2011 2012 player usage charts

[Nizdizzle]

It's really interesting to see which teams had their top offensive players also in the shutdown role (San Jose, St. Louis, Anaheim, Boston, Colorado, Detroit, LA, etc.) and which sheltered them with easy minutes (Vancouver, Chicago, Carolina, Dallas, Edmonton, Winnipeg, Washington, Ottawa, NYI, etc.).

Let me use this opportunity to vindicate my appreciation for Grabovski. I get laughed at when I say his contract is good and that he's Toronto's best forward besides Kessel, but the guy is truly great.

Another surprise was Nikitin and Tyutin. I always knew Tyutin was an awesome player, but I didn't know just how good.

And lastly, the Selke belongs to David Backes. He is a truly amazing, amazing player.

Very few Toronto fans would laugh at that notion. Its all these HF "experts" who pretend to know everything about the Leafs that find it funny.

 

[zytz]

It's really interesting to see which teams had their top offensive players also in the shutdown role (San Jose, St. Louis, Anaheim, Boston, Colorado, Detroit, LA, etc.) and which sheltered them with easy minutes (Vancouver, Chicago, Carolina, Dallas, Edmonton, Winnipeg, Washington, Ottawa, NYI, etc.).

Let me use this opportunity to vindicate my appreciation for Grabovski. I get laughed at when I say his contract is good and that he's Toronto's best forward besides Kessel, but the guy is truly great.

Another surprise was Nikitin and Tyutin. I always knew Tyutin was an awesome player, but I didn't know just how good.

And lastly, the Selke belongs to David Backes. He is a truly amazing, amazing player.

Are you referring strictly to zone starts? Most CHI forwards had s pretty high QoC

 

[Juxtaposer]

Very few Toronto fans would laugh at that notion. Its all these HF "experts" who pretend to know everything about the Leafs that find it funny.

Grabovski is an amazing player by counting stats, advanced stats, and the eye test. He's criminally underrated around here because any time a Leaf fan mentions how good he is, everyone just laughs and brushes it off as a 'typical Leaf fan' overrating their player. But there are a number of guys that I'd take Grabovski over that I've been laughed at quite a few time for.

Are you referring strictly to zone starts? Most CHI forwards had s pretty high QoC

I'm referring to the fact that Bolland gets the tough, shutdown matchups. Yes, Chicago forwards (specifically Toews and Hossa) are very good two way players, but they aren't playing in particularly difficult situations. If a player is player against top competition but also starting at about 60% in the o-zone, it doesn't surprise me to see another center on the team getting the same tough comp, but starting a large majority in the d-zone. It's obvious that Coach Q does his matchups on zonestarts, primarily.

TL;DR, I have a hard time accepting people advocating giving people like Toews and Hossa Selkes because of how much they start in the o-zone.

 

[Pietraneglo222]

It's really interesting to see which teams had their top offensive players also in the shutdown role (San Jose, St. Louis, Anaheim, Boston, Colorado, Detroit, LA, etc.) and which sheltered them with easy minutes (Vancouver, Chicago, Carolina, Dallas, Edmonton, Winnipeg, Washington, Ottawa, NYI, etc.).

Let me use this opportunity to vindicate my appreciation for Grabovski. I get laughed at when I say his contract is good and that he's Toronto's best forward besides Kessel, but the guy is truly great.

Another surprise was Nikitin and Tyutin. I always knew Tyutin was an awesome player, but I didn't know just how good.

And lastly, the Selke belongs to David Backes. He is a truly amazing, amazing player.

Spezza and Karlsson had the highest QoC... They only had >50% zone starts because the team as a whole is good at possession so pretty much everyone was >50.

 

[PocketNines]

Marcel Goc, whoa. Tomas Holmstrom is nearly Parros-Janssen bad per these charts. Chris Stewart sticks out like a sore thumb on the Blues. Colaiacovo's rating is PURELY Pietrangelo, totally deceptive. Would like to see Berglund's charting pre & post All-Star break.

Datsyuk, Backes and Bergeron clearly deserve the Selke finalist nods. Staal is way up there too but he only managed 62 games.

 

[BlueDream]

Marcel Goc, whoa. Tomas Holmstrom is nearly Parros-Janssen bad per these charts. Chris Stewart sticks out like a sore thumb on the Blues. Colaiacovo's rating is PURELY Pietrangelo, totally deceptive. Would like to see Berglund's charting pre & post All-Star break.

Datsyuk, Backes and Bergeron clearly deserve the Selke finalist nods. Staal is way up there too but he only managed 62 games.

Stewart's rating isn't that bad, it's what I expected or even a little better. He's not a great defensive player because he's just an offensive-minded guy period, but he's not exactly out of place.

