2009 NHL Review Alan Ryder Hockeyanalytics.Com

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2009 NHL Review Alan Ryder HockeyAnalytics.com

Table of Contents

Introduction 3 Player Contribution ...... 3 PC Basics ...... 3 Threshold Performance ...... 4 Situational PC ...... 5 The Currency of PC ...... 6 Team Performances 8 Lucky and Unlucky Teams ...... 8 Offense ...... 9 Shots and Shot Quality ...... 11 Defense ...... 12 Goaltending ...... 15 The Shootout ...... 18 Top Individual Performances 21 Forwards ...... 21 Defensive Forwards ...... 25 Defensemen ...... 28 Defensive Defensemen ...... 32 Goaltenders ...... 35 Clean Play ...... 37 Rookies ...... 40 Shootout ...... 42 All Star Contributions 44 NHL ...... 44 East ...... 45 West ...... 45 Rookie ...... 46 Green ...... 47 Grey ...... 47 Offense ...... 48 Defense ...... 50 Even Handed ...... 51 Power Play ...... 52 Short Handed ...... 53 Most Valuable Performances ...... 54 All Cap Roster ...... 55 Hall of Fame Watch 59

Introduction

This review is focused on the most outstanding individual performances in the NHL during the 2008-09 (“2009”) season. But I will also comment on certain aspects of team performance since individual performances are difficult to assess without understanding the team context.

My tool for measuring individual player impact is Player Contribution (PC). When I developed PC I put it out in the public domain 1 so that (a) people would know that it was there and (b) it could be critiqued and therefore enhanced over time.

People certainly know it is there. My original PC paper is probably the most downloaded hockey analytics “how to” piece, and my series of annual NHL reviews is probably the most downloaded piece of hockey analysis, on the internet.

For those of you anxiously awaiting my analysis, I am sorry that I am so late with this. As the NHL does not publish a decent statistical database or set of reports, the process of cobbling together the data (and PC uses everything that I can get my hands on that seems relevant) is enormous and … I have a day job.

The constructive evolution of PC through public debate has not happened. What has happened, instead, is use and abuse of my work. I don’t mind the use of my analysis. That’s why I publish it in a public forum. I do mind the abuse by hackers, amateurs and thieves. PC has evolved considerably since I first developed it. Some of those enhancements have been documented by me. But my most recent improvements have not been publicly described. If you want the most refined view of individual player performance you will have to read on 2.

PC Basics

The PC method is a system of credits and debits. The credits are for the observed elements of individual performance that aggregate to team success. That part is easy to understand. The debits are to subtract the “marginal” aspects of performance – more on that below.

‘PCO’ is PC from offense, based on ‘goals created’ in excess of a threshold level of performance. To determine PCO a player is credited for creating goals but debited for ice time (greater ice time, especially for forwards and on the power play, means greater offensive expectations).

1 PC is described in http://www.HockeyAnalytics.com/Research_files/Player_Contribution.pdf

2 There are other individual performance measurement systems out there. The better ones are actually built from the same principles as PC. The differences are largely in the details.

‘PCD’ is PC from defense, based on ‘goals prevented’ in excess of a threshold level of performance. To determine PCD players get credited for ice time (greater ice time, especially for defensemen and on the penalty kill, means more defensive responsibility and exposure to goals against) but debited for goals allowed while on ice.

‘PCG’ is PC from goaltending, again based on ‘goals prevented’ in excess of a threshold level of performance. Goaltender contribution is essentially measured by save percentage (credit) in excess of a threshold (debit), factoring in shots faced. The assessment of goaltending is adjusted for various team defense factors. These adjustments find their way back into the assessment of defense.

PC is also determined for penalty taking and drawing. In this case, however, the benchmark is essentially the average propensity to take/draw penalties (rather than the marginal propensity). In this sense it is best interpreted as an adjustment to the other PC scores.

Threshold Performance

In the PC calculations threshold performance is determined mathematically, by inference. It is determined by observing that (a) the marginal impact of more/fewer goals on wins/points is virtually linear 3 over the normal performance range of teams and (b) the “slope” of that linear relationship is the average number of goals scored per game. Marginal or threshold performance is determined by figuring out what level of performance predicts zero contribution to winning when using this linear relationship.

The notion of threshold performance is critical to the analysis of individuals. If an AHL goaltender gets promoted to the NHL and posts an .890 save percentage, we should think of an NHL regular with an .893 save percentage as not contributing a performance of very much value, there being a large number of others (minor leaguers) lined up to play nearly as well.

Although not really true, you can think of a ‘marginal’ player as a borderline NHLer (my AHL goaltender). It is difficult to be precise about where the borderline is, but the PC method draws a line in the sand somewhere near that line. Why subtract out borderline performance? Because performance at that level is worth ‘nothing’. Borderline players sit on the end of the bench and / or spend a great deal of time in transit to / from the minors. Marginal performance is so far from average as to be zero valued.

3 This is critical to the success of any measurement of individual contributions to team success. “Linearity” means that individual contributions are additive. Every goal scored or prevented has the same impact on winning percentage. Non-linearity (curvature) would mean that not all goals have the same impact on winning percentage and, by extension, that the attribution of team success to individuals would involve very complex assessments of the nature of the curvative relationship between goals and wins. The relationship between goals and wins is curved for teams winning 70% or more of the time (or losing 30% or more) but those are very rare teams. PC does make an adjustment for whatever curvature (or statistical noise) is detected so that individual performances do sum to team performance.

The assessment of marginal (valueless) performance based on the contribution of a replacement player (my AHL goaltender) is a common approach used in baseball analytics where most players are either (a) regulars or (b) replacement players. The application of that thought process (and various rules of thumb derived from it) is tempting but, for hockey, the notion of replacement level performance is much trickier. Other than in goal, especially with player changes every 30-40 seconds, it would be difficult to sort players into the categories of “regular” and “replacement”. A third line forward or third pairing defender is used regularly, frequently in special roles.

In fact the notion of a “replacement player” is quite tricky in hockey. When the first line centre is injured, the second line centre gets a promotion (gains more ice time). Or perhaps the third line centre is a better fit on the “first” line. Yes, somebody from the “fourth line” is going to get more ice time (and a call up player will dress). But it may not be the centre and players can and do shift position. And it may not be much ice time as second and third line players my get incremental special team duty.

A hockey team is not comprised of “regulars” and “replacement players”. Instead there is an allocation of ice time along the spectrum of superior to inferior players. The cascading effect of replacing a player is difficult to model and highly situational. With all of this in mind I stick with my approach to the assessment of marginal performance. And it tests out just fine. Players with any amount of playing time and PC scores of around zero get deployed by coaches as if they were “replacement players”.

Situational PC

Where we can, PC is measured separately for even handed (EH), short handed (SH), power play (PP) and shootout (SO) situations. This ensures that specialty team performance is assessed relative to marginal performance on specialty teams. In other words, a player who runs up big offensive numbers on the power play is judged against other power play performances while a penalty killing specialist has his offense judged against other penalty killers. Perhaps more importantly, assessing contribution by situation permits a much better assessment of overall performance.

On defense, short handed situations are further subdivided into penalty Components of Player Contribution killing (PCDSHK) and penalty taking (PCDSHO). On offense, power play Situation Offense Defense Goaltending situations are further subdivided into Even Handed PCOEH PCDEH power play production (PCOPPP) and Power Play penalty drawing (PCOPPO). Opportunities PCOPPO PCDPP Production PCOPPP PCGRO To the right is a summary of the Short Handed component parts of PC. Opportunities PCDSHO PCOSH Penalty Killing PCDSHK Shootout PCOSO PCGSO TOTALS PCO PCD PCG

The ‘Currency’ of PC

Since advancing in the standings (wining) is the one and only team objective, PC is denominated in points in the standings (wins). Goals created/prevented are translated into points in the standings on the same basis that teams do so. A PC ‘point’ is scaled to be 1/10th of a standings point and the PC points allocated to a team are therefore 10 x points in the standings. The end result is that offense, defense and goaltending (including shootout performance) are all on the same page, in the same currency. This denomination of player contribution is also ‘inflation proof’ – it is unaffected by changes in scoring levels (but is affected by schedule length).

To get a lot of PC points one needs to both (a) play a lot and 2009 Boston Bruins (b) play well. As (a) and (b) tend to be correlated, PC is also a Cost per measure of ‘talent’. However, Player $ Cap Cost PC PC Point coaches tend to over play top talent Tim Thomas 1,100,000 268 4,111 with a resulting distortion of Dennis Wideman 3,937,500 84 47,083 apparent relative value. Zdeno Chara 7,500,000 76 98,458 Marc Savard 5,000,000 69 72,696 As a rough rule of thumb it takes David Krejci 883,333 69 12,886 100 or more PC points for a skater Phil Kessel 2,200,000 68 32,555 to be an all-star candidate (the Michael Ryder 4,000,000 54 73,934 story with goaltenders is different). Manny Fernandez 4,333,333 52 83,013 At 80 points you would consider a Blake Wheeler 2,825,000 50 55,965 skater to be a team star, 60 is a Chuck Kobasew 2,333,333 37 62,665 team leader, 40 is a solid Matt Hunwick 750,000 37 20,265 contributor and 20 is a weak link. Mark Stuart 1,300,000 37 35,159 With a salary cap of $56.7 million Patrice Bergeron 4,750,000 29 165,682 (all figures U.S.) for the 2009 Aaron Ward 2,500,000 29 87,384 Shane Hnidy 757,500 28 27,433 season, a rough guide to player P.J. Axelsson 850,000 27 31,768 value is $56,700 per annum per PC Andrew Ference 1,400,000 27 52,548 point or $1,134,000 for every 20 Milan Lucic 850,000 26 32,191 PC points). This is based on a Mark Recchi 1,500,000 19 80,567 team spending the cap amount and Stephane Yelle 750,000 14 52,172 targeting a 100 point season (a Marco Sturm 3,500,000 14 256,534 comfortable target for a berth in Tuukka Rask 3,200,000 13 238,580 the playoffs). A serious Stanley Martin St. Pierre 500,000 9 54,866 Cup aspirant will need to target a Shawn Thornton 516,667 7 71,338 lower cost per PC point. And, of Byron Bitz 740,000 6 120,292 course the market value of a player Petteri Nokelainen 850,000 5 182,055 may be different due to supply and Matt Lashoff 850,000 4 192,892 demand and other factors. Steve Montador 800,000 4 212,886 Johnny Boychuk 500,000 0 1,137,504 As an illustration I have shown to Mikko Lehtonen 800,000 0 999,999 the right the cap costs (all dollars Martins Karsums 883,333 0 999,999 are US), PC scores (rounded to the Vladimir Sobotka 750,000 0 999,999

nearest integer) and the dollar cap costs per PC point (I have shown negative cost per PC points results as 999,999) for the Boston Bruins. Note that cap costs in this table are (a) annualized (the actual “cap hit” depends on days on the roster, which is a big factor for those at the bottom of the table) and (b) not salary (cap costs are the average salary/bonus over the contract).

Boston was the NHL’s second best team in the regular season (one point behind San Jose), finishing with 116 points. One can easily see that this was achieved on the back of Tim Thomas and his bargain basement contract. But there were some other inexpensive performances, most notably from Krejci and Kessel and very few contracts that were way off performance levels (Chara’s contract continues to be difficult to live up to).

Although I want to focus on individual performance it sets the stage best if I first look at some team metrics using a marginal goals analysis.

Marginal goals, a building block for Player Contribution, are simply:

a. goals scored in excess of a threshold, plus b. goals allowed subtracted from a threshold.

Lucky and Unlucky Teams

Wins are about 94% predicted by goals for and against (or by marginal goals totals). When a team wins in spite of a low marginal goal performance it is either very skilled at winning close games or it is lucky. Historical analysis suggests that this is mostly luck. I would not completely rule Marginal Goals per Point out some intangible, but nobody has found it yet. Lucky teams tend to regress the In Skating Time In Shootout Team per Skating Point per Shootout Win following season (and vice versa). But ANA 2.82 2.79 these teams may also be systemically able ATL 2.96 2.60 to win tight games. BOS 2.80 2.32 BUF 2.97 2.86 To the right is a table of the marginal goals CAL 2.51 1.84 per point during the conventional part of CAR 2.64 1.70 the game (‘skating time’) and during the CBJ 2.68 1.92 CHI 2.85 1.86 shootout. The five most efficient/lucky COL 2.84 2.50 teams are highlighted in green and the five DAL 2.68 2.78 least efficient/lucky teams are highlighted DET 2.67 2.44 in red. EDM 2.75 2.55 FLA 2.68 1.00 Scoring was up in 2009 and an average LA 2.83 1.64 point in the standings was more expensive MIN 2.98 1.95 as a result. During skating time it cost, on MON 2.74 1.71 NAS 2.59 2.20 average, 2.71 goals to generate a point NJ 2.65 2.34 (versus 2.60 in 2008). It also required NYI 2.72 1.38 more goals to resolve a shootout in 2009 NYR 2.61 2.31 (an average of 2.25 per shootout) than in OTT 2.73 2.90 2008 (2.21). PHI 2.75 2.40 PHO 2.49 2.81 During skating time the Coyotes were the PIT 2.78 2.34 SJ 2.57 2.34 most ‘efficient’ team in the NHL, requiring STL 2.72 2.13 only 2.49 marginal goals per point. TB 2.72 1.16 Toronto (2.55) repeated from 2008 as one TOR 2.55 1.83 of the league’s luckiest teams. Other lucky VAN 2.72 2.67 teams were Calgary (2.51), Washington WAS 2.51 2.07 (2.51) and San Jose (2.57). AVG 2.71 2.25

The Minnesota Wild flipped from being one of the most unlucky teams in 2007 to being one of the luckiest ones in 2008 to being the NHL’s most unlucky team in 2009 (2.98 marginal goals per win). Buffalo (2.97) and Chicago (2.85) repeated as a unlucky teams. Atlanta (2.96) went from lucky in 2008 to unlucky in 2009. Colorado (2.84) rounded out the bottom five in skating time winning efficiency.

Florida ranked as the luckiest team in the shootout. They had three shootout wins on just 3 marginal (shootout) goals. Carolina repeated as a lucky shootout team (requiring only 1.70 goals per win. The Lightning (1.16), Islanders (1.38) and Kings (1.64) were other lucky shootout teams in 2009.

Ottawa was the NHL’s unluckiest shootout team, requiring 2.96 marginal goals per win. Joining Ottawa to repeat from 2008 as one of the NHL’s unluckiest shootout teams was Phoenix (2.81). Buffalo’s bad luck during skating time continued in the shootout (2.86), making it the NHL’s most unlucky team over the past two years. Other unlucky shootout performances came from Anaheim (2.79) and Dallas (2.78).

Notwithstanding a few repeat performances there was no correlation between marginal goal efficiency in 2008 and 2009. This is part of the evidence that (in) efficiency is just (bad) luck and most likely will not repeat next season.

Note that PC attempts to allocate team performance, whether lucky or skilled, to individuals. It does not set out to determine whether a performance is from luck or skill. It translates a player’s marginal goals into PC points using these marginal goal factors. The implicit assumption here is that these observed team performances are a result of skill. This means that a goal scored (or prevented) by a Coyote is worth more than a goal scored (or prevented) by a member of the Wild.

Offense

A marginal goals analysis helps us to deconstruct offenses. Below is a summary of marginal goals from offense (MGO) by situation – even handed (MGOEH), power play production (MGOPPP), power play opportunities (MGOPPO) and short handed (MGOSH). Also shown is the change from 2008.

As we already know, the Red Wings were the NHL’s top offense. This translates to 153 marginal goals comprised mainly of a league leading 99 even handed marginal goals and a league leading 51 marginal power play goals.

While the Bruins won the East on the basis of their outstanding goaltending, they were still a very potent offense and ranked second in the NHL. This team improved by a stunning 58 marginal goals over their performance in the prior season (ranking third in even handed and tied for fourth in power play offense). Pittsburgh had the NHL’s second best even handed offense (95 marginal goals) and Washington was the second strongest power play team.

With just 77 marginal goals, the Senators’ offense fell off badly (-51 goals) in 2009. The Avalanche also fell off the offensive cliff with 40 fewer goals from offense.

Marginal Goals - Offense

Team vs 2008 MGO MGOEH MGOPPP MGOPPO MGOSH DET +31 153 99 51 1 1 BOS +58 134 94 39 -3 3 WAS +24 132 82 48 0 2 CHI +20 124 86 30 2 5 PHI +9 124 79 36 -3 11 PIT +12 122 95 22 2 2 CAL +19 115 90 21 2 1 SJ +29 115 58 47 2 7 ATL +37 114 74 30 2 8 TOR +10 108 82 26 -1 1 VAN +30 107 75 28 2 2 BUF -15 106 66 35 2 2 MON -21 106 66 31 4 5 ANA +35 102 65 39 -4 1 NJD +34 102 74 24 -4 7 CAR -20 100 64 29 4 3 FLA +14 95 79 17 -4 2 EDM +2 92 71 21 1 -2 STL +19 91 51 33 1 5 DAL -19 88 74 15 1 -3 CBJ +24 84 77 5 -2 3 MIN -12 78 45 30 -1 4 OTT -51 77 45 29 0 3 NAS -26 71 54 15 -3 4 TB -20 71 48 23 0 -1 PHO -10 69 56 12 0 0 LA -30 66 35 29 2 -1 NYR -11 64 49 10 1 4 NYI +3 62 38 19 -2 7 COL -40 54 42 15 -3 -1

Columbus had a big improvement (+24 goals) on offense notwithstanding a woeful power play (just 5 marginal goals).

Short handed offense varies considerably from year to year. This year’s hot team was Philadelphia with 11 marginal goals while short handed.

In general, weak offensive teams were not playoff teams (the Rangers being a notable exception) and strong offensive teams were. This tendency was a little stronger this year than in the past.

MGOPPO measures a team’s relative ability to generate power play opportunities (draw penalties). Montreal and Carolina (with 4 such marginal goals) earned an extra one or two points by their ability to draw penalties. This was the fourth year in a row for a strong performance by the Hurricanes in this metric. Anaheim, New Jersey and Florida (each with MGOPPO of -4) were the teams least able to draw penalties.

