I've long held the belief that Corsi is a bit of a flawed stat, which has been unfair for players who have offensive zone starts (OZ%) below 40 percent. As of games to November 20th, there were 116 players who had OZ starts below 40 percent. Of those 116 players only 14 players had a CF% over 50. There were 63 players with OZ starts below 35 percent and not one of those players had a CF% above 50. The players with zone starts less than 35 percent were doomed to fail.

In 2021-22 there were 92 players who played at least 26 NHL games and had OZ starts below 40 percent. There were 12 players with a CF% above 50. There were 42 players with OZ starts below 35 percent with five players having a CF% above 50. Those five were David Kampf and Ondrej Kase in Toronto and Nic Dowd, Garnet Hathaway and Carl Hagelin in Washington. Toronto had a high team CF% of 53.6 but Washington was just at 50.5 so whatever the Capitals did to tilt the ice for Dowd, Hathaway and Hagelin, they should have bottled it and sold it.

Last season, Mika Zibanejad (47.9) was the only player in the top 30 scoring leaders with less than 50 percent of starts in the OZ. The average was 58.6 percent for the top 30. You want players with high OZ starts on your fantasy teams.

Calgary leads the NHL as a team right now with 60.6 percent of their 5on5 starts being in the OZ while Arizona is last at 39.6 percent. How can we measure an individual stat, when it is influenced so heavily by the team you play on? We've had this long held belief that a player with a CF% above 50 is ok, but a player below is struggling.

Dobber's Frozen Tools has a Player Usage Chart under the Advanced Stats tab when looking at the individual players, which is a much better indicator of where players are at, but I'd love to see an adjusted Corsi number take some of what is mentioned here into account.

Expected goals for (xGF) and expected goals against (xGA) produce an expected goals for percentage and it is a little better than Corsi in my opinion but still an unfair statistic overall as players who start in the DZ are more likely to give up a chance against than a player who starts in the OZ or neutral zone. There are players with a 46 or 47 CF% who are doing just fine and there are players with a 52 or 53 CF% who are struggling on the better teams. We need to incorporate an adjustment so that 50 CF% has some meaning across the board for every player.

Name	ZS%	Corsi	Fenwick
NICK RITCHIE	36.1	46.1	44.5
TRENT FREDERIC	40.6	51.9	52.9

As an example from above, on first glance one would think that Trent Frederic is having a better go of it than Nick Ritchie this season defensively. When you take into account that Boston's team Corsi is 52.3 and Arizona is at 43.2 it puts the players on a much more level playing field. Arizona is getting buried as a team this season but it looks like Ritchie is better than most on the team.

We're going to take a closer look at some players in the Western Conference, who might be a better player for their teams than given credit for as their production has been curtailed by fairly low OZ starts. If given more sheltered minutes, they might produce more as the season progresses. I'll also look at each player's career average and see if this season is in line with past years.

Nicolas Roy – Vegas

Last season Roy had OZ starts of 50.8 percent compared to 28.4 so far this year. As a result his CF% has gone from 54.2 to 47.2 and his SOG/GP has gone from 1.9 to 1.4. He has still managed 11 points in his first 18 games (0.61/g) after putting up 39 points in 78 games last year (0.5). Once he is back from injury, he will need to see more sheltered minutes going forward to put up 35-40 points like he had last year.

Jakob Silfverberg – Anaheim

Whatever offensive game Silfverberg used to have has been curtailed this year and last as his OZ starts are 25.1 percent this year and 29.2 last year. In the four seasons that he scored 20 goals with the Ducks his OZ starts were between 37.52 and 52.4 percent of the time. His CF% the last two seasons has been 42.4 and 44.5 after never being above 50 in seven of his previous nine years.

Logan O'Connor – Colorado

After putting up eight goals and 16 assists in 81 games last season with 41.4 percent of OZ starts, perhaps there was more offense for O'Connor moving forward. This season he has an OZ percentage of 24.4 but has still managed five goals and six points in 18 games with a respectable CF% of 49.0. He has become an important defensive forward for the Avalanche and is averaging just over 15 minutes per game. 

