locks it down on Pittsburgh. They get 9 chances the remainder of the game (including the next 7, 3 on a late 2nd period PP), getting one more goal. Pittsburgh only gets 5 more. Each team scored on their first chance and their last chance.
5 on 5, Montreal actually outchanced Pittsburgh 12-11. It was that one PP in the 2nd that gave Pittsburgh more chances. Of course, if you score early on a PP, that limits the total number of chances you can generate.
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Oddly enough, from here on in, Montreal locks it down on Pittsburgh. They get 9 chances the remainder of the game (including the next 7, 3 on a late 2nd period PP), getting one more goal. Pittsburgh only gets 5 more. Each team scored on their first chance and their last chance.
5 on 5, Montreal actually outchanced Pittsburgh 12-11. It was that one PP in the 2nd that gave Pittsburgh more chances. Of course, if you score early on a PP, that limits the total number of chances you can generate.
This is an important point. We shouldn’t have Corsi on one side and PP+PK+ES Scoring chances on the other.
Another thing, and Mathman have been hammering that point for most of the year: getting, say, two or three goals on three-4 scoring chances is infrequent but not that rare and it seems, to my naked eye, that it has a huge impact on the game. A team who was carrying the play but couldn’t get it in will panic, a close game becomes a blowout, a team just turtles and stops challenging the opposing zone (MTL’s game 7 is a textbook example). We have data on this now, it’ll be interesting to parse it out.
So, going back to your article on Fleury, if the Pens get mediocre goaltending, they probably win this series? I think that is a fair assessment.
We can talk about Cammaleri having a great series, but it was also Fleury having a very subpar series, providing below replacement level performance. He had some good looks and got off good shots, but his shooting percentage is probably more reasonable if the average saves are made.
As well, going back to the post on Fleury, it seems, as a Pens fan, that he’s got some confidence issues. If he starts well, he can be unstoppable. If he starts poorly, he drops his head and can go to pieces. I don’t know if this is a narrative that I’ve made up in my mind to explain what’s happened, but there seems to be a mental aspect to his game that exists.
Similar to arguments in the NFL about boom vs bust rushers, for example, MAF’s distribution of his performances seem really dispersed and maybe leads to worse results than aggregated stats suggest.
Thoughts?
I doubt his performances are that dispersed. He only has 6 shutouts in the last 2 seasons, regular-season and playoffs combined, and given that his aggregate stats are not that bad that means a lot of 1-goal and 2-goal games; exactly what you want from a goaltender.
Nobody was talking about his confidence as the Penguins won the Cup last year, even though he was not particularly good.
Fleury had a bad game 7
Otherwise, his save percentage for the series was 90.8% – roughly equal to his career average, equal to his percentage from last season’s playoffs, better than this year’s regular season. They could have easily lost games 3 and 5 without him.
I've been looking at the sky
by Back In Black on May 14, 2010 1:22 AM EDT up reply actions
Netminding and luck
I hate the Habs — and more to the point their fans — more than any other fanbase in pro sports so it’s hard for me to be objective about any success they have but I have to give them credit for one thing: the org has always known how to scout and sign netminders.
Which brings me to my point: the Habs are winning because of netminding and luck and it’s as simple as that and it’s nice to get caught up in the run and go out and steal that TV that you can’t really afford to buy but while you’re loving this run there’s a bunch of us sitting back and waiting for it to stop and expecting that if you do get past Philly the ’10 Cup finals will resemble the ones from ’02 and ’07.
No one expects Habs fans to lobby the league to rescind the first two round’s wins but you look at the saves on Crosby and Malkin when the third period was in it’s infancy in G7 and if you keep expecting that to continue or if you think that’s yet another part of the habs birthright of success than I suspect you’re about to help out a Nigerian prince or two.
by DennisK on May 14, 2010 12:01 PM EDT reply actions 4 recs
Tom: I just used those years as a way to remind people of finals that weren’t really all that close and I suspect that’s what happens if Mtl makes the last round and luck turns on them even just the tiniest bit.
Gabe: I saw Mirtle link to this site on the globe’s page so I figure I’d zip on over. Vic deserves just about all the credit for creating the script that lets fans log the action and I imagine he’s with me in thinking how neat it is that it’s starting to become a little more mainstream.
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