Month: August 2014

Save Percentage vs the Experts: Do shots against inflate a goaltender’s save percentage?

Garret Hohl Theory Tags: , , , , 6 Comments

Curtesy of Wikipedia Commons

I’ve seen many statistical articles look at different ways to determine whether or not shot volume inflates a goaltender’s save percentage; however, I’ve never been satisfied with the methods used, regardless of the outcomes. So, I finally went and looked at the data myself.

It’s been seven months since I’ve written anything on save percentage. With all that wait, you’d think I’d give you a big, long, and in-depth article… but I won’t. 

I had one planned, but accidentally lost all my data. Of course, errors always come in clumps. Instead of recovering the lost data, I ended up permanently removing it. To make matters worse, extraskater.com going black made the information a hassle to manually extract again. I probably could write a code (or get someone else) to draw up the information again… but I still have one piece remaining from the original data: the graph.

What is this graph of? What does it mean? Continue reading →

Value of Corsi possession measured in goals

Garret Hohl Theory Tags: , , , Leave a comment

The average on-ice shooting and save percentages a player experiences tends to be influenced by their average time on ice per game. This relationship likely occurs due to a combination of factors: shooting talents of linemates and opponent, defensive talents of linemates and opponent, system and psychological effects, and an effect I like to call “streak effects”.
(See bottom for discussion on these effects)

Regardless of the reasons why, these effects indicate that not all Corsi percentages are created equal in impact. This has been discussed previously on Hockey-Graphs both here and here. So, can we measure this difference in impact? Continue reading →

How well do Plus Possession Rookie D-Men do in their next few years?

garik16 Theory Tags: , , , , Leave a comment

There is nothing perhaps more encouraging to fans of struggling teams than to see a rookie D-Man come up and put up big numbers right out of the gate.  I speak of course, not just about goals and assists – in this case I refer to good possession #s (Corsi, Fenwick, and the relative versions thereabout).  Fans of the Oilers (Marincin), Leafs (Rielly), Isles (de Haan, Donovan), etc, all seem to have higher hopes than they might’ve otherwise due to how well their rookie D has performed.  After all, a top pair D Man (under control for cheap for years to come) can have such a great impact and they are extremely hard to find on the free market (or trade market).

But can these standout rookie D keep up their great performances?  After all, we always hear about the so-called “sophomore slump” and it’s not like players disappointing after great rookie years is that uncommon.  How certain can we be about the futures of rookie D-Men who come up and right away show strong possession #s?  Let’s see how similar rookie D the last few years did.

Continue reading →