30 > 40?

Michael Neuvirth already has a pretty impressive professional hockey resume: two Calder Cups, a Calder Cup MVP award, an 11-5-0 NHL record and .910 save%. This coming season, he looks to vie for playing time against fellow youngster Semyon Varlamov. Despite displaying two dramatically different goaltending styles, both have managed to work their way into a 1/1A goalie tandem.

In my previous analysis, we've already seen that Varly was susceptible to goals on the blocker side last season. But just how did the 40 goals Neuvy surrendered last season go in. Once again, we head to the video.

Using the same categories to describe how pucks got past Michael as I did with Semyon (location of the shot, whether the shot came off a rebound, was redirected or whether Michael was screened) here's the breakdown:

High Blocker - 6

Low Blocker - 9

High Glove - 5

Low Glove - 5

5 Hole - 9

Other (down and out, on his back, etc) - 6

As for the other factors, I found Neuvirth popped out a bad rebound 10 times, was screened on 7 goals and 5 goals came off deflections or redirections in front (one of which Semin knocked in after a big save by Neuvy).

What's obvious right from the start is that the 5 hole goals are concerning for a butterfly goalie. Neuvy managed to get square to the shooter on almost every one of these goals, but wasn't able to close himself up quickly enough to prevent the squeaker (most of them managed to hit the inside of his pads before going in). Neuvirth also had a tendency to pop out rebounds to the middle, leading to quite a few goals against. At Hershey, his rebound control was quite good, which bodes well for his development at the NHL level.

Neuvy, like Varly, was also vulnerable to blocker-side goals more than on the glove side (15-10). However, those who wish Varly could have Neuvirth's glove hand seem to have something, with only 13% of his goals going in high glove compared to 25% for Varlamov.

Neuvy doesn't have the athleticism or explosiveness of Varlamov. But he is a technically-sound butterfly goalie. He squares himself to the shooter well and the majority of the shots he sees hit him in the body or pads. If the two young goalies can sound up the small holes in their game (and maybe learn something from each other), the Caps could have a very solid last line of defense this season.

Goals (From The Other Side)

So far in the video analyses I've performed on various players from last season, I've stuck with 'goals scored'. For my next video session, I decided to flip things upside-down: I'm looking at every goal scored ON the young Caps goaltending tandem of Semyon Varlamov and Michael Neuvirth. Today, we'll look at Varly.

Varlamov is a reflex goalie. His reaction time is off the charts, as is his lateral movement. He was criticized early on in his career for having a wear glove hand, but those feelings seemed to subside as last season progressed. So how does Varly get beat? Are the goals put past him his fault, or is his defense leaving him out to dry. Let's look at the tape!

I had to come up with a variety of categories to describe how pucks got past Semyon: Location of the shot, whether the shot came off a rebound, was redirected or whether Varly was screened.

Looking at location, this is what I found:

High Blocker - 14
Low Blocker - 16
High Glove - 15
Low Glove - 4
5 Hole - 6
Other (Varly down and out, on his back, etc) - 10

As for the other factors, I found Varly popped out a bad rebound 7 times, was screened on 11 goals and 7 goals came off deflections or redirections in front.

So what does this mean? While Varly is vulnerable to shots high glove, most of the goals against of that variety came off a good, hard shot rather than some misplay by Varlamov. The majority of his goals against last season found their way in on his blocker side, several of which came from areas of the ice where a shot to that side is a relatively routine save. Coach Boudreau's reactions to those goals should speak volumes to their lack of difficulty to stop.

Varly's athleticism often has him driving laterally from one side of the crease to the other, so rebounds or redirections back to the other side frequently leave him down and out in his net. It also doesn't help that on a number of goals, his defensemen either screened his view of the shot, or knocked the puck in their selves. It's encouraging that so few of Varly's goals against came from rebounds, as it shows his rebound control to be fairly solid.

Overall, Varly had a relatively solid season. With some attention to certain areas of his game, his stats this coming season could be excellent. Hopefully the defensive corps around him can help eliminate some of the need for him to have to make so many highlight reel type saves.

More Bradley

When you think of Matt Bradley, what images come to mind? Do you think of hard hits? Sticking up for teammates? A defense-first mentality? Dirty work? Certainly. But would you ever use the words 'skilled', 'sniper', or 'slick' when talking about Matt? Maybe you should.

