On the Blue Jackets' Struggling Power Play

Yesterday I made a short post on the Blue Jackets' low PDO, making the point that we should expect the Jackets to have a much better second half as their shooting and save percentages climb back towards the mean. In the comments, Rob Vollman brought to my attention this Hockey Prospectus article by Timo Seppa, which brings into question Columbus' Power Play production dropoff after the transition from Ken Hitchcock to Scott Arniel. Timo asserts that

Arniel's track record wasn't favorable, particularly when compared to that of former coach Ken Hitchcock. In many aspects, the Blue Jackets had taken steps backwards since his departure, and they'd done no better than tread water elsewhere.

One example is on the power play. Never a particular strength of the Jackets—you need star players to have a truly upper echelon man advantage—the production of several key contributors had taken a highly visible nosedive in a year-and-a-half under Arniel's watch:

In other words, the dropoff in scoring under Arniel signifies a dropoff in overall power play production since Hitchcock left. This is a fine assertion to make judging by what these numbers tell us on the surface, however, I actually believe the Blue Jackets were a better PP team under Howson than Hitchcock. Let's take a look at why with some numbers via Behind the Net and NHL.com:

Season	5v4 SF/60 (NHL Rank)	5v4 SH%
2007-2008	44.8 (24)	11.4
2008-2009	47.2 (25)	9.4
2009-2010	51.8 (12)	12.9
2010-2011	53.7 (8)	8.9
2011-2012	53.5 (6)	9.1

Timo only looks at '08-09 onward, but I decided to include '07-08 under Hitchcock since I don't have the ability to break down the '09-10 season with splits before & after Hitchcock was let go. Regardless, it is clear from these numbers that Columbus actually increased their shot rate on the PP under Arniel to levels that the Hitchcock-coached team were never able to reach.

How, then, could have Columbus actually posted better scoring results under Hitchcock? The answer is simple: shooting percentage. As Jared has pointed out, there is a tremendous amount of luck involved in shooting percentages, especially in small sample sizes. When you're looking at results on the power play, it is important to keep in mind that PP shots are going to represent about 1/4 (or less) of a team's total shots throughout the regular season, enough where luck is still going to be a major factor in scoring goals. The fact of the matter is this: the shots were going in under Hitchcock, and they weren't under Arniel. Regardless of whether Rick Nash was playing in front of the net or on the half-wall, the team was still unlucky to shoot at such low rates under Arniel, which resulted in lower point production for the team.

Though there were definite shortcomings in Arniel's system, e.g. going into an absolute shell when up by 1 or 2 goals, this is more evidence that he was yet again on the wrong side of luck.

On the Firing of Scott Arniel

Yesterday the Columbus Blue Jackets announced that they had relieved head coach Scott Arniel of his duties. This shouldn't come as a surprise to many, the Jackets are in the midst of a disappointing 11-25-5 start, good for a league worst 27 points in the standings. After an exciting offseason, the Jackets were poised to make a run at the playoffs as predicted by a slew of excellent bloggers. Before the 'I told you so' comments start pouring in, however, let's take a look at a few of Columbus' underlying statistics (via BTN here and here):

ES SH%	ES SV%	PDO	Score-Tied Fenwick %
7.3	0.905	978	50.7

For the past few weeks, Gabe Desjardins has been writing about the importance of PDO and its tendency to regress towards the mean as the season progresses. Columbus is currently rivaling the worst PDO we've seen over the past four seasons, yet their possession statistics indicate that GM Scott Howson has indeed built a strong group of skaters. In net, even though Steve Mason may not be very good, he is also well below his career ES SV% numbers. This is good news for interim coach Todd Richards should (when) the Jackets see a revival of sorts during the second half of the season. We've already seen Ken Hitchcock receive media praise for a turnaround in St. Louis that was bound to happen anyway, and don't be surprised if we see the same for Todd Richards in Columbus.