Defense – Shots and Shot Quality

Marginal goals analysis is an even more helpful tool for assessing defenses. But, to get at this, it is necessary to separate goal prevention into defense and goaltending. To identify a team’s contribution from goaltending I compare its goals against, adjusted for shot quality, to a threshold level (based on the shots allowed).

A goaltender facing no shots cannot make a contribution. When he faces a high number Defensive Measures of shots he can make a high contribution. So the number of shots faced is a significant Avg Shot factor in assessing goaltending contribution. Team Shots Team Quality For a given number of shots a high (shot SJ 27.2 NJD 0.903 quality neutral) save percentage implies a big DET 27.7 BUF 0.913 goaltending contribution (and a low shot CBJ 27.8 PHO 0.929 quality neutral save percentage implies a LA 28.1 ANA 0.954 small goaltending contribution). DAL 28.1 ATL 0.963 OTT 28.5 PHI 0.965 And whatever is not goaltending must be STL 28.5 MIN 0.967 attributable to defense. This is clearest with CHI 28.6 COL 0.968 shots (low shots allowed suggest a strong COL 29.0 TB 0.971 defense). VAN 29.2 WAS 0.974 NAS 29.4 CBJ 0.978 If you do this math you are attributing to NJD 29.5 STL 0.979 defense the responsibility for the number and WAS 29.5 OTT 0.980 quality of shots on goal. To the right are the CAR 29.5 NYI 0.989 shots and shot quality leader boards for the NYR 29.7 SJ 0.990 2009 season. CAL 29.8 BOS 0.991 TOR 30.3 CHI 1.001 Average shots on goal per game is a familiar PIT 30.3 DET 1.014 metric. In the table below we see Detroit, San ANA 30.5 VAN 1.017 Jose, Columbus and Dallas with strong MIN 30.7 NYR 1.022 performances again in 2009. Los Angeles BOS 30.8 EDM 1.031 made the biggest move to reduce shots BUF 31.4 CAL 1.033 allowed (third worst to fourth best). PHO 31.6 MON 1.034 MON 31.7 NAS 1.037 Florida, Atlanta, Philadelphia, Montreal and EDM 32.5 PIT 1.042 Edmonton continued to allow league worst PHI 32.5 FLA 1.042

shot totals. Tampa’s decline continued, ATL 32.7 CAR 1.052

sagging from near the top of this list in 2007 TB 32.9 LA 1.069 NYI 33.5 DAL 1.083 FLA 34.7 TOR 1.124

to a middling performance in 2008 to third worst in 2009.

Shot totals up in 2009 with average shots on goal per game increased about 3% from to 29.1 to 30.2. The dispersion of team results reduced considerably. Last season’s team shots allowed per game ranged from 23.5 (Detroit) to 33.9 (Atlanta). This season that span was 27.2 (San Jose) to 34.7 (Florida). I don’t know what this means, but the development is, as Spock would say, “fascinating”. It suggests that defense is becoming more homogeneous across the NHL and, by extension, less valuable. Or it could just be statistical noise.

Shot quality is based on an assessment of the characteristics of each shot allowed4. The ‘expected goals’ from this assessment, normalized for variations in shots on goal, can be compared to average. My shot quality factors are the ratio of these normalized expected goals to average (a shot quality factor of 0.950 means that shots taken are, on average, 5% less likely to result in goals).

There is a clear shot distance recording bias5 in certain arenas. The worst such reporting bias is in Madison Square Garden where the raw data suggests that the Rangers give up much shorter shots than average (shorter shots are more likely to be goals). But further analysis reveals the distance recording bias. The truth is that the Rangers are closer to an average shot quality team.

There are other issues with the quality of reported shots. This year my shot quality factors adjust for any reporting biases I have been able to measure with confidence. Any comparison of these results with those of prior years is therefore a bit tricky.

Shot quality leaders in 2009 were New Jersey, Buffalo, Phoenix and Anaheim. This was a huge turnaround for the Ducks notwithstanding their continued propensity to take penalties (shot quality goes up materially while shot handed). The laggards were Toronto, Dallas, Los Angeles and Carolina.

Defense

Marginal goals provides a sophisticated look at team defense. Below is a summary of marginal goals from defense (MGD) by situation – even handed (MGDEH), power play (MGDPP), short handed opportunities or penalty taking (MGDSHO) and penalty killing (MGDSHK). Also shown is the change in MGD from 2008.

San Jose (MGD of 131) repeated as the NHL’s top defensive team, especially while even handed (MGDEH of 91). As noted above, the Sharks lead the league in (fewest) shots allowed. But a Marginal Goals analysis shows a contributing factor was that they were

4 My original approach to Shot Quality is described in http://www.HockeyAnalytics.com/Research_files/Shot_Quality.pdf

5 See http://www.HockeyAnalytics.com/Research_files/Product_Recall_for_Shot_Quality.pdf

quite disciplined (MGDSHO of 8), behind only Phoenix and Minnesota in short handed opportunities granted.

Improving from seventh to record the second best defense in 2009 were the Devils (MGD of 125). While even handed they were about the same team as the Sharks. New Jersey was a little less effective on the penalty kill (MGDSHK of 25 versus 31) and a little less disciplined (MGDSHO of 4) but they had superior defense on the power play (yes Martha there is such a thing as power play defense).

Proving that they were not a defensive fluke in 2008, the Blue Jackets repeated as the NHL’s third best defensive team (MGD of 131). The Blue Jackets were third in even handed defense (MGDEH of 88) and tied for third in MGDSHK (with 35).

Marginal Goals - Defense

Team vs 2008 MGD MGDEH MGDPP MGDSHK MGDSHO SJ -16 131 91 1 31 8 NJD 13 125 90 6 25 4 CBJ -10 122 88 0 35 -1 DET -29 118 82 8 25 4 STL 25 115 76 4 40 -4 COL 13 115 73 4 31 7 CHI 30 113 81 4 25 2 OTT 31 112 75 6 32 -1 WAS -9 111 87 1 35 -12 BUF 3 107 70 6 30 1 ANA 12 105 82 3 29 -10 PHO 16 104 67 7 17 12 VAN -7 103 77 5 28 -6 MIN -10 101 58 4 30 9 NYR -17 100 61 -1 37 2 LA 38 99 68 3 32 -4 BOS 5 96 67 3 20 6 DAL -11 96 63 7 23 3 CAL -22 95 63 -2 36 -2 NAS 0 92 61 3 27 1 CAR -5 90 62 2 19 7 PHI 17 89 59 7 33 -10 PIT 3 87 61 0 28 -1 ATL 25 84 69 2 20 -7 MON 5 80 56 1 28 -5 TB -21 79 66 3 25 -15 EDM 11 72 54 3 15 1 NYI -16 70 43 5 26 -4 TOR -16 68 44 4 12 8 FLA -8 46 30 1 12 3

The most improved defense in 2009 (going from awful to average) belonged to Los Angeles (+38 MGD). But in hockey so many things are tradeoffs. This improvement in defensive play may have resulted from a change in emphasis (MGO was off 30 goals). It was a similar story in Ottawa where MGD bounced back (+31) but MGO sagged (-51) badly. Chicago’s defensive developed considerably (+30), but not at the expense of offense (+20).

Detroit’s defense deteriorated considerably (-29) in 2009, but improving offense (+38) more than made up the difference. Notwithstanding that deterioration, the Red Wings still ranked fourth in defense. Other large deteriorations belonged to Calgary (-22) and, just when fans thought it couldn’t get worse, Tampa Bay(-21).

The Lightning had had a terrible swing in penalty taking with its MGDSHO going from +13 in 2008 to -15 in 2009. This 28 goal swing is the equivalent of about 10 points in the standings and possible evidence of a coaching mess.

Repeating with the NHL’s worst defensive team were the Florida Panthers (MGD of 46). There is a now long legacy of superior goaltending (first Luongo and now Vokoun) in Miami which may be contributing to the openness of their game. In hockey there is a trade-off between offense and defense. The Florida situation tells us clearly that a top- notch netminder can indirectly improve offense.

After an extreme makeover, including a new coach, Toronto sagged (from 22nd in 2008) to deliver the second worst defensive performance. The Leafs and Panthers had the worst penalty killing in the NHL. While Toronto’s penalty killing record was obviously awful (a PK percentage of 74.7%), Florida’s weak penalty killing was hidden by great goaltending. This analysis sorts that out for you.

Conventional analysis says that the Rangers had the league’s best penalty killing (87.8%). However their MGDSHK score of 37 was bested by the Blues (40). St. Louis had the third best penalty killing percentage (83.8%) but did so in front of less effective goaltending. Minnesota also slides in the penalty kill rankings after you consider goaltending.

Philadelphia (MGD of 89) and Pittsburgh (87) continue to believe that you don’t have to play defense to be a playoff team. The Penguins’ Stanley Cup, more so that the Wings’ championship of the prior year, may encourage NHL coaches to believe less in defense.

Phoenix led the NHL in MGDSHO (12) based on the second lowest total in short handed opportunities (293). This was worth 4 – 5 points in the standings. While Minnesota allowed the least number of short handed opportunities (293), superior goaltending diminished the value of this performance (MGDSHO of 9).

Tampa Bay, Washington, Philadelphia and Anaheim (again) were the NHL’s least disciplined teams, each giving up four or more points by taking penalties.

Goaltending

Isolating shots and shot quality lets one better assess goaltending. The impact of goaltending is highest when a strong goalie allows ‘few’ goals notwithstanding a high number of shots faced and / or shots of high quality.

To the right is a table of the marginal goals from goaltending (MGG) by team (excluding the shootout which is discussed below). Marginal Goals - Goaltending Although it is certainly possible, you won’t normally find impactful goaltending behind a great defense. It Team vs 2008 2009 just does not get the opportunity to shine. So it is not FLA 21 100 so surprising to see the goaltending of San Jose, New BOS 36 84 MIN 40 72 Jersey and Columbus in the bottom half of this list. CAR 47 59 This does not mean that goaltending for these teams NYR 12 58 is necessarily weak, just that it did not contribute EDM 9 54 much to overall team success. VAN 16 53 MON -12 50 In 2007 Nashville was on top by some distance. In NAS 13 50 2008 it was Florida (by a nose). This season it was PIT -7 50 Florida (by many lengths). The common thread was PHI -6 49 Tomas Vokoun and bad defense. While in Nashville CHI 9 48 he played behind a weak defense. But in Florida he LA 16 45 has suffered through the NHL’s worst defense. SJ 21 40 NJD -10 38 The confluence of really bad defense and really good BUF 17 33 goaltending (.925 team save percentage) resulted in a ANA -46 30 very high MGG for Florida (in fact 42% of Florida’s CAL 16 29 success was attributable to goaltending). Boston was STL -3 27 ranked second in MGG. The Bruins league average OTT -4 27 defense offered Tim Thomas less opportunity to NYI -2 25 shine. CBJ 13 25 DAL -19 23 A marginal goals analysis compares performance to a TB 35 22 threshold. The threshold is based on my estimate of WAS 12 19 zero-value performance. You can see from the table PHO -24 17 above that Colorado barely cleared that threshold. TOR 3 16 There was also an unimpressive goaltending DET -16 12 contribution in Atlanta. ATL -22 6 COL -34 2 The Red Wings should have a look at the company they keep on this list. Here is a team inches away from back to back Stanley Cups … with nearly no goaltending.

Let’s look at the biggest swings in goaltending. First the biggest improvements:

• The Carolina (+47 MGG) story was mainly the emergence of Cam Ward. Over the past few seasons he has carried the goaltending load for the Hurricanes. But the former Conn Smyth Trophy winner has spent some time getting his legs underneath him. In 2007 he had a save percentage of .897. In 2008 that improved notably to .904. But this past season his save percentage soared to .916. To complete the picture one needs to note the performance of the backups. Over the past two seasons backups have worked about 1000 minutes. This season Michael Leighton delivered a useful .901 save percentage. In 2008 John Grahame delivered most of these minutes at .875.

• In Minnesota (+40) Niklas Backstrom went from stunning (.929) in 2007 to simply stellar (.920) in 2008 to some-where-in-between (.923) in 2009 (in more playing time). But, again, backups can matter a great deal. Josh Harding delivered stunning (.929) in 870 minutes in 2009. This compares to .908 in 2008 over 1571 minutes.

• The profile in Boston (+36) was similar to that of Carolina – improvement all around. Thomas went from a stellar save percentage of .921 in 2008 to a stunning .933 in 2009 (playing a similar number of minutes). In 2008 backup goaltending had a save percentage of .904. This season it was .914. A year ago I said this about Thomas: “There is a rich history in the NHL of late blooming goalies. But expect his performance to regress next season.” Oops! I’ll try to repair that damage by saying that I am a big fan of the underdog so I am a big fan of Thomas (I was then and I still am). But I still expect regression.

• As warm as it is there, Tampa Bay (+35) has been Siberia for goaltenders since the departure of Khabibulin. In 2008 they had “negative goaltending” (-13 MGG). You can forgive the giddiness of the team based on the magnitude of the improvement, but this team still ranked 24th in goaltending contribution and has some distance to go. The redeemer was Mike Smith, who posted a Cam Ward like.916 save percentage (behind worse defense). The good news for the Lightning for the upcoming season is that he only played 2,471 minutes in 2009.

• Florida was +21 on the basis of a weaker defense and an improvement in team save percentage. Vokoun improved his save percentage from .919 to .926 but played fewer minutes (3,324 versus 4,031). Although his performance fell off year over year (.924 versus .935), his increase in playing time meant that Craig Anderson still contributed materially to the overall team improvement. The Panthers have lost his contribution for the 2010 season to the Avalanche.

• With the team save percentage improving from .908 to .912, San Jose was +21 in MGG. This was not because of Nabakov, who delivered a .910 save percentage two seasons in a row. Actually his playing time was reduced in favour of Brian Boucher who logged a .917 save percentage in 1,291 minutes of play. In 2008 Nabakov was a Vezina Trophy finalist. What got him there was a league leading

46 wins. Of course he got a lot of wins. He played 77 games for the second best team in the NHL. In 2009 he posted the same save percentage for the same team (OK – first overall) but reduced playing time (62 games) meant fewer wins (41). On the basis of fewer games played, he slumped to fifth in the Vezina voting (for the “best” goaltender). Goaltender wins is the most useless statistic in the NHL!!! General Managers vote for the Vezina. I cannot believe how dumb they are.

And the largest deteriorations:

• Atlanta (-22) has seen goaltending fall off badly over the past two seasons (the Thrashers were -40 MGG in 2008). The number one guy, Kari Lehtonen, played a bit worse in 2009 (save percentage of .911 versus .916 in 2008 but similar to.912 in 2007). This is a better than average performance but his playing time was again modest for the main man (2,624 minutes in 2009, not too different from 2,707 in 2008). Backup goaltending is the main culprit here. Johan Hedberg continues to accumulate significant playing time (1,717 minutes in 2009, 1,927 minutes in 2008) without stopping pucks (save percentage of .886 in 2009 and .892 in 2008).

• Phoenix (-24) has ridden the roller coaster of goaltending fortunes. Last season the savior was anointed – Ilya Bryzgalov arrived from Anaheim and delivered a .921 save percentage in 55 games. But this season Bryz proved to be merely mortal (.906).

• Colorado (-34) suffered a white out in net. I suppose the writing was on the wall when they signed Toronto cast-off Andrew Raycroft. He played better in 2009, but his save percentage of .892 was still quite marginal. The former Calder Trophy winter has moved on to Vancouver for the coming season and Canuck fans should pray for a healthy Roberto Luongo. That Raycroft got 1,722 minutes of playing time says that Peter Budaj was a disappointment as well. His save percentage in 2008 (.903) should not have inspired much hope and he delivered more-or-less as expected in 2009 (.899). The loss of Jose Theodore’s 2008 performance (.910 save percentage) turned out to be quite painful (but note that he only delivered a .900 save percentage in Washington). For 2010 Craig Anderson has been acquired to lead the Avalanche out of the blizzard. I think there is considerable upside potential there.

• In Anaheim (-46) goaltending went from exceptional in 2008 (.922 team save percentage) to merely average in 2009 (.909). J-S Giguere fell off badly, posting an unremarkable .900 save percentage in 2009 (versus .922 in 2008). As a consequence his role as the premier puck stopper first eroded and then was lost (his playing time reduced from 3,310 minutes in 2008 to 2,486 minutes last season). With a quicker hook Jonas Hiller would have mitigated the problem. Although it also fell from 2008, he posted a not-to-shabby .919 save percentage in 2009.

There was not much change in Ottawa (-4) including change itself. But it is sure is fun to follow the bouncing puck. Where should I start? How about … Martin Gerber was acquired for the 2007 season to succeed Domenic Hasek who was acquired to lead the Senators out of goaltending purgatory to the Promised Land (the story is much too long to start earlier). The problem with Gerber was that he got off to a rough start. Ray Emery surprised and won the starting job. The 2008 season opened with the Senators seeking to trade Gerber but an injury to Emery made Gerber the go-to guy in the early season. He was white hot so Sugar Ray sat for a while and began to pout. He got his chance as Gerber cooled considerably, but his performance was not compelling and he returned to the bench (and to pouting). Emery’s behavior got him sent to Siberia (no, not Tampa Bay) for 2009. Enter, stage right, Alex Auld, who posted a respectable .911 save percentage, and, stage left, Brian Elliott, (.902). As we look forward to the 2010 season … Hasek is retired, Gerber is in Siberia, Emery is in Philadelphia, Auld is in Dallas, Pascal Leclaire arrived from Columbus (where he was displaced by rookie of the year Steve Mason) and Elliott is back on the end of the bench. Are you following this? Or should I go over it again?

The Shootout

My method for assessing shootout performance for goaltenders is the same as for skating time. To get marginal shootout goals saved (MGGSO) I compare save percentages to a threshold and then multiply the difference by the number of attempts faced. For skaters I use the same kind of logic to derive MGOSO 6.

