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Sep
07

"It's Just A Game"

Author // Corey Sznajder

As most of you know by now, the KHL team Lokomotiv Yaroslavl was involved in a deadly plane crash which took the lives of nine players including former Carolina Hurricane Josef Vasicek. This just adds to what's already been a terrible off-season for the NHL after the deaths of Derek Boogaard, Wade Belak, Tom Cavanagh and Rick Rypien.This is the toughest NHL off-season that I can remember because regardless of what teams these players were on, the hockey community, as a whole, suffered thirteen big losses this summer.

The tragic events this off-season have really put things into perspective for me as a hockey fan. Every single player in the league constantly makes sacrifices not only to entertain us, but to make a living as well. Most of them are regular people like you or me. They all have family and friends who cared about them and were affected by these tragic events which makes looking at this photo of Pavol Demitra's daughter at the Olympics much more heartbreaking. It's not only that, but he has played on five different NHL teams and on the Czech National team, so he probably has friends from all over the league and his death has affected them. Fellow Czech teammate Tomas Vokoun could not even speak to the media after these events occured and he probably knew a lot of people who were involved in the plane crash.

Then you think about Brad McCrimmon who took the Lokomotiv job because he really wanted to be a head coach and he died before he could ever coach a game. Both him and Ruslan Salei were in the playoffs with the Red Wings only three months ago and now they are gone so this is just surreal to think about.

Vasicek's death really struck me because I mentioned him a couple of times in an article I wrote only two days ago. Before today, he was just a player who spent six years on the Hurricanes and was a good player for most of that time but I never thought much of him otherwise when I really should have. He was part of the Canes for six years and was on the 2005-06 squad who won the Cup, so his death is probably affecting a lot of guys on the roster right now as well as other players all over the league. He was never a top point-getter but he was a good teammate and there are probably a lot of people in the hockey community who are mourning his death.

I have said plenty of stupid things about athletes while watching games in the past and too many times I forget that these players have personal lives and people who care about them no matter how good or bad they are inside the rink. In the end, it's just a game. These guys are making a living by entertaining us as fans. The impact of whether my team wins or loses does not have any effect on my personal life and it's a real shame that it took the death of these players to make me realize that. I'm sure other fans are thinking about the same thing.

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Sep
04

Jim Rutherford and trading

Author // Corey Sznajder

Generally, I think Jim Rutherford has done a good job as GM during his years in Carolina but I know a good number of fans who have been unhappy with him in recent seasons. Most of the complaints are related to him not supplying this team with enough talent, especially through trading. I will touch on how he's handled drafting and free agent signings in later posts, but right now we're going to see how effective Rutherford's trades have been since the lockout. It will be interesting to see which recent trades he "won" and "lost" but more importantly, it will be great to know just how much his trades have benefited the Hurricanes. I am mainly going to be looking at trades of significant impact here because going through every single one of them would be heavily time consuming.

We'll start with the first post-lockout season and work our way up:

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Aug
18

Is Stephen Weiss Really A First-Line Center?

Author // Corey Sznajder

I've always been a huge fan of Stephen Weiss. The former first round pick always had a reputation of being a very underrated center in the league and someone who would thrive on a better team with a better supporting cast. Weiss is definitely a great player and you could say that he's underrated because of where he plays but he has never been a point-per-game player in his career and where he ranks among other centers since the lock-out is not that impressive.

Weiss has been in the league for about nine seasons now and since the lockout, he has been averaging about .66 points per game. That puts him around the same company as Tomas Plekanec, Nik Antropov, Ryan Kesler, Travis Zajac and David Legwand. All great players but I would hard pressed to call any of them top first line centers in the league. He also ranked 46th among all of the centers that I sampled. Weiss is also 29 this coming season and most players enter their prime in their late 20's, so if Weiss was in his "prime" two years ago then does that mean his 61-point campaign in 2008-09 will be his career high? If so, then I would have an even tougher time calling him a first line center. However, the bounces certainly were not going Weiss' way last season so there could be some hope for him.

