Also I am not a fancy-stat person so can someone explain what the graph should represent? and how does it compensate while comparing a player on a championship team vs players from the worst team? ty
The chart is basically a send up - my take on Sabres with similar value to Richards. Corsi relative is best used comparing players' on the same team effectiveness at driving possession.
You should ignore it unless you want to see how Flynn compares to Mitchell.
If you compare Richards to his teammates, you will find he gets almost the highest offensive zone starts, faces lower competition and has much worse possession numbers.
Outside of the 2012 playoffs, he has been the six million dollar passenger. For a peak at a Kings blogger's evaluation of Richards' seasons (with some advance stats and explanations)
look here:
2012,
2013,
2014
FYI - you can find Corsi numbers that take into account score/situation - "Close" , leading by 1, trailing by 1, etc. at
stats.hockeyanalysis.com
When it comes to Mike Richards I am not sure a stat comparison is the way to go. Richards can go two ways. He can continue to party and have a good time and take 1M salary(most washups are offered) in the NHL or he can in the off season decide he wants to be a good NHL player again and get together with someone like Gary Roberts for off season training. There is two outcomes.
Dean Lombardi thought pride, competitiveness, being a winner were more important that stats last summer as well.
Past performance/intangibles overshadowed the current and projected future state of Richards' abilities/game in summer 2014. So far it has not worked out well.
After making a commitment to Lombardi/the Kings, Richards supposedly worked out hard all last summer so conditioning should not have been an issue
at the beginning of this season. Yet Richards role and TOI dropped each month. Richards under performed his salary and his teammates his entire time in LA
and that downward spiral quicken in the last 1.5 seasons. Richard is just the husk of the player he was in Philly. Paying him a $1M
is only an option if the Kings buy him out.