A Voracek and Nash Follow Up

Once again I find myself writing an article on the Flyers. I'm not, as Jackets Cannon somewhat offensively suggests, a Philly Blogger. In fact, the Flyers sit just above the Iceland Junior Goodwill team in the as-yet-unpublished hockey teams JaredL likes rankings. When I started looking into Voracek's stats for Chase's series on the Flyers offseason self destruction moves (part 1, part 2), I was quite surprised, especially at how his numbers compared to the much more famous Rick Nash. After I posted my initial article, the not only literate but astute readers at broadstreet (I kid, I kid) raised some valid points: I didn't consider teammate and zone-start effects. I will address those here.

Teammates

With teammates, we have the same pattern over and over. Every forward that played at least 60 minutes with each of Voracek and Nash, excluding time spent with both of them together, did better with Voracek than Nash. Typically Nash faced much tougher competition, but it seems that the gap is large enough that we can say that Voracek did better. For defensemen, the pattern is pretty much the same, with Tyutin as the exception.

Here are two charts with the results. The first column gives the teammate in question, the second whether the row corresponds to Voracek or Nash being on the ice, the third is the overall Corsi and the fourth how many minutes the player and Voracek/Nash were on the ice together. You should focus on the fifth, giving the Corsi rate. The last column is provided to give some extra context. It gives the average Corsi quality of competition, according to BTN.

Forwards:

Player	With	Corsi	Time	Rate	Corsi QoC
Vermette	Voracek	63	309.1	12.23	0.346
Vermette	Nash	-23	976.2	-1.414	1.607
Brassard	Voracek	24	827.1	1.741	0.711
Brassard	Nash	-15	218.5	-4.118	0.85
Huselius	Voracek	15	133.1	6.762	0.053
Huselius	Nash	40	869.1	2.761	1.126
Umberger	Voracek	-3	620	-0.29	0.649
Umberger	Nash	-14	427.2	-1.966	1.414
Pahlsson	Voracek	-20	101.2	-11.854	2.733
Pahlsson	Nash	-20	78.8	-15.232	1.726
None of Above	Voracek	8	71.3	6.732	1.09
None of Above	Nash	-14	39	-21.538	0.515

Defensemen:

Player	With	Corsi	Time	Rate	Corsi QoC
Stralman	Voracek	30	426.8	4.217	1.432
Stralman	Nash	19	458.4	2.487	1.718
Tyutin	Voracek	12	461.6	1.56	1.191
Tyutin	Nash	36	578.9	3.731	1.706
Hejda	Voracek	-14	347.4	-2.418	0.987
Hejda	Nash	-88	501.3	-10.532	1.267
Russell	Voracek	61	440.1	8.317	-0.417
Russell	Nash	-6	334.1	-1.078	0.511
Methot	Voracek	-10	346.8	-1.73	0.895
Methot	Nash	-36	368.5	-5.862	0.767
Commodore	Voracek	-17	248.1	-4.111	2.23
Commodore	Nash	-43	278	-9.281	2.752
Roy	Voracek	12	123.1	5.851	-0.873
Roy	Nash	9	120.3	4.489	0.744

Zones

For zone-start analysis, the obvious first place to look is at balanced Corsi by the Philly bloggers over at broadstreet. Here are their balanced corsis from each of the last two seasons, the total and average, weighted by 5-on-5 TOI:

Year	Voracek	Nash
2009-2010	-5.12	-2.09
2010-2011	0.75	-1.66
Total	-4.37	-3.75
Weighted Avg.	-2.109	-1.882

This might lead one to conclude that zone starts completely make up this difference. There is, however, a problem. While I really like balanced Corsi as a metric, a drawback is that players with different starts are compared to different players. They had very similar zone starts in 2010-2011, which makes sense because they were often linemates. In 2009-2010, Voracek had an Ozone% of 54.5% compared to 49.8% for Nash. It's always very difficult to say because getting more offensive-zone starts leads to better numbers, but I suspect Voracek's group of comparable players to be better than Nash's.

I'll take a different approach from the Broadstreet guys and Bettman's Nightmare and Gabe from arcticicehockey. Instead of doing something more complicated, I'll just look at how each did when the most recent faceoff was in the offensive zone, neutral zone and defensive zone. I'll be introducing a fancy new metric based on this idea in the next few days, so consider this a sneak peek. This metric isn't perfect, but I think it's a solid indicator of how good a guy is in each zone.

