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Looking at this chart, I think only Lightning fans can sympathize with the torture that Leaf fans have suffered through with regards to their goaltending, but at least the Lightning have made the playoffs a few times and even had some success. Update:  For interest sake, here are the post lockout shooting percentages and PDO [...]

Steve Downie was traded from the Tampa Bay Lightning to the Colorado Avalanche today for Kyle Quincey (who was later shipped to Detroit).  I featured Downie in a post I wrote on the weekend about mixing toughness with skill and how having a big, physical winger can make a skilled center more productive, especially a [...]

There was a twitter conversation between Gabe Desjardins and David Staples last night in which Gabe suggested that Daniel Sedin’s heavy offensive zone start bias resulted in an additional 7-9 points that he would not have gotten if his zone starts were more evenly split between offensive and defensive zone.  When I saw this I [...]

The other day at Pension Plan Puppets there was a discussion about the merit so Steve Downie and whether the Leafs should go after him if Tampa made him available.   In it I brought up the fact that when Steven Stamkos or Martin St. Louis or Vincent Lecavalier play with Downie their offensive numbers [...]

A little less than 48 hours ago, I wrote at length about why I think Dean Lombardi NEEDS to go all-in for Rick Nash. Since then, it looks as if Lombardi lacks the balls to go big. There’s a lot yet to be resolved but when you’re being outbid by teams who have a lot

Game changers. There are not many of them in the NHL, and they’re rarely available at the trade deadline. When news of Rick Nash’s availability via trade broke earlier this week, the first thing that popped into my head was “We HAVE to do this. We NEED this guy”. Nash is one of the NHL’s

So word has come out over the last day that Rick Nash is, at least on some level, available in a trade from the Blue Jackets.  So, the question is, who is Rick Nash and would you want him on your team? Nash has been a Blue Jacket from the day he was drafted first [...]

It has been shown on numerous occasions that players can influence their own teams on-ice shooting percentage be that through their talents or their style of play.  An example is the PDO vs Luck article I posted the other day.  In that article there is a table that clearly shows that shooting percentage varies across players and [...]

One of my beefs in the analysis and evaluation of hockey players is the notion that PDO (on-ice shooting percentage plus on-ice save percentage) can be used as a proxy for luck.  A perfect example of how PDO is used as a proxy for luck is this article by Neil Greenberg about the Washington Capitals. [...]

Over the past week or so I have talked about a simple and straight forward method for taking into account variations in zone starts.  The method is to simply ignore the 10 seconds following an offensive or defensive face off.  By adjusting for zone starts in this manner we can see a fairly significant impact [...]