The Driving Play Podcast - Take 1

Hear ye, hear ye:

Today marks the launch of a new feature here at Driving Play. In an effort to try and examine what teams may be thinking as the the NHL trade deadline approaches, we've decided to record a six-part podcast series examining the league's buyers, sellers, and every team in between. Today, Matt and I take a look at the teams currently at the bottom of the Eastern Conference standings.

Enjoy.




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Driving Play Season Preview: 10-7, The Near-Elite

Sorry about the delay, everybody. I didn't realize that I had a previous engagement with a baseball game in South Philadelphia yesterday. Without further adieu, here are teams 10 through 7 on our countdown as promised.

10. Montreal Canadiens

Last Season’s Results:

5-on-5 Fenwick/Corsi %: 52.7/51.7
5-on-5 SF/60 (NHL Rank): 31.6 (7)
5-on-5 SA/60 (NHL Rank): 30.0 (16)
PP SF/60 (NHL Rank): 53.6 (9)
SH SA/60 (NHL Rank): 48.5 (10)

The Montreal Canadiens’ results from last season are interesting to say the least. Despite sporting very good possession numbers, the Habs were ranked 22nd in the league in scoring, shooting only 7.0% at even strength. On the defensive side of the puck, Montreal was a middle-of-the-pack team in allowing shots but solid play from Carey Price helped propel them to the 6th seed in the Eastern Conference. Montreal would meet division rival Boston in the first round, and like this commercial, the series wouldn’t disappoint. Boston would squeak out a 4-3 OT win in game 7 and advance to the second round.

Offseason Changes:

Montreal wasn’t very active this offseason, but they were able to shake up their personnel without handcuffing themselves against the salary cap. They let James Wisniewski, Roman Hamrlik, and Jeff Halpern walk to free agency and awarded Erik Cole a new 4 year, $18 million contract. They also re-signed Andrei Markov to a 3-year deal, hoping that he can stay healthy and give that defensive unit a much-needed spark.

Season Outlook:

Montreal is another team that looks very similar to the one we last saw in April. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing – they were very good at controlling the play against their opponents last season. If Andrei Markov can give them any semblance of a healthy season and P.K. Subban continues to improve, Montreal has a chance to challenge the top half of the standings in the Eastern Conference.

9. Tampa Bay Lightning

Last Season’s Results:

5-on-5 Fenwick/Corsi %: 52.2/50.7
5-on-5 SF/60 (NHL Rank): 31.5 (8)
5-on-5 SA/60 (NHL Rank): 27.3 (3)
PP SF/60 (NHL Rank): 50.0 (13)
SH SA/60 (NHL Rank): 46.0 (4)

Tampa Bay was perhaps the surprise team of the Eastern Conference last season. GM Steve Yzerman had a busy offseason re-tooling the lightning in 2010, and his first season in the front office saw his team improve from 12th to 5th in the standings. Tampa had above-average to elite totals in just about every category except one – goaltending. Yzerman would of course infuse the team with a much-needed upgrade mid-season, acquiring the ageless Dwayne Roloson from the Islanders. The Bolts would prevail against both Pittsburgh and Washington before losing the 7th game of the Eastern Conference Finals to the Boston Bruins.

Offseason Changes:

Tampa is another team that remains largely unchanged from a season ago which certainly is not a bad thing. The Bolts signed forward Ryan Shannon to a 1-year, no risk contract and also added Matt Gilroy and Tom Pyatt. They managed to re-sign core contributors Steven Stamkos and Teddy Purcell to multi-year contracts while Dwayne Roloson agreed to come back for at least one more shot at winning the Stanley Cup.

Season Outlook:

Considering that this team finished 12th in the standings just two seasons ago, it is quite remarkable how tremendous of a job Steve Yzerman has done re-tooling the franchise. It will be interesting to see how Dwayne Roloson performs during a full-season of play for the Lightning, though whatever he can give them figures to be an improvement over the Mike Smith/Dan Ellis tandem of last season. Tampa seems to have all the pieces in place to challenge for a division title, though unseating the Washington Capitals atop the Southeast will be a tall task.

