There needs to be a meme with Dave Chappelle dressed like Rick James saying, "WE SHOULDA NEVER GAVE YOU MUTHAF****** CORSI!"
Corsi is a good, valuable stat. But to use shot differential to judge teams (and especially individual players) as good or bad, is lazy. Even when considering that it only accounts for 5v5 play, cutting out a ton of a minutes per game.
Hunwick, Boyle, and John Moore were our best Corsi defensemen last season. Yeah...
Rangers are usually a good shot differential team, except last year where, whatever we did, we compensated for less shots and worse shot suppression with more goals. Call it luck - I call it smarter playmaking and more confidence as a unit - but to do that over 82 games is no accident. Some really good Corsi teams, even teams who were great at shot differential in the playoffs, lost out.
Meanwhile, most everyone considers our defense to be the best in hockey, or right up there. Face it, we're VERY comfortable at handling pressure when pinned in our own end. Makes for crappy shot differential, yeah, but if we can make life difficult for shooters so that Hank doesn't have to make too many difficult saves or face too many rebounds, then the puck stays out and we win the game, end of story. The shot-spamming Islanders don't get pinned too much, they just let up odd-man rushes and fail to kill penalties. YAY CORSI!
Same line of reasoning we always get from Puck Daddy writers, but if there was a Corsi for writing ability, they would be Dan Girardi to TSN's Jake Muzzin. Yahoo plays them too many minutes.