Despite the Oilers poor effort at home against the Flames on Saturday night, the team has shown some signs of life this season. It’s easy to point out the individual flaws and the decade of bad hockey in Edmonton. But we can’t overlook what this current group of players has accomplished this season under new management and a new coaching staff.

Now lets be real for a minute. This is a 30th place team. But a lot of it has to do with the injuries to key players. It has to do with poor roster construction which management did not address over the summer. And it has to do with games like the one this past weekend, where weaknesses, like the defence and special teams, get exposed. But before we trade everyone away this summer, it’s worth looking at the overall team performance and compare it to previous seasons.

An important metric worth including in our regular assessments of the club is Corsi, which has been used as a proxy for possession. The metric tells us which teams are spending more time in the offensive zone, and we’ve learned that over time outshooting eventually leads to outscoring (Sources: Objective NHL, NHL Numbers)

What we can also do, thanks to Corsica Hockey, is adjust Corsi to take into account things like score effects, team and player zone starts and venue (since home teams tend to get their shot attempt counts inflated). This way we can get a much more accurate assessment of a teams performance when it comes to possession and have a lot more confidence when comparing teams.

Full article is at The Copper & Blue.