Joined Lowetide this morning on TSN 1260 to talk Oilers, why we dislike the current defence pairings and areas of improvement. Clip starts around 40 minutes in.

Joined Lowetide on Monday morning to talk Oilers, their losing streak, and what to expect going forward.

Clip is here, starts around 25 minutes in: TSN 1260, November 14, 2016

Joined Lowetide this morning on TSN 1260 to talk about the Oilers. Starts around the 25 minute mark.

Here’s some of my work from the past week that I mentioned:

• Corsi Percentage Combinations Between Forwards and Defencemen (Copper & Blue)
• Reviewing the common line combinations this season and if changes are required (Copper & Blue)
• Checking in on the Pacific Division (Copper & Blue)

And this is the article that talked about the predictive value of Corsi after one month of play:

• Are the Flyers a ‘good’ team according to advanced stats? Depends on which you use. – Broad Street Hockey

And since we talked about Dougie Weight and how great he was for the Oilers, one of my favorite highlights:

Something of interest this early in the season has been the Oilers scoring chance numbers, as they currently sit 5th in league with a 58.3% share of the total chances at even-strength (Source: Corsica Hockey). Obviously an encouraging number as the Oilers have been under 50.0% historically when it comes to this metric.

What’s interesting is that even though the Oilers are getting a higher share of the scoring chances after six games, (light schedule, only one game on the road, two against Calgary…minor details) the Oilers are still posting an adjusted Corsi For% less than 50%. This doesn’t seem like a sustainable output, as you’d think that generating scoring chances would be dependent on how often your team has the puck (with shot attempts being a good proxy for this). One thing I was curious about was how often teams have posted a below average adjusted Corsi For%, yet still had a higher share of scoring chances.

Below is a graph of every team and how they performed when it came to Corsi For% as well as their share of scoring chances last season, as defined by Corsica Hockey. I’ve added a black line for each metric to show the average.

Here we see a pretty good correlation between possession and scoring chances. Most of the top teams from last season that finished with a higher winning percentage and/or did well in the playoffs are in the top right quadrant (i.e., >50% CF% and >50% SCF%). And in the bottom left are most of the clubs that missed the playoffs or were eliminated early on. Only two teams posted below average possession numbers and above average scoring chance numbers last season: Columbus and Minnesota.

So while you could interpret the Oilers early 2016/17 numbers as the team doing a better job at converting their shot attempts into scoring chances, the truth is that it’s hard to sustain and does not guarantee any success. I fully expect the Oilers share of scoring chances to come back down to earth if they continue to post below-average possession numbers, just based on how teams did last season. But if McDavid can continue dominating, creating chances on his own, and the team continues to ride out their higher-than-average shooting percentage to win more games, I’ll be thrilled.

Joined Lowetide on TSN 1260 to talk Oilers this morning. Full audio clip is below (starts around the 45 minute mark):

Discussed:

• Yakupov’s role this coming season
• Defence pairings, including why Sekera should be paired with Fayne. Wrote about the duo at Copper & Blue a few months ago.
• Talked about why Gryba might be a good fit for Davidson. Wrote about that recently at Copper & Blue.
• Penalty kill options

I joined Lowetide on Monday morning to talk about the Oilers and how they should better integrate analytics. Full audio is here.

Couple notes:

• We touched on a lot of what I talked about in my recent article: Oilers and Analytics (2016, July 24).
• I mentioned articles that tied in analytics with video analysis. A couple solid examples are from Hockey Graphs:
  • Tactalytics: Using Data to Inform Tactical Offensive Zone Decisions
  • Video Analysis: How The Penguins Extend Zone Time With “Total Hockey”
• Also, mentioned the new WoodMoney metric (developed by Woodguy55 and G Money), which does a nice job of measuring quality of competition. You can learn more about the metric here: WoodMoney: A new quality of competition metric to analyze NHL data
• Couple recent articles that summarize the most commonly used metrics in hockey:
  • Putting it all together: A hockey systems, stats, tools, and talent evaluation primer – Blue Seat Blogs
  • WIIM Mailbag: Answering Your Analytics Questions – Winging it in Motown (with video)

Joined Lowetide this morning on TSN 1260 to talk Oilers. Full clip is below, starting around the 40 minute mark.

Couple notes:

• Some useful dashboards that compare Hall to Lucic. They’re both good players who can play in your top 6, but I’d take Hall over Lucic any day because of his style of play, production and long term outlook.

This one is from Ryan Stimson of Hockey Graphs:

And this one is from Own the Puck:

• Definitely not a fan of the Gustavsson signing. Dug into his numbers last week.
• The rebound analysis that I referred to is here.
• And the positives I found from last season are written up here.

Joined Alan and Phil from Arctic Ice Hockey to talk Oilers this past weekend. Full podcast can be found here (starting around the 8:00 minute mark after the intro):

http://www.cyberears.com/index.php/Browse/playaudio/29784

Topics included:

• Oilers drafting Jesse Puljujärvi and what to expect from the latest group of draft picks
• Trading Hall for Larsson
• Signing Milan Lucic
• What to expect from Leon Draisaitl this coming season
• RNH’s importance to the club
• The current defence core

Thanks again to Alan and Phil for having me on.

Joined Lowetide on Monday morning on TSN 1260 to talk about the Oilers, the Hall-for-Larsson trade, what to expect from Milan Lucic, center depth and potential moves on defence. Full audio is here (starts around the 25 minute mark):

Related links:

Should the Oilers consider adding Milan Lucic this summer? – The Copper & Blue

Looking into Milan Lucic … Again – The Copper & Blue

Thoughts on the Hall Trade – The SuperFan