Memorial Cup Game 1 Zone Entries

Trying something new for the Memorial Cup. Rather than my usual of recording scoring chances I decided to take a stab at tracking zone entries. A zone entry is how the team got across the blue line into the offensive zone. Since I'm new to this I only tracked dump-ins and carry-ins. I deemed an entry a success if the team was able to get a shot attempt before the puck left the zone. We care about zone entries because of the great work done by Eric Tulsky, who has shown that (NHL) teams generate more shots when the puck is carried into the zone rather than when it is dumped in.

As I do more of this I hope to be able to track more plays as well as individual players, as zone data like this is good way to evaluate defencemen.  You can see what players are being targeted with zone entries and how they are able to prevent chances. For now though just team data.

Team	Dump In*	Success Rate	Carry In*	Success Rate	Other*	Success Rate
London	27	15%	36	75%	11	64%
Val d’Or	23	4%	33	61%	12	42%

 *Even Strength Only

In looking at these numbers its clear London had the better game. They had more success on all zone entries. However they were  unable to beat Val d'Or goalie Antoine Bibeau, who was spectacular in stopping all 51 shots he faced.

This is a very short tournament but this game bodes well for the future success of London. If they can fire 50 shots a night they are going to win more often than not. Val d'Or got the win but needs to improve on getting shots after gaining the zone, particularly when they dump it in. They need to either stop dumping in or try to be better along the boards to create turnovers and retrieve the puck back.

I am looking forward to watching these teams again to see if they continue and make the adjustments they need to as the tournament progresses.

Counting Cards at the Draft – USHL Defencemen

For those who are new to this series I would recommend part one on NCAA defencemen and part two on high school defencemen. Those will both give you an idea of my methodology .  

Today we are looking at defencemen drafted out of the USHL. I am using all USHL drafted defencemen from 1999-2009, excluding players who played in the United States Development Program (they will get their own piece).  This sample size was again small with only 59 players, but I believe the results still provide a good estimate of what players are likely to succeed. Without further ado the graphs:

The dots seem to take off right between 0.6 and 0.8, so dividing the graph into quadrants at 0.7 and 40% provides:

Obviously only two successes is not ideal, but what is a positive is the 46 players below the 0.7 who failed. Clearly some scoring is needed to have a chance at succeeding at the NHL level.  Those who scored above 0.7 and failed and those who succeeded despite being below 0.7 need to be examined to see why and how they failed/succeeded.

How They Missed

-Colby Cohen (45^th overall, 2007) and Brett Skinner (68^th overall, 2002) were both traded and went to Europe to find stability.

 -Mike Vannelli (136^th overall, 2003) had a decent college career (0.55 ppg) but never received a rookie contract and went to Europe

 -Scott Polaski (180^th overall, 2001) played some RW in his draft season leading to the high point totals.

 -Jeff Finger (240^th overall, 1999) he likely would have been a success if not for the massive deal he signed with the Toronto Maple Leafs. Was sent to the AHL due to his large cap hit.

How They Made it

 -Tom Gilbert (129^th overall, 2002), Chris Butler (96^th overall, 2005) and Jeff Petry (45^th overall, 2006) all saw their scoring improve in the NCAA.

 -Andrew Alberts (179^th overall, 2001) didn’t have a great NCAA career (0.44ppg) but showed flashes including 22 points in 39 games his sophomore season.

 -Matt Greene (44^th overall, 2002) he is the exception to this as he never showed any ability to score at any level, but was big and physical which kept him around.

John Moore was also in this group but he had 0.68 ppg which is close enough to be deemed a success.

2014 Draft Eligible USHL Defensemen as per Central Scouting’s final ranking.  

Player	Rank	GP	Goals	Assists	Points	PPG
Joshua Jacobs	43	56	5	18	23	0.41
Brandon Montour	92	60	14	48	62	1.03
Mark Friedman	124	51	10	30	40	0.78
Neil Pionk	146	54	2	21	23	0.43
Ryan Mantha	149	53	3	12	15	0.28
Hunter Warner	206	43	2	10	12	0.28

Brandon Montour and Mark Friedman are the only two players I would consider drafting. Montour is older as he is a 1994 birthday which explains why his ranking is low. I would still take a shot on him especially if he slips in the draft due to his age. Friedman is likely to go in the fifth round but by this study, has a chance to make the NHL. The other players should be avoided as their likelihood of success is very low.

This study again shows that players who find NHL success are the ones who have proven they can put up points at lower levels. Brandon Montour and Mark Friedman are both on the path to NHL success, and could be draft day steals. For those players who fell below the 0.7 points per game, their NCAA seasons should be monitored closely to see if their scoring rates improve.

All stats gathered from elite prospects and hockey data base, and information on players from Hockey’s Future.

OHL Final Fancy Stats

Rather than continue with game recaps I decided to do a series recap and include some fancy stats that I can easily generate. I thought this would give us a good idea of if the better team won. From watching the games and recording the scoring chance data I would say yes the better team won. Guelph was dominate in game 3 and 4. 