To the right is some data from the shootout from its inception. Shootout Statistics

You can see that the number of Statistic 2006 2007 2008 2009 shootouts has been relatively Shootouts 145 164 156 159 stable (this is a function of Attempts 981 1215 1057 1059 what is going on during the Goals 330 398 344 357 previous 65 minutes of Attempts per Shootout 6.77 7.41 6.78 6.66 Goals per Shootout 2.28 2.43 2.21 2.25 ‘skating time’). Shooting Percentage .336 .328 .325 .337 Shooting Threshold .131 .141 .202 .202 The average number of Save Threshold .533 .531 .472 .461 attempts per shootout was Goalie Attribution .390 .431 .621 .599 down slightly in 2009. This may reflect the number of shootout marathons, which tend to favour the goaltender as the rules prohibit shooters from multiple attempts.

Goals per shootout were up slightly in 2009. The history of the shootout is brief. The trend line that had emerged through 2008, that goaltenders were getting smarter faster

6 For a full description of my method see http://www.HockeyAnalytics.com/Research_files/Shootout_at_the_Oval_Corral.pdf

Copyright Alan Ryder, 2009 Hockey Analytics www.HockeyAnalytics.com 2009 NHL Review Page 19 than shooters, reversed in 2009 when the shooting percentage reverted to 2006 levels. The observed fluctuation of the relative success of goaltenders and shooters is likely nothing more than randomness at work.

The shooting and save thresholds I have used in my calculations are also shown. They were similar in 2006 and 2007 and then changed rather dramatically to different levels in 2008 and 2009. The driver of this is the final statistic – ‘goalie attribution’. In 2006 and 2007 I attributed about 40% of shootout results to goaltending. But in 2008 and 2009 I attributed about 60% of the shootout to goalies.

Goalie attribution is a measure of the relative team-to-team variation in shooting percentages and save percentages. In the extreme, no team-to-team variation in save percentages would imply that shootout success was determined 100% by the shooters. Likewise no team-to-team variation in shooting percentages would imply that shootout success was determined 100% by the goaltenders.

Recent history has revealed less team-to- team variation in shooting percentages Marginal Goals - Shootout relative to team-to-team variation in save percentages than in the early years of the Team SW MGOSO MGGSO shootout. This higher variation in ANA 7 5 14 goaltending means that goaltending is ATL 7 5 13 relatively more valuable in the shootout and BOS 4 2 7 BUF 8 9 14 my Player Contribution results reflect that. CAL 3 1 5 CAR 3 2 3 To the right is a summary, by team, of the CBJ 6 4 7 shootout in 2009 – shootout wins and CHI 4 5 3 marginal goals from offense and goaltending. COL 9 13 9 DAL 6 10 7 So far as I can tell the shootout is a lottery. DET 6 6 8 In 2008 nearly one Edmonton game in four EDM 6 5 10 was decided by a shootout. And this was FLA 3 0 3 LA 5 4 4 good for the Oilers as they went 15-4. In MIN 5 3 6 2009 the Oilers were less fortunate, winning MON 7 4 8 6 and losing 4 and dropping 6 points in the NAS 6 5 8 standings. NJD 6 7 7 NYI 3 2 2 Atlanta had the NHL’s best shootout NYR 10 8 15 performance, winning 7 of 8 (on 18 marginal OTT 4 5 7 goals). The Thrashers goaltenders posted the PHI 4 2 8 PHO 3 4 4 best save percentage in the shootout (.829). PIT 6 3 11 Lehtonen (.773) faced most of the shots SJ 6 7 7 while the previously slagged Hedburg posted STL 6 7 6 a not-too-shabby .923 save percentage. TB 3 2 2 TOR 6 7 4 The Rangers topped the NHL in shootout VAN 3 2 6 wins (10 of 16 matches). This success was WAS 4 2 6

Copyright Alan Ryder, 2009 Hockey Analytics www.HockeyAnalytics.com 2009 NHL Review Page 20 largely attributed to goaltending (15 of 23 marginal goals) that faced a league leading 52 attempts. Buffalo (14) and Anaheim (14) also had valuable goaltending contributions in the shootout.

Tampa Bay logged the NHL’s worst goaltending performance in the shootout (.500 save percentage). But their shooters were not so hot either (.244 shooting percentage). The net result was just 3 wins in 13 shootouts (from just 4 marginal goals). This was a repeat of their dismal performance in 2008 (just 2 shootout wins on 4 marginal goals).

Florida was the NHL’s luckiest shootout team with 3 wins in 11 tries notwithstanding a league worst shooting percentage of .188 and a save percentage of .567. This profile attributed their meager success (more than) fully to goaltending.

Colorado had a league best .512 shooting percentage, winning 9 of 13, followed by the Devils (.480).

Top Individual Performances

Hart Trophy

The Hart Memorial Trophy is awarded to the player judged to be “the most valuable to his team”. This year’s “finalists” (the top three vote getters) for both trophies were Pavel Datsyuk, Evgeni Malkin and Alexander Ovechkin.

Although a literal read of this clearly means that a goaltender must win this prize each year, the award has typically (nearly 90% of the time) been presented to the NHL’s most impactful skater, as judged by the voters. In fact the Hart Trophy has usually gone to a forward (about 80% of the time). In their voting for the Lester B. Pearson Award (for “the most outstanding player”) the players have shown an even greater bias towards forwards than do the hockey writers who choose the Hart winner.

I will leave this debate alone and go straight to a discussion of my …

Forwards

Here is the high level case for each of the Hart candidates:

• Malkin was the NHL’s leading point scorer (113 points), snatching the Art Ross Trophy from Ovechkin in the process. • Ovechkin, the 2008 Art Ross winner, was the (repeat) winner of the Maurice Richard Trophy with 56 goals. • Datsyuk was voted the NHL’s top defensive forward and finished fourth in scoring (97 points).

Alexander Ovechkin (with 1,264 voting points) was the Hart Trophy winner by a pretty clear margin over Malkin (787) and Datsyuk (404). He also won the Pearson Trophy.

But my analysis says sees this quite differently. PC has Datsyuk ahead of Ovechkin (by decimal places) for my Wayne Gretzky Award Wayne Gretzky Award, as top forward Top Forward (Malkin was ranked 7th). Furthermore, with fewer marginal goals per point than Player Team PC Detroit, Washington was an ‘efficient’ Pavel Datsyuk DET 124 team. If you treat this as luck rather than Alexander Ovechkin WAS 124 skill a PC gap opens up and Datsyuk Zach Parise NJ 119 emerges as the clearly more impactful Rick Nash CBJ 105 player (by about 9 PC points). And he Patrick Marleau SJ 100 works for less money too. Alexander Semin WAS 100 Mike Richards PHI 100 The lens of Player Contribution enables us to break down these performances and

Copyright Alan Ryder, 2009 Hockey Analytics www.HockeyAnalytics.com 2009 NHL Review Page 22 determine who was the NHL’s most valuable forward and why. Shown below are the details of the PC calculation for the top 30 forwards.

2009 Player Contribution – Forwards (items may not total due to rounding)

PCO PCD Player Team POS PC EH PPP PPO SH SO PCO EH PP SHK SHO PCD Pavel Datsyuk DET C 124 51 27 1 2 12 93 13 1 5 12 32 Alexander Ovechkin WAS LW 124 69 40 3 1 3 116 11 -1 5 -8 8 Zach Parise NJ LW 119 60 21 3 3 11 98 10 2 3 8 22 Rick Nash CBJ LW 105 55 4 6 13 9 86 12 0 6 0 18 Patrick Marleau SJ LW 100 36 15 -3 13 3 63 11 1 12 13 37 Alexander Semin WAS RW 100 57 25 2 1 8 93 12 1 7 -12 8 Mike Richards PHI C 100 28 19 2 16 8 73 11 2 9 5 27 Evgeni Malkin PIT C 98 54 20 11 4 3 91 9 -1 4 -6 7 Marian Hossa DET RW 93 47 19 4 1 5 75 13 1 6 -3 18 Jarome Iginla CAL RW 93 50 18 6 0 -5 68 9 0 1 14 25 Sidney Crosby PIT C 92 56 19 3 1 4 84 6 -1 3 0 8 Patrik Elias NJ LW 91 34 20 2 5 7 68 7 1 12 4 24 Henrik Zetterberg DET C 90 30 23 4 2 5 64 13 1 6 6 26 Daniel Alfredsson OTT RW 89 30 13 -2 4 11 56 9 2 11 11 33 Nicklas Backstrom WAS C 89 32 36 -7 -1 2 63 16 0 8 2 25 Jeff Carter PHI C 88 54 19 -6 8 -4 71 9 1 11 -4 17 Jason Blake TOR LW 87 36 12 4 1 13 66 7 1 6 7 21 Jonathan Toews CHI C 85 35 14 1 0 21 71 10 1 2 0 13 Simon Gagne PHI LW 84 32 18 -6 13 3 61 10 1 10 2 23 Joe Pavelski SJ C 82 22 16 1 6 8 53 13 0 11 5 29 Eric Staal CAR C 82 45 17 7 1 -2 67 10 1 3 1 15 Shane Doan PHO RW 81 42 14 -6 1 4 55 12 1 8 5 26 Loui Eriksson DAL LW 81 44 6 -2 0 0 48 13 1 3 15 32 Daniel Sedin VAN LW 80 48 13 0 0 -2 59 14 1 3 4 22 Jamie Langenbrunner NJ RW 80 43 12 -2 4 9 66 9 1 5 -1 14 Martin St. Louis TB RW 80 36 9 0 3 0 49 9 1 4 16 31 Brad Boyes STL RW 79 23 26 -4 0 17 62 7 1 1 9 17 Derek Roy BUF C 79 27 18 3 1 8 56 10 1 6 6 23 Joe Thornton SJ C 79 32 22 6 0 0 59 16 0 1 2 19 Devin Setoguchi SJ RW 78 33 20 4 0 -2 55 13 1 1 9 23

Ovechkin was clearly the top offensive threat in the NHL. By conventional standards his 56 goals and 54 assists ranked him second in scoring (13 points behind Malkin). But nobody but the NHL gives an assist equal weight in assessing offense (hence his trophy collection). PC awarded him 116 points for offense and nobody else was close. He was the top even handed offensive threat (PCOEH of 69) and had the league’s most impactful power play performance (PCOPPP of 40).

That sounds like an MVP performance. Datsyuk trailed by 18 PCO points while even handed (PCOEH of 51) and then slipped behind another 13 points on the power play (PCOPPP of 40). But he significantly out-performed in the shootout (Ovechkin was 2 for 7 while Datsyuk was 5 for 10). On the penalty kill the two players had similar contributions notwithstanding much more ice time for Datsyuk. Ovechkin was not far off Datysuk’s even handed defensive pace.

Ovechkin’s failure to seal the deal was mainly due to his propensity to take penalties (36 minors versus 11, PCDSHO of -8 versus 12). This is not an insignificant thing and a big, sloppy turnaround from last season (PCDSHO of 9). As a rule of thumb the cost of a minor penalty is about 0.25 goals (both extra goals allowed and forgone offense).

Voters miss the shootout, undervalue defense and completely ignore the penalty taking story. When you put these things into the mix it deflates Ovechkin a great deal and promotes the work of Datsyuk. PC reports a virtual tie between these two players. But Washington was the NHL’s second luckiest (‘most efficient’) team in translating goals to points in the standings. Knowing that PC credits Ovechkin with some of Washington’s luck, I give the nod to Datsyuk for my Wayne Gretzky Award.

Based on the second best offensive performance in the NHL (PCOEH of 60), Zach Parise ranked third among forwards. Helping his overall profile was a strong shootout performance (4 goals in 8 attempts for 11 PCOSO points) and passable defense (PCD of 22). He was (properly) selected to the second all-star team at left wing and finished 5th in Hart Trophy voting.

What is Malkin, the NHL’s leading scorer, doing in 7th? Let’s compare him to Datsyuk. At a high level these two looked like similar offensive players. Malkin collected 35 goals and 78 assists while Datsyuk was 32 and 65. On the power play Malkin was 14 and 27 whereas Datsyuk was 11 and 25. The edge would seem to go to the Pittsburgh centre until you look at ice time:

Time on Ice EH PP SH TOT Pavel Datsyuk 1,152 274 130 1,566 Evgeni Malkin 1,302 456 88 1,846

On the power play Malkin chewed up a lot of minutes to collect just 3 goals and 2 assists more. PC says that Datsyuk’s performance was therefore more valuable (by 7 PC points). While even handed Malkin’s contribution (19 goals, 51 assists) was seen by PC to be only a little ahead of that of Datsyuk (20, 39) because he took an extra 150 minutes to achieve the differential.

Where Malkin excelled was in drawing penalties. Only LA’s Dustin Brown was fouled more often than the Pittsburgh centre (who drew 58 minors for 11 PCOPPO points). But Malkin gave this back to Datsyuk by going just 2 for 7 in the shootout.

Where Malkin fell far off the pace was on defense (7 PCD points), most notably due to penalty taking (PCDSHO of -6).

Although an unusual profile, the Rick Nash story is relatively easy to tell. His offensive performance was strong (40 goals, 39 assists) but only good for 18th place in NHL ‘scoring’. Goals count for more than assists so it is helpful to point out that he ranked 5th in goals both overall and, importantly, even handed. PC digested this (and more) and had Nash as the 5th best offensive contributor while even handed, trailing only Ovechkin, Parise, Semin (we’ll get to him in a moment) and Crosby. Nash truly sucked on the power play (his 6 goals and 13 assists were not much above a marginal performance for someone with 284 PP minutes) but made up for it with an unusual offensive contribution on the penalty kill (5 goals, 1 assist) and a decent shootout record (4 goals in 11 tries). His defense was passable and his penalty taking was neutral. Finally, Rick Nash led the NHL in unassisted goals (10). That means he caused or capitalized on turnovers, creating 10 goals that mere mortals may have missed.

With 93 PCO points Alexander Semin tied with Datsyuk for third in offensive contribution. As the scoring race saw Semin tied for 18th with Rick Nash with 79 points, let’s compare the two of them. Semin collected 34 goals and 45 assists (advantage Nash at 40 and 39). Nash did his impressive short handed scoring routine that Semin could not match. However while on the power play Semin collected 8 goals and 22 assists to better Nash’s output of 6 and 13.

Until you look at playing time, Nash looks like the better player. But here is the ice time story:

Time on Ice EH PP SH TOT Alexander Semin 850 249 94 1,193 Rick Nash 1,193 284 174 1,650

Nash had 38% more playing time (Semin missed games due to injury) – about 15% more time on the power play, 84% more short handed opportunity and 40% more time while even handed. PC (properly) taxes ice time and this makes Semin’s performance that much more impressive.

Defense works the opposite way. Semin played better defense than Nash (per minute on ice) but ended up with similar PCD scores because he played less (except for the excessive penalty taking – he is Russian, after all).

The net PC score turns out to be Nash 105, Semin 100.

If there was a vote for the most improved player I suspect that either Semin or Marleau would have been the winner. My calculations say that Alexander Semin was the most improved skater in the NHL in 2009 (+60 PC points) notwithstanding time lost to injury.

In a season when Joe Thornton was in retreat (just 79 PC points in 2009), Patrick Marleau stepped up his performance by 45 PC points to rank among the top 5 forwards in the NHL. He was rewarded by being stripped of the captaincy.

Marleau and Richards had similar PC lines. :

PCO PCD Player Team POS PC EH PPP PPO SH SO PCO EH PP SHK SHO PCD Patrick Marleau SJ LW 100 36 15 -3 13 3 63 11 1 12 13 37 Mike Richards PHI C 100 28 19 2 16 8 73 11 2 9 5 27

These two players got to the leader board with their defense. Without the puck their profiles were about the same except that Marleau had a better penalty killing record (goals against average of 5.86 versus 6.65) and did a better job avoiding penalties. In doing so he built a 10 PC point lead over Marleau.

Richards led the NHL with 7 short handed goals. Marleau tied Nash for second with 5. Richards was better on the power play (8 goals, 25 assists, 264 minutes) than Marleau (11, 7, 297) but the order was reversed while even handed. Richards contributed more in the shootout (4 for 10 versus 1 for 2) and drew a lot more minor penalties (36 versus 22) to even the overall score at 100 PC points.

The shootout shuffled the order of this list. Jonathan Toews scored 6 times in 10 attempts to collect 21 PCOSO. Brad Boyes went 6 for 12 and collected 17 PCOSO. Both players made the leaderboard because of this effort. Datsyuk, Parise and Daniel Alfredsson each collected more than 10 PCOSO points to move up the list. Evgeni Malkin’s penalty drawing was very important to his overall value. Most people have no way of factoring these things into player evaluation. Now you do.

Pavel Datsyuk might be the NHL’s most under-rated player. Shown to the right are Top Forwards – 2003-2009 the top five aggregate PC scores from forwards over the past six seasons … and Player Team PC there is Datsyuk on top of the list. Each of Pavel Datsyuk DET 553 Thornton, Iginla, St. Louis and Ovechkin Alexander Ovechkin WAS 522 have Hart Trophies to brag about. Note Jarome Iginla CAL 513 that Ovechkin makes this list based only Joe Thornton BOS/SJ 502 Martin St. Louis TB 493 four seasons in the NHL.

Defensive Forwards

The Frank Selke trophy goes to the best defensive forward in the NHL. Having no metric for defense on which to rely, the Bob Gainey Award voters rarely get this right. Reputations Top Defensive Forward tend to rule. The three finalists for this Player Team PCD trophy were Pavel Datsyuk (the repeat Patrick Marleau SJ 37 winner), Mike Richards and Ryan Kesler. Jay McClement STL 36 Manny Malhotra CBJ 33 My Bob Gainey Award winner, for the top Daniel Alfredsson OTT 33 defensive contribution by a forward, was Wojtek Wolski COL 33 also the much maligned Patrick Marleau, Milan Hejduk COL 33 who finished 9th in the voting. Datsyuk,

Richards and Kesler each had strong defensive seasons but many others deserved greater consideration in the Selke voting. Below On the following page are the details for the PCD calculation for the top defensive forwards in 2009.

