The big movers this week were the Kings and Jets. The Kings are an interesting case as they jumped up this week largely on the back of their performance against the Red Wings, who have topped these and other Corsi/Fenwick based power rankings since early in the season. This is somewhat odd since the Kings got beat 8-2. In that game, the Kings put up a Corsi of +8, 54.4% at even strength. We expect a team to win the territory battle when they are behind, but given how good the Red Wings have been those are still strong numbers. They also had two more shots on the power play than the Red Wings.
Winnipeg is more straightforward - they played a weak schedule: Minnesota, Washington and Anaheim all at home. While they got two wins out of that, their possession numbers were bad. At even strength with the score tied they put up a Corsi percentage of 47.1%, 48.7% for Fenwick. They were worse taking all even-strength time, which is to be expected given score effects. Still, their shooting stats were pretty weak when you consider how bad their opponents were as a group and that they were playing at home.
| Corsi Rank | team | Corsi% | Fenwick | Fen Rank |
| 1 | DET | 57.6 | 57.5 | 1 |
| 2 | VAN | 56.1 | 55 | 4 |
| 3 | PIT | 55.9 | 55.3 | 3 |
| 4 | STL | 55 | 55.5 | 2 |
| 5 | BOS | 53.8 | 53.4 | 7 |
| 6 | COL | 52.7 | 52.4 | 8 |
| 7 | S.J | 52.6 | 53.5 | 6 |
| 8 | CHI | 52.5 | 53.7 | 5 |
| 9 | L.A | 51.5 | 50.2 | 12 |
| 9 | PHI | 51.5 | 51.7 | 9 |
| 11 | PHX | 50.9 | 50.2 | 12 |
| 12 | N.J | 50.8 | 50.8 | 10 |
| 13 | WSH | 50.2 | 49.7 | 16 |
| 14 | CBJ | 50 | 50 | 15 |
| 15 | OTT | 49.7 | 49.1 | 18 |
| 16 | FLA | 49.6 | 49.5 | 17 |
| 16 | WPG | 49.6 | 50.4 | 11 |
| 18 | MTL | 49.4 | 50.2 | 12 |
| 19 | CGY | 48.9 | 48.2 | 21 |
| 19 | TOR | 48.9 | 48.5 | 20 |
| 21 | DAL | 48.2 | 49 | 19 |
| 22 | BUF | 47.4 | 45.8 | 27 |
| 23 | CAR | 47.1 | 46.8 | 25 |
| 24 | NYI | 46.9 | 47.7 | 22 |
| 25 | EDM | 46.5 | 47.3 | 23 |
| 26 | NYR | 46.2 | 47.2 | 24 |
| 27 | T.B | 46.1 | 46.7 | 26 |
| 28 | ANA | 45.8 | 45.1 | 29 |
| 29 | NSH | 45.5 | 45.5 | 28 |
| 30 | MIN | 43.2 | 43.8 | 30 |
I'm working on testing this with older data, and quite likely will be tweaking the formula to improve the way I deal with special teams.
How does your model take special teams into account? I'm just wondering because I don't quite understand why special teams would affect even-strength metrics. Is it because EV and PP shooting rates appear to have some correlation and you're looking for increased sample size?
ReplyDeleteThat's a great question and I'm going to be changing what I do with the PP.
ReplyDeleteRight now, the model simply includes it but adjusts for it. So roughly speaking your power-play performance would be judged relative to what other teams do, but it's included as an overall aspect of team performance. So if you are bad 5-on-5 but good 5-on-4 these rankings would put you in the middle. However recent work, see the article about the PP being its own beast, has convinced me that the PP/PK are different enough skillwise from ES play that it would be better to separate them out. So the rankings this weekend will be only for even strength and I'll add a different set ranking each team's PP and PK based on schedule strength and performance.