Since Matt didn't score a lot of goals last season, we'll take a look at his last 2 seasons, including playoffs. That's a total of 18 goals. As with all our other goal analyses, we'll break the goals down into categories. For Matt, the groupings are pretty simple:

• Skill Goals
• Rebound/Grit Goals

You might be surprised to know that 10 of those 18 goals fall into the 'skill' category, including 7 of his 11 scored this season. Seven more fit the 'Rebound/Grit' group, and one lone goal falls into the undefined 'luck' category (Martin Broduer's flub of a partially-blocked Bradley shot).

A lot of Brads' goals aren't just showcases of skill, but show the hands and release of a sniper. On breakaways (and 'I'll do it" shootout attempts), he's not afraid to make power moves, use his backhand, or try something tricky. And of course, every time Bradley scores, Caps fans cheer that much louder.

Which brings me to the ultimate point of this post: that even 3rd and 4th line NHL players are still highly skilled and capable of much more than they might regularly show. Like so many, Bradley is dedicated to playing his role as a defensively-minded energy player and he excels at it.

But maybe he's really a 3rd line sniper waiting for the right opportunity to put the puck in the net.

Sasha vs. Sasha

In what will become a running segment during the regular season, today marks the debut of ‘Sasha vs. Sasha’, and in-depth competition between The Alexs, Ovechkin and Semin. Some of the competitive categories will be your standard statistical fare, while some will be up to my discretion (and completely off the wall).

We're calling it 'Sasha vs. Sasha'.

Today, we’ll look at something real: who scored their goals against better defensemen?

Trying to quantify every defenseman in the NHL is a tough task. I chose to go with 'Goals Against On-Ice Per 60 Minutes' DIVIDED BY 'Quality of Competition +1'. This brings negative values of QUALCOMP to a positive baseline that is <1. When GAON/60 is divided by this value, you see an adjustment up if the value is <1. It’s probably not the best way to evaluate a defenseman, but it works. We’ll call it GA60/QUAL. Here’s what I found.

Breaking down the defensemen on the ice for each of the Alexs’ 90 goals scored and using their GA60/QUAL, we come up with an average GA60/QUAL of 2.48 for Ovechkin and 2.71 for Semin (the lower the value, the better the defenseman). Using the standard deviation of the entries and grouping them by frequency, we come up with the following graph:

Clearly, Ovechkin is scoring against better defensemen (his curve shifted slightly to the left of Semin’s) while Semin is taking advantage of less effective defensemen (his curve extending far to the right, even though he scored 10 fewer goals). Obviously, Ovechkin was usually skating against a team's #1 defensive unit while Semin was attacking against unit #2 (and obviously Ovechkin is the 'Superstar' of the two).

But the fact that Semin was able to capitalize against the weaker defensemen in the league is also important, as those are the match-ups a good player/team needs to exploit (especially if your #1 player is seeing tougher defenses). Clearly both players have thier respective roles, with each one producing when called upon.

I'm scoring this one in Ovie's favor though. It's tough to deny the left side of the curve.

To be Fehr...

Much has been made over the years about how Eric Fehr was drafted ahead of Ryan Getzlaf in the 2003 NHL Entry Draft and, yes, there is a large disparity in their career point production. But to call Eric Fehr a bust seems a little unfair. He's a 20 goal scorer, Calder Cup winner and solid contributor for what was the league's best offense last season. But for some reason, his ice time is held back while others see their time rise (we're looking at you Tomas). Is this disparity in ice time deserved? Let's look at the tape.

As with all our goal analyses, we'll group Eric's goals into a few categories. For the sake of camparison, we'll use the same scoring categories as Tomas Fleischmann:

1. Skill goals created by offensive zone play/turn overs/face off wins
2. Goals from offensive rushes/breakaways
3. Crease work/tap-ins/rebounds/redirections

Based on Eric's goals, he seems to be equally adept at scoring skill goals, dirty goals, and hard working goals, with 8 goals coming from offensive zone work, 7 goals from offensive rushes and 6 more from in close to the goaltender. Oddly enough, when looking for another Cap whose goal scoring style resembles Fehr, my first (and only) thought was of Tomas Fleischmann. He has above average hands and a hard accurate shot and like Fleischmann, he manages to find open space for himself. Fehr isn't a board crasher, but he also isn't afraid to go into rough areas on the ice looking for a rebound.

I find it amazing that Eric had the lowest average ice time (12:08 per game) for any 20 goal scorer in the NHL last season, by 2:36 per game (a huge gap). In fact, you have to go all the way down to John Sim (13 goals in 11:39 in avg. ice time) to find a productive player with less ice time. The last time a 20 goal scorer played less than 13:00 per game was when Jeff Carter, Patrick Eaves and Chuck Kobasew did it in 2005-2006. So once again, the question needs to be asked: is there something about Eric Fehr's game that causes Coach Boudreau pause in calling his name?