Let’s compare the performance of Marleau to his peers, focusing on Datsyuk, Richards and Kesler.

PC had his even handed defense at the same level (PCDEH 11) as Richards and Kesler. He was ranked a couple of points behind Datsyuk and teammates Joe Pavelski and Mike Grier. The PCDEH leaders were Manny Malhotra and Patrik Berglund, each with 16 points, and Matt Bradley with 15.

Even handed goals against averages tell part of the story – Malholtra (1.93), Berglund (1.35), Bradley (1.68), Datsyuk (2.50), Pavelski (2.13), Grier (1.58), Richards (2.35), Kesler (2.40) and Marleau (2.49).

But two other factors need to be considered to calculate PCDEH – ice time and goaltending. Marleau and Datsyuk had virtually identical goals against averages. But recall that Detroit’s goaltending was assessed to be weak. That makes Datsyuk’s performance better.

Marleau’s teammates obviously had the same goaltending and can be 2009 Player Contribution compared directly. Grier PCD for Forwards was nearly a goal per game better and Pavelski was in Defense (PCD) between the two. Grier Player Team POS EH PP SHK SHO PCD posted a stunning 1.58 even Patrick Marleau SJ LW 11 1 12 13 37 handed goals against Jay McClement STL C 12 0 17 7 36 average but his PCDEH Manny Malhotra CBJ C 16 0 11 7 33 score was held back by ice Daniel Alfredsson OTT RW 9 2 11 11 33 Wojtek Wolski COL LW 9 0 16 8 33 time. He had only 759 Milan Hejduk COL RW 4 1 11 16 33 even handed minutes Loui Eriksson DAL LW 13 1 3 15 32 whereas Marleau got 1,132 Pavel Datsyuk DET C 13 1 5 12 32 and Pavelski skated for Martin St. Louis TB RW 9 1 4 16 31 1,097 minutes. Joe Pavelski SJ C 13 0 11 5 29 Jordan Staal PIT C 9 0 12 6 28 While even handed Mikkel Boedker PHO LW 10 1 7 10 28 Marleau’s performance was Chris Kelly OTT C 11 0 12 5 28 not much better than the Mike Grier SJ RW 12 0 8 7 27 league average 2.57 goals Dave Steckel WAS C 13 -1 17 -1 27 against average. He played Mike Richards PHI C 11 2 9 5 27 Joel Ward NAS RW 9 0 12 5 27 in front of slightly better Matt Bradley WAS RW 15 0 6 6 27 than average goaltending. Patrik Berglund STL C 16 1 3 8 26 But he put in a fair number Jason Pominville BUF RW 7 0 7 11 26 of minutes. All of that Ryan Kesler VAN C 11 0 11 4 26

ranked him around 50th in even handed defensive contribution. Not great but a solid start.

To put even handed defense in perspective consider the performance of Nik Antropov during his tenure in Toronto. During his 841 even handed minutes he was on ice for 54 goals. This works out to a 3.85 goals against average (more than a goal per even handed game behind teammates Mikhail Grabovski and Niklas Hagman). PC calls this marginal work and awards him with 0 PCDEH points.

The top penalty killing performances by a forward in 2009 were by Jay McClement and Dave Steckel (PCDSHK scores of 17). McClement was on the ice for 33 goals against in 315 minutes of penalty killing (a short handed GAA of 6.28) and Steckel was on the ice for 34 goals against in 289 minutes (a short handed GAA of 7.06). Neither GAA is that impressive but both played a lot of effective minutes in front of below average goaltending. Wojtek Wolski posted an impressive 16 PCDSHK score on the basis of a 3.15 short handed GAA in just 152 minutes in front of awful goaltending.

Marleau posted a strong short handed record (19 goals, 195 minutes, GAA 5.86, 12 PCDSHK). Note that the league-wide short handed goals against average is 6.28. Only seven forwards had a higher PCDSHK total than did Marleau. Of the three Selke trophy finalists Kesler (31, 272, 6.83, 11) had the most short handed impact and Datsyuk the least (18, 130, 8.31, 5), mainly due to limited ice time.

Marginal penalty killing performance is illustrated by Toronto’s Jamal Mayers (11.46 GAA in 126 minutes) and Boston’s Blake Wheeler (10.56 GAA in 97 minutes).

When you add together even and short handed contributions Marleau is top ten. Defensive leaders, before considering the impact of penalty taking, were McClement and Steckel.

To top this list you generally need have good penalty avoidance. And this brings me to Martin St. Louis. He has, for years, played very uninspired even-handed defense, killed penalties a great deal and with good effect and avoided the sin-bin like a choir boy. This rather odd profile has placed him high on my defensive play leader board for several years in a row. This year he ranks 9th in PCD, notwithstanding ineffective penalty killing, again largely on the basis of his penalty avoidance (just 7 minor penalties).

Getting any defensive job done while avoiding penalties is much better than getting the job done while taking penalties. Marleau ranked 5th amongst forwards in PCDSHO with a score of 13. The other leaders were were St. Louis and Milan Hejduk, each with a score of 16, Loui Eriksson (15) and Jarome Iginla (14). Datsyuk, Richards and Kesler had PCDSHO scores of 12, 5 and 4 respectively.

PCD tries to sort out the impact of goaltending on defense, but these stats are still materially influenced by teammates. So we see some pairings from certain teams.

As you might hope, the leader board is dominated by defensively focused forwards. My selection for the NHL’s Defense First Award for forwards is Matt Bradley. On defense PC had him ranked 18th with 27 PCD. On offense he was a sub-marginal player (-4

PCO). Honourable mention goes to Steckel (27 PCD, 2 PCO) and Mikkel Boedker (28 PCD, 3 PCO).

But sometimes the best defense is a good offense. Spending a great deal of time on the attack is a great way to prevent goals. Note some famous offensive players on the leader board, especially Datsyuk.

One caveat in all of this is that not all forwards receive uniformly difficult defensive assignments. Top offensive forwards frequently skate against checkers and vice versa. This tendency may cause the defense of top offensive forwards to be over rated (and the defense of checkers to be underrated).

Defensemen

Finalists for the Norris Trophy in 2009: Zdeno Chara, Mike Green and Nicklas Lidstrom. Chara was the winner in a pretty close vote – he was the top choice on 68 of 133 ballots (versus 50 for Green and 14 for Lidstrom).

To the right I show the top six PC performances in 2009 by defensemen. You Bobby Orr Award can see that Green (and, in fact, Lidstrom) Top Defenseman put a great deal of distance between himself and the pack. If you are paying Player Team PC attention you will also note that Mike Mike Green WAS 134 Green was not only the NHL’s top Nicklas Lidstrom DET 117 defenseman in 2009 but also its most Brian Rafalski DET 103 valuable skater. Dan Boyle SJ 102 Scott Niedermayer ANA 92 Chara is not in sight. Which leads me to a Andrei Markov MON 89 rant.

Zdeno Chara is captain of the NHL’s second best regular season team, plays in the east (more TV exposure), is 6’9”, has a salary of $7.5 million a year and plays in front of the NHL’s top goaltender. Those are a lot of reasons why people think highly of him. I think highly of Chara too. But let’s get real about this. This season I have him ranked behind 11 other defensemen.

If there is a more over-hyped defenseman in the NHL it is Jay Bouwmeester. His rights were acquired by the Calgary Flames so that a $6.68 million per year deal could be inked before the open market made him even more expensive. According to Calgary GM Darryl Sutter he “is one of the most complete defenseman in the game”. When assessing defense it is challenging to take the team out of the man. So, perhaps, I should forgive Jay for being the anchor of the NHL’s worst defense. Still I have him ranked as the 84th most complete defenseman in the NHL in 2009.

Besides the hype, what do these two have in common? Neither of these players was the most valuable defender on their team.

Player Contribution says that Keith Ballard was the Panthers top defenseman (49 PC versus 43 for Bouwmeester). Their even handed defense was nearly indistinguishable. Ballard had the better goals against average (2.33 versus 2.43), but played fewer minutes (1,445 versus 1,582). Ballard was exceptional on the penalty kill (GAA of 3.62 versus 7.93). Because he was exposed to fewer minutes (199 versus 280) this only translated into 4 additional PC points. On offense the profiles are quite divergent. Bouwmeester was a power play showoff (16 PCOPPP versus -1 for Ballard). But this reversed while even handed (13 PCOPPP versus 22 for Ballard). Then a strange thing happened on the way to the penalty box. Bowmeester ended up taking more minor penalties (34 versus 21) and Ballard ended up drawing more minor penalties (23 versus 8) to create a 10 PC point swing in penalty impact in favour of Ballard.

Player Contribution says that Boston’s best blueliner was Dennis Wideman by a margin of 8 PC points. On offense Chara and Wideman came up very close. Both had 50 scoring points. Because goals matter more Chara seems to take the lead with 19 goals (versus 13). Most of Chara’s advantage came on the power play while Wideman netted a valuable short handed goal and two unassisted goals (Chara had one). These facts narrow the gap considerably. Chara also had more even handed (1,515 versus 1,468) and power play (302 versus 255) minutes on ice. PC taxes this at marginal rates of performance to reduce the gap some more. On defense it was close as well. Wideman had a better record while even handed (GAA of 2.04 versus 2.18) but the situation was reversed on the penalty kill. Until you consider penalties the two players are about even. But Chara spends more time in the penalty box (35 minors versus 17) and Wideman gets the PC win.

This analysis admittedly misses the ‘quality of competition’ variable7. Bouwmeester may have drawn the tougher penalty killing work (although I doubt it was twice as tough). When the going got tough Chara was routinely trotted out against tough opposition (he was a one man wall going up against Carolina’s Eric Staal during the Stanley Cup playoffs – a series the Bruins lost, by the way). So I think that PC probably understates his contribution.

But Chara was still not the best defender in the NHL in 2009.

That was Mike Green.

Trivia question: In the history of the NHL, how many defensemen have netted 30 or more goals in a season? Answer: Just eight.

7 Quality of competition is difficult to assess. First of all it relies on some holistic measure of “quality”. Plus/minus is the first approximation of “quality”. But it is a seriously deficient measurement. The best measure that I know is Player Contribution. But to use quality of competition in PC creates a problem of “circularity” (the measurement cannot be made until the measurement is made). The correct approach involves the simultaneous solution of about 1,000 equations in 1,000 variables. I have better things to do.

Prior to 2009 only Bobby Orr (5 times), Paul Coffey (4), Dennis Potvin (3), Doug Wilson, Kevin Hatcher, Ray Bourque and Phil Housley had performed at this level. In 2009 Mike Green joined this elite group with 31 goals.

Below is a list of all of the 30 goal performances recorded by a defenseman in the history of the NHL. Paul Coffey leads the way with his 48 goal season in 1986. But that output was during the most open scoring era in recent NHL history. To adjust for relative scoring levels over time I have calculated Normalized Goals, expressing goal 30 Goal Seasons by Defensemen scoring in terms of 2009 Goals per Normalized scoring levels and Player Season Goals Game Goals accounting for variations in Bobby Orr 1975 46 6.39 43 season length (translating Bobby Orr 1971 37 5.81 39 the performance to an 82 Paul Coffey 1986 48 7.68 36 game season). Bobby Orr 1970 33 5.69 36 Bobby Orr 1972 37 6.24 36 And there is Green with the Mike Green 2009 31 5.70 31 sixth best scoring-context Paul Coffey 1984 40 7.73 30 adjusted goal scoring Doug Wilson 1982 39 7.69 30 Bobby Orr 1974 32 6.55 29 season of all time. This Kevin Hatcher 1993 34 6.87 29 assessment would be even Paul Coffey 1985 37 7.80 28 more impressive if I had Denis Potvin 1979 31 6.59 27 adjusted for actual playing Denis Potvin 1976 31 6.85 26 time (instead of schedule Denis Potvin 1978 30 6.64 26 length). If Green had not Paul Coffey 1989 30 7.34 24 missed 14 games he would Ray Bourque 1984 31 7.73 23 have ranked number 3 on Philip Housley 1984 31 7.73 23 this list.

After showing you this you should not be surprised that Green posted the best PCO (84) score by a defenseman since I began calculating PC in 2003. His PCO score was bettered by only six forwards (hinting at what Bobby Orr may have looked like through the lens of Player Contribution.

It is not uncommon for a defender to do a lot from the point on the power play. Green’s PCOPPP score of 37 (based on 18 goals and 20 assists in 366 minutes) was well ahead of other point men and second only to Ovechkin, but a bit off Sheldon Souray’s pace in 2007 (19 goals, 29 assists, 394 minutes, 46 PCOPPP). His even handed offensive contribution (12 goals, 22 assists, 1,218 minutes, 38 PCOPPP) was also tops among defenders (Shea Weber had 32 PCOPPP). His short handed offense (3 PCOSH) was bested by only one defender (Atlanta’s Tobias Enstrom) and only Dion Phaneuf generated more offense by drawing penalties (32 versus 25 for Green).

His total domination of offensive categories could not be carried over defensively. But ranking 16th in PCD (49) was no small accomplishment. This was mainly attributable to the second most valuable penalty killing contribution in the NHL (23 PCDSHK) based on a

Copyright Alan Ryder, 2009 Hockey Analytics www.HockeyAnalytics.com 2009 NHL Review Page 31 stunning goals 2.50 goals against average in just 168 minutes. While even handed his PC score (32) was bested by only 9 other defenders.

The only place that he disappointed was in penalty taking (-7 PCDSHO). But, I guess, we all have our flaws.

Last season Green was the NHL’s most improved player. Here is the three year growth chart:

Mike Green PCO PCD Season PC EH PPP PPO SH SO PCO EH PP SHK SHO PCD 2007 19 0 -2 0 0 -1 -3 17 2 2 1 21 2008 97 31 17 7 0 -1 53 38 4 3 -1 44 2009 134 38 37 6 3 0 84 32 1 23 -7 49

Below is the PC breakdown for Green and the other 20 top defensemen in 2009.

2009 Player Contribution – Defensemen (items may not total due to rounding)

PCO PCD Player Team POS PC EH PPP PPO SH SO PCO EH PP SHK SHO PCD Mike Green WAS D 134 38 37 6 3 0 84 32 1 23 -7 49 Nicklas Lidstrom DET D 117 23 27 -4 1 0 47 37 7 12 14 70 Brian Rafalski DET D 103 24 19 -3 0 0 39 35 6 5 17 63 Dan Boyle SJ D 102 20 22 5 1 3 51 33 1 13 4 51 Scott Niedermayer ANA D 92 12 23 0 3 -1 37 27 3 20 5 55 Andrei Markov MON D 89 21 23 0 0 9 53 19 1 8 8 36 Dennis Wideman BOS D 84 20 19 1 1 0 40 24 3 9 7 43 Marc-Edouard Vlasic SJ D 82 7 10 -1 1 0 17 37 3 13 12 65 Shea Weber NAS D 81 32 11 -2 2 0 44 23 4 10 0 38 Duncan Keith CHI D 79 26 5 -3 2 0 29 32 2 12 4 49 Jan Hejda CBJ D 77 12 -1 0 1 0 12 35 1 20 9 65 Zdeno Chara BOS D 76 20 20 1 0 -1 42 23 0 12 -1 35 Chris Pronger ANA D 76 11 18 -4 1 -1 26 32 5 14 -2 49 Joe Corvo CAR D 75 11 13 0 3 0 26 20 4 11 13 48 Paul Martin NJ D 73 10 10 0 1 0 20 25 5 16 6 52 Kimmo Timonen PHI D 71 9 19 -3 2 -2 26 21 7 15 2 46 Mark Streit NYI D 71 21 16 1 3 -1 38 18 7 9 -2 33 Sheldon Souray EDM D 71 24 18 -2 1 0 41 22 2 10 -4 30 Brian Campbell CHI D 70 17 13 -2 0 0 28 26 4 0 12 42 Willie Mitchell VAN D 70 15 -1 2 0 0 16 37 -1 15 2 53

Lidstrom was ranked number two by PC. His offense (47 PCO points) was up over last year to rank 4th behind Green (84), Markov (53) and Boyle (51). On the power play his

PCOPPP score (27) ranked second only to Green. While even handed he was the 7th ranked offensive defenseman. With only 5 minor penalty draws he scored -4 PCOPPO.

Notwithstanding a slip in his performance from last season his PCD score (70) was tops amongst all NHL players. His 37 PCDEH points tied him for first with Marc-Edouard Vlasic. His PC score was held back this season by his penalty killing (12 PCDSHK on the basis of a GAA of 8.23 in 270 minutes). But he continues to generate power play defense (yes there is such a thing) and he continued to do his work without taking penalties (PCDSHO of 14).

Lidstrom has won 6 of the last 8 Norris Trophies and is clearly one of the greatest defensemen of all time. Since I started doing Player Contribution I had him ranked as the league’s most valuable skater and top defenseman in 2003 (PC 124) and 5th amongst defenders in 2004 (PC 93). In 2006, with his best PC score ever (143), I had him ranked as the NHL’s second most valuable skater but only because of Sergei Zubov’s unusual shootout contribution. In both 2007 and 2008 I had Lidstrom ranked at the top of my list of defenders (PC 130 and 121 respectively) and, in 2009, I have him as Top Defensemen – 2003-2009 second best in the NHL (PC 117) and its 5th Player Team PC most valuable skater. No defender (see Nicklas Lidstrom DET 604 table) or forward has been as valuable over Chris Pronger SL/ED/AN 473 that time. But it looks like he will end his Brian Rafalski NJ/DET 462 career without a Hart Trophy (he is good Scott Niedermeyer NJ/ANA 430 company as there has been only one Tomas Kaberle TOR 427 defender, Chris Pronger, to win the MVP award since Bobby Orr).

Two of these top five defenders were top five in 2009 – Rafalski (PC of 103 including 17 PCDSHO) and Niedermeyer (92). Dan Boyle was one part offense (51 PCO), one part defense (51 PCD) to be ranked fourth among defenders.

