Interesting numbers from the Flames’ first half

7 years ago

The Calgary Flames have crossed the halfway mark of their 2016-17 regular season schedule. Through the first half they’ve played a lot of hockey: some good, some bad. We broke down their first 41 games to see what interesting patterns emerged.

Well, they’re patterns. They may (or may not) be interesting.

OPPONENTS

The Flames played 27 games in-conference and 14 games against the Eastern Conference. Their record in the Western Conference was 15-11-1 and they were 6-7-1 against the East. Fourteen of their 27 Western games were against the Pacific Division.

For those keeping track, they have 23 games remaining against the West (of 50 total) and 18 games remaining against the East (of 32 total).

TIME & PLACE

Place:

Home: 10-10-0
Away: 11-8-2

The Flames were better on the road than at home in the first half.

Day of Week:

Sunday: 2-3-0
Monday: 2-1-1
Tuesday: 5-2-0
Wednesday: 4-2-0
Thursday: 2-3-0
Friday: 4-4-0
Saturday: 2-3-1

The Flames are good early-to-mid week and so-so on the weekends.

Start Time:

5:00 p.m.: 1-1-1
5:30 p.m.: 2-0-0
6:00 p.m.: 2-0-0
6:30 p.m.: 3-2-0
7:00 p.m.: 7-7-0
7:30 p.m.: 1-1-0
8:00 p.m.: 4-5-1
8:30 p.m.: 1-2-0

The Flames are so-so in late games and pretty good in early games. Granted, the early games were primarily against Eastern Conference opposition. This basically tells you that the Flames were good on the road against Eastern teams but not quite as good against them at home.

ANNOUNCERS

Rick Ball & Kelly Hrudey: 16-6-0
Rick Ball & Anybody Else: 4-8-1
Any Other Announce Team: 1-4-1

That’s right: the announce team dictates the quality of the Flames’ play. That said, Ball and Hrudey primarily work the weekday games that the Flames have played so well in.

JERSEYS

Red Home: 8-6-0
White Away: 11-8-2
Vintage Thirds: 2-4-0

The Flames aren’t quite to a level of futility in their vintage thirds as they were when they debuted their old western-themed alternates, but there have been nights where the jerseys have been the best thing about their game.

INDIVIDUALS

The Flames have a core of returning players this season that are performing better in the first half of this year than they were a year ago and a few players that are performing worse.

The names probably aren’t terribly surprising.

Doing better:

Mikael Backlund has 27 points, a nine-point improvement.
Michael Frolik has 23 points, representing a seven-point improvement and a very slight points-per-game improvement as he missed 11 games in the first half of last year.
Sam Bennett has 18 points, a three-point improvement.
Dougie Hamilton has 22 points, a seven-point improvement.
Matt Stajan has 15 points, a six-point improvement.
Micheal Ferland has 11 points, a three-point improvement.
Deryk Engelland 7 points, a five-point improvement.
Lance Bouma has four points (in 23 games), a hefty points-per-game improvement over his one point in 11 games in last year’s first half.

Doing Worse:

Johnny Gaudeau had 26 points in the first half, a 16-point reduction. If you compare his points-per-game (since he missed time this year), he went from 1.024 to 0.839, so he’s a bit worse even when you control for games played.
Sean Monahan had 22 points, a six-point reduction.
Mark Giordano had 18 points, a seven-point reduction.
T.J. Brodie had 16 points, a six-point reduction. When you compare points-per-game (since he missed time last year), he went from 0.688 to 0.390 – a fairly big drop.
Dennis Wideman had 12 points, a seven-point reduction.