FanPost

Charts: New York Islanders Forwards 4-Year Corsi

"Tee hee, I'll take that kind of 'tough' competition any day." - Christopher Szagola-US PRESSWIRE

I am working on charts of the New York Islanders vs. each Metro team's top-9 forwards, using data of a four-year average, but while I do that, here are a couple charts looking at Isles' top-9 options heading into the 2014-15 season.

The chart is somewhat self-explanatory, but also somewhat complex, so here is an explanation:

Y-axis is Corsi Rel + Corsi On. I explained in comment section of last post, but basically I think this is a decent (by no means perfect) way to compare forwards (especially on different teams).... I think Corsi Rel by itself over-compensates at times. (I'd be happy to go over Corsi, Corsi Rel, etc in comments section if you have questions.)

X-axis is mostly Corsi Rel QoC, which basically measures the Corsi Rel of opponents for each player. Zone starts are also figured in considerably. And penalties drawn/taken are figured in about half as much as zone starts. (So players facing tough competition are on right side of chart, more defensive draws push the bubble farther right, and if the player draws more penalties than he takes, it pushes the bubble even farther right).... But it is harder to draw penalties with mostly defensive draws (starts).... Again, I'd be happy to give details of formulas in comments, if anyone would like.

Bubbles are color-coded by year. See legend on right side of chart. Blues are most recent years. Black bubbles are average of 4-year for each player. (They are weighted by TOI each season, so not simply 25% for each year