We'll probably never know. What I do know is, based on Eric Fehr's game, I see nothing to indicate he's not a 25+ goal scorer in the NHL. With 4 more minutes per game, who knows what we could see.

...In A Flash

I think it's safe to say that there are two Washington Capitals players that confuse and frustrate fans more than any others: Tomas Fleischmann and Eric Fehr (sorry #28, we all know you're an enigma). At times, they look like scoring machines, capable of playing top 6 forward minutes and producing. Other times, they look lost, afraid of contact and of defensive responsibility. And why is one the Favorite Son while they other is the Whipping Boy?

So which is it? Are they truly skilled players in need of that... something. Or are they products of a system that produces offense? Today, we'll take a look at #14's goals and see if we can tell.

As with all these analyses, we'll break down Flash's goals into categories. They are:

1. Skill goals created by offensive zone play/turn overs/face off wins
2. Goals from offensive rushes/breakaways
3. Crease work/tap-ins/rebounds/redirections

Unlike some of his more skilled teammates (and perhaps due to his 2nd and 3rd line minutes with more grinding linemates), 11 of Felischmann's 23 goals came from working in the offensive zone. Another 8 goals were scored by going hard to the net and either redirecting pucks, tapping in cross-crease passes or Knubling pucks into the net. Only 4 of last season's goals came on transition plays or breakaways. We've seen Tomas score some elite level skill and speed goals in his Caps career (his nickname used to fit), but the majority of last season's goals weren't of that variety.

After watching all of Fleischmann's goals, the first thing I noticed was was his release. There is NO hesitation on Flash's wrist shot, no wind up; he receives the puck and in one motion the shot is off (I'm reminded of Paul Kariya in his goal scoring prime). With the 2nd highest shooting % on the team, Flash was clearly picking his spots well. The second, and perhaps more important thing I saw was his positioning. On many of his offensive zone goals, Fleischmann managed to get into open ice and put himself in position for a good pass. He forechecked well, wasn't afraid to skate out of the corners and went to the places goals scorers go. That's instinct, and that will lead to more goals.

Fleischmann missed the first 11 games of the season and returned to score 7 goals in his first 9 games. But in his remaining 60 games, he managed to score only 16 goals more goals (and none in his last 7 games, including playoffs). Perhaps those Olympic games wore down poor Tomas, after not being able to participate in training camp?

2010-11 should answer quite a few questions about Tomas Fleischmann: Is he a legitimate 25+ goal, 55+ point producer? Can he fill the role of 2nd line center? Can he gain the consistency his game has been lacking in his previous seasons? Does he deserve the high praise his coach heaps onto him?

I guess we'll see.

Red Light, Green Light

So it’s inevitable that we’d eventually get around to taking a look at Mike Green’s 19 goals from the 2009-2010 season. Personally, I had a couple of questions about Mike’s game: “How many times did Mike go end-to-end on the rush and score?” and “How often did he look like a defenseman in scoring a goal?”

 

Once again, I reviewed each of Green’s goals and placed them in a category. As it turns out, there were 5 categories:

1. A slap/wrist shot from the right point
2. A shot off an offensive rush
3. A shot from the left side
4. A shot from below the face off dots with the play set up in the offensive zone
5. An empty net goal

The findings? Well, let’s just say that Mike isn’t a fan of the left side. And he's no Paul Coffey.

 

Of his 19 goals, 9 were scored on a hard slap shot or wrist shot from the right point, the counter to Ovie’s left-side power play one-timer. Another 4 goals came on an offensive zone rush where his shots came from the middle/right and from below or between the circles. 3 more goals were scored by sneaking down low from the point (the 'Gonchar') and another was a long range empty netter. Mike only scored 2 goals from the left side last season, both from the left faceoff dot.

 

For the most part, Mike scores the way most defensemen score: from their position on the point and from selectively sneaking in for back door chances when left alone. Mike also has enough speed to join the rush at times, which makes him dangerous trailing the play. But he never broke out for an end-to-end rush like he has in the past (at least he never scored a goal that way).

 

I found it interesting that so few of Green’s goals were scored from the left side. Usually, for a right shot, playing the left side allows you to open up for a one-timer. Maybe this is because that's Ovie's spot? Mike did, however, almost always take his time with the puck before he shot it, picking his spots rather than blindly throwing pucks at the net.