J.T. Compher – Colorado

Compher has averaged between 38.5 and 44.4 percent in the OZ in the four years prior to this season where is currently sitting at 28.5 after 16 games. He has six points in those 16 games (0.38) which is close to his career average of 0.43. His CF% is 49.0 and much like O'Connor above, Compher has become a go-to defensive player in Colorado.

Nick Leddy – St. Louis

Leddy is at 32.6 percent in the OZ this season and throughout his career has always been between 44 and 51 in the seven years prior to this year. His CF% is currently 45.6 but compared to the 46.1 he had last year with 50.5 OZ starts, he and Parayko are doing a fairly good job this season so far.

Colton Parayko – St. Louis

Parayko has always emphasized defense over offense in his eight NHL seasons, but this year and last he has become a shut-down defender with 39.5 OZ starts last year and 33.7 this season. The six goals and 29 assists he put up last season is even more impressive but will be difficult for him to duplicate.

Joel Eriksson Ek – Minnesota

Eriksson Ek is the least surprising player on this list as he has been a defensive forward since the 2019-20 season. Last year we saw what he could do offensively with 47.6 percent of OZ starts when he had 26 goals and 24 assists in 77 games with a CF% of 53.0 (albeit with 12 goals and five assists on the PP). This season’s OZ starts are down to 35 after the first 18 games and he is still producing with six goals and six assists but his CF% is down to 48.1. His zone starts should come up into the 40s, so he should be able to get back to 20 goals and 20 assists at the very least.

Nico Sturm – San Jose

Sturm is an under-rated player in my mind. He has been a shut-down forward for the past three seasons with OZ starts of 37.6 this season, 35.2 last year and 31.6 the year before that. There was a reason that the Avalanche traded for him in the lead up to their Stanley Cup run last year. He can chip in offensively, shut-down the opposition, add physicality and win the majority of his faceoffs.

Logan Couture – San Jose

Couture is one of the most underrated defensive forwards in the league. His OZ starts over the past three seasons have been 38.7 this year, 42.4 and 37.3 two years ago. His CF% has slipped a little this year to 42.4 but the prior two seasons he was between 47.2 and 48.7. The fact that he has averaged between 0.73 and 0.75 points per game this year and last is impressive.

Kevin Shattenkirk – Anaheim

Last year Shattenkirk had eight goals and 27 assists with 49.4 percent OZ starts. This season he has been used in a more defensive role and is at 39.5 OZ starts, but he actually has a better CF% this year (47.0) than last year (46.4). His expected goals at five on five has gone from 47.2 to 39.1 and has hurt his offensive production this year.

Adam Lowry – Winnipeg

Lowry has been a defensive forward for the past seven seasons in Winnipeg. This year he is down to 35 percent of OZ starts but typically he has been between 37.8 and 41.67. He has had a good start to the season with eight points in his first 16 games and will try to eclipse his career high of 29 points.

Ryan Hartman – Minnesota

Hartman had 34 goals and 31 assists last year in a breakout season. He had OZ starts of 57.0 percent and is back down to 40.2 this season in which he is out with an injury but had a slow start nonetheless with one goal and four assists in his nine games to date. His SOG/g was down from 2.9 to 2.3.

Darnell Nurse – Edmonton

Nurse has 11 points in his first 18 games (0.61), but he has seen his role somewhat change with 40.1 OZ starts compared to the 52 percent he saw last year. His CF% is 48.9 down from 53.6 and his expected goals for at five on five is 46.2 percent down from 54.2. There are some who already criticize Nurse for his defense and seeing these numbers decrease might only give them more ammunition without context.

After writing this, maybe I'll have another go at something I called GCorsi a few years back in which I attempted to come up with an adjusted number which took into account zone starts, team Corsi and team Fenwick.

Thanks for reading and if you have any questions or players you'd like me to look at please message or follow me on Twitter @gampbler15.