Full of Air

steve laidlaw

2014-10-04

JamesNeal

Vollman takes a look at some players whose bubbles are about to burst.

Whose Scoring is Full of Air?

Players like James Neal, Jiri Hudler, and Brad Richards may have had their scoring totals temporarily boosted last year, and for three very different reasons. Playing alongside incredible linemates, riding favorable shooting percentages, and being assigned a heap of advantageous ice time can pump a lot of hot air into practically anyone’s scoring totals.

Who got their tires pumped last year? Hockey analytics can help find some those players whose scoring totals had a little bit of air in them, and who are therefore bound to take a bit of a dip once the player’s playing conditions and/or fortune changes.

We’ll look at each of these three aspects one-by-one, including some great examples, and where to get the information as the season progresses.

Who Has Incredible Linemates?

Warren Young scored 40 goals in his 29-year-old rookie season back in 1984-85, but managed only 30 in his career’s remaining 136 games. The secret? Playing alongside Mario Lemieux, of course. It was the same secret that helped Rob Brown score 49 goals and 115 points in just 68 games as a 20-year-old sophomore four years later.

It was well-established long ago how particularly elite players can boost the scoring of their linemates. The only cause for concern is if the lines change. This year, for instance, that will certainly be the case with James Neal, who went from Pittsburgh to Nashville. You don’t need advanced statistics to predict that someone playing with Mike Ribeiro instead of Evgeni Malkin is going to see a dip in his scoring totals!

The advantage of the advanced statistics is to help quantify the advantage the league’s best players provide. Jonathan Willis of Sportsnet recently figured out that Malkin can boost his linemate’s scoring by around 25%, and Sidney Crosby by 36%. Quick – draft Patric Hornqvist!

How did Willis figure this out? He went to a website like Hockey Analysis to see how much time each player was getting with each of Pittsburgh’s stars, and compared their scoring rates both with and without those franchise players.

You can also go to Hockey Reference and look at each player’s scoring logs last year. There I found that one of those two names (Crosby or Malkin) was on the scoresheet for 77% to 78% of all the goals Jussi Jokinen and Chris Kunitz were involved in last year. While that can certainly continue for Kunitz, assuming he keeps playing with Crosby, it definitely won’t be the case for Jokinen in Florida. As for Neal, 69% of his points involved at least one of those stars. And how about defensemen Brooks Orpik (64%) and Matt Niskanen (54%)? Losing Crosby and Malkin would normally take a big bite out of their scoring, but not if it’s fully replaced by someone like Alexander Ovechkin.

Chimera

10.6

Patrick Maroon

ANA

Perreault

10.5

Kyle Turris

OTT

MacArthur, Ryan

10.4

Patrice Bergeron

BOS

Marchand, Smith

10.3

It’s certainly possible that some of these lines are the real deal and will continue to find the back of the net at the same rate as Corey Perry and Ryan Getzlaf, but it’s far more realistic to expect the scoring of all but a couple of these lines to take a big dip this year. Consider yourself warned.

Who is Getting the Opportunities?

Another way to boost a player’s scoring is with lots of ice time, and in advantageous situations. It stands to reason that more time on the power play and more time in the offensive zone will result in additional scoring.

While power play and even strength ice time can be easily found on NHL’s website, estimating how much of the latter was in the offensive zone is a little bit trickier. A crude way to get started is to multiply the percentage of shifts a player starts in the offensive zone rather than the defensive zone by his ice time. It’s far from perfect, but it provides at least some indication of who is getting the most offensive zone opportunities. That little nugget of information, incidentally, is available at the same websites mentioned earlier.

The following table features the 10 players who enjoyed the most opportunity to score last year, based on those two factors. I weighted power play ice-time (PPTOI) 2.75 times heavier than the even strength offensive zone ice time (OZTOI), based on how much more common it is to score in such situations.

Player	Team	PPTOI	OZTOI
Erik Karlsson	OTT	335.5	982.3
Ryan Suter	MIN	307.7	1034.5
Keith Yandle	ARI	360.3	878.0
P.K. Subban	MTL	382.3	744.0
Alexander Ovechkin	WSH	392.8	712.6
Brian Campbell	FLA	319.7	857.4
Drew Doughty	LA	303.8	823.2
Sidney Crosby	PIT	343.0	705.9
Brad Richards	NYR	301.7	817.6
Oliver Ekman-Larsson	ARI	327.4	738.0

Each of these players rely on getting a lot of minutes, especially in the offensive zone and/or on the power play, to keep scoring. While most of these superstars can continue to expect all these opportunities, will that be the case for Brad Richards in Chicago? And if he does get the ice tilted in his favor with the Blackhawks, what will that mean for Patrick Sharp, who just missed this list? It’s good food for thought.

Closing Thoughts

Predicting a player’s scoring totals is no easy task, because you can never predict how the coaches will craft their lines, how much ice time he’ll assign to each player, and especially how consistently their shots will find the back of the net. It’s almost enough to have you headed for the tea leaves and chicken bones instead of the tables and spreadsheets.

At least now we have some indication of which players might have been hitting above their weight last year, either because they were being boosted by their linemates, had a lot of shooting luck, or were blessed with heaps of offensive zone or power play minutes. While that may not result in a foolproof system, at least you can leave the Ouija board in the attic.