 

To me, this analysis was interesting. It showed me that Mike is truly deadly shooting pucks in from the point, not abandoning his defensive responsibilities in favor of skating the puck (something he still does quite often, to the displeasure of many a Cap fan). His point production might be cut a bit if he took fewer risks and skated with the puck less, but his defensive game would likely improve.

Then again, he wouldn’t be Mike Green if he weren’t risky. And quite often, his risks reap rewards.

Sniper Swede

Scoring goals in the NHL is a study in style and preference. Most pure scorers have a few specific ways in which they score the majority of their goals and even though those methods are well known, most defenders can’t do much to stop the inevitable red light.

This past season, Nicklas Backstrom quietly became a goal scorer, raising his goal total by 11 from his sophomore season. He joined an exclusive club of players with 30+ goals and 65+ assists in a season since the 2000-2001 season (Malkin, Crosby, Datsyuk, Jagr, Thornton) and joins Crosby as the only player on the list to put up such numbers while not leading his team in scoring.

So how did he do it? How did Nick become a 30+ goal scorer after being previously thought of as Alex Ovechkin’s set-up man? To find out, we once again go to the video replay. For Nick, we broke his goals up into the following categories:

1. One-timer snap/ slap shot in middle
2. Cross crease tap in
3. Shot off an offensive rush
4. Shot off loose puck/ turn over
5. Rebound/stuff-in
6. Play from behind the net/ wrap around
7. Tip in
8. Other shot in offensive zone

The majority of Nick’s goals were scored while floating in a position near or between the hash marks and came off a well placed one-timer snap or slap shot (10). Eight of Backstrom’s goals came off work down low, putting in rebounds or jamming home loose pucks. Another 4 goals came while on an offensive rush, including his thrilling OT winner against the Blackhawks. Nick scored 3 goals from cross-crease, back door passes, 3 goals when capitalizing on loose pucks or defensive turnovers, 2 on wrap-around type goals, 2 on tip-ins, and 1 from a spin-o-rama plain old, long range backhand.

The first thing that jumped out after reviewing Nick’s goals is the quality of his snap shot. While not in the same class as Ovechkin's missile, Nick's shot proved to be quite hard and deadly accurate enough, accounting for all but 5 of his goals on the season. His one-timer snapp shot often came while in high-traffic areas and was released with little or no wind-up. Also, his work from behind the net brought back visions of Peter Forsberg for some. It appears quite obvious that Nick has developed a few preferred ways to put the puck in the net.

Some of Nick’s increased goal scoring can be attributed to the almost 50 more shots taken than in his previous season. Nick’s shooting % also rose by over 2%, from 12.6% to 14.9% (better than every Cap but Knuble and Fleischmann). Somewhere, Backstrom not only decided to shoot more often, he learned how to score.

While Ovechkin and Semin tend to get all the attention as the Caps’ “Pure Scorers”, Nick Backstrom quietly helped the Caps lead the league in the number of 30 goal scorers. Based on his still-ascending goal scoring talent, the Caps could potentially have another 40 goal man in Nick. If he wants to be one, that is.

Defensive Zone Ratings for Goalies?

During the summer, like many of us, I'm an occasional fan of baseball (occasional because the area's teams only occasionally win). Baseball is renowned for it's statistical analysis of the game (see: Moneyball, SABRmetrics), affecting everything from draft strategy to stolen bases to intentional walks. One of the more recent developments in this statistical analysis are the various Defensive Rating systems.

In the past, attempting to quantify a certain player's defensive ability with respect to his peers was difficult at best: it required that you analyze every defensive chance for every player in every game played. You have to analyze starting position, distance traveled, whether the ball was caught for or turned into an out. In the end you could theoretically say that on a given play, a certain player should or shouldn't have gotten to a ball based on the performance of every one else at his position.

Could something like this work for NHL goalies? I say yes.

You'd have to anaylze every shot on goal on every goalie in the NHL for distance, angle, whether the goalie had to move laterally to react to the puck, whether the goalie was screened, whether the puck was deflected or any subsequent shots or goals resulted from rebounds. Then you'd have to group all shots of similar types together and determine the save percentage for each catergory. Then you could determine which goalies make saves they shouldn't, and which ones let in goals that most of their peers would stop.

This type of analysis would be more beneficial to goalies than a generic Save % number (which doesn't take into account the difficulty of certain saves or a goalie's performance in spite of his defense). It would identify areas for a particular goalie to work on to bring his ability up that that of his peers.

Now all I need is video of every shot on goal in the league...