Last season the National Hockey League unveiled their player tracking statistics called NHL Edge. Players have chips in the players jerseys and in the puck. They are able to track different metrics around skating speed, distance travelled, shot speed, and shot location.

I thought it would be fun to dive into NHL Edge and see where the Flames stack up league wide in some metrics, as well as who Calgary’s top players are when it comes to a variety of skating and shooting stats.

As you can see not only by the numbers but also the eye test, the Calgary Flames are not a fast team this season. They haven’t had a fast team for a long time. This season, they rank in the bottom half in the NHL in 18-20, 20-22, and 22+ MPH speed bursts.

They have an impressive top speed of 24.06 MPH which came from Martin Pospisil. He is also responsible for seven of the Flames 16 22+ MPH speed bursts this season.

According to NHL Edge data, Pospisil is one of the fastest players in the NHL as he is in the 99th percentile of top speed achieved (24.06 MPH).

We always hear about how difficult Ryan Huska’s system is to play. Here is one of the indicators to prove that theory correct.

The Flames rank in the 96th percentile in average distance skated per 60 minutes played. A lot of that comes from the Flames dump and chase, high pressure forechecking system they play. The forwards are asked to work the puck along the walls and cycle when they’re in the offence zone. There is not a lot of offence generated off the rush.

There is a lot of skating involved in the way they check on defence. They play a physical, high pressure, in your face style of defence that requires the players to skate a lot.

The Flames have been one of the better teams in the NHL when it comes to where they spend their time on the ice. They are above average in terms of time spent in each zone.

The most surprising number is the fact that the Flames are in the 70th percentile in time spent in the offensive zone. That tells me that they do a good job establishing their forecheck and spending time with the puck in the offensive zone, but just can’t turn that into actual goals at the moment as they currently sit 27th in goals per game.

One of the unfortunate parts of the NHL Edge website is that you can’t compare the Flames to the rest of the teams in the NHL. You can only compare them to one team at a time which makes it difficult to see where they stack up in terms of shot location.

All you can really gather is the number of shots per area and match up up with the grey colour scale.

Nevertheless, the Flames do a decent job of generating shot attempts and shots on goals. But they struggle to put the puck in the back of the net.

Is that from a lack of talent? Is that bad luck? I would say it’s more of the former than the latter.

But this Flames team is full of streaky scorers. Guys like Yegor Sharangovich, Nazem Kadri, Jonathan Huberdeau, Blake Coleman and Andrei Kuzmenko all have the ability to go on shooting heaters. It wouldn’t surprise me if a few of those guys get hot at the same time and start to turn around the goal scoring fortunes of the Flames.

The closer the lines are to the outer part of the circle, the better you are at that stat. The closer to the center of the circle, the worse you are at that stat.

Everything we see from NHL Edge matches the eyes test. The Flames are a below average skating team that struggles mightily to score despite being an above average team in time spent in the offensive zone and number of shot attempts.