njexpress9 said:
I need some help. I am looking to answer the following question.
Are Beleskey, Hayes and Connolly an upgrade over Lucic, Smith and Soderberg?
Looking at 5x5 stats over the past two years, in both Fenwick/60 and Corsi/60 it appears that Beleskey, Hayes and Connolly (only 2015 data) have much higher values. It seems to me that they might be and this does not factor in their cost.
What am I missing? Are Fenwick/Corsi good indicators?
Edit: Table exploded. Can someone point me in the right direction to add a table?
Well, a few things:
1. Comparing Corsi or Fenwick between different players on different teams is tough as context matters a lot. There are five players on the ice at one time, so one guy only exerts so much influence on possession. The Bruins have generally been a good possession team and off the top of my head Anaheim and Tampa are too, but Florida isn't though I think they were pretty solid last year. And then, even within one team who your linemates are matters a lot -- someone who plays with Bergeron a lot is going to look great, while someone who plays with Greg Campbell is going to look bad regardless of how good they are. Finally, who you're deployed against and where you're deployed also influences your Corsi, so a "1st pair" Dman on a bad team is going to look worse than they actually are, because they will get a lot of tough matchups and probably get a lot of faceoffs in their own zone --it's harder to get a shot attempt when you start in your own zone.
2. Using corsi/60 is just half the story, as you also want to pull corsi against /60 (Maybe you were going to do this before you deleted the table). Usually it's easier to look at CF% which is the raatio of the two -- so of total shot attempts for both teams while the player was on the ice, what percent were for his team? CFRel is also helpful as it is a quick adjustment for the strength of the team -- what is the player's CF% relative to the team when he's not on the ice? This will be a percent plus or minus zero.
3. So, to answer the question, let's go one by one:
Lucic: Never a great possession player, but not a bad one either. Over the last two years he had a 52.4% CF% and the team was a little better with him off the ice. But, a lot of his value comes in his consistently high shooting percentage and generally solid point production.
Soderberg: Pretty solid possession player and as a center he has more influence than a winger does. 52.3 CF% the last two years. He's actually comparable possession wise to Krejci the last couple years. However, he may have gotten a boost from playing a lot with Eriksson.
Smith: Tough to tell because he played a lot with Bergeron who may be the best possession player in the NHL.
Beleskey: A good CFRel of +2.1% the last two years, however, he had a lot of ice time with Ryan Kesler who is a good possession player.
Hayes: Negative 1.0 CFRel over the last two years, but played sporadically and on two teams before last year. His 14-15 was pretty good but it is likely too early to tell.
Connolly: Ditto, I would say. Good possession numbers but only played 66 games the last two years and on two teams.
My feeling is that the newcomers have a chance to influence possession more than Lucic or Smith, but it's not likely, and not as much as Soderberg. As wingers though, they won't be as important.
Edit: I should add that I'm not an expert on this stuff and I wrote this in kind of a hurry.