Markov moved well up PCO list to rank 6th by going 3 for 7 in the shootout, worth 9 PCOSO points.

Player Contribution can be reduced to ‘performance’ times ‘ice time’. Six defensemen cleared the 2,000 minute mark – Sheldon Souray (2,012), Zdeno Chara (2,085), Dion Phaneuf (2,122), Scott Niedermeyer (2,207), Chris Pronger (2,209) and Jay Bouwmeester (2,213). I guess this is what makes Jay such a hot commodity.

Defensive Defensemen

The list of top defensemen is usually highly influenced by offensive play. The NHL needs a defenseman’s version of the Selke Trophy. Mine is the Rod Langway Award, for the top defensive contribution to team success by a defenseman.

Who were the best defensive defensemen in the NHL in 2009? I just explained how Rod Langway Award and why Lidstrom is at the top of this list. Top Defensive Defenseman So let’s move quickly to number two. Player Team PCD Have you ever heard of Marc-Edouard Nicklas Lidstrom DET 70 Vlasic? He is the anti-Chara: left coast, Marc-Edouard Vlasic SJ 65 average but over-rated goaltending, small Jan Hejda CBJ 65 Brian Rafalski DET 63 salary ($1.1 million salary cap hit), average Scott Hannan COL 59 build. Scott Niedermayer ANA 55 Sean O'Donnell LA 55 Here is the NHL’s statistical line on Vlasic:

Player GP G A Pts +/- PIM PP SH GW S PCT Marc-Edouard Vlasic 82 6 30 36 15 42 3 0 1 104 5.8% Rank 351 110 209 55 293 212 156 250 301 506

Any clue yet as to his value?

In my assessment of defensive contribution Vlasic was third in 2007, first in 2008 and second in 2009. He is a consummately capable defender. He is Nick Lidstrom without the offense.

OK. Not quite. He does not have the power play defense.

Truthfully, his penalty killing was better (GAA of 6.61 versus 8.23) in fewer minutes (218 versus 270) while his even handed defense was not quite as good (GAA of 2.12 in 1,501 minutes versus 2.21 in 1,360 minutes for Lidstrom). I know it seems better, but Vlasic had better goaltending support – so it was worse (trust me). Both execute without taking penalties.

On defense it is hard to take the team out of the player. It does not hurt Vlasic that he plays for what seems to be the NHL’s best defensive team.

In 2008 Vlasic was my choice for the Stay-At-Home-Defenseman of the year (highest differential between PCD and PCO). But this season it is Sean O’Donnell (PCD of 55, PCO of -4) and the runner up is Scott Hannan (59, 0).

Two years ago Scott Hannan was a teammate of Vlasic and I had him ranked as the second best defensive defenseman in the NHL. In 2008 he moved on to Colorado (for a $4.5 million a year contract) and slipped to 65th in the defensive rankings. But, this season, he is back – ranked 5th overall.

The 2009 list of top defensive performances by defensemen (see following page) is interesting, with some big names and some no-names.

2009 Player Contribution Defense – Defensemen (items may not total due to rounding)

PCD Player Team POS EH PP SHK SHO PCD Nicklas Lidstrom DET D 37 7 12 14 70 Marc-Edouard Vlasic SJ D 37 3 13 12 65 Jan Hejda CBJ D 35 1 20 9 65 Brian Rafalski DET D 35 6 5 17 63 Scott Hannan COL D 26 1 18 14 59 Scott Niedermayer ANA D 27 3 20 5 55 Sean O'Donnell LA D 32 0 16 6 55 Willie Mitchell VAN D 37 -1 15 2 53 Rob Scuderi PIT D 25 0 18 10 53 Paul Martin NJ D 25 5 16 6 52 Dan Boyle SJ D 33 1 13 4 51 Filip Kuba OTT D 33 5 4 10 51 Jeff Schultz WAS D 26 1 14 11 51 Chris Pronger ANA D 32 5 14 -2 49 Mike Weaver STL D 23 0 19 8 49 Mike Green WAS D 32 1 23 -7 49 Daniel Girardi NYR D 24 -2 18 9 49 Duncan Keith CHI D 32 2 12 4 49 Robyn Regehr CAL D 31 0 20 -2 48 Joe Corvo CAR D 20 4 11 13 48

In a sense this is a very different list than last season. Last season 12 of the top 20 defenders came from just three teams – San Jose, Columbus and Minnesota. This season the best a single team could do was two players.

• Detroit: Lidstrom and Rafalski are two of the finest defensemen to ever play the game.

• San Jose: Vlasic, the anti-Chara, and Dan Boyle (the big free agent).

• Anaheim: We already know about Niedermeyer and Pronger (now a Flyer).

• Washington: Green and Jeff Schultz (remember those names).

Columbus defender Jan Hejda repeated near the top of the list.

Hejda was tied, with Rafalski, for 6th in PCDEH. The even handed leaders were Lidstrom, Vlasic, Willie Mitchell, Milan Jurcina (each with 37) and Calgary’s Cory Sarich (36). Jurcina is an interesting study. He got very little PK time (74 minutes) notwithstanding a passable record (7.26 GAA). But he was smoking hot while even handed (1.89 GAA in

1,193 minutes). Although that could be quality of competition (or teammates), I think it suggests considerable upside for 2010.

Hejda was tied for third in PCHSHK. Leaders were former Calder Trophy winner Barret Jackman (26 PCDSHK, 5.50 GAA, 360 minutes,), Mike Green (23, 2.50, 168), Chris Philips (20, 5.74, 303), Robin Regher (20, 5.85, 277), Hejda (20, 6.44, 326) and Niedermeyer (20, 6.99, 378).

As I consider penalty avoidance to be an element of defense, it is not surprising that most of these players were above average in taking penalties. Raflaski led the way with 17 PCDSHO points (based on 10 minors). Tomas Kaberle, last season’s leader, was runner up with just 4 minor penalties in 1,337 minutes of ice time (15 PCDSHO). Inferior goaltending in Detroit and Toronto contributed to the positive evaluation of their penalty avoidance.

Of those on the leader board, Mike Green hurt his team the most by taking penalties (-7 PCDSHO).

PCD is highly influenced by teammates. A good defensive team has lots of PCD to go around. Notably, given the way PCD is determined, we are unable to separate the work of a defensive pair. If two defenders play together at all times they will have the same PCD score (save for penalty taking). If they play together a great deal, they will have similar scores. It is always possible that one player carried the other but it is probable that a material difference in performance would result in less playing time for the inferior player.

Goaltenders

The Vezina Trophy goes to the goalkeeper adjudged to be “the best at this position as voted by the general managers of all NHL clubs”. I always struggle with this definition. If a goalie has great stats and plays 70 games, should he lose this award to another with better numbers but in only 45 games? I don’t think so. I prefer a “most valuable” definition (PC is an impact measure) for my Patrick Roy Award.

This year’s finalists for the Vezina were Nicklas Backstrom, Chris Mason, and Tim Thomas. The unorthodox Bruin netminder won the trophy in a cake walk (127 voting points including 22 first place votes). Patrick Roy Trophy For the seond year in a row PC says that Top Goaltender Tomas Vokoun was the NHL’s most valuable goalie. To demonstrate the Player Team PC acceleration of his respect we note that he Tomas Vokoun FLA 293 Tim Thomas BOS 268 did garner one third place Vezina vote in Henrik Lundqvist NYR 248 2009 (versus no votes last season). Here is Niklas Backstrom MIN 222 how he went unnoticed – although he Cam Ward CAR 215 played in 59 games and for 3,324 minutes, Dwayne Roloson EDM 211 he played for a crummy team and ‘his’

record was 26-23-6. Vezina voters (the GMs) love wins so this record did not cut it. His goals against average was an unimpressive 2.49. Did I mention that he played for a crummy team? Florida allowed more shots on goal than any team in the NHL and I ranked them, by far, as the NHL’s worst defensive team. Finally, his backup, Craig Anderson, also posted a strong save percentage (.924) leaving voters (the GMs) with the impression that Florida’s defense must be the explanation for the high save percentages in Florida.

To properly evaluate any goaltender one needs to look at save percentages. Vokoun’s raw save percentage was .926 and his shot quality neutral save percentage was a more impressive .929. For goaltenders PC can be thought of as “shots faced” x “save percentage”. Vokoun faced 1,856 shots and contributed a stellar performance to be the most valuable goaltender to his team during the conventional part of the game.

During the shootout goalies add more. And only Henrik Lundqvist contributed more (50 PC points) in the shootout (30 saves in 40 attempts) than did Vokoun. To be fair to other goaltenders, Vokoun’s 42 PC points (based on 13 saves in 19 attempts) were a consequence of the Panthers’ freakishly fortunate shootout record.

Florida was a bit fortunate in skating time as well. If you deflate Vokoun’s PC results to reflect what was likely good fortune in Miami you come to the conclusion that Tim Thomas was actually the NHL’s most valuable goaltender. The Vezina goes to the league’s “best” goaltender. Thomas’ shootout record was about the same as Vokoun’s yet he earned 16 PC points less from that. He had a better save percentage (.933) even after adjusting for shot quality (.932). He played in 54 games and for 3,259 minutes. It’s not his fault that he had less playing time. And it’s not his fault he faced fewer shots (1,694). His (shot quality neutral) save percentage is sufficiently above that of Vokoun that I am very comfortable with the conclusion that he was the “best” in 2009.

Lundqvist is always hard to assess as the quality of shot records in Madison Square Garden is so poor. I have a method to address that problem. I think it is working. His position on my leader board is validated to some degree by Vezina (6th) and all-star (9th) voting.

When one looks for improved performance amongst goaltenders, changes in roles are quite binary and get in the way. The most impressive improvement in PC score came from Cam Ward (+138) who had an emergent year in 2009. He has improved his save percentage from.897 (2007) to.904 (2008) to .916. Dwayne Roloson (+117) won back the number one role in Edmonton and Niklas Backstrom (+113) played better (save percentage of .923 versus .920) and more (4,088 minutes, up from 3,409 in 2008). These were three of the top six goaltenders in the NHL.

Voters continue to support Evgeni Nabakov (5th in the Vezina and all-star voting) notwithstanding an insipid save percentage. The fact that he plays behind the league’s top defense means that he won’t score so well in “contribution”. But a .910 save percentage just does not impress me.

Because he was an outstanding rookie and therefore a story, Steve Mason was over-rated by the voters. His data (61 games, 3,664 minutes, 1,658 shots, .916 save percentage) looked much like that of Buffalo’s Ryan Miller (59, 3,443, 1,773, .918), who got no votes from anyone.

Roberto Luongo had another “off” season with “only” 191 PC points to finish 7th among goaltenders. In 2009 that was due to injury (only 54 games, 3,181 minutes) more than performance. His shot quality neutral save percentage bounced back from.912 in 2008 to .921 in 2009. Over the past six seasons, he has been the NHL’s most valuable player by some distance.

Clean Play

The Lady Byng Memorial Trophy goes to the player “adjudged to have exhibited the best type of sportsmanship and gentlemanly conduct combined with a high standard of playing ability”. Voters tend to go down the list of top scorers until they find someone with low penalty minute totals. This season Pavel Datsyuk (22), Zach Parise (24) and Martin St. Louis (14) had the lowest penalty minute totals among the top 20 point scorers. They were the Lady Byng Trophy finalists. This is so dead simple that you can play along at home.

Clean and Impactful Play

In honour of Frank Boucher, a seven time Lady Byng Trophy winner (in fact they gave him the original trophy and now award a second generation version), let me present the Frank Boucher Award to the player who best combines both clean and impactful play. This is close to the Lady Byng definition. The word “combines” is an “AND” condition. With “AND” conditions you multiply (with “OR” conditions you add). You need both factors to be strong to get a good “AND” rating.

My “Frank” points are therefore Player Contribution (the measure of impact) x (50 – PIM) (my measure of clean play). Fifty minutes is a pretty arbitrary part of this formula. In fact the formula is pretty arbitrary.

For the fourth year in a row the voters chose Datsyuk as the Lady Byng man (124 PC points, 20 penalty minutes) and my Frank Boucher Award approach concurred. The voters had Parise Clean and Impactful Play (119, 24) and St. Louis (80, 14) as well Player Team Franks deserved finalists. I had Marleau (100, 18) Pavel Datsyuk DET 3481 in second on the strength of his defense Patrick Marleau SJ 3210 while the Byng voters placed him fourth. Zach Parise NJ 3100 Brian Rafalski DET 3083 With no way to measure defense, the Lady Loui Eriksson DAL 2908 Byng voters downplay defensmen in their Martin St. Louis TB 2869 voting. While the voters placed him 8th, I had Rafalski (103, 20) in fourth. An

exception is larger-than-life Lidstrom (117, 30). He placed 10th in the Frank rankings but 5th in Lady Byng voting.

Loui Eriksson (81, 14) was pretty much the Martin St. Louis of the Western Conference.

The Lady Byng voters seemed to be ready to consider Jarome Iginla’s record to be one of “sportsmanship and gentlemanly conduct”. They had him ranked 7th in the voting (with 3 first place votes). His PC score (93) reflected lots of offense (PCO 68) and an ability to avoid minor penalties (PCDSHO of 14). As it does not result in a man (dis)advantage, PC treats fighting majors are a neutral event. So his three fights were off the PC books. But I don’t see how fighting is an element of sportsmanship or gentlemanly conduct. The Frank rankings had him in 62nd place.

Penalty Avoidance

To the right is a list of the six highest penalty avoidance contributions (PCDSHO) in the Penalty Avoidance – Best NHL in 2009. The formula to Player Team Minors PCDSHO determine this is basically ice time Brian Rafalski DET 10 17 x (average minor penalties – Milan Hejduk COL 8 16 actual minor penalties) with a few Martin St. Louis TB 7 16 adjustments along the way, most Loui Eriksson DAL 7 15 notably for the impact of Zbynek Michalek PHO 14 15 goaltending. So this is a list of Tomas Kaberle TOR 4 15 players with considerable ice time who did whatever they did, on Penalty Avoidance – Worst offense or defense, without cheating (much). Each Player Team Minors PCDSHO contributed around 1.5 points in Cody McLeod COL 41 -25 the standings with their discipline. Evgeny Artyukhin TB 43 -25 Jarkko Ruutu OTT 47 -25 I have already remarked on many Boris Valabik ATL 41 -24 David Backes STL 50 -23 of these players before so I won’t Shane O'Brien VAN 48 -19 spend more on them other to point out that three are defensemen.

Also shown are the worst penalty taking offenders. Each of these players played a great deal, took a lot of minor penalties and hurt their team by 2 or more points in the standings. Valabik and O’Brien are defensemen and the others are forwards. The rest are defensemen. They all fought a fair bit but I would not describe any of these guys as enforcers. McLeod, Artyukhin and Valabik had negative PC scores as a consequence of their penalty taking while Backes posted a PC score (37) that was remarkable given how much time he spent in the sin bin.

Penalty Drawing

I think penalty drawing is an indication of an ability to play an Penalty Drawing– Best up-tempo game. It is probably the best statistical indication of Player Team Minors PCOPPO aggressive play. Thank you NHL Dustin Brown LA 77 20 for finally giving us this Evgeni Malkin PIT 58 11 information. Patrick Kaleta BUF 35 11 Cal Clutterbuck MIN 42 10 The list of the top PCOPPO scores David Perron STL 41 9 (to the right) demonstrate that it is Alex Burrows VAN 44 8 not just talented players (like Dion Phaneuf CAL 32 8 Malkin) who draw penalties, but also muckers like Kaleta and Penalty Drawing – Worst Clutterbuck. Dustin Brown and PPO Alex Burrows are very high Player Team Minors PCO Rob Niedermayer ANA 3 -8 energy, productive players that Antti Miettinen MIN 7 -8 every coach would love to have. Nicklas Backstrom WAS 14 -7 Chris Drury NYR 14 -6 I expected forwards to dominate Simon Gagne PHI 12 -6 this list and they do – only 2 of the Shane Doan PHO 15 -6 PPO top 20 PCO scores belong to Jeff Carter PHI 17 -6 defensemen. Even though the Petr Sykora PIT 8 -6 expectations for penalty drawing Ian Laperriere COL 4 -6 that are built in to the PC Brad Richards DAL 7 -6 calculations are lower for defensemen, drawing penalties is just not what they do. It takes an unusual skill set for a defender to draw a lot of penalties. Dion Phaneuf did just that. So did Mike Green (25 minors).

Q: The most unusual name on the top 20 PCOPPO list? A: Edmonton goaltender Dwayne Roloson (15 minors).

At the other end of the spectrum, ten forwards had PCOPPO scores of -6 or worse. Others were penalized less but this group averaged 1429 minutes of playing time and, on average, drew a minor penalty once every 8 games. Rob Niedermeyer played 1,230 minutes in 79 games and was fouled only 3 times.

Net Penalty Impact

So here is the question: does aggressive play, generally considered a good thing, have to result in penalties?

My best answer is in the tables below where I show PC points for net penalty opportunities (PCNPO = PCOPPO – PCDSHO). While there is a notable correlation between taking and drawing penalties, for the most part, those taking a lot of penalties do not

make up for it by drawing penalties. And the impact of penalty avoidance is Net Penalty Opportunities generally not watered down by the failure Best to draw penalties. Player Team PCNPO In other words: avoiding penalties is good, Dustin Brown LA 22 drawing penalties is good, doing both is Jarome Iginla CAL 20 both better and possible. Niklas Hagman TOR 16 Martin St. Louis TB 16 Dustin Brown drew an amazing number Zbynek Michalek PHO 16 (77) of minor penalties in 2009, generating Scott Hannan COL 16 about 2 points in the standings. His penalty taking (22 minors) was slightly Net Penalty Opportunities better than league average and he leads the Worst PCNPO list. Iginla was not fouled as much Player Team PCNPO (44) but did not take as many penalties Cody McLeod COL -24 (11). David Backes STL -23 Boris Valabik ATL -21 Those players who took a lot of minor Evgeny Artyukhin TB -20 penalties could not make up for it by Jarkko Ruutu OTT -19 drawing them. Cody McLeod took 41 Shane O'Brien VAN -18 minors but drew only 19. Backes was 50 Bobby Holik NJ -18 and 24.