Almost every player in the league has a negative Corsi when they are on the ice during or following a defensive-zone faceoff. Cutting your losses is the name of the game. Here is a chart with the Jackets' Corsi stats with both Voracek and Nash on the ice, one of them and neither when the most recent faceoff was in their defensive zone.

Defensive Zone	Corsi	Time	Rate	Corsi QoC
Both	-23	221.8	-6.223	0.955
Voracek	-58	427	-8.151	1.073
Nash	-136	464.8	-17.555	1.65
Neither	-466	1267.8	-22.055	0.739

You can see that Voracek appears to be substantially better than Nash in his own end. Given that the difference is so large, it seems likely that Columbus could have improved by giving Voracek more defensive-zone starts.

Here's how they did following neutral-zone starts:

Neutral Zone	Corsi	Time	Rate	Corsi QoC
Both	14	274.5	3.061	0.119
Voracek	-16	564.4	-1.701	0.87
Nash	-53	580.3	-5.48	1.549
Neither	-76	1650.1	-2.763	0.488

This comes very close to matching the overall numbers. We have Voracek nearly 4 Corsi shots better per 60 minutes, but not facing as tough competition.

Here is the attacking end:

Offensive Zone	Corsi	Time	Rate	Corsi QoC
Both	68	217	18.8	0.608
Voracek	139	429.7	19.41	0.347
Nash	128	462.1	16.62	0.717
Neither	289	1266.5	13.691	0.267

The gap here is much smaller. Actually, given the other numbers I suspect that if we looked only at offensive-zone play then Nash's numbers would be better despite facing tougher competition. Remember that the above includes time well after a faceoff. If he's better than Nash in the other two zones then Voracek will put up better Corsi figures when they jump on the ice after an offensive-zone faceoff but with the puck elsewhere.

To that end, here is a table giving their Corsi stats within a minute of an offensive-zone faceoff:

Recent Offensive Zone	Corsi	Time	Rate	Corsi QoC
Both	71	156.1	27.293	0.158
Voracek	88	263.6	20.032	0.308
Nash	110	312.9	21.094	0.73
Neither	369	754.4	29.348	0.16

I didn't include the same for the defensive zone because it is very similar to the overall. To be honest, that Columbus did best when neither were on the ice according to this measure makes me uneasy. I think a lot of that may be due to faceoffs; cutting it to within a minute of the faceoff means it's tough to get something positive to count if you lose the faceoff or even win it but not cleanly. As I said, this is all a work in progress.

Conclusion

If I've done my job at all with the writing, a picture has emerged. Voracek appears to be more than capable of carrying the load, particularly in the defensive and neutral zones. His offensive numbers are not as strong. For further evidence of that, his points percentage is not very good. This indicates that he's mainly relying on teammates to convert possession in the offensive zone into goals. The Flyers would do well to put him with a scorer like Giroux or Briere.

In the next few days I'll post a full list of performance after each type of faceoff for every player in the league last year.

Part I.V: The Aftermath... Jakub Voracek and Rick Nash WOWY Analysis

Chase asked me to do some number crunching on Voracek. To be honest, I found the results surprising. The numbers indicate that Voracek is highly underrated and was a great pickup. It appears that he, not Rick Nash, was Driving Play at even strength in Columbus.

Here is how Columbus did at even strength with both goalies in net with both Nash and Voracek on the ice, one of them on and neither of them:

2010-2011 ES	Corsi	Time (mins)	Corsi/60	OppCorsi
Both	67	690.2	5.824	0.499
Nash only	-6	405.1	-0.889	-0.136
Voracek only	71	414.3	10.283	0.399
Neither	-11	2453.9	-0.269	0.214

It surprised me that in the 20 periods worth of ice time he was without Voracek, the guy with the sixth most shots taken in the league (including PP) was negative, albeit slightly. It's too small of a sample to take the exact numbers seriously, but it's interesting to note that when Voracek was off the ice not only was Nash a negative-Corsi player but Columbus actually did better without him than with him. Voracek, on the other hand, did quite well without Nash. He did so against tougher competition.

