As per reader request, I have consolidated the best articles for Canada's Fancy Stats at the Olympics. Though there is nothing on the same scale as Extra Skaters regular NHL work (though they do have some Olympic stuff over there that you can check out but there are articles in French on LNH.com that breaks down all of Canada's games. They are in French, so I have created a translation guide to understand the charts.
| French | English |
| forces égales | even strength |
| entrées de zone | controlled zone entries |
| chances de marquer | scoring chances |
|
part du temps de glace en “minutes dures” |
quality of competition |
| part de ties vers le filet | Corsi |
| mises en jeu | zone starts |
These terms are the ones most commonly used. I recommend running the articles through Google Translate yourself but I will summarize the one from today's game with some commentary of my own, but I recommend that you read all of Bouchard's Olympic summaries.
First and foremost, Latvia out chanced Finland against Canada. That is really good for Latvia considering they were playing without Kaspars Daugavins, who was sick. Canada was still the dominant team, with Corey Perry really shining. Arturs Kulda and Oskars Bartulis were defensive monsters for Latvia. Kulda was a Thrasher who came back last year, only to be sent to St. John’s and then go to the KHL.
Canada was able to adjust to Latvia's defensive posture as time went on, but there are some problems emerging: Crosby struggled for the first time in this tournament when facing the aforementioned Kulda and Bartulis pairing. The fourth line struggled without John Tavares. There is a lot more in the article that I am not going to summarize because it is a really easy read.
Gold Medal Game
A brief translation on the Gold Medal Game for all to enjoy. Crosby-Bergeron-Kunitz started more shifts in the defensive zone as did the Weber-Keith pairing and they were dominant offensively. Up until the final game this was not the case as Crosby's line was given easy zone starts in the offensive zone. Sweden was a deserving opponent, but Canada was on another level the entire tournament.
The comment that emerged after this game was this fantastic comment from Mike Babcock curtesy of Bruce Arthur’s brilliant article from today “The first thing I guard against is you talk about great defence, sometimes we get confused. Great defence means you play fast and you have the puck all the time so you’re always on offence. We out-chanced these teams big time, we didn’t score. We were a great offensive team. That’s how we coached. That’s what we expected. We didn’t ask guys to back up.”
That is what a great defence is, a team that attacks in waves. All Canada did was attack all. They played a perfect game from the second period of the Norway game on.
Here are the summaries for the other five games:
*the defensive chart is messed up so here is the real one
@HappyCaraT Sorry I’m late. It’s just a stupid Excel bug. Here is the real chart. pic.twitter.com/2zs754nrFw
— Olivier Bouchard (@oli_bou) February 22, 2014
Canada has played really well this tournament, fighting bad shooting luck and teams playing the trap. If you are on Twitter follow @oli_bou for more Olympic stats (he did charts for at least one Russian game) and to ask him all your questions. If you are not on Twitter but have questions, leave them in the comments and I will ask them for you.
Also @bhawksfanjen over at Second City Hockey tracked the Corsi for the American game and Canada finished with 58.5% of the Corsis!
USA v CAN (men) Semifinal Game Corsi #Sochi2014 #USAvsCanada pic.twitter.com/3qCkcNpepK
— Jen LC (@bhawksfanjen) February 21, 2014
This will be updated one more time after the final, but Canada has been dominant.
Final Tournament Stats
Curtesy of Sapp MacIntosh. Canada's *worse* game was at 57.8% CorsiClose. That is insanity.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p>1. <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23canada&src=hash">#canada</a> all situations corsi close vs: 2. <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23sweden&src=hash">#sweden</a> 57.8% (37-27) 3. <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23finland&src=hash">#finland</a> 72.5% (72-28) 4. <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23USA&src=hash">#USA</a> 62.4% (53-32) total: 65.1% (162-87)</p>— Sapp Macintosh (@MacSapintosh) <a href="https://twitter.com/MacSapintosh/statuses/437609706664632320">February 23, 2014</a></blockquote>
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