 

[PocketNines]

Stewart's rating isn't that bad, it's what I expected or even a little better. He's not a great defensive player because he's just an offensive-minded guy period, but he's not exactly out of place.

We don't agree. I think it's horrible. Look at it. Protected by getting the most offensive zone starts of any of the top six type forwards and he's a huge white bubble. Only Schwartz and Grachev who played a handful of games have a bigger white bubble AND Stewart is way to the right on that graph. Backes, Oshie, Perron, Berglund, McDonald, Steen, and Sobotka 1) ALL faced harder opposition; 2) ALL were clearly less sheltered; and 3) ALL had a better shots for/shots against ratio than Stewart. Considering that Stewart overlapped with those guys a ton, think of how much worse he had to be to be that big an outlier relative to them. Berglund wasn't great but his bubble is higher and to the left. Top left blue bubbles are elite two way players, big bottom right white bubbles are the worst players in the NHL (e.g., take a look at Anthony Stewart). Being a top right white bubble is better than a bottom right white bubble, but Stewart's not that far into the top half. My season-long argument is that Stewart is badly out of place in Hitchcock's system. They don't trust him defensively and with good reason – even protected with a very high offensive zone start percentage compared with the other skill forwards he still was a significant drag in the shots for/shots against ratio when he was on the ice.

 

[Vavonia]

Jovanovski

 

[InjuredChoker]

Man this is awesome, props for the OP.

 

[Micklebot]

Spezza and Karlsson had the highest QoC... They only had >50% zone starts because the team as a whole is good at possession so pretty much everyone was >50.

QFT, only 7 players on the sens had under 50% offensive zone starts (5v5) and of them 3 played under half the season,

Zone starts is a pretty deceptive stat out of context. Ottawa as a team started 54.7% of the time in the offensive zone, so while a player like Spezza had 59.3% (+4.6) of his starts in the offensive end, it's not as significant as D.Sedin/H.Sedin, who's team only started 47.1% of the time in the offensive zone, and had personal OZ starts of 79.6 and 78.6 (+32.5/+31.5) respectively.

Raw Zone start stats can be useful in hinting at what situations the player played in, but comparing their zone starts relative to the teams gives a better idea of how the coach uses the players; unfortunately, to my knowledge, there isn't a site that publishes that stat so you have to do the math yourself.

 

[PocketNines]

As this charting goes forward and its presentation is tweaked, it would be useful to see some allowance for guys who tend to have accurate shots. For example, David Perron. Perron shot over 18% this year and while that's high for his career, his career average is just under 14% which is outstanding. So this is always going to punish a player like him. Being a highly accurate shooter is more valuable than not being an accurate shooter, and I'd like to see a way these charts take a factor like that into account in the future. (On the Toronto page, Kessel's line was dinged for this reason.)

 

[Micklebot]

As this charting goes forward and its presentation is tweaked, it would be useful to see some allowance for guys who tend to have accurate shots. For example, David Perron. Perron shot over 18% this year and while that's high for his career, his career average is just under 14% which is outstanding. So this is always going to punish a player like him. Being a highly accurate shooter is more valuable than not being an accurate shooter, and I'd like to see a way these charts take a factor like that into account in the future. (On the Toronto page, Kessel's line was dinged for this reason.)

Not sure I follow you; While there is no argument his shooting percentage is a positive, the team takes less shots when he is on the ice than when he isn't. Since it measures team shots (not personal shots), this is likely more of a detriment to the team then if he were to have a slightly lower shooting percentage (just my opinion). The two could relate, for example if he holds out for the perfect shot, passing up on many opportunities to shoot, his rel corsi would drop and his personal shooting percentage would rise.

 

[Talks to Goalposts]

As this charting goes forward and its presentation is tweaked, it would be useful to see some allowance for guys who tend to have accurate shots. For example, David Perron. Perron shot over 18% this year and while that's high for his career, his career average is just under 14% which is outstanding. So this is always going to punish a player like him. Being a highly accurate shooter is more valuable than not being an accurate shooter, and I'd like to see a way these charts take a factor like that into account in the future. (On the Toronto page, Kessel's line was dinged for this reason.)

There is a big difference between personal shooting percentage and team on-ice shooting percentage. A player controls his own shooting and its a talent albeit one that fluctuates greatly year to year. Plus it includes powerplay shooting which is a different animal than 5 on 5 shooting.

Almost no players in the league have a strong enough effect on their team on ice shooting on 5 on 5 to be noticeable year to year. That list is maybe 10-15 players deep. For the bulk of NHL players its something that can be largely ignored.

That Kessel's line converted at a better rate than normal is actually a pretty good reason to expect their scoring to go down next year as they revert to the mean.

 

[DanZ]

Shows that even in the last season of his career, Lidstrom was still a baller