Could Luongo Stay?

Outside of Niklas Lidstrom’s playing status next year, no story will dominate the hockey world quite like the fast-growing goalie controversy in Vancouver. The Canucks certainly have an awkward situation on their hands – on one hand they have an elite goalie who has fallen out of favor with the majority of the fanbase, (unfairly) becoming the scapegoat for a team that has come up short on their expectations. On the other hand, they have a younger, cheaper goalie that has shown great promise, winning over the Vancouver fanbase in the process. I make two assumptions here, one is Vancouver will not keep both, the other is that other teams will make offers for Schneider. I do believe Luongo will be the odd man out, but I certainly do not believe that as strongly as others, and I will explain this below.

Ostensibly, Vancouver will begin the process by comparing the value of Luongo’s contract to a range of contracts that they theoretically see themselves giving to Schneider. But there is more – and at this point is where I believe many stop the analysis. The very factors that make Schneider more valuable than Luongo to the Vancouver Canucks also make him more valuable to every other team.

As outsiders, there is no way we can accurately speculate on just how much more valuable they see Schneider. It’s easier (but still more difficult, and still beyond the scope of this article) to identify each player’s relative trade value. What we can do, though, is talk about how the trade value of one impacts the necessary value of the other, and from there, how that relationship impacts Vancouver’s ultimate decision.

We begin with obvious – there is a whole lot of uncertainty in the market for Roberto Luongo. On production alone he is a hot commodity, but his contract precludes many teams (and possibly teams that have been speculated as trade partners) from acquiring him. There are other teams that both need goaltending and can handle the financial burden (Chicago and Edmonton), but it is not clear that Vancouver is willing to trade an elite player to one of their biggest rivals. I believe the decisions of these smaller market teams (Columbus, Florida, Tampa Bay) on whether or not they are willing to take on the burden to be one of the biggest factors in Vancouver’s ultimate decision, because if the market for Luongo becomes liquid, then we can almost guarantee that he’s gone. But if Vancouver finds the offers to be lacking, then the possibility of an offer for Schneider that closes the gap between the value I mentioned earlier becomes more and more likely.

In other words, there is an inflection point in this scenario – some point where Schneider’s advantage over Luongo is mitigated by the value Vancouver could acquire by trading Schneider. What that exact point is can only be known by Vancouver, but assuming that Luongo has played his last game as a Canuck neglects a very important part of this calculus.

Driving Play Podcast Take Deux

Hello, today. With the deadline fast approaching, the Driving Play podcast marches on. This time, we're privileged to be joined by none other than Derek Zona of The Copper & Blue to discuss the sellers of the Western Conference.

Though Jeff Carter was actually traded today, do your best to let it sink in that Scott Howson only got Jack Johnson and a first round pick in return.



Anyway, enjoy.



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Is the Power Play Its Own Beast?

To what extent are even-strength and power-play performance linked? If your team is an offensive juggernaut five-on-five, should you expect them to dominate with a man advantage?

One might say that hockey skills are hockey skills and whatever helps you score at even strength should carry over. Thinking more about it, though, there are lot of aspects of the game that are in one but not the other. If your team excels at the breakout, On the Forecheck or has a mean neutral-zone trap then that won't help you too much when the other team simply clears the puck and waits for you at the blue line.

In the analytical community, the most-cited metric for power-play quality is shooting rate. See the recent article that got me thinking about this by Derek Zona or the definitive article on the subject by Gabe Desjardins. Since I am using 5-on-4 shots for per 60, the most obvious stat for comparison is 5-on-5 shots for per 60. So the question at hand is how correlated are 5-on-5 and 5-on-4 shooting rates.

Using data from BTN, over the last four full seasons the correlation between shooting rates 5-on-5 and 5-on-4 is 0.4. Normally I would put out an R^2 interpretation, but for this relationship it isn't one driving the other but some hockey skills and tactics driving both. Here is a graph showing the relationship:

With a correlation of 0.4 one could say there is a relationship between the two, but it isn't particularly strong. Luck is obviously one factor. We tend to focus on shooting rates because that reduces the luck factor, but it is still present. That is particularly true for the power play due to reduced sample sizes.

Here is a chart showing the average difference between 5-on-4 shooting rate and the one predicted by the above regression formula for each team. You can think of this as how good they have been 5-on-4 compared to offensively 5-on-5.

Team	Difference
S.J	8.19
ANA	7.94
DET	6.21
MTL	3.93
WSH	3.57
VAN	3.41
N.J	3.31
MIN	2.04
T.B	1.89
DAL	1.64
L.A	1.57
CBJ	-0.17
FLA	-0.22
BOS	-0.76
COL	-1.03
PIT	-1.09
BUF	-1.67
CGY	-1.75
NYR	-1.75
TOR	-1.9
PHI	-1.99
OTT	-2.44
STL	-2.45
NSH	-2.69
ATL	-2.76
NYI	-2.89
PHX	-3.62
CHI	-3.67
CAR	-4.25
EDM	-6.59

As you can see, the Sharks, Ducks and Red Wings are outliers at the positive end. Their power plays have performed better than you would expect based on their 5-on-5 shooting rates. The Sharks under McLellan have been very strong with the man advantage. The huge outlier in the graph above is the ungodly 72.6 5-on-4 shots/60 they put up last year. They currently lead the league this year at 68.8. Getting slightly off-topic, I think a safe prediction is for the Sharks to improve their power-play results since they top the league in 5-on-4 SF/60 but are only 10th in PP%.

On the bad end, the Edmonton Oilers stand alone. This is saying something, since the Oilers haven't exactly been machine gunning pucks at the net 5-on-5. Going by 5-on-4 shots for per 60 they have finished the last four years 30th, 30th, 30th and, you guessed it, 30th. This year Ryan Nugent-Hopkins can barely miss on the power play and perhaps he's helped their shooting rate out as well since they are currently all the way up to 24th in the league.

Given how consistently the Sharks, Ducks and Red Wings have outperformed expectations with the man advantage and how terrible the Oilers' power play has been, I think it's pretty clear that there is some skill component of the power play that is distinct from 5-on-5.