Rookies

A lot of famous names have won the Calder Trophy as the NHL’s top rookie. But a very large number of very good hockey players never got their name on this trophy. Of the NHL’s top ten all time leading scorers only one, Mario Lemieux, was awarded the Calder (the others – Wayne Gretzky, Mark Messier, Gordie Howe, Ron Francis, Marcel Dionne, Steve Yzerman, Joe Sakic, Mark Messier Award Jaromir Jagr and Phil Esposito). With this Top Rookie kind of history, I am thinking that Sidney Crosby is happy that he lost out to Player Team PC Alexander Ovechkin in the 2006 voting. Pekka Rinne NAS 187 Steve Mason CBJ 169 The finalists for the Calder Trophy were Jon Quick LA 137 Bobby Ryan ANA 58 Chris Mason, Bobby Ryan and Chris Patrik Berglund STL 57 Versteeg. Mason was the winner, being Kris Versteeg CHI 57 named so on 121 of 132 ballots. He was Blake Wheeler BOS 50 young and came from out of the blue and James Neal DAL 50 he got the hype, but the voters got it wrong. T.J. Oshie STL 49 Rinne is my top rookie contributor in 2009 Drew Doughty LA 48 (he finished 4th in the voting).

The top ten PC scores in 2009 from rookies are shown above. The reason I have eschewed my usual format (of six leaders) is the goaltender factor – the top three were goalies. Below is the line on these three:

Player Team GP MIN W GAA Shots SV% NSV% PCGRO PCGSO PCG Pekka Rinne NAS 52 2,999 29 2.38 1,316 .917 .920 151 36 187 Steve Mason CLB 61 3,664 33 2.29 1,518 .916 .914 129 40 169 Jon Quick LA 44 2,495 21 2.48 1,200 .914 .920 114 22 136

Mason led in the headline statistics of wins and goals against average. He also led in games and minutes played. Rinne was the leader in save percentage, but not by much. The 20 year old surprise Columbus star was a landslide winner of the Calder Trophy on the basis of a win in 4 out of 5 of the conventional ways of looking at a goaltender.

But most of the conventional goaltender statistics are useless. Wins are a consequence of a team effort and goals against average are a measure of team defense. The best measure of a goaltender’s ability is his shot quality neutral save percentage (NSV%) and the best measure of his contribution combines NSV% with shots faced.

Mason played behind a good (11th best) shot quality team. So you need to let some air out of his raw save percentage. Quick and Rinne played behind poor (3rd and 7th worst respectively) shot quality teams and you need to adjust their raw save percentages upward. When you are done assessing shot quality, Rinne and Quick each have a 6 point NSV% lead (6 goals in 1,000 shots). That, my friends, is a big margin.

So Mason was actually the least able of the three but he faced about 200 more shots than did Rinne. PC says that the 6 points of better performance was more important than the 200 shots of extra ‘exposure’, giving Rinne 151 PCGRO points (for regulation and over time) and Mason 129. With similar PC scores in the shootout (PCGSO of 36 for Rinne and 40 for Mason) the Nashville goalie is the winner.

Let’s move on to the skaters:

PCO PCD Player Team POS PC EH PPP PPO SH SO PCO EH PP SHK SHO PCD Bobby Ryan ANA RW 58 30 18 1 0 -1 49 8 0 0 2 9 Patrik Berglund STL C 57 23 11 -1 0 -1 31 16 1 3 8 26 Kris Versteeg CHI LW 57 13 6 2 11 3 36 11 1 5 4 21 Blake Wheeler BOS RW 50 28 3 -2 4 11 44 9 0 0 -3 7 James Neal DAL LW 50 16 7 5 -1 13 41 9 1 2 -2 10 T.J. Oshie STL C 49 12 8 1 4 4 29 11 0 9 0 21 Drew Doughty LA D 48 3 3 0 0 2 8 21 3 14 2 40

Bobby Ryan was the top skater in the Calder voting and was tops in PC. Berglund (7th) and Versteeg (3rd) were very close on his heels, mainly due to more playing time (Ryan played only 64 games). The voters had them ranked in the same order as their scoring points (57, 53, 47).

The voters missed Versteeg’s 4 short handed goals, bested by only three players, his shootout contribution (1 for 2) and his solid defense. In the last two seasons the Blackhawks have had three players in the top three positions in Calder voting. Versteeg joins last season’s Calder winner Patrick Kane and Jonathan Toews to form an important nucleus of what looks to be the emerging power in the West.

The voters missed Berglund’s exceptional defense. I had him ranked 19th best amongst NHL forwards. But he did this with only 26 minutes of penalty killing time. That means that his even handed defense was something special. He tied former Hart Trophy winner Joe Thornton, Nick Backstrom (a Calder finalist in 2008) and Manny Molhotra with 16 PCDEH to lead the NHL. As a rookie. He looks to me like the sleeper in this cohort of young players.

Shootout

There were 159 points contested in the shootout in 2009. The rather limited number of contestants meant that certain players earned a very significant percentage of their PC points in the fifth period.

The fourth annual Wyatt Earp Award, as the top shootout gunslinger, goes this season to Wojtek Wolski, successful in a stunning 10 out of 12 attempts. His 30 PCOSO points represented about 40% of his total (77 PC points) and about 70% of his total offensive contribution (44 PCO). The Shootout Awards leader board is shown to the right. Wyatt Earp Award Each of Toews, Kozlov, Boyes, Ribiero Top Shooter and Hejduk netted 6 shootout goals.

SO Player Team PC Toews 21 PCO score was wind assisted Wojtek Wolski COL 30 (Chicago was efficient at translating Jonathan Toews CHI 21 shootout goals into points in the standings) Slava Kozlov ATL 17 and represented about 25% of his total Brad Boyes STL 17 contribution to Chicago’s success. Frans Nielsen NYI 14 Alexei Kovalev MON 14 Kozlov took only 8 shootout tries. His 17 Mike Ribeiro DAL 14 PCOSO also represented about 25% of his Milan Hejduk COL 14 total contribution in Atlanta. Cork Award Boyes, Ribiero and Hejduk had 12, 11 and Top Stopper 13 attempts respectively. Nielsen went 3 for 5 and Kovalev went 4 for 8. Player Team PC Henrik Lundqvist NYR 50 Phil Kessel was stopped more than any Ryan Miller BUF 44 other shooter (1 for 8), but the worst Tomas Vokoun FLA 42 shootout performances came from Michael Jonas Hiller ANA 42 Frolik (6 attempts, -12 PCOSO), Vaclav Steve Mason CBJ 40 Pekka Rinne NAS 36 Prospal (5, -9), Patrice Bergeron (7, -6),

Matt Cullen (5, -6), Andrei Kostitsyn (5, -6) and Kyle Okposo (4, -6), each of whom failed to score.

PC sorts out the impact of these performances on team success. Florida’s extreme efficiency in the shootout amplified individual success and failure (such as Frolik’s).

For goaltenders in the shootout I present the Cork Award for the best stopper. As with all of PC, this can be thought of as “performance” x “workload” and each of the leaders had a high exposure to the shootout.

Henrik Lundqvist stopped 30 of 40 shootout attempts (save percentage .750) to lead with 50 PCGSO. Miller did a bit better, stopping 31 of 40 chances, but Buffalo, for the second year in a row, was unlucky in the shootout and he had to settle for 44 PCGSO. Florida’s high efficiency converting goals/saves into shootout wins lifted Vokoun’s PCGSO score to 42. But he did not have that much exposure to the shootout (19 attempts) and his performance was nothing special (save percentage of .684). Hiller had the highest shootout save percentage amongst goaltenders with a material shootout workload. His 26 saves in 31 chances also earned him a 42 PCGSO score. Mason stopped 22 of 31 and Rinne blocked 19 of 24.

Jason LaBarbera posted the NHL’s worst shootout performance. While in Los Angeles he stopped only 1 of 7 attempts. Then they ran him out of town. In Vancouver he did better (saving 4 of 9). But both performances were ‘sub-marginal’ and this added up to a PCGSO score of -15 between the two stints.

NHL

NHL First Team Second Team Position Name Team PC Name Team PC LW Alexander Ovechkin WAS 124 Zach Parise NJ 119 C Pavel Datsyuk DET 124 Mike Richards PHI 100 RW Alexander Semin WAS 100 Marian Hossa DET 93 D Mike Green WAS 134 Brian Rafalski DET 103 D Nicklas Lidstrom DET 117 Dan Boyle SJ 102 G Tomas Vokoun FLA 293 Tim Thomas BOS 268

The NHL All-Star Team is selected by the hockey writers. In goal they had Tim Thomas on the first team and Steve Mason on the second team. I have already discussed (a) the oversight of Vokoun and (b) how his PC numbers might be a bit lucky.

Mason’s selection is an insult to too many fine goaltenders to name. I had him ranked 10th in ‘contribution’ or ‘impact’ or ‘value’ (take your pick – I think these words are interchangeable here) amongst goaltenders with 169 PC points.

On defense you would expect the voting to mirror that of the Norris Trophy. But a strange thing happened this season – Chara won the Norris while Green was ranked as the top defenseman in the all-star voting. Both of these votes were by a small margin. But it is odd.

You know my thoughts on Chara. I had him ranked 12th.

The voters put Lidstrom and Boyle on the second team. But Boyle was there by just a point over Shea Weber. Weber was the most improved defenseman in the NHL (+52 PC), but I don’t know how they could see his performance as being close to that of Boyle or how they could rank Rafalski in 8th. Or Jay Bouwmeester in 15th.

Given the Hart voting it is no surprise that Malkin was voted by the writers as the first team centre. I had him ranked third – well behind Datsyuk and a couple of PC points behind Richards. He does not play defense (Richards does but the voters don’t care) and he takes too many penalties (the voters don’t know to notice).

Left wing was easy – Ovechkin then Parise.

The voters completely missed Semin in the voting for right wing. They picked Iginla for the first team and Hossa for the second. I had both at 93 PC points with Hossa winning by decimal places. If you adjust for the fact that Calgary was a bit of a lucky team this year you conclude that Hossa’s contribution was better. The big difference between these two was the shootout (PCOSO of 5 for Hossa versus -5 for Iginla) and few, including now you, can sort out its contribution to overall team success.

Repeating from my 2008 team were Ovechkin, Datsyuk, Lidstrom, Rafalski and Vokoun.

East

East First Team Second Team Position Name Team PC Name Team PC LW Alexander Ovechkin WAS 124 Zach Parise NJ 119 C Mike Richards PHI 100 Evgeni Malkin PIT 98 RW Alexander Semin WAS 100 Daniel Alfredsson OTT 89 D Mike Green WAS 134 Dennis Wideman BOS 84 D Andrei Markov MON 89 Zdeno Chara BOS 76 G Tomas Vokoun FLA 293 Tim Thomas BOS 268

According to PC, 11 of the 12 NHL all-stars were based in the eastern time zone. PC is blind to media effects, but there may be something going on here. Part of that is the Detroit effect. Soon we might be pointing to the Washington effect.

The East dominated the NHL all star team in goal. But the West was best on defense. So we need to go deep in the defensive rankings to find Markov, Wideman and (yes) Chara who (yes) repeated from 2008.

The East dominated the forward positions. The new faces (from the NHL all-star team) are Malkin and Alfredsson. But they are repeat performers from 2008, as was Ovechkin.

Honourable mention goes to forwards who were close to the top: Sidney Crosby (92), Patrick Elias (91), Nicklas Backstrom (89), Jeff Carter (88) and Jason Blake (87). In goal I should note Henrik Lundqvist (248) and Cam Ward (215).

West

West First Team Second Team Position Name Team PC Name Team PC LW Rick Nash CBJ 105 Patrick Marleau SJ 100 C Pavel Datsyuk DET 124 Henrik Zetterberg DET 90 RW Marian Hossa DET 93 Jarome Iginla CAL 93 D Nicklas Lidstrom DET 117 Dan Boyle SJ 102 D Brian Rafalski DET 103 Scott Niedermayer ANA 92 G Niklas Backstrom MIN 222 Dwayne Roloson EDM 211

Four first team all stars from Detroit explain a great deal about the Wings’ success in 2009. If they only had goaltending …

At forward Datsyuk and Hossa are the only carry overs from the NHL all-star team. But Nash, Zetterberg and Iginla are repeating from the 2008 West team. Patrick Marleau has returned to form to make the team at left wing.

The defensive all-stars look a lot like the all-NHL team. The new face is somebody named Niedermeyer, who can put up some very strong numbers when he plays a full season. Lidstrom and Rafalski repeat from last season.

Backstrom is the deserving first team stopper. Roloson had a fabulous season, reclaiming the starting job in Edmonton. Last year’s duo were Giguerre, who had a terrible season, and Luongo, whose improved play was offset by injury.

No honourable mention here except to note that four defensemen, Vlasic, Weber, Keith and Hejda could have been an all-star in the East.

Rookie

Let’s start by reviewing last year’s team and their 2009 PC performance:

Rookie (2008) First Team Second Team Position Name Team PC Name Team PC LW Nigel Dawes NYR 18 Mason Raymond VAN 21 C Nicklas Backstrom WAS 89 Jonathan Toews CHI 85 RW Patrick Kane CHI 58 Devin Setoguchi SJ 78 D Matt Niskanen DAL 48 Alexander Edler VAN 58 D Tom Gilbert EDM 55 Tobias Enstrom ATL 60 G Carey Price MON 125 Jonas Hiller ANA 138

Dawes (-32) and Kane (-22) regressed. Backstrom (+25), Toews (+36) and Seteoguchi (+50) grew a lot (80 PC points is a very strong performance, 100 is membership on an all-star team). The defensive corps produced at about the same level. Price struggled (-32) but Hiller (+43) captured the starting role from Giguere.

Here is the 2009 PC all-rookie team.

Rookie First Team Second Team Position Name Team PC Name Team PC LW James Neal DAL 50 Nikolai Kulemin TOR 34 C Patrik Berglund STL 57 T.J. Oshie STL 49 RW Bobby Ryan ANA 58 Blake Wheeler BOS 50 D Drew Doughty LA 48 Brian Lee OTT 37 D Matt Hunwick BOS 37 Zach Bogosian ATL 35 G Pekka Rinne NAS 187 Steve Mason CBJ 169

On balance this looks like a stronger class than in 2008.

Certainly in goal the performances of Rinne and Mason were impressive.

But there were no standout skaters. Bobby Ryan was the best of them, but not by a measureable amount. Neal was ignored in the Calder voting. His contribution in the shootout (13 PCOSO) was missed. I think Berglund is a sleeper. His defense is very mature for his age.

The voters like to ignore defensemen, but the class of 2009 might turn out to be remembered best for its blueliners.

Toronto’s Mikhail Grabovski (his 39 PC points were more than those of teammate Kulemin), number one pick Steve Stamkos (38) and the Kings’ latest goaltending prospect, Jon Quick (137), are honourable mentions.

Green (24 and under)

Green First Team Second Team Position Name Team PC Name Team PC LW Alexander Ovechkin WAS 124 Zach Parise NJ 119 C Mike Richards PHI 100 Evgeni Malkin PIT 98 RW Alexander Semin WAS 100 Devin Setoguchi SJ 78 D Mike Green WAS 134 Shea Weber NAS 81 D Marc-Edouard Vlasic SJ 82 Dion Phaneuf CAL 68 G Cam Ward CAR 215 Marc-Andre Fleury PIT 180

Up front this is pretty much the East all-star team. Each of Ovechkin (23), Parise (24), Richards (23), Semin (24) and Malkin (22) carried over from that team. Forwards tend to peak around the age of 23. The new face is the sophomore Setoguchi (21) at right wing. Ovechkin and Malkin are repeats from 2008 while Parise is not eligible again.

Defenders generally take longer to hone their craft, but there are also a number of very impressive youngsters on the blueline. As we already know Green (23) kept growing this year. He and Phaneuf (23), who has under-performed his potential over the last two seasons, repeated from last year. Vlasic (21) has been the NHL’s best defensive defenseman for the past three seasons and added some offense this year. Weber (23) was the most improved defender in the NHL in 2009.

Goalies generally require the most seasoning. Ward (24) had tremendous growth in 2009. Both Ward and Fleury (24) graduate from the team this season.

There are a lot of great young players in the NHL today. Honourable mention goes to Calder Trophy winner Steve Mason (age 20, 169 PC points), Rick Nash (24, 105), Sidney Crosby (21, 92), Nicklas Backstrom (21, 89), Jeff Carter (23, 88) and Jonathan Toews (20, 85).

Note that, for both of the Green and Grey teams, I used the player’s age as of January 1, 2009 (mid season) to determine eligibility.

Grey (34 and over)

Grey First Team Second Team Position Name Team PC Name Team PC LW Jason Blake TOR 87 Ray Whitney CAR 59 C Craig Conroy CAL 58 Pavol Demitra VAN 49 RW Daniel Alfredsson OTT 89 Alexei Kovalev MON 68 D Nicklas Lidstrom DET 117 Scott Niedermayer ANA 92 D Brian Rafalski DET 103 Chris Pronger ANA 76 G Tim Thomas BOS 268 Dwayne Roloson EDM 211

The back end of this team is pretty much the West all-star team. What does this mean? Note that when you are long in the tooth it is hard to keep it going.

Each of Lidstrom (38), Rafalski (35) and Niedermeyer (35) made the West all-star team. The two Detroit defenders are repeats from the 2008 team with very similar PC scores. Pronger (34) brings a Hart Trophy and Norris Trophy to a defensive corps that already owned 7 Norris Trophies (OK, Lidstrom has won 6).

Tim Thomas (34) is the Grey rookie of the year. Goalies are sometimes very late to bloom. Roloson (39) is playing like the energizer bunny.

On right wing Alfredsson (36) and Alexei Kovalev (35) repeated from 2008. But here is the story with age – Alfredsson fell off 20 PC points and Kovalev was off 18 points.