In game 3 they had the scoring chance edge and shot edge but Jake Smith was up to the task. North Bay held a one goal lead late into the third period. Guelph needed some puck luck late with goals by Zack Mitchell and Brock McGinn to win that game. In game 4 basically the same thing happened however Smith was not going to have a spectacular performance again and Guelph won 10-1.  In game 5 much like in game three, Guelph needed two late goals this time both from Kerby Rychel to win the game and the series. Guelph advances to the Memorial Cup in London. Interesting about this run by Guelph is that they won every series in 5 games, a very dominating performance. With that here are the fancy stats for Guelph and 

North Bay.

Team	SF%	SH%	SV%	PDO	SCF%	GF%
North Bay	54%	14%	0.913	105	67%	65%
Guelph	46%	9%	0.864	95	33%	35%

Most of them are pretty straight forward. PDO is a luck basic metric which is an addition of shooting percentage (SH%) and save percentage (SV%). A team with normal luck will have a PDO of 100. Anything above or below that, the team has been lucky or unlucky. As you can see Guelph had the higher PDO, which attains to their high shooting percentage.

It’s clear from these numbers that the better team won this series. Guelph had the higher shot percentage (SF%) as well as generating more scoring chances (SCF%). They controlled the puck for the majority of this series. North Bay was in this series because of the excellent goal tending for Jake Smith, with the obvious exception of game 4.

Interesting to note, in winning the OHL, Guelph won every series four games to one. I am very excited to see how this team performs against the best in the Memorial Cup.

The Memorial Cup starts this Friday, May 16 with London taking on QMJHL champs Val d’Or.       

Counting Cards at the Draft – High School Defencemen

In part one of this series I looked at NCAA defencemen determine if a players point total in his draft season had any sort of predictive value for an NHL career. Turns out that there is some merit to that and the estimated points per game is roughly 0.6. I have followed the same methodology in that post but this time am looking at high school defencemen.

First off I would like to point out that my sample size is unfortunately rather small. There haven’t been many defencemen selected out of US high schools, just 60 players in total. Since we are dealing with high schools some statistics are simply unavailable. I was unable to find stats for 20 of the 60 players which cut an already small sample size down even further. Take what follows with a grain of salt due to the small sample size.  

To determine who was drafted out of high school I simply sorted the players by team and league and selected the players who team or league said H.S. This time I used the time period of 1999-2009. I gathered the points per game data from elite prospects.com, and games played data from hockey database. Plotting these points gives up the following:      

To me it looks like the dots begin to take off around 1.5 points per game. Dividing the graph into quadrants at 40% of eligible games played and 1.5 ppg provides the following:

As you can see the majority of players who didn’t make the NHL fell below the 1.5 ppg. That’s an encouraging sign. However the concern here is that the percentage of players in the bottom right quadrant is higher than previous studies. Those players need to be looked at individually to see why and how they failed.

How they Missed:

-         - R.J. Anderson (101^st overall, 2004), Michael Gergen (61^st overall, 2005), Joe Gleason (192^nd overall, 2008) and Alex Velischek (123^rd overall, 2009); all did not carry their scoring touch over to the NCAA.

-          -Andy Sertich (136^th overall, 2004). He split time between defence and forward which would explain why his ppg was so high.

-          -Dan Spang (52^nd overall, 2002). He was in a severe car accident his draft season and dealt with concussion issues, which might explain why his scoring didn’t carry over to college.

-          -Aaron Ness (40^th overall, 2008). He is still trying to establish himself in the NHL. Played in 20 games this season for the Islanders, and at 23 years old may still have a (slight) chance to become an NHL regular.

-          -Brian Lee (9^th overall, 2005). Missed the entire 2013-14 season with an ACL injury. Would have come close to the 40% requirement had he been healthy. Has already played in 209 NHL games.

Jake Gardiner was excluded from this list as he just missed being an NHL regular (36%) but it’s clear he has an NHL job going forward, health provided.        

How They Made it:

There were only two players to fall below 1.5 and have NHL success. They were Ryan McDonagh and Nick Leddy. Not really surprising that these two players worked out. Both were quite close to the 1.5 cut-off (1.43 and 1.45 respectively), and were first rounders’ (12^th and 16^th overall).

2014 Draft Eligible High School Defensemen as per Central Scouting’s final ranking.

Player	Rank	GP	Goals	Assists	Points	PPG
Luc Snuggerud	42	25	8	30	38	1.52
Matthew Berkovitz	61	24	11	26	37	1.54
Miles Gendron	74	22	6	13	19	0.86
Nick Wolff	89	23	8	12	20	0.87
Tyler Nanne	118	25	7	20	27	1.08
Jonathan Barry	147	27	5	29	34	1.25
Michael Lee	156	28	7	21	28	1.00
Billy Sweezey	177	28	8	20	28	1.00
John-Claude Brassard	203	27	11	32	43	1.59

The steal of the list looks to be John-Claude Brassard. As the highest scoring player on the list at 1.59 ppg, he is projected to go in the 7^th round, if he even gets drafted at all. He is definitely worth the gamble in the 7^th or even 6^th round.  Luc Snuggerud and Matthew Berkovitz also have a chance to become NHL regulars. I would avoid all other players on this list as they simply don’t have the point production necessary to be worth taking a chance on. The likelihood of success is too low in my opinion.