This pattern also held if you look only at situations where the score was tied:

2010-2011 tied	Corsi	Time	Corsi/60	OppCorsi
Both	55	256.9	12.844	0.192
Nash	-13	155.3	-5.023	0.002
Voracek	15	140.5	6.408	0.66
Neither	-52	946.9	-3.295	0.021

Let's expand the sample by throwing in 2009-2010, when they spent more time apart. Here's all 5-on-5 minutes:

2009-2011	Corsi	Time (mins)	Corsi/60	OppCorsi
Both	59	713.2	4.963	0.528
Nash only	-61	1507.2	-2.428	1.325
Voracek only	65	1421.1	2.744	0.773
Neither	-253	4184.4	-3.628	0.497

and when the score was tied:

2009-2011 Tied	Corsi	Time (mins)	Corsi/60	OppCorsi
Both	55	262.8	12.559	0.265
Nash	-20	584	-2.055	1.439
Voracek	34	508.9	4.009	0.646
Neither	-164	1585.8	-6.205	0.468

Nash had tougher competition in his time without Voracek than vice versa, but Voracek's numbers are far better. I'll write a lot more on quality of competition later and come up with something more precise, but according to my rough calculations it looks like Voracek was somewhere between 4 and 4.5 Corsi shots better per 60 when you take the tougher opposition into account. Maybe a little higher if you only look at tied-score minutes.

Before the flood of angry emails from Jackets' fans comes in, I'd like to point out that this is all for 5-on-5 play. It appears that Nash was carrying the water on the Power Play, maybe the fans yelling "SHOOT" for the entire damn power play are smarter than we think, and he also played about 19% of Columbus' PK time. In both cases, the Jackets had better Corsi numbers when he was on the ice than off.

Expect Voracek to play a big role for the Flyers at 5-on-5 this season.

Part I: The Aftermath of the Mike Richards and Jeff Carter Deals

On June 23rd, 2011, Flyers General Manager Paul Holmgren sent shockwaves through the hockey world when he dealt arguably the two most notable faces of the franchise – Mike Richards and Jeff Carter – to Los Angeles and Columbus respectively. Since then, much has been (and will continue to be) written about possible motives behind what he and team owner Ed Snider were pondering to make such bold moves. So far, speculation has included both off-ice issues as well as the need to create salary cap space for newly signed goaltender Ilya Bryzgalov. Starting with the former, Richards’ tumultuous relationship with members of the Philadelphia media is no secret. For the last few seasons, there have been accusations that he (and Carter) enjoyed a lifestyle where partying was the main focus, leaving hockey on the back burner. Richards’ leadership inside the locker room hasn’t been looked upon any more favorably. It has been rumored that a longstanding rift between the team’s young stars and seasoned veterans – most notably Chris Pronger – could also have played a factor in the stars’ departure from the team. Whether or not these accusations have merit, it is certain that the moves will accomplish one of the team’s likely intended goals: a culture change inside the dressing room.


In the aftershock of what happened almost four weeks ago, another highly-debated question has naturally emerged: are the Flyers still one of the premier Stanley Cup contenders in the Eastern Conference? In order to answer such a question, I am going to break my study into three parts. Part one will look into the deals for Richards and Carter themselves, evaluating what it was that the Flyers added to their lineup. Part two will evaluate Philadelphia’s signings on July 1 and speak to where Jaromir Jagr, Maxime Talbot, and Andreas Lilja fit into the equation. Finally, part three will decipher what the Flyers lost when they made the decision to deal their captain and his swift sidekick.


Of course, trying to answer our question is a bit of a double-edged sword – only time will tell if Holmgren’s return of Wayne Simmonds, Brayden Schenn, a 2012 second round pick, Jakub Voracek, the 8th overall selection in this year’s draft (Sean Couturier), and a third round selection in this year’s draft (Nick Cousins) were an adequate return for both superstars. Fortunately, we can still attempt to decipher what the numbers tell us about these players (and even draft picks). In order to do this, I like to start by looking at players’ average ice time per game. This tells us 1) what situations the players are being used in, and 2) how often they are being used. Per nhl.com, here are the numbers for Simmonds and Voracek, the two players coming to Philadelphia who saw significant ice time at the NHL level last season:

From these numbers, we can conclude that Simmonds played a bottom-six checking role in Los Angeles, the same role that he will most likely see in Philadelphia. Voracek, on the other hand, was one of the Jackets’ top forwards, ranking in the top 5 on his team at even strength and on the PP. This is good news for the Flyers – they will need him to replace any and all minutes in both situations without Richards and Carter in the fold.
With our ice-time analysis complete, we can now attempt to give this raw data its proper context.