Ray Whitney (36) repeated at left wing with a similar PC score. Jason Blake (35) rebounded from an unremarkable 2008 to lead the Leafs in PC (87).

Remarkable, ageless, future hall-of-famer, organizer of player unions, Gordie Howe wanna-be Chris Chelios (46) nearly made the team in 2007 but was out of the running in 2008 with 57 PC points. In 2009 he produced 9 PC points in 28 games.

Offense

Offense First Team Second Team Position Name Team PCO* Name Team PCO* LW Alexander Ovechkin WAS 113 Zach Parise NJ 87 C Evgeni Malkin PIT 89 Pavel Datsyuk DET 81 RW Alexander Semin WAS 85 Jarome Iginla CAL 74 D Mike Green WAS 84 Nicklas Lidstrom DET 47 D Dan Boyle SJ 48 Dion Phaneuf CAL 45

* PCO excluding shootouts.

This is team is very closely aligned to the voters’ view of the NHL’s all-star team. Which tells you something about their view of defense.

Among the forwards my outlier is Semin. If you disqualify him from consideration, as his playing time seemed to do with the voters, I would promote Hossa to this team and it would perfectly match the NHL’s all-star team, as selected by the media.

On defense the voters ranked Lidstrom ahead of Boyle. But you can see that PC had them only one point apart and Lidstrom does play much better defense. The voters liked Chara (the facts speak loudly against this view) but disliked Phaneuf. This assessment says that his offense (11 goals, 36 assists) was actually pretty good. But he also has a rather freakish ability to draw penalties.

Each of last year’s first team repeated to the first of second team this season. But the entire 2008 second team, Kovalchuk, Lecavalier, Gaborik, Chara and Streit, failed to repeat.

Shootout performance has proven to be somewhat non-repeatable. So the my evaluation of offense, for this purpose, is PCO before the shootout (PCO*). Here is how PCO* compares to scoring points for the ‘scoring’ leaders in the NHL (I carry lots of decimal places in the calculations so watch out for rounding):

PCO Player Team POS G A Pts EH PPP PPO SH PCO* Alexander Ovechkin WAS LW 56 54 110 69 40 3 1 113 Evgeni Malkin PIT C 35 78 113 54 20 11 4 89 Zach Parise NJ LW 45 49 94 60 21 3 3 87 Alexander Semin WAS RW 34 45 79 57 25 2 1 85 Mike Green WAS D 31 42 73 38 37 6 3 84 Pavel Datsyuk DET C 32 65 97 51 27 1 2 81 Sidney Crosby PIT C 33 70 103 56 19 3 1 80 Rick Nash CBJ LW 40 39 79 55 4 6 13 77 Jeff Carter PHI C 46 38 84 54 19 -6 8 75 Jarome Iginla CAL RW 35 54 89 50 18 6 0 74 Marian Hossa DET RW 40 31 71 47 19 4 1 70 Eric Staal CAR C 40 35 75 45 17 7 1 70 Michael Cammalleri CAL LW 39 43 82 38 28 -1 0 65 Mike Richards PHI C 30 50 80 28 19 2 16 64 Ilya Kovalchuk ATL LW 43 48 91 49 17 -4 1 63 Nicklas Backstrom WAS C 22 66 88 32 36 -7 -1 61 Corey Perry ANA RW 32 40 72 39 16 6 0 61 Patrick Marleau SJ LW 38 33 71 36 15 -3 13 61 Patrik Elias NJ LW 31 47 78 34 20 2 5 60 Daniel Sedin VAN LW 31 51 82 48 13 0 0 60

The PC calculation essentially adjusts scoring points in the following fashion:

• Goals are given more weight than assists. There is actually much more to this re- balancing but my position is that a scoring point is a very crude and inaccurate assessment of offense. This is why players with high (relative) assists levels slide down in the rankings. Note the relationship of scoring points to PCO* for Malkin, Crosby and Backstrom.

• Ice time is ‘taxed’ to get to value added above that of a marginal player. This is why Semin’s 79 scoring points rank him so highly. He played in only 62 games.

• The rate of tax is situational. Much more offense is created on the power play and much less while short handed. This means that marginal performance is higher on the power play and lower while short handed. The offense generated on the

penalty kill by Richards, Nash and Marleau is taxed lightly and stands out. Nash’s weak offensive output on the power play is taxed heavily, to the point where it looks nearly marginal. Malkin (456 minutes) and Kovalchuk (458) each spent an enormous amount of time on the power play to achieve their point totals.

• The tax rate varies by position. Less offense is generated by defensemen (the marginal level of performance is lower), mainly while even handed. Before applying the tax, Green (31 goals, 42 assists) and Perry (32, 40) look about the same. But Green’s offensive performance is quite rare for a defender (note that there are no other defensemen on the list).

• Penalty drawing does not show up in the ‘points’ column. But drawing penalties generates observable offense. Malkin and Staal do it. Backstrom and Carter do not.

• PC is denominated in points in the standings. Individual performance is scaled by a team’s ability to translate its offense and defense into points, whether by good fortune or through skill (an ability to win close games). In 2009 Washington was efficient at translating goals into wins and Ovechkin and the gang shared in the credit.

Defense

Defense First Team Second Team Position Name Team PCD Name Team PCD LW Patrick Marleau SJ 37 Wojtek Wolski COL 33 C Jay McClement STL 36 Manny Malhotra CBJ 33 RW Daniel Alfredsson OTT 33 Milan Hejduk COL 33 D Nicklas Lidstrom DET 70 Jan Hejda CBJ 65 D Marc-Edouard Vlasic SJ 65 Brian Rafalski DET 63

Three of the four defenders repeat from last year’s team. Rafalski, the new face, and Lidstrom are on my NHL all-star team. Both are “offensive defensemen” who play great defense. Vlasic and Hejda are more stay-at-home types although, in 2009, Vlasic got a lot of time on the power play.

Marleau and Alfredsson used their defense to make the conference all-star teams. But none of the forwards repeated from last season.

Honourable mention should go to forwards Loui Eriksson (32), Pavel Datsyuk (32) and Martin St. Louis (31), each of whom cleared 30 PCD points, and defender Scott Hannan (59).

Each of San Jose (#1 ranked NHL defense), Columbus (3), Detroit (4) and Colorado (6) placed two players on this team. In assessing defense it is challenging to take the team out the player. In particular, a pair of players matched at all times on the ice will have the same PCD score (save for penalty taking). That hypothetical situation never truly arises

but we can get close. But Lidstrom generally played with Kronwall. Wolski and Hejduk played together a great deal but played apart much more.

Even Handed

Even Handed First Team Second Team Position Name Team PCEH Name Team PCEH LW Zach Parise NJ 80 Alexander Ovechkin WAS 76 C Pavel Datsyuk DET 77 Evgeni Malkin PIT 69 RW Jarome Iginla CAL 80 Martin Havlat CHI 65 D Brian Rafalski DET 73 Mike Green WAS 70 D Nicklas Lidstrom DET 70 Dan Boyle SJ 63

PCEH = PCOEH + PCDEH + PCOPPO + PCDSHO

The NHL’s so-called more open game really is not. The reality is that there is more scoring mainly because there is less even handed time. But about two-thirds of the game is played even handed. And you don’t need a degree in math to figure out that this still matters more than power play time.

My definition of PCEH includes ALL of penalty drawing (PCOPPO) and penalty taking (PCDSHO). Note that this is a simplification as penalties are drawn/taken when not even- handed. While the NHL does give enough information to split it out it is a considerable amount of work. I have better things to do.

This team is not much changed from last season. Gone are Ilya Kovalchuk, Marian Gaborik and Adrian Aucoin. The new guys are Parise, Havlat and Boyle.

As one would expect, this team also resembles the NHL all-star team. But the differences are notable, reflecting the subtraction of special team performance.

On defense, Rafalski jumps to the head of the class while Green slips to the second team (by just a few decimal points).

On left wing Parise and Ovechkin swapped places. Their overall PC scores were not that far apart but Ovechkin’s superior power play numbers came out of this analysis.

Malkin jumped ahead of Richards to claim a spot as the second team centre for the sceond season in a row. See below for the Richards story.

Iginla and Havlat displaced Semin and Hossa on the right wing. Havlat was tied (with Datsyuk) for 8th in PCOEH and had passable defense and an above average penalty aversion. What held his overall PC score back was a Nash-like performance on the power play. Iginla had the 10th ranked even handed offense, passable defense and a very net penalty performance (discussed above).

Honourable mention goes to forwards Rick Nash (73 PCOEH), Loui Eriksson (71), Daniel Sedin (66) and Sidney Crosby (65).

Power Play

Player Contribution reduces to “performance” x “ice time”. Here is where playing time really matters. This is not a list of the “best” power play performers, it is a list of the biggest contributions on the power play. Normally this list is dominated by the brute force of ice time. But this season the finesse shone through.

Power Play First Team Second Team Position Name Team PCPP Name Team PCPP LW Alexander Ovechkin WAS 39 Michael Cammalleri CAL 27 C Nicklas Backstrom WAS 37 Pavel Datsyuk DET 28 RW Brad Boyes STL 27 Alexander Semin WAS 25 D Mike Green WAS 38 Scott Niedermayer ANA 26 D Nicklas Lidstrom DET 34 Kimmo Timonen PHI 26

PCPP = PCOPPP + PCDPP

The NHL’s top power play performances in 2009 came from the Washington main PP unit that included Ovechkin (PCPP of 39), Green (38), Backstrom (37) and Semin (25). Here is how they did it:

Player POS G A Pts MOI Alexander Ovechkin LW 19 27 46 428 Mike Green D 18 20 38 366 Nicklas Backstrom C 14 28 42 316 Alexander Semin RW 8 22 30 249

Part of their pre-eminence was due to Washington’s documented efficiency at translating goals into wins. But this was a truly frightening group to face.

Ovechkin ranked fourth in the league in power play time, trailing only Kovalchuk (458), Malkin (456) and Phaneuf (446). None of these players did enough (PCPP of 18, 19 and 11 respectively) with all that ice time to come close to making the all-power-play team.

Kovalchuck’s line (12 goals, 24 assists) looks pretty impressive until you study the cost (ice time). PC had him ranked 53rd on the power play. Malkin did better (14, 27) but still ranked 42nd.

Phaneuf did very little (4, 17) with all that ice time, ranking 121st. But (former) teammate Michael Cammalleri was very productive (19 goals, 15 assists, 328 minutes, PCPP of 27).

Boyes’ numbers (16 goals, 19 assists, 356 minutes, PCPP of 27) were a lot like those of Cammalleri. They look a little worse but there is some secret sauce in this analysis in favour of Boyes.

Datsyuk and Semin got to similar PC scores (28 and 25 respectively) a different way. With just 10 and 8 goals (and 25 and 22 assists) respectively they look like weaker

performers. But Datsyuk took just 274 minutes to do his work and Semin took even less (249).

The leader from the point was Mike Green, but Lidstrom (10 goals, 23 assists, 306 minutes) was not far behind. And Scott Niedermeyer (9, 23, 328) was not far off his pace. Timonen’s name might surprise you. He potted only 2 goals on the power play but was second (to Andrei Markov) in power play assists (26) by a defenseman. PC lets the air out of assists but less so on the power play, which is more of a team effort. His performance was economical, coming in just 314 minutes (ranked 19th amongst NHL defenders).

Short Handed

Short Handed First Team Second Team Position Name Team PCSH Name Team PCSH F Mike Richards PHI 25 Simon Gagne PHI 23 F Patrick Marleau SJ 25 Dave Steckel WAS 19 D Barret Jackman STL 28 Scott Niedermayer ANA 23 D Mike Green WAS 26 Chris Phillips OTT 23

PCSH = PCOSH + PCDSHK

For forwards it is common to get to the head of this class with offense. If you ignore the offense and just look at penalty killing you get the following results (which do not look very different for defenders).

Penalty Killing First Team Second Team Position Name Team PCSHK Name Team PCSHK F Jay McClement STL 17 Wojtek Wolski COL 16 F Dave Steckel WAS 17 Blair Betts NYR 16 D Barret Jackman STL 26 Jan Hejda CBJ 20 D Mike Green WAS 23 Chris Phillips OTT 20

Barret Jackman was the NHL’s short handed player of the year. His GAASH of 5.50 was not the best in the league but it was very good and he got a lot of ice time (360 minutes). Only Niedermeyer logged more time on the penalty kill (378 minutes), but his GAASH of 6.99 was off Jackman’s pace and the performance was not quite good enough for the all- PK team (he and Robin Regehr posted PCDSHK scores of 20 but trailed Philips by decimal places). He chipped in more short handed offense to make the (second) short handed all-star team.

The Mike Green story was quite unusual. Seeing his name on the list of PCSH leaders might make you jump to the conclusion that he contributed some short handed offense. But that was not really the case. So perhaps he ground his way to the top with lots of PK minutes? Nope. He did this the old-fashioned way – he kept the puck out of the net. He was on ice for just 7 short handed goals in 168 minutes of play. That works out to a GAASH of 2.50!

St. Louis defenseman Mike Weaver had a run at these teams using the same approach. He had a 2.51 GAASH in the same 168 minutes. This resulted in a PCDSHK score of 20 and a PCSH score of 21, both just off the mark. Green’s advantage (again) was Washington’s efficiency in translating goals to points.

Both Jan Hejda (326, 6.44) and Chris Phillips (303, 5.74) put in a lot of very productive minutes on the penalty kill.

Hejda and Dave Steckel are repeats from the 2008 PK team.

Among forwards Steckel (289 minutes, 7.06 GAASH) and Jay McClement (315, 6.28) had the top PCDSHK scores with Wolski (152, 3.15) and Blair Betts (242, 3.97) not far off the pace with low goals against averages.

With the Washington wind behind him Steckel also made the second all-short-handed team. The other forwards made that team mainly with their offense. While short handed Marleau had 5 goals and 2 assists and a 5.86 GAASH). Philadelphia teammates Richards (7 goals, 2 assists) and Gagne (4, 4) had unusual short handed offense. Both were effective on the penalty kill – Gagne had a 4.72 GAASH and Richards came in at 6.65.

Most Valuable Performances

In a sense value is a relative thing. When two players produce the same outputs, a team would prefer the player with the smaller paycheck. And, in today’s salary cap era, certain contracts are seen as liabilities because no plausible performance can justify the cost.

In this spirit I present the All-Value teams for 2009:

All Value First Team Second Team $ PC $ PC Position Name Team Cost Name Team Cost LW Alex Burrows VAN 8,281 Kris Versteeg CHI 8,644 C Matt Cullen CAR 10,909 Frans Nielsen NYI 11,436 RW Joel Ward NAS 10,129 Ryan Callahan NYR 10,341 D Alexander Edler VAN 9,560 Kyle Quincey LA 12,656 D Johnny Oduya NJ 10,700 Rob Scuderi PIT 12,762 G Pekka Rinne NAS 2,926 Scott Clemmensen NJ 3,626

PC Cost is the Cap Cost per PC point. I used the annual cap cost (in US dollars) per annum, rather than the per diem approach used in the NHL’s CBA, to screen out players with limited playing time but high per game PC scores.

Obviously a lower PC Cost is better and the table above shows the value leaders. To put these costs into perspective, a salary cap of about $56.7 million suggests that an average player on a playoff bound team should cost around $56,700 per annum per PC point8.

There were no repeaters from last season. That tends to be the nature of the group. They either have an unusual year or they are coming off an old contract. Here are some of last year’s team: Tim Thomas, Mike Richards, Mike Green, Dennis Wideman, Corey Perry, Joe Pavelski, Milan Michalek

For the second season in a row a Nashville goaltender was the value leader. But Dan Ellis was usurped in 2009 by Pekka Rinne. He cost $547,500 (per annum) and produced 187 PC points based largely on a .920 shot quality neutral save percentage in 52 games. Clemenson was cheaper ($500,000) but delivered less (138 PC points) based on a similar .920 SQNSV% but fewer (40) games.

A very honourable mention goes to Tim Thomas. His performance (268 PC points, .932 SQNSV%, 54 games) cost only $1,100,000.

Among skaters the value leader was Alex Burrows (58 PC points, 28 goals, 23 assists, $483,333 annual cap cost). Vancouver teammate Alexander Edler gave the most valuable performance by a player in a defending role – 57 PC points at a cap cost of $550,000). The weakest performance was from Kyle Quincy (41 PC points at a cost of $525,000), but that kind of performance for a “minimum wage” is quite useful. The most expensive player on the team is Rob Scuderi. But his $712,500 cap cost was well justified by his 56 PC point output.

All Cap Roster

If all NHL players had been free agents at the beginning of the 2009 season and could have been signed for their then current cap cost, who would you want on your team? Herein I present my All Cap roster. This is a list of 23 players you might want to have on your team if you were prepared to max out your cap costs while attempting to max out performance.

This was a pretty subjective exercise. I am sure there is a mathematical solution to this optimization problem. But I know that any solution would involve a lot of variables and constraints and would tax my computer (never mind my programming skills).

So I did this by eye. This is my All Cap Roster. If you can find a more optimal one, share it with me:

8 A team with playoff aspirations needs to target a 100 point season. This translates into 1000 PC points and gives you my average cost per PC point. A Stanley Cup team is likely to be better than this and needs to have a lower average cost per PC point.

