Looking At Corsi And Game-By-Game Results

There’s been a lot of discussion about puck possession lately, particularly how Calgary is succeeding despite some pretty awful metrics in that area.

With another game up tonight, let’s take a gander at how, specifically, they’re doing.

The Flames get out-shot and out-attempted quite a lot. How often?

Here’s a table.

So, yeah. They get out-attempted 55% of the time, yet have won 55% of the time anyway. That’s crazy!

Breaking it down more specifically, the team has earned 67% of the available points when they’ve gotten out-attempted. When they’re breaking even, they earn 46% of possible points. When they’re out-attempting their opposition and driving the play, they earn 50% of available points.

Someway, somehow, this is a team that does better on the scoreboard and in the standings when they’re getting out-played than they do when they are out-playing the opposition.

(That’s a rolling five-game look at their Corsi For percentage, by the way.)

In terms of games that are outliers there are a bunch that stick out on both ends.

So, in other words, when the Flames get wildly out-attempted, they tend to win big or squeak by when they do win. When they lose despite out-attempting their opponents, they tend to lose squeakers.

I’m not in any way convinced that these distributions are anything but random, but they’re interesting to think about, particularly given how the season’s been going thus far and how little is left on the docket.