Balanced Zone Shift Leaders and Cabooses, 2007-08 to 2010-11
by Bettman's Nightmare on Feb 9, 2011 8:00 AM EST
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Taking the Expected Zone Shifts from last week, I wanted to apply that to single-season player performances over the last four seasons to see whose Zone Shifts exceeded and fell below expectations. "Adjusted Zone Shift" has already been taken, so I'm going to identify the differential of Expected and Actual Zone Shift as Balanced Zone Shift, or BZS. By calculating the BZS over these seasons, I can look for trends in terms of player types as well as look to see if there's any correlation to overall team performance.
Some of the initial results might surprise you...and I can guarantee you some of them won't at all.
So, what were the best performances in BZS these last four years?
Player --------------------- Season ---------- BZS
Blair Betts ---------------- 2008-09 --------- 8.3
Nick Schultz -------------- 2008-09 --------- 7.4
Kurt Sauer ---------------- 2008-09 --------- 7.2
Scott Nichol -------------- 2010-11 --------- 7.2
Jay Harrison ------------- 2010-11 --------- 6.8
Matt Cooke --------------- 2007-08 --------- 6.3
Manny Malhotra --------- 2010-11 --------- 6.3
Jerred Smithson ------- 2007-08 ---------- 6.3
Lubomir Visnovsky ---- 2008-09 ---------- 6.3
Adam Foote ------------- 2010-11 ---------- 6.2
Adam Pardy ------------- 2009-10 ---------- 6.2
Robert Lang ------------- 2009-10 ---------- 6.2
Now that is a list of unheralded players. A good number are defensive-minded forwards and defensemen, but Lang and Visnovsky are the beginning of a number of offensive-minded and two-way players on the BZS list, including Milan Michalek (2008-09, 6.0), Pavel Datsyuk (2010-11, 5.6), and Alexander Semin (2008-09, 5.4). In fact, when I graphed out Zone Start % versus BZS, the player types/deployment were all over the place, so I'd hesitate to say that solely defensive players are favored by BZS. On the other hand, looking at the players bringing up the caboose in BZS reveals some pretty obvious player types:
Player --------------------- Season ----------- BZS
Aaron Downey ---------- 2007-08 ---------- -12.1
Derek Boogaard ------- 2008-09 ---------- -11.6
Kris Russell ------------- 2008-09 ---------- -10.6
Colton Orr ---------------- 2010-11 ---------- -10.5
Derek Armstrong ------- 2008-09 ----------- -8.5
Marc-Andre Bergeron - 2008-09 ----------- -8.1
Eric Godard -------------- 2008-09 ----------- -7.6
Bryan Berard ------------ 2007-08 ----------- -7.5
Jody Shelley ------------- 2010-11 ----------- -7.5
Raitis Ivanans ---------- 2009-10 ----------- -7.3
Hmmm, see a trend? Downey's 2007-08 was particularly remarkable in that the Red Wings gave him 82% of his starts in the offensive zone. 82%. He scored zero goals. Lest you be concerned, John Scott makes an appearance near the bottom (2010-11, -7.2) as does Zack Stortini (2010-11, -6.6). Interestingly enough, so does Brad Richards (2008-09, -7.0). In sum, I think BZS in this instance is quite accurately identifying players that most of us would agree are not particularly good defensively or in general. At least not at the hockey part of the game.
As most people do after compiling a bunch of data, I will be farting around with Zone Starts a bit more in the coming weeks.
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Have you taken a look to see how repeatable it is from year to year? I also think looking at a player’s results over multiple seasons might further bring to light who excels in this area.
I’ll put the data together on this later…just eyeballing it, I see Datsyuk, Crosby, Marian Hossa, Brandon Dubinsky, and Joe Pavelski popping up again and again near the top for forwards, and Douglas Murray, Nicklas Lidstrom, Stephane Robidas, and maybe surprisingly Kevin Klein among defensemen. A number of different player types are doing it, so that’s encouraging.
Does he call it Luongo underwear?
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by Bettman's Nightmare on Feb 9, 2011 11:35 AM EST up reply actions
I also wonder what implications this might have at the team level. I imagine teams taking more offensive zone starts than other teams will have better Corsi numbers and could be another way of looking at territorial dominance.
I was just glancing through some team stats through the years, and Detroit only had 1 player (with 30+ games played) in 07-08 who finished in the other team’s zone less than 50% of the time. In 08-09, they had 3 players and last season they had 5 players. The trend continued in a major way this season as of their 18 players who have played at least 30 games, 14 players have finished in the other team’s zone less than 50% of the time. Over time, they have progressively gotten worse at finishing in the other team’s zone.
Yeah, the 07-08 team was like 60% Fenwick with the score tied, might be the highest in NHL history (with 20+ teams), and 08-09 team wasn’t as clinical but added Hossa, 09-10 was banged up, and so is this year’s team.
When I’m lazy I sometimes assess teams by their Ozone start and finish, so I think it’s valid, although not completely accurate.
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by red army line on Feb 9, 2011 10:38 AM EST up reply actions
Actually, I’ll be talking about that a bit in a forthcoming post.
Does he call it Luongo underwear?
Co-Manager at Behind the Net
by Bettman's Nightmare on Feb 9, 2011 11:25 AM EST up reply actions
I’m entirely unsurprised to see Lubomir Visnovsky on this list.
That said, I didn’t expect to see Bergeron here.
A posse ad esse.
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by Jonathan Willis on Feb 11, 2011 10:21 PM EST reply actions
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