8. New Jersey Devils

Last Season’s Results:

5-on-5 Fenwick/Corsi %: 53.3/53.8
5-on-5 SF/60 (NHL Rank): 28.0 (24)
5-on-5 SA/60 (NHL Rank): 25.8 (1)
PP SF/60 (NHL Rank): 49.6 (14)
SH SA/60 (NHL Rank): 43.0 (2)

Another of the teams with the most peculiar results from last season is the New Jersey Devils. They were an elite possession team, and boasted the least shots allowed per 60 minutes average in the NHL. Though they near the bottom in generating shots, they still managed to average a positive shot differential without Zach Parise for a majority of the season. At the end of the day, poor goaltending from Martin Brodeur and a 6.7% shooting percentage at even strength hurt their bottom line on the scoreboard. After a late-season surge, the Devils would finish 11th in the East and miss out on the playoffs.

Offseason Changes:

I’ll fix this broken record that keeps reporting little to no offseason movement sooner or later. This offseason was more about retention in New Jersey, as they re-signed Zach Parise to a 1-year, $6 million contract and brought back Andy Greene for the price of $12 million over 4 years. Thanks to their poor finish last season, the Devils were able to select Adam Larsson 4th overall giving the team a very good defensive prospect.

Season Outlook:

I think I speak for all of my co-authors when I say that we will be very surprised if the Devils repeat their performance from a season ago. Adding a healthy Zach Parise to a cast that performed amongst the NHL’s elite in controlling the play last season means that the offense will receive a luxurious boost up front. The biggest question New Jersey figures to face is goaltending. If Martin Brodeur shows us more of the same from last season, don’t be surprised if Johan Hedberg is eventually given the reigns. Barring another set of unforeseen setbacks, the Devils will definitely be in the mix in the Atlantic Division.

7. Los Angeles Kings

Last Season’s Results:

5-on-5 Fenwick/Corsi %: 50.8/52.0
5-on-5 SF/60 (NHL Rank): 27.9 (26)
5-on-5 SA/60 (NHL Rank): 27.9 (6)
PP SF/60 (NHL Rank): 50.4 (12)
SH SA/60 (NHL Rank): 48.1 (9)

The Los Angeles Kings made the playoffs as the 7th seed in the Western Conference last season, sporting a below-average offense, very good defense and slightly above-average goaltending. The Kings would draw a first round match-up with the San Jose Sharks, but would fall short to the Pacific Division Champions in six games. In the end, the Kings just could not overcome losing superstar center Anze Kopitar(rrrrrrrggggghhhhhh) to a broken ankle near the end of the season.

Offseason Changes:

Finally, some moves to report on! The Kings acquired center Mike Richards from Philadelphia for Brayden Schenn, Wayne Simmonds and a second-round draft pick. They also signed Richards’ former partner in crime Simon Gagne to a 2-year contract, adding both offensive and defensive depth up front. Franchise cornerstone Drew Doughty recently agreed to an 8-year, $56 million contract, keeping intact what was a very good defensive unit a season ago.

Season Outlook:

Though a few of my fellow bloggers disagree, I think L.A. is ready to take the next step. They should certainly contend for a Pacific Division title this season, as Mike Richards and Simon Gagne figure to give them added tough-minutes help up front. Jonathan Quick might be the only thing standing in their way as he will need to improve in order for Los Angeles to truly be in the conversation with the league’s elite.

Matt will lead us to the promised land, taking us from number six through one on the countdown. Our list so far:

30. Edmonton
29. Colorado
28. Dallas
27. NY Islanders
26. Minnesota
25. Ottawa
24. Toronto
23. Florida
22. Phoenix
21. Winnipeg
20. Anaheim
19. Carolina
18. Calgary
17. St. Louis
16. Nashville
15. New York Rangers
14. Columbus
13. Buffalo
12. Philadelphia
11. Boston
10. Montreal Canadiens
9. Tampa Bay Lightning
8. New Jersey Devils
7. Los Angeles Kings

Projecting Steven Stamkos's Goals

"I've made a huge mistake" - GOB

In a recent article on the role of luck and skill in shooting percentage, I used Steven Stamkos as an example of a player who shot for a very high percentage last season and who should see his goal tally drop this year as a result. Why I didn't choose Corey Porey, I have no idea. I don't play fantasy hockey, but I looked over a few projections and noticed that they all had Stamkos over 50 goals. Since I suggested he'd have a drop from the 45 he made last year, it seems like a deeper look at is in order.

