Updated Adjusted Corsi

Via Flickr

Adjusted Corsi isn’t perfect, but it allows us to get a much clearer picture of what a player’s visualized Corsi actually means. There are some effects we won’t be able to completely correct for; teammates who are really good or are really bad can have a huge impact we can’t cut out all the way. In case you’re not familiar with adjusted Corsi, know that it adjusts a player’s Corsi On for starting position, quality of teammates and quality of competition.

Let’s take a look at the updated numbers. Less than 30 games means you’re not counted. Chart is sorted by GP.

Mikael Backlund leads the pack here, as usual. The Forward is having better than a superb season thus far, taking on the toughest comp the league has to offer and regularly outshooting them. Joe Colborne has also shown well (or, at least, better) compared to earlier in the season. The move to wing has had a noticible effect on his shot attempt numbers; it’s good that he’s found a home on the right side. If your expectation is for Colborne to be a 3W, you’ll be happy to know he’s almost already there – #239 in PPG among regular forwards. Top 270 are considered at least 3rd liners.

I was a little surprised to see Lance Bouma with such a poor total; even if we had used Fenwick numbers I think Bouma would be under the watermark still, but a lot of it probably has to do with him playing with McGrattan and Westgarth so much. I think we’d see that number tick up a little if he got away from those two players – some suck you just can’t adjust enough for. This is further evidenced by the 7.5% Corsi jump Bouma gets when he’s away from McGrattan and almost 3% when he’s away from Butler. If he can’t demonstrate the ability to get over the hump next year, though, I’m going to be a lot less lenient. 

Monahan gets a bit of a pass as well, since he’s 19 – but he’s played with much better teammates and has a high OZ% but hasn’t really been doing much with it in terms of shot attempt differential. Obviously this doesn’t matter as much right now as it does for the guys who are fully-developed players but I’d still like to see it on the right side of the ledger.

Cammalleri has had these types of results for as long as I can remember. He’ll probably still be a good possession player into his mid-thirties but I don’t want to pay a 33 year old possession player a scorer’s rate, which is what he will probably be seeking. Still, for right now, these are really good results. 

Stajan, like Cammalleri, will probably be a good possession player into his mid-30s but he’s being paid like a 3rd liner, not a 30-goal guy. Good results, good contract, good player – might as well keep him around. I doubt he was worth more via trade than what he’s worth to the Flames on-ice.

We talked at length about TJ Galliardi a short time ago and his results are still stellar. No idea what happened to him this season, but he’s turned into a juggernaut of some sort.

Jones, Byron and Hudler are mostly coasting out there. Not much difference between them and the other team but all three still have positive numbers.

McGrattan is here to hurt people. He’s not that good at hockey. Kevin Westgarth hasn’t played 30 games for the Flames yet, but his number is worse than McGrattan’s via the eyeballin’ it method. 

TJ Brodie and Mark Giordano look fantastic here, but like Backlund, where don’t they put up good numbers?

I was a little surprised to see Butler with that high of a number, honestly, but then I realized that a lot of his numbers and perception of his play are based on thee fact that he starts about 42% of his shifts in the defensive zone. He’ll also get a little bump based on his play with Brodie earlier in the year but not more than a quarter of an event. If I recall correctly, Butler has done pretty well in adjusted Corsi over the years but that’s something we’ll further look into at the completion of the season.

Kris Russell has been the beneficiary of the highest on-ice SH% among these 7 (~9.1%, which is ~1% above league average), so that’s probably why he’s looked as good as he has. His adjusted numbers are still above the water mark, although I would prefer him as a number 5. Basically, I’d be okay with a Russell-Butler 5/6 pairing that gets about even ZS. 

I got a little pushback on Tuesday when I said Smid was, well, brutal. This seems to confirm it. Everyone gets worse when they’re on the ice with Smid and he’s been the team’s second worst defenseman. I understand that some people don’t believe that “defensive defenseman” are rated fairly by CF% or whatever but this is the way it is: a player either gets shot attempts for or stops shot attempts against. If a defensive defenseman has a negative CF% that means he’s not suppressing shot attempts enough to be beneficial to the team in the long run. I assume that people consider defensive defensemen to be better at suppressing Corsi events than generating them but Smid doesn’t even really do that: his 880 Corsi events against in 55 games with the Flames puts him with these players:

Most of the guys on this list have 10+ more games than Smid does and all of them except for Kulemin (who plays on the tire fire that is the Leafs) have more minutes played than he does. The other guys are players that we would probably consider on the lower end of the scale. I believe all of the numbers here are purely his Flames results, too. I can’t find any way that Smid is providing value presently, at least in ways that are showing up in results. If you can, please share. Otherwise, I think Smid should be one of the two compliance buyouts this summer.

Wideman takes a big hit in adjusted Corsi because of how often he starts in the offensive zone – still over 60% of the time. In saying that, he should obviously be doing more with his high start ratio. I think Wideman would be a prime buyout candidate if they didn’t have cap floor issues next year; his contract was horrible the day it was signed and now that his run of good play is behind us I don’t think you should be paying $5.5 million for a PP specialist.

There’s a reason Shane O’Brien is in the minors and likely won’t get another NHL shot.

Hopefully this has provided a little more context for the numbers we saw on Tuesday. Some time in May we’ll take a look at the whole-season numbers for the whole team in both adjusted and visualized Corsi.