Written by Bob Sullivan at Sporting Charts
The NHL regular season is one quarter of its way through as Thanksgiving approaches south of the 49th parallel. The Montreal Canadiens and Dallas Stars have made early statements, Patrick Kane is inauspiciously atop the league’s points race and rookie phenom Connor McDavid was shelved long-term as he began to serve notice of his arrival.
The first 20 or so games typically paint a picture that will stay on display for the balance of the season. I wanted to examine how each NHL team has been performing to this point based on puck possession metrics. If puck possession truly has a strong correlation to playing winning hockey, then analyzing these season-to-date statistics should provide us a glimpse at the playoff picture. But anyone can look up Corsi and scan the list. Instead, I wanted to delve deeper into each puck possession component to understand how teams arrived at their current results.
The theory behind these statistics is that teams must be in possession of the puck in order to shoot on the net. Therefore, the more shots taken, and the fewer shots taken against you, are a strong indicator of how a player or team controls the game. Corsi statistics can be attributed to an individual player or an entire team. For my analysis, I have focused on team-only statistics. The metric is developed as follows:
Corsi For (CF) = Shots For + Missed Shots For + Blocked Shots For
Corsi Against (CA) = Shots Against + Missed Shots Against + Blocked Shots Against
CF % = CF ÷ (CF + CA)
Corsi is a situational statistic. If you think about it, how relevant is assessing puck possession of a player while he’s on the power play or shorthanded. It wouldn’t be valuable to dock a team for killing penalties when the opposition has a significantly higher likelihood of possessing the puck. Consequently, puck possession stats are often measured separately in scenarios such as 5-on-5.
To continue reading this article, click here