To forecast Stamkos's goals for this season, I am using a method many others have used - finding comparable players to see how their numbers changed. For comparable players, I took all players that had a 40+ goal season at or below age 20. My source for this list is hockey-reference.com. There are a couple guys that fizzled out and some current players we'll have to wait on, but this is an elite list: Brian Bellows, Rob Brown, Jimmy Carson, Wayne Gretzky, Dale Hawerchuk, Ilya Kovalchuk, Pierre Larouche, Mario Lemieux, Eric Lindros, Rick Martin, Rick Nash, Owen Nolan, Alex Ovechkin, Barry Pederson, Luc Robitaille, Geoff Sanderson, Craig Simpson, Tony Tanti, Pierre Turgeon and Sylvain Turgeon.

Because Stamkos is about to start his age-21 season, I will forecast his goal total by looking at the relationship between goals per game for the above players for the seasons where they were 20 or younger and the season where they were 21*. Fortunately, there is a strong relationship, as you can see in the graph below:


Let's pause for a second to marvel at that 92-goal season for Gretzky. I left it zoomed out so you can see just how amazing that was. The other outlier was Mario Lemieux scoring 54 goals in only 63 games.

The regression spits out this equation:

GPG21 = 0.0362 + 1.0019*GPG1820

where GPG21 is the goals per game in the age-21 season and GPG1820 is the total average goals per game for all seasons where the player was younger. Notice how close the coefficient is to 1. That tells us that typically there is a direct relationship between average goals per game before 21 and at 21. The average difference between two guys is almost exactly the same the season they turn 21 and their careers to that point. Because that coefficient is very close to 1, we can see that the average elite young goalscorer improves by about 0.036 goals per game in his age-21 season. So if a guy only played full seasons, we'd expect him to score about 3 more goals than his career average for all years before age 21.

Thus far Stamkos has scored 119 goals in 243 games, or 0.49 goals per game. Using the above formula, this forecasts him at 43.2 goals for next year, a small drop from last season but up from his career average of just under 40 goals per season.

You might argue that Stamkos has improved a lot since his rookie season - he only scored 25 goals his rookie year and has put up 51 and 45 the last two. To look into that, I used the same methodology but only used the seasons where the player was 19 or 20 to forecast the year 21 season. The downside of this method jumped out - dropping that first season makes the earlier data far less descriptive and predictive of the 21-year-old season. Here's a graph:



While they look similar, you can see that there is less of an up-and-right pattern. The R^2 is 0.125 for this regression and was 0.292 for averaging all three seasons. So instead of explaining 29% of the variation in goal scoring at age 21, the average of the previous two seasons only accounts for 12.5% of it. So for that reason, I don't put as much stock into this regression. This forecast puts Stamkos at 49 goals this season.

Conclusion

Like most forecasts, it's all messy and things change when you tweak the model a bit or change the group of comparables. I didn't include it, but I changed the comparable group to be all players who scored at least 80 goals before age 21, which excludes several of the above names and includes Crosby, Trevor Linden and Steve Yzerman. That model also came out with a prediction of about 43 goals. While I think the first model above is the best, his rookie year Stamkos both took substantially fewer shots - 181 compared to 297 in 2009-2010 and 272 last seasons and his shooting percentage was substantially down - 12.7% compared to 17.2% and 16.5%. There is some reason to think that first year should be given less weight.

I think somewhere in between the two predictions is best and something very close to last year's 45 should be expected. This is an expectation, it's definitely possible that he could go on a tear and get over 50 and about as likely that he scores below 40, especially with injuries possible even for a guy with few injury problems.




* ages as defined by hockey-reference - the age the player is on February 1st of the season. Ilya Kovalchuk would have been 21 the year of the lockout so I used the season after for his count. Rick Nash turned 20 the season of the lockout so I shifted everything back a year for him as well.