To conclude this study continues to support the claim that players who make the NHL are the ones who are producing points as amateurs. In the upcoming draft I would target players such as John-Claude Brassard as he has put up the highest points per game total among high school defencemen who are likely to be drafted. One thing to watch for with these players is how they perform in the NCAA in the years following the draft. If they fail to put up points in college they are likely going to be busts despite their high school numbers.

All stats gathered from elite prospects and hockey database, and information about the players from hockey's future.

OHL Finals Game 2 – North Bay vs. Guelph

Before the game I tweeted my keys to the game. For Guelph I said they need to get there big line of Kerby Rychel, Robert Fabbri and ZachMitchell going. For North Bay I said they needed to dominate play and keep Guelph’s chances to the outside.  

Through the first period each of these keys held true. For North Bay they dominated the first ten minutes of this game. They had tons of zone time and all sorts of shots. However many of the shots were from the outside and credit to Guelph for keeping the North Bay players out of the slot. Guelph was on their heels for the most part but had a 1-0 lead on an early goal by Steven Trojanovic from a terrible angle. They extended the lead to 2-0 when Fabbri scored on what should have been a pass to Mitchell. The North Bay goalie Jake Smith tipped the puck into the net.  Fabbri was very impressive this period, not only with the goal but also in drawing a penalty as he intercepted a clearing attempt and used his speed to get into the slot drawing a hooking penalty. This is something I have become fascinated with in watching Boone Jenner play for Columbus. The ability to draw a penalty and get your team on a power play is huge for any team.

Second period was a tale of two halves even more than the first. North Bay had 7 scoring chances in the period with 6 of them coming before the ten minute mark in the period. From that point on, Guelph had the chance advantage with 5 of their 6 chances coming after the ten minute mark. Fabbri scored his second of the night this one a much nicer goal than the first. A good wrist shot that beat Smith short side. The two goals give Fabbri, the 21^st ranked player on CSS list, 11 goals for the postseason.

The third period was very tight defensively for both teams. Chances were 5-4 for Guelph but only 3-2 at even strength. Nick Paulcapitalized on a delay of game penalty by Trojanovic, to send the game into OT. And in OT much like game one, did not last very long. Barclay Goodrow the captain of the Battalion scored 2:30 into the OT period.

Overall this was a very good game for the Battalion. They did exactly what I laid out in my key to the game. They were dominate in the shot count finishing the game with a 41-24 advantage. They limited the shots and chances of the Guelph snipers. For Guelph they completed half of my key as Fabbri got going with two goals, where Rychel only had one assist. Guelph is going to have to create more pressure and chances to win this series as Justin Nichols can’t be making 35+ saves every night.

Scoring Chances     

Team	First Period	Second Period	Third Period	OT	Total
North Bay	4(3)	7(5)	4(2)	1(1)	16(11)
Guelph	6(5)	6(6)	5(3)	0(0)	17(14)

OHL Finals Game 1 – North Bay vs Guelph

Guelph came out flying in this game. Kerby Rychel registered the first scoring chances not even ten seconds into the game. Guelph dominated the first period out-shooting the North Bay Battalion 16-6 in the first. Scoring chances were equally lopsided 10-3 for Guelph.  Despite all the Storm pressure, Battalion goalie Jake Smith stood tall making all the saves to keep the game scoreless.

The second period saw North Bay take over the shot count, as they out shot Guelph in the period 12-7. Guelph did a job of keeping those shots to the outside and the point as North Bay only generated four scoring chances with three at even strength. Guelph only had seven shots in the period but made the most of them recording six scoring chances. Ben Thompson scored the first goal of the game on the power play to give the Battalion the lead. The lead was short lived as Brock McGinn scored a minute later to tie the game up. McGinn the Carolina second rounder could be in for a big series as he is one of the more rested guys on the Storm. If you remember he was suspended 8 games for his hit on Conner Sills of Plymouth in round one.

The third saw more of the same for North Bay as they again dominated the shot count, 15-6 in the period. They also out chanced the Storm 7-6 in the period and 6-5 at even strength. The Storm again made the most of their shots. North Bay took the lead again when Jamie Lewis scored a fluke goal from the circle on a weak shot. Guleph again tied it up with a goal from overager Zach Mitchell. The game remained tied at the end of third and this game was off to OT.

OT did not last very long as Jason Dickenson scored 57 seconds in to give Guelph the victory in game one. Game two goes tonight at 7 pm.

Scoring Chances

Team	First Period	Second Period	Third Period	OT	Total
North Bay	3(3)	4(3)	7(6)	0(0)	14(12)
Guelph	10(9)	6(4)	6(5)	0(0)	22(18)