Year-End Scoring Chance Round-Up

9 years ago

One of the things we do here at FlamesNation is count scoring chances. We do this because we care, but also because the data can be pretty useful – both on an individual level and in the aggregate. We’ll have some more time to dig into the data over the summer, but here’s a quick overview of how things turned out for individual players.

TERMINOLOGY

CF%: Corsi For %; percentage of all shots, missed shots and blocked shots that were sent towards the opponent’s net while a player’s on the ice.

FF%: Fenwick For %; percentage of all shots and missed shots that were sent towards the opponent’s net (it’s Corsi that ignores blocked shots) while the player’s on the ice.

SF%: Shots For %; percentage of all shots that were sent towards the opponent’s net while the player’s on the ice.

GF%: Goals For %; percentage of all goals scored while a player’s on the ice that were scored on the opponent’s net.

SC%: Scoring Chance For %; percentage of all scoring chances while a player’s on the ice that were on the opponent’s net. In short: it’s Corsi, except limited to attempts within the “home-plate” zone in front of the net.

CorsRel QoC: The average CorsiRel of the opponents each player played against. Typically there’s a continuum from 2 (the other team’s best players) to -2 (slugs), but there are exceptions.

DEFENSEMEN

Player	GP	CF%	FF%	SF%	GF%	SC%	CorsiRel QoC
Giordano	64	53.3	53.5	54.8	53.5	52.8	1.682
Brodie	81	51.5	52.3	52.0	48.7	52.0	1.487
Russell	68	43.5	45.9	46.3	46.1	46.7	0.370
Butler	82	42.8	45.2	44.9	37.5	45.2	0.311
Cundari	4	47.7	50.8	52.5	0.0	44.4	-4.347
O’Brien	45	44.0	44.4	42.2	39.0	42.3	-1.526
Wideman	46	45.9	47.9	49.4	43.1	42.0	-0.270
Wotherspoon	14	40.5	41.5	42.9	41.2	41.9	0.119
Smid	56	41.2	43.4	43.3	41.7	40.4	0.536
Smith	14	48.4	43.9	40.4	14.3	35.7	-1.406
Billins	10	44.4	43.4	40.2	36.4	34.6	-1.906
Breen	9	45.1	43.2	41.3	54.5	34.0	-1.054

Boy howdy, Giordano and Brodie are amazing. They face EASILY the hardest competition on the team, and they constantly push play the right way. Butler and Russell are shielded, but their numbers are adequate on a team with a 46% average. Smid and Wotherspoon aren’t too shielded and their numbers aren’t great, suggesting that they could do better with more favourable circumstances. Wideman, O’Brien, Billins, Smith and Breen are not good, and they were shielded quite a bit. Granted, Wideman was injured or recovering from injury for a big chunk of the year, but for the guy with the richest contract on the entire team, that’s pretty awful.

FORWARDS

Player	GP	CF%	FF%	SF%	GF%	SC%	CorsiRel QoC
Backlund	76	51.7	53.3	52.6	51.4	54.4	1.000
Baertschi	26	43.2	45.2	45.7	44.4	50.3	-0.399
Byron	47	50.4	51.2	52.2	52.8	50.0	0.884
Horak	1	41.7	33.3	40.0	0.0	50.0	N/A
Galiardi	62	49.5	51.2	50.4	39.4	49.9	0.629
Cammalleri	63	50.8	51.7	51.9	45.7	49.3	1.011
Hudler	75	46.7	47.5	47.2	55.8	48.5	0.454
Stempniak	52	48.3	48.2	48.4	30.8	47.8	N/A
Stajan	63	47.6	49.3	49.4	40.2	46.4	1.028
Reinhart	8	45.5	41.8	38.2	60.0	45.9	0.592
Jones (B)	14	43.5	42.7	45.8	50.0	45.7	0.329
Glencross	38	42.7	44.0	43.0	37.0	45.2	0.891
Jones (D)	48	45.3	47.6	48.5	51.2	44.4	1.229
Monahan	75	43.8	44.9	44.8	41.8	43.8	-0.040
Colborne	80	45.4	46.5	47.1	42.3	43.6	0.208
Granlund	7	44.4	44.8	42.2	60.0	43.3	0.200
Bouma	78	43.5	46.0	47.3	46.4	42.9	0.453
Westgarth	36	41.1	43.8	44.1	45.0	41.9	-1.326
Agostino	8	43.4	46.0	44.6	33.3	41.2	-0.692
Hanowski	11	44.3	46.2	47.3	37.5	40.0	-0.252
Arnold	1	50.0	54.5	40.0	0.0	40.0	0.167
McGrattan	76	38.4	41.0	41.3	43.8	38.1	-1.191
Jackman	10	42.3	43.3	43.1	33.3	37.5	N/A
Knight	7	42.9	50.7	53.8	42.9	37.0	-0.176
Van Brabant	6	36.3	39.7	35.3	33.3	36.8	0.120
Street	13	41.4	41.7	42.0	37.5	36.7	0.682
Gaudreau	1	57.9	58.3	66.7	100	33.3	-0.381
MacDermid	1	0.0	0.0	0.0	0.0	33.3	-2.334

Backlund and Byron: not shielded, but driving play. With Byron, not sure how much is his linemates and how much is him, but I’m curious to see how he does over a full year. Looking at goals-for, Galiardi and Stempniak just had no luck at all – especially Galiardi. He wasn’t shielded, consistently drove play, yet couldn’t hit water if he fell out of a boat. David Jones’ numbers were just slightly under the team average, despite him (a) dealing with injuries all year and (b) facing tough sledding. Baertschi was shielded a little bit, but had really good chance numbers given that.

Monahan and Colborne generally played together. They weren’t shielded. They were below average in terms of chances. But remember: they’re really young. And shocker: Westgarth and McGrattan were heavily shielded and were buried alive in terms of scoring chances.

HIGHS & LOWS

Most chances-for among regulars:

T.J. Brodie – 383
Chris Butler – 309
Mark Giordano – 297
Kris Russell – 291
Mikael Backlund – 279

Least chances-for among regulars:

Kevin Westgarth – 39
Brian McGrattan – 80
Shane O’Brien – 90
Paul Byron – 125
Curtis Glencross – 128

Most chances-against among regulars:

Chris Butler – 374
T.J. Brodie – 353
Kris Russell – 332
Jiri Hudler – 282
Sean Monahan – 276

Least chances-against among regulars:

Kevin Westgarth – 54
Shane O’Brien – 123
Paul Byron – 125
Brian McGrattan – 130
Curtis Glencross – 155

Any differences between the goaltenders?

Team was 51.58% with Joni Ortio in net
Team was 50.00% with Joey MacDonald in net
Team was 45.43% with Karri Ramo in net
Team was 43.71% with Reto Berra in net

SUM IT UP

The Flames’ good players are – shocker – good by possession metrics. Some of their not-great players appear to have had bad years, like David Jones and T.J. Galiardi.

And the team seemed to play better with Joni Ortio in net than with anybody else, and better with Karri Ramo than with Reto Berra.