All Cap Roster – 2009

Actual Projected Position Name Team CapCost MOI PC MOIEH MOISH MOIPP MOITOT PC LW1 Zach Parise NJ 3,125,000 1,538 119 1,100 0 350 1,450 112 C1 Pavel Datsyuk DET 6,700,000 1,556 124 1,100 100 350 1,550 123 RW1 Alexander Semin WAS 4,600,000 1,193 100 1,100 0 350 1,450 117 LW2 Rick Nash CBJ 5,400,000 1,650 105 900 150 50 1,100 72 C2 Evgeni Malkin PIT 3,834,200 1,846 98 900 50 100 1,050 56 RW2 Devin Setoguchi SJ 1,246,667 1,313 78 900 0 200 1,100 68 LW3 Loui Eriksson DAL 1,600,000 1,626 81 700 0 50 750 42 C3 Henrik Zetterberg DET 2,650,000 1,531 90 700 0 200 900 51 RW3 Johan Franzen DET 941,667 1,285 71 700 0 200 900 51 LW4 Wojtek Wolski COL 2,800,000 1,434 77 700 250 0 950 74 C4 Joe Pavelski SJ 1,637,500 1,517 82 700 250 100 1,050 63 RW4 Ryan Callahan NYR 575,000 1,382 56 700 150 0 850 37 F5 David Krejci BOS 883,333 1,382 69 450 50 100 600 29 F5 Travis Zajac NJ 984,200 1,529 66 450 100 50 600 25 F TOTAL 36,977,567 20,785 1,215 920 D1 Mike Green WAS 5,250,000 1,752 134 1,400 200 300 1,900 142 D1 Brian Rafalski DET 6,000,000 1,808 103 1,400 100 300 1,800 103 D2 Marc-Edouard Vlasic SJ 1,100,000 1,960 82 1,200 300 150 1,650 72 D2 Duncan Keith CHI 1,475,000 1,969 79 1,200 200 150 1,550 62 D3 Jan Hejda CBJ 2,000,000 1,835 77 900 300 50 1,250 52 D3 Zbynek Michalek PHO 1,250,000 1,863 67 900 100 50 1,050 38 D4 Ian White TOR 850,000 1,622 61 550 25 25 600 24 D TOTAL 17,925,000 12,809 602 493 G1 Tim Thomas BOS 1,100,000 3,259 265 3,700 298 G2 Scott Clemmensen NJ 500,000 2,356 137 1,300 81 G TOTAL 1,600,000 5,615 402 379 TEAM TOTAL 56,502,567 2,219 1,792

The rules I used to put this together and evaluate the output are:

• Cap Cost < $56,700,000

• 14 forwards, 7 defensemen, 2 goaltenders.

• Players play in position and are seeded into a depth chart for each situation.

• Players are attributed ice time (MOITOT) based on their position in the depth chart:

o The prima goalie gets 3,700 minutes (about 61 games). The second fiddle gets 1,300 minutes (about 21 games).

o Even handed, first line forwards are assumed to play 1,100 minutes, second line 900 minutes and the third and fourth lines 700 minutes. The top power play unit gets 350 minutes, the second unit 200 minutes, the third unit 100 minutes and the fourth unit 50 minutes. The top penalty killing pair gets 250 minutes, the second pair 150 minutes, the third pair 100 minutes and a fourth pair 50 minutes.

o Even handed, first defensive pair is assumed to play 1,400 minutes, second pair 1,200 minutes and the third pair 900 minutes. The top power play unit gets 300 minutes, the second unit 150 minutes and the third unit 50 minutes. The top penalty killing pair gets 300 minutes, the second pair 200 minutes and the third pair 100 minutes.

o The two press box forwards are each assumed to play 450 even handed minutes and the press box defenseman is assumed to play 600 minutes (of which 25 is power play and 25 is short handed) during the injuries, slumps and trips to the coach’s doghouse of main roster players.

Goal: Tim Thomas is my starting goalie. His PC score grosses up to 298 for his slightly increased workload. This is not bad for $1,100,000 (all ‘salary’ data is the cap cost – the average annual paycheque over the contract). He is a repeat from 2008 but has signed a big contract extension that means he is unlikely to be back on the squad next season.

Last year Dan Ellis was on this team. This year it could have been teammate Pekka Rinne ($547,500) but I selected Scott Clemenson who stepped to provide a very cheap ($500,000) but effective solution to the Martin Brodeur injury. He would be expected to chip in another 81 PC points. Another strong candidate was Craig Anderson ($550,000 for 117 PC points in 31 games.

Defense: In 2008 there were a fair number of inexpensive performances among the best defensemen in the NHL. This season the shopping was much more expensive. Rafalski was right priced ($6,000,000) for his output. Green was a still a bargain (at $5,250,000), given his lower price but higher performance. He was also the only player repeating on defense (notwithstanding an enormous pay hike).

This team sets up with Green and Rafalski as the principal point men with Vlasic and Keith as the second pair.

There was no shortage of penalty killers in this group. I set up Vlasic and Hejda as the first PK pairing and Green and Keith as the number two pair. Green’s PK was awesome (2.50 GAASH in 168 minutes) in 2009 but I have to presume that there was some statistical noise in that assessment, hence the second string role.

Ian White repeats from the 2007 team as the “seventh man”. His small stature keeps his paycheque down more so than his performance.

As the shopping was more expensive than in 2008, this team’s defense cost more ($17.9 million versus $12.0 million) and is projected to perform at a lower level (493 versus 639

PC points). I have the impression that people are catching up to my view that defense is an undervalued skill set.

Forwards: My top line is Parise, Datsyuk and Semin. Datsyuk repeats from 2008. He is not cheap ($6,700,000) but is fairly priced for his output. Parise was a no-brainer with 119 PC for $3,125,000. Semin produced less (100 PC) for more ($4,600,000) but missed a large number of games. He projects out to a bigger contribution than Parise.

These three were the best power play performers on the team and I have given them that kind of PP ice time.

Nash nearly did not make this team. The ratio of is output (105 PC) to cost ($5,400,000) is ‘fair’ but he was a dud on the power play and had a freakish performance on the penalty kill.

The Art Ross Trophy winner projects into a much smaller role on this team but his cost ($3,834,200) is still in the right zone for inclusion on the team. Malkin is a repeat performer from 2008 but, with a big contract extension kicking in, he is very unlikely to be back next season.

Devin Setoguchi rounds out my “top six” group of forwards. With the second lowest number of minutes of any skater on the team he was hiding from view. But he projects to Nash like numbers if he gets similar ice time.

Zetterberg and Franzen, are the core of the third line. Zetterberg repeats from the 2008 team. Note that Franzen, who had the lowest time on ice of any skater on this team, projects to Zetterberg’s PC score when they are given the same ice time. Both of these players have agreed to very long contract extensions that ought to keep them off next year’s team. But Franzen’s contract could turn out to be a (near term) bargain if he continues to perform at the same level and he is given more ice time.

The two Red Wings are joined by nicely priced ($1,600,000) Loui Eriksson. The Dallas winger was not so effective on special teams so he will sit while teams are at uneven strength.

The way I set this up my fourth line players can expect a larger role than on most teams. In particular I selected the ‘ski’ brothers, Joe and Wojtek, on the strength of their penalty killing ability. Ryan Callahan is effective on the PK as well.

Pavelski is no slouch on the power play. Wolski had the best shootout performance in 2009 and would be lead gun in that event. These two set up for valuable roles from the “fourth line”.

For the press box corps I selected Krejci and Zajac.

All of these forwards can score. Nearly all could play the power play. Some of them may have to learn to play some defense for this team.

The forwards cost $37.0 million in 2009, up slightly from last season ($35.9 million) and are projected to perform at a lower level (920 versus 987 PC points).

Overall: This team comes in just under budget. This team’s very inexpensive goaltending made a bigger spend possible elsewhere. There are four contracts north of $5 million (of annual cap cost) – Datsyuk, Rafalski, Nash and Green. But these guys earned that kind of paycheque in 2009. Except for goaltenders, it is only extreme performance that can justify a contract north of $5 million.

This is an offensive team (more than 50% of PC comes from forwards). This is mainly a consequence of the availability of dirt cheap goaltending. These players combined for 2,219 PC points, down from 2,410 PC points in 2008 but about the same as the 2007 team. But the playing time of almost all of these players needs to be scaled back and this team projects out to 1,792 PC points (or 179 points in the standings). That would not happen for two big reasons:

• There are only 164 points (1640 PC points) up for grabs!!!!

• Although winning is a linear (additive) function of individual performance over the normal range of team play, this team ain’t normal. A really good team, such as this, faces an increased headwind in its winning percentage. But this team could be a 140 point team … and a Stanley Cup shoo-in.

Hall of Fame Watch

I would like to close by having some fun forecasting the careers of three terrific young hockey players – Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin and Alexander Ovechkin.

This started as a two horse race. Ovechkin and Crosby entered the NHL in the same year (2006) and the Russian won round one, capturing the Calder Trophy as the NHL’s top rookie. Crosby won the Art Ross and Hart Trophies in 2007 to claim round two. But Ovechkin trumped that in 2008 with an unprecedented sweep of the Ross, Richard, Hart and Pearson Trophies and stretched his lead in 2009 with repeat Richard, Hart and Pearson Trophies.

But Malkin has muscled his way into the picture very quickly. He won the Calder Trophy in 2007, the Art Ross Trophy in 2009 and was a Hart Trophy ‘finalist’ in each of the last two seasons.

These three are such great talents and still so young. So the question just dangles – how good could they be over time?

The answer to this question is in career projections. This exercise is much like trying to forecast the weather over the long term – accuracy is very challenging. But the exercise is awfully interesting.

The best approach to this is to find a group of similar players and study their performance over time.

To properly conduct that analysis it is necessary to pay attention to three large factors – age of entry into the NHL, experience and playing time. In the case of a teenage phenom this analysis is made easier as raw skill development, experience and playing time all tend to blossom in concert.

But the analysis is made more challenging by a very limited number of comparisons. The comparison group I formed is comprised of players who, like Crosby, were well established at an elite level of competition prior to the age of 20. Over the history of the NHL, this is an awfully small group of players.

Malkin was 20 in his rookie year, having decided to defer entry to the NHL in favour of more time in the homeland. Ovechkin was also 20 years old when he entered the NHL, losing a year to the lockout. I think it is fair to conclude that both players could have played in the league as teenagers and can be compared to this peer group.

To be a useful part of the analysis it is also necessary for a player to have a Peer Group complete or nearly-so career. Furthermore the game Player GP G A Pts changes over time and it is Wayne Gretzky 1,487 894 1,963 2,857 desirable to keep the Mark Messier 1,602 658 1,146 1,804 comparison group recent. To Ron Francis 1,731 549 1,249 1,798 that end most of the Steve Yzerman 1,514 692 1,063 1,755 comparable players were born Mario Lemieux 915 690 1,033 1,723 in the 1960s. To the right are Joe Sakic 1,363 623 1,006 1,629 the 18 players included in the Jaromir Jagr 1,273 646 953 1,599 comparison group and career Dale Hawerchuk 1,188 518 891 1,409 Mike Gartner 1,510 735 652 1,387 summary scoring statistics Brendan Shanahan 1,490 650 690 1,340 through 2009. Denis Savard 1,196 473 865 1,338 Pierre Turgeon 1,294 515 812 1,327 It is clear from this list that Mats Sundin 1,305 555 766 1,321 Crosby and Ovechkin are in Dave Andrechuk 1,597 634 686 1,320 very good company. This Pat Lafontaine 865 468 545 1,013 group has averaged 1,244 Eric Lindros 760 372 493 865 games played, 568 goals, 851 Jimmy Carson 626 275 286 561 assists and 1,419 points over Sylvain Turgeon 669 269 225 494 their careers.

To use this historical data one needs to adjust for changes in rates of scoring over time. Below is a graph of the per- game scoring rates, by age, for this comparison group after adjusting scoring to the context of the 2009 season. This graph shows the significant growth of goal scoring and playmaking skills through the age of 23. Thereafter goal scoring tends to go into gradual

Copyright Alan Ryder, 2009 Hockey Analytics www.HockeyAnalytics.com 2009 NHL Review Page 61 decline. Playmaking tends to grow at about the same pace as goal scoring through the age of 23 but the growth continues on, peaking several years later. As point totals are dominated by assists, they tend to peak around the age of 27. Offensive skills are clearly in retreat over the age of 30, eroding quickly beyond the age of 37. Note that this analysis is of per game scoring rates. The forces of injury and retirement also reduce the average number of games played by attained age.

How do Crosby, Malkin and Ovechkin compare to this group?

The table below shows that King Crosby has trumped the competition. Over his career (per game played, normalized to today’s scoring environment) he has out-performed the peer group – 25% more goals, 72% more assists and 53% more points.

But the King’s crown is looking a bit tarnished. The pace of Crosby’s out-performance has diminished markedly. The peer group analysis says that he should be getting better with age, yet that may not be the case. Crosby’s scoring and playmaking are not growing as one would expect. This means that one has to let some air out of his Sidney Crosby career forecast (see below). Age 18 19 20 21 Crosby Alexander the Great is Games Played 81 79 53 77 clearly more of a sniper Goals 39 36 24 33 than is Crosby. The Assists 63 84 48 70 table below shows that Points 102 120 72 103 Ovechkin’s career Adjusted Peer Group * performance, relative to Games Played 70 72 75 72 the peer group, is Goals 21 24 30 30 different – 54% more Assists 30 36 44 45 goals, 2% fewer assists Points 51 60 74 75 and 21% more points. Ratio to Peers per GP Goals 159% 137% 114% 102% One should not read too Assists 180% 213% 155% 145% much in to Ovechkin’s Points 172% 183% 138% 128% performance decline * adjusted to today’s scoring context

this season. When you adjust for changes in Alexander Ovechkin scoring levels over time, his goal production last Age 20 21 22 23 season was one of the Ovechkin ten best in NHL history. Games Played 81 82 82 79 This season he was not Goals 52 46 65 56 far from his career Assists 54 46 47 54 average pace, a better Points 106 92 112 110 signal than is being Adjusted Peer Group * given by Crosby. Games Played 75 72 72 72 Goals 30 30 32 35 Ovechkin is two years Assists 44 45 46 49 older than Crosby, a Points 74 75 78 84 significant matter in Ratio to Peers per GP career projections. He Goals 161% 134% 178% 145% is also at the magic age Assists 114% 89% 90% 100% of 23 when the Points 133% 107% 126% 119% performance of snipers * adjusted to today’s scoring context tends to peak.

Which is Evgeni Malkin – sniper or playmaker? His profile seems between that of Crosby and Ovechkin. Although he led the NHL in assists last season he netted 47 goals the year before.

As we have one year less data it also is more difficult to draw a conclusion. But, here goes. His career to date goal scoring is 14% above that of the peer group and his playmaking is 29% better. While the jury is still out, it would seem Evgeni Malkin like Malkin is much more like Crosby, but Age 20 21 22 not his equal. Malkin Games Played 78 82 82 Technical Note: As Goals 33 47 35 Malkin entered the Assists 52 59 78 NHL a year after Points 85 106 113 Crosby and Ovechkin, Adjusted Peer Group * the “normalization” of Games Played 75 72 72 the peer group results in Goals 30 30 31 slightly different Assists 43 44 45 benchmarks for him. Points 73 74 76 Ratio to Peers per GP Although still very early Goals 106% 137% 99% in their careers it is Assists 117% 117% 152% evident that both of Points 112% 125% 131% these youngsters are * adjusted to today’s scoring context

something quite special. Using their career-to-date performance and the lifetime trajectories of the peer group I have (boldly) forecast their careers (career to date statistics are highlighted):

Crosby Malkin Ovechkin Age G A Pts G A Pts G A Pts 18 39 63 102 19 36 84 120 20 24 48 72 33 52 85 52 54 106 21 33 70 103 47 59 106 46 46 92 22 40 79 119 35 78 113 65 47 112 23 45 87 132 40 64 104 56 54 110 24 39 80 119 35 59 94 48 46 94 25 39 80 119 35 59 94 48 45 93 26 38 84 122 34 61 95 46 47 93 27 37 83 120 33 61 94 46 47 93 28 34 76 110 30 56 86 41 43 84 29 29 69 98 26 51 77 35 39 74 30 34 71 105 31 52 83 42 40 82 31 31 68 99 28 50 78 38 39 77 32 24 61 85 21 45 66 29 35 64 33 25 55 80 22 41 63 30 31 61 34 22 54 76 20 40 60 27 31 58 35 21 49 70 19 36 55 26 28 54 36 18 42 60 16 31 47 22 24 46 37 15 40 55 13 29 42 18 23 41 38 0 0 0 0 0 0 13 14 27 39 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 40 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 Totals 623 1343 1966 518 924 1442 728 733 1461

The first thing to note is that the careers of Malkin and Ovechkin are disadvantaged by later entry into the NHL. Not only did they both lose two seasons to Crosby but their older age of entry implies less upside. The projections say that Ovechkin has peaked and that Malkin is about to peak. But the algorithm I have used suggests that Crosby has considerable growth in him.

Malkin: His projected career totals are most similar to those of Bryan Trottier (524 goals and 901 assists in 1,279 games) and Dale Hawerchuk (518, 891, 1,188). Both played in a much higher scoring era.

Ovechkin: He projects out at over 700 career goals, flirting with the magical 50 goal plateau over the next four seasons. This would be a career much like that of Brett Hull (741, 650, 1,269 games) or Mike Gartner (708, 627, 1,432) who also played in the good old scoring days. Another reference point is Phil Esposito (717, 873, 1,282).

Crosby: His projection is 28 goals and 32 assists lower than the one I published a year ago. Part of that is locked in and due to under-performance of his 2009 forecast (39

Copyright Alan Ryder, 2009 Hockey Analytics www.HockeyAnalytics.com 2009 NHL Review Page 64 goals, 78 assists) by 6 goals and 8 assists. Part of it is due to the lack of growth to date. The model is forecasting a return to teenage form that Sidney needs to make real. But, if you believe it, this is a career that would place him second only to Wayne Gretzky in career assists and points. This projection should elicit a ‘wow’ from the audience.

Pay attention to these guys! Should these careers come to pass we would worship Crosby, Malkin and Ovechkin as three of the finest players to ever lace on skates. But this would understate their relative achievements. They are disadvantaged by playing during one of the lowest scoring eras ever.

When you deflate the career performances of others to the current scoring context you come to the conclusion that Ovechkin has the potential to be recalled as the greatest goal scorer (and Crosby the second greatest playmaker) of all time.

Or, to put it another way, just imagine what these numbers might have resembled during the free scoring 1980s (note that my assumption is that scoring levels remain at today’s low levels). These projections are highly dependent on the size of goals and goaltenders going forward. The NHL’s desire for more offense suggests that future scoring inflation could pump up these careers.