 

What do these numbers tell us? Starting with Simmonds, he was asked to play a moderately defensive role against the toughest competition of any forward on the team (min. 20 games played). However, his zone start percentage should probably see an expected Corsi score of zero or slightly worse (see chart), and instead Simmonds sits at -4.02 . DobberHockey tells us that he most often played with Michal Handzus and Alex Ponikarovsky (21.25%), and Handzus and Kyle Clifford (15.33%). Of these forwards, Handzus and Ponikarovsky both have Corsi scores around what we would expect for someone given their roles, but no player seems to be “carrying the water” as we like to say. Unfortunately for the Flyers, Simmonds is no exception and his low scores in just about every category show that he cannot send the play in the right direction on his own against the opponent’s best players.


Voracek, on the other hand, is an interesting case in and of himself. Once again using the expected Corsi graph linked, Voracek actually slightly over-performs what we might expect from somebody given his zone start percentage. However, his impressive Corsi scores and Fenwick percentage are perhaps correlated with a few points of interest. First, his aforementioned high zone start percentage gave him an immediate advantage in generating shots towards the opponent’s net as he quite often started his shifts in prime scoring position. Second, his competition was anything but impressive, actually averaging a negative relative Corsi score. Finally, DobberHockey shows us that among his three most common line combinations, Rick Nash was on the ice a healthy 57.81% of the time. I hardly think explaining why playing with Nash would be beneficial to Voracek, but it is worth noting that Nash was among the league’s leaders in shots last season – his total of 305 ranked 6th in the entire NHL. Though Nash’s Corsi score of 4.49 may be lower than expected considering his own 57.1% zone start, taking into consideration how often he shoots it is easy to see how Voracek’s own score was undoubtedly affected for the better. It will be most interesting to see if Voracek can repeat such gaudy scores without a line-mate sporting the credentials of Mr. Nash.


We have already noted Voracek’s 2:57 of average PP time per game in ’10-11 which will be immensely valuable to Philadelphia in the absence of Richards and Carter. Though he ranked amongst the team’s leaders in said category, however, he only registered 8 total points for his efforts on the man advantage. Perhaps it is unsurprising that Columbus’ Power Play ranked 8th in the league in shots for/60 minutes with Nash in the fold (remember: shots are a better indicator than goals), but for a team that saw success in generating pressure on the opponent, Voracek’s totals still seem low. However, some of this effect can be explained when we realize that Columbus’ opponents saved 91.1% of all shots while on the PK according to Behind The Net. Thanks to mc79hockey, we know that the historic average is around 86.6%, a full 4.5% disparity. Had Columbus’ opponents not been so lucky, both the team and Voracek most likely would have sported slightly higher power play production.


Moving on to the relative unknowns of what the Flyers got back in the deal, on the surface Brayden Schenn and three draft picks may seem like an appetizing return. However, Derek Zona’s study on draft picks and their value tells us something slightly different. Putting Schenn aside for a moment, what can we realistically expect from the first, second, and third round picks that the Flyers gained? Zona’s study is particularly excellent because it shows the historical chance of drafting a “top” player with a certain selection. He notes to “...consider the 'Top Players' to be top five forwards and top three defenseman [on their team].” Knowing what we know about Richards and Carter, I don’t think anybody would argue that the Flyers subtracted two established “top 5” forwards from their lineup. However, the article also notes that the odds of drafting such a player with the number 8-13 selections (they selected Couturier 8th overall) is a mere 41.2%. Looking at the other two picks, the 68th overall selection this season which turned into Nick Cousins has a 7.4% chance of turning into a Richards or Carter-esque player. Considering the Kings figure to be among the top western conference contenders next season in the wake of their offseason, I would most likely expect the 2012 second round pick to fall within this same range. The fact that the Flyers didn’t receive higher than a 50% chance to replenish their lineup with two established stars puts a bit of a hindrance on their returns.


Adding this to the fact that both Richards and Carter were on long-term, cap-friendly deals, and I’m not sure that there is a net positive to be found here. Perhaps Sean Couturier or one of the other selections will make a difference, saving the Flyers money in the short-term should they produce while on an entry level contract. So far, all indications are that Brayden Schenn will be given every possible opportunity to make the final roster, but much like Couturier, there are still question marks surrounding his development. Unfortunately, prospects are called prospects for a reason – there is no guarantee that they will meet development expectations. Considering what the Flyers gave up in these deals, while the return could most certainly prove lucrative, the odds simply do not stack up in their favor.