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Prior to the season Gabe Desjardins and I had a conversation over at MC79hockey.com where I predicted several players would combine for a 5v5 on-ice shooting percentage above 10.0% while league average is just shy of 8.0%.  I documented this in a post prior to the season.  In short, I predicted the following: Crosby, Gaborik, Ryan, [...]

A lot has been made about Joffrey Lupul’s “career year” this year and some Leaf fans are even suggesting that now is the time to trade him while his value is at an all-time high.  While it is true that he is on pace for career high in goals and points I would like to [...]

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 [...]

With the re-signing of John-Michael Liles the Leafs now have an abundance of defensemen signed under control for a number of years, many with big dollar contracts too.  We all have our varying opinions on the relative values of each of these defensemen but I thought it would be an appropriate time to take a [...]

Whenever I get into a statistical debate over which player might be better than another the inevitable argument that comes up is “yeah, but player A plays against tougher competition and gets tougher assignments” which is a valid argument to make.  But how valid?  The other day I looked at a simple, straight forward method [...]

One of the biggest omissions in my player rankings is making adjustments for zone start differences.  We know that Manny Malhotra has a significant bias towards starting his shifts in the defensive zone and that his teammates Daniel and Henrik Sedin have a significant bias towards starting their shifts in the offensive zone.  The result is Malhotra [...]

There is a post over at Backhand Shelf today that lists 10 backup goalies that have out performed their #1 counterparts.  It is an interesting read but it may be a perfect example of how simple statistics don’t tell the whole story. The first pair of goalies on the list are the Bruins Tukka Rask [...]