Year Corsi Rel QoC Shooting% Sv% PDO Corsi Rel. Corsi On OZ% OZ% Finish
2007-08 1.048 9.42% .931 1026 8.7 4.17 53% 50.4%
2008-09 0.544 10.53% .929 1034 12.4 1.53 45.5% 48.6%
2009-10 0.324 9.23% .915 1007 10.6 -4.39 47% 50.3%
2010-11 1.004 7.73% .907 907 0.1 0.66 47.6% 49.7%

This is where Gabe Desjardins' Behind The Net stat site and player card tool comes in handy. 2008-10, Weiss had his best offensive seasons and he saw easier competition compared to 2007 and 2010. He was also better at driving possession in those yeas, too despite starting the majority of his shifts in his own zone. In 2010, he want back to seeing tougher competition and started the same amount of his shifts in his own zone so his assignments got a lot tougher and on top of that, his on-ice shooting percentage was the lowest it's been in years. His boxcar stats as well as his corsi suffered from this. If things weren't bad enough, one of his most frequent linemates, Michael Frolik, also had a down year (5.5% shooting percentage) so it wasn't just him who was getting bad luck.

Now, this information shows that Weiss suffered from bad luck but he still has not shown that he can put up over 61 points in a season which tells me that he is not a primer first-line center. He's just a really good two-way center who a lot of teams would love to have but not someone who they would base their franchise around. Weiss has a chance of putting up 70 points in at least one remaining season in his career but I do not think he will ever be a star.

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Aug
16

Carolina's Role In "Southern Hockey"

Author // Corey Sznajder

When the Atlanta Thrashers moved to Winnipeg to eventually become the Jets, I was a little sad and that's not just because Carolina will have to play "divisional" games in Winnipeg next year, but more that I was upset to see a team from a southern market leave. The Canes have had a lot of great games against the Thrashers over the years and I will miss playing them, but I look forward to future contests against the Jets. The NHL's attempt to expand hockey into different markets has seen moderate success but the experiment with Atlanta clearly wasn't working out as attendance at Thrasher games got considerably worse by the season. Couple that with ownership issues and that doesn't bode well for the future of a team in a non-traditional market. There's a lot of people who think that having a hockey a professional hockey team in the southern states will not work and point to the Thrashers moving and the Florida Panthers attendance issues as evidence but the truth is that hockey in non-traditional markets can be successful which is what teams like Nashville, Carolina and even Tampa Bay have proven. The front office putting a good team on the ice is the main key to success, though.

Ever since the Canes won the Cup, Carolina's attendance numbers have been solid in every season but there was a slight downturn in 2009-10 when the Canes were well out of the playoff picture before Christmas but even that year they still managed to fill over 80% of the arena. When the Nashville Predators finally got over the hump and won their playoff series against Anaheim, a lot of pundits talked about how good it was for a team in a Southern market to be succeeding. What about the team who had won the Stanley Cup in 2006? The team who is only two years removed from being in the Eastern Conference Finals? Hell, what about the team a few hundred miles south of us who were just in the Eastern Conference final and recently won a cup in the last decade? Yes, I'm talking about the Tampa Bay Lightning. Teams having success on-ice in non-traditional markets is nothing foreign but the issue is having a fan-base that sticks with the team through the good and bad times.

The Lightning managed to sell out the St. Pete Times Forum in 2006-07 but attendance took a huge dip in the next three seasons as the team began to struggle with ownership issues and iced a lousy team as a result. Things re-surged this season as they are back to 87% capacity, have a winning team and one of the smartest GM's in the game right now. Tampa has proven to be a good market if the team there is good unlike Phoenix who constantly have one of the worst attendance figures in the NHL despite the team making the playoffs the last two seasons. Carolina had an attendance percentage of over 92% the year after they won the cup and that number is teetering around 88% since then. Nashville has been about the same the last five seasons but they saw a huge increase last year. Nashville has grown a lot as a hockey market and the fact that their team has been in the playoffs six of the last seven years helps. Having the luxury of watching a team who manages to at least makes the playoffs on a small budget is part of the reason why Nashville has been celebrated as a success for southern hockey. Their fans have always had a good team to watch and they've been an attractive option for the locals there. The Canes have a Cup under their belt and have had similar attendance records to the Preds but have made the playoffs in only two of the last six years.

Most of you know how crazy the RBC Center can get when it's a sell out. Remember the playoffs? The All-Star Game? Even the game where the team retired Rod Brind'Amour's jersey drew a very big crowd. Give this fanbase something to be excited about and the seats will be filled. The Canes attendance records show that at least 80% of people will show up during a bad year but I'm sure many would like to see that number get better. The truth about hockey in these markets is that fairweather fans are the key to success because fans will be more likely to support a winning team who constantly makes the playoffs, which is what Nashville has done. Tampa and Carolina may have won the Cup before but they've been muddled by inconsistencies and mediocre seasons in between those years.

Atlanta suffered from poor attendance because their front office constantly put a sub-par team on the ice and they only made the playoffs once in their 11 year history, which resulted in them moving to Winnipeg. Florida has similar problems and it's probably even worse because they have only had one winning season in the last ten years. Nashville has developed a strong fan-base but they've had the luxury of watching a solid team for most of their franchise existence. Tampa Bay and Carolina have their die-hards, but most of their fans show up when the team is winning with Tampa's highs and lows being much more extreme than Carolina's. For the Canes and Bolts to develop a following like Nashville's, it may take a couple more consecutive playoff appearances and then we may see over 90% of the RBC Center packed again. There's no chance of these two teams failing like Atlanta did but there's still a lot of room for improvement when it comes to growing the fanbase.

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Aug
12

Jeff Skinner and Logical Fallacies

Author // Corey Sznajder

Jeff Skinner had as good of a rookie season as anyone could ask for. At the age of 19, he already has a 30 goal season under his belt, received top-six minutes and took home the Calder Trophy. Some NHL scouts called him the "best pure goal-scorer in the 2010 draft" and he definitely showed a lot of people why last year. Of course, now that he's has an outstanding rookie season under his belt, Canes fans and hockey pundits from all over are going to have even bigger expectations for him next year and with good reason. He's only 19 years old and anything less than at least a 25-goal season would be a disappointment for him and he'll be tagged with the dreaded "sophomore slump" label.

Stop right here.

First of all, the sophomore slump is probably the biggest myth that is thrown around in sports because a lot of people don't consider how one player may have been more fortunate than others in his rookie season and that a regression to the mean would occur soon. The "sophomore slump," in my mind, is one of the biggest logical fallacies thrown around in sports for this very reason and it gets thrown around in the NHL a lot when one player's counting numbers are not superior to their rookie season. There's many times I've heard where "x player wont ever top his rookie season" or "that guy really fell off after his rookie year" when the truth is that they've been a solid (or even great) player throughout their entire careers but they just had a lot of luck in their rookie season and put up ridiculous numbers then and have sort of gotten unlucky for the rest of their careers. There's a good chance that this may happen with Skinner just like it did to Tyler Myers for the first half of last season (although the second year is considerably tougher for defenseman as it's harder for coaches to shelter them as much as forwards).

Most of the time, coaches shelter their rookie players to not throw them directly into the wolves in their first year and slowly ease them into tougher assignments, which is what Maurice did with Skinner. I've stated this a few times, but he had the highest amount of draws starting in the offensive zone among the team's forwards and his line with Jussi Jokinen and Tuomo Ruutu saw middling competition compared to the rest of the team. These aren't negative comments, though. This is what a coach is supposed to do with a line which has a lot of offensive potential. What does concern me is that not only did Skinner have the easiest zone starts, he had the highest shooting percentage on the team by far with 14.4% and his on-ice shooting percentage was 10.98%, both of which are well above the league average.

Some have been using Patrick Kane's rookie season as a comparison to Skinner's as they were both 18-19 during their first years but Kane wasn't quite as fortunate as Skinner (11% shooting) and most of his points were from assists. The next year, Kane's shooting percentage decreased a lot and over half of Kane's goals came on the powerplay. It's very possible that Skinner's sophomore season may go a similar route.

A shooting percentage of 14.4% in one year is going to come down sooner or later unless Skinner can establish himself as an elite goal-scorer, which would make me all kinds of happy but I don't know how likely that is. However, Skinner shot the puck quite a bit last season too (215 attempts) and he will likely get more ice-time this season along with more time on the powerplay (where he logged a lot of minutes last year). so you can bet he's still going to get a lot of chances and if he shoots the puck at around the same rate as he did last year (>200 shots) and his shooting percentage starts to decline towards the league average (not completely sure what that is but I'm assuming it's around 9%), then he would still have at least a 20+ goal season, maybe even more.

There's a lot to be excited about with Skinner, especially since he played so well last year at a young age but it's important to remember what may have helped him have such a great rookie season and not to buy into the fallacy of a sophomore slump if things don't go his way 15-20 games into next year. He's a fantastic player who will likely be productive if he doesn't get as lucky as he did last year and if the dice continue to roll in his favor, then I will have zero problems with it.

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Aug
08

Defensive and Two-way Forwards 2010-11

Author // Corey Sznajder

Cam Charron of Flames Nation recently brought up the issue of how NHL pundits have been improperly using the term "defensive" and "two-way" forwards to describe players, mostly when it came to deciding Selke Award winners. He discusses how he feels that "the best defensive players" should be ones who play tough assignments and prevent shots sufficiently better than others. Meanwhile, two-way players are those who produce at both end of he ice. Some recent Selke winners appear to fit the latter category more than the former, which is understandable when you think about it. A player who scores more goals like Ryan Kesler or Pavel Datsyuk will get more attention than players like Tom Wandell, Paul Gaustad and Joel Ward who are terrific defensive forwards but will probably never win a Selke unless they have a 20-goal season.

He brings up a great point with this but he does bring up a point at the end of the article where he states that he judges defensive players by their adjusted Fenwick ratings and lists who each Canadian team's best defensive and two-way forwards are. The team's best players through Fenwick would be ones who gave up the least amount of non-blocked shots at even strength with some adjustments made based on where they started their shifts. Two way players are similar only they put up a considerable amount of production in the offenzive zone, as well. In the case of the Hurricanes last season, Chad LaRose had the strongest Fewncik percentage at even strength and I don't know if his 15 goals and 31 points last year is enough to consider him a two-way player. The next closest regular player who took more defensive zone starts was Eric Staal and most would consider him a two-way forward.

I decided to do this only I went by a player's shots allowed per 60 minutes while taking their corsi numbers and zone starts into consideration. Information is available at Behind The Net's stat site, like always. The players who surrendered the fewest shots per 60 minutes at even strength while taking a lot of tough draws are who I would say are the team's best defensive players, those who didn't yield a lot of shots and produced a lot of offense by this are the team's best two-players. I only used players who played 40 of their respective teams games this year to do this because anything lower would cause some pretty odd result. My original plan was to go through each team and state who their best defensive and two-way forwards are but I made some pretty interesting discoveries while doing this research so I thought I would share some of this information instead.

First, Jiri Tlusty was the team's best defensive forward last year. Yeah, that shocked me too when I saw it but he gave up the least amount of shots per 60 minutes (25.4) and started only 45% of his draws in the offensive zone. He doesn't do much to drive the play or carry momentum and ended up on the negative side of the corsi scale because of this but didn't get killed, so technically he was the team's best defensive forward when you go by shots yielded. However, he had less than 10 minutes of ice-time at even strength last year with third/fourth line minutes so that makes things a little clearer. The next best player was LaRose with 28 shots yielded per 60 minutes and he had a very solid corsi rating as well so he could be considered the team's best two-way forward. Eric Staal would have been my original answer if you had asked me yesterday but he gave up the third most shots per 60 minutes out of the Carolina forwards I sampled (31.2) but was able to generate enough offense to off-set some defensive issues he apparently had last year. I found out that a big issue with the Canes last year was that their best "defensive forwards" couldn't create much offense on their own despite not surrendering a lot of shots with tough zone starts. Dwyer, Tlusty and Sutter in particular. Also highlighted a problem that the Canes gave up way too many shots at even strength last season for me to be comfortable. Here's some things I found out about other teams by doing this study.

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Aug
04

Shea Weber's Value

Author // Corey Sznajder

Yesterday, Nashville Predators defenseman and pending free agent Shea Weber was awarded with a one-year contract worth $7.5 mil after his arbitration hearing. When any player signs a contract with that kind of cap hit, people wil always say that it's an overpayment and the team paying that kind of contract is foolish. To justify spending that kind of money on one player, that certain player has to be in an elite class for his position. In my opinion, Weber fits into that class and is arguably a top-three defenseman in the league right now. This is why I do not have a problem with Weber receiving this kind of salary and why I think he will be worth it.

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Jul
26

Did Montreal Screw Up With The Josh Gorges Extension?

Author // Corey Sznajder

About a week ago, the Montreal Canadiens signed 26-year-old defenseman Josh Gorges to a one-year contract extension worth $2.5 mil. This was met with a mixed reaction as some thought that Gorges was someone the Habs should lock-up long-term because of how big of a role he plays both on and off the ice. On the other side, there are some who were fine with him only getting a one-year extension because he is less than a year removed from knee surgery and it was revealed that he has been playing on a torn ACL since 2003. Which was the right way to go here? When looking at the Habs future cap situation, GM Pierre Gauthier may have been better with giving Gorges at least a two-year extension.

After next season, Gorges, PK Subban, Carey Price and Lars Eller will all be free agents, Gorges being unrestricted so now Gauthier will have to find a way to extend all four of them. While that's one problem, something else that didn't reflect well on him was his decision to re-sign Andrei Markov to a three-year deal worth $17.25 mil. Markov missed almost the entire 2010-11 season with a serious knee injury and has played only 52 games the last two seasons. People who are saying that Gorges health was the reason that he didn't get signed long term need to look at Markov's deal and wonder why he was given such a big contract despite being very injury prone the last two seasons. It definitely raises some questions. I decided to take a look at the Canadiens top defensemen sorted by quality of competition (props to Behind The Net for the stats) over the last four seasons and it didn't indicate to me that Gorges is any less important than Markov and vice-versa but it did show some interesting things regarding Montreal's blue line.

Both Markov and Gorges ranked in the top 24 in all four of the seasons that were recorded here (although Markov's most recent season shouldn't count as he only played in 7 games). The difference is that Markov's assignments got softer in the 2009-10 season as he began to be used in more offensive situations while Gorges' assignments have gotten tougher every year. I expect this pattern to continue because Markov is coming off two serious injuries and Gorges is finally playing on a healthy knee. The question of whether or not Markov will perform up to his $5.75 mil per year salary is still up in the air because he played well in all of his most recent seasons but there has to be some concern about how much injuries will effect his play over the next three years, especially since he will be 35 at the end of the contract. Gorges is still 26 and extending him to a contract with a cap hit of $2.5 mil for the next two season shouldn't ahve been that big of a dent even if his play level decreased.

Going back to the table, one other interesting thing I saw is just how many guys that were heavily depended on could leave Montreal in the next year. Jaroslav Spacek and Hall Gill are free agents after next season and will probably be gone because of their age. Roman Hamrlik was a huge part of this Habs blue line and he left via free agency this year (he was 38 though) and James Wisniewski's rites were traded as the Habs felt they couldn't re-sign him despite having a great season in Montreal (think the Markov signing had a lot to do with that). PK Subban is also a free agent next year but I think he will be re-signed and then there's Gorges whose future in Montreal still appears to be up in the air. The Habs D should be fine for next season with their current staff but after that, things could get dicey and it's possible that Gauthier may have to consider a rebuild project with this.

So, to answer the question in the headline, I do not think that Gauthier completely screwed up with signing Gorges for only one season as Montreal doesn't appear to be in cap trouble next off-season as it stands now ($26 mil in space), but he could have made his life A LOT easier for when he has to give new deals to Price, Subban and Eller along with Gorges if he gave him a multi-year deal. This and the Markov signing doesn't reflect too well on him at the moment.

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Jul
25

A Full Season of Bryan Allen

Author // Corey Sznajder

One of my favorite trades the Canes made last season was sending pending UFA Sergei Samsonov to the Florida Panthers in exchange for defenseman Bryan Allen. Why I was a fan of this move so much was because Samsonov's role with the team decreased after the acquisition of Cory Stillman and the emergence of Jeff Skinner while Allen filled a big need for the team; a physical stay-at-home defenseman. As I stated in my errors post, Tim Gleason was the team's best defensive defenseman and had the most difficult assignments. The guy who got the next toughest competition was Joe Corvo, who is more valued for his offensive abilities than play in his own zone and he was on ice for a lot of goals as a result. The Canes needed another stay-at-home guy who could play a lot of tough minutes to take some pressure on Gleason and Allen gives them that. He played decently during his 19 game stretch in Carolina but the Canes have him under contract for another year (another reason why I liked the trade) so what can we expect from Allen over an 82 game course?

Season TOI/60 CorsiRelQOC Corsi Rel GA/60 SA/60 OZ% P/TAKE P/DRAW
2007-08 16:38 1.356 -3.4 2.22 31.4 48.2 0.9 0.4
2009-10 16:26 0.252 -3.3 2.57 32.4 40.5 1 0.5
2010-11 15:39 0.594 -6.9 2.98 30.8 45.3 1.1 0.4

Note: CorsiRelQoC = Corsi Relative to Quality of Competition, Corsi Rel = Relative Corsi, GA/60 = Goals allowed per 60 mins, SA/60 = Shots allowed per 60 mins., OZ% = Offensive zone start percentage, P/TAKE = penalties taken per 60 mins, P/DRAW = penalties drawn per 60 mins.

Note 2: Bryan Allen didn't play in all but two games of the 2008-09 season due to a serious knee injury.

This is Bryan Allen's player card from Gabe Desjardins' Behind The Net stat side (which everyone should check out) and it gives a good idea of what Allen's role was with Florida (and 19 games with Carolina) and how he performed during that time. As you can tell from the low zone start percentage and high QoC numbers, Allen was a heavy-lifter as a part of the Panthers. Him along with Jay Boumeester and Keith Ballard were the defensemen who got the toughtest assignments in Florida in the first two seasons listed above. However, in Allen's last season in Florida, the young duo of Jason Garrison and Mike Weaver took over as Florida's "shut-down" pair and made Allen (and Dennis Wideman) expandable to the Panthers who, at the time, were trying to save money. However, you can see that his numbers look slightly worse than they did in the previous years. He was on ice for more goals and his relative corsi is higher, as well. On the flipside, he still got a lot of tough assignments and was on ice for less shots allowed per 60 minutes. Health may also be a concern as Allen is 30 and is only two years removed from a serious knee injury which kept him out for nearly an entire season.

When I looked at defensive errors, Alllen was only somewhat responsible for six of the 19 goals he was on ice for, which isn't bad at all. The question is can he continue to be a solid stay-at-home defenseman while playing more minutes and facing tougher competition. With the Hurricanes, he was paried mostly with Jay Harrison and Derek Joslin and wasn't playing top minutes. However, with Joe Corvo gone and Tomas Kaberle added, someone is going to have to make-up for all of those short-handed minutes that Crovo left behind. That someone will likely be Allen and you can expect him to possibly get top-4 minutes. Pitkanen didn't play that many minutes on the PK, neither did McBain and Kaberle wasn't relied on for penalty killing that much in Toronto or Boston. The guys who got the bulk of PK minutes for the Canes last season were Gleason, Corvo, Harrison and Allen while was here. Either Harrison starts playing against tougher competition or I think it will be Allen who takes the extra responsibilities on the penalty kill.

The question is where people think he will fit in the lineup. Personally, I could see him being paired with Gleason to give the Canes a potential "shut-down pair" but a more likely option would be ot put him with Pitkanen or McBain to have a nice balance in the pairings. Another good question would be which defenseman sits for game 1 because there's seven worthy defensemen on the roster and only six spots. A positive thought with this is that the Canes appear to have a pretty solid defense corps if things go right for them.

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Jul
22

"Fancy Stats" and Why They Are Important

Author // Corey Sznajder

With the expanding popularity of corsi and scoring chance statistics in the hockey community, there's been a bit of a backlash by those who prefer to judge what they see by observations instead. There's no problem with that but when they throw out accusations like "you people with your fancy stats probably don't even watch the games" or "the numbers don't show what happened on the ice accurately" when you present data that goes against one of their beliefs is where I start to draw some problems. What irritates me the most is there's a lot of people who go against stats like corsi without knowing what it is or what it represents. I mentioned in my last post about Erik Cole that a poor corsi rating does not mean a player is bad, it means that he may not be as good as the 26 goals he scored say he is. To get a better understanding of this, let's discuss corsi and scoring chances and why hockey statisticians like Gabe Desjardins, Derek Zona and Scott Reynolds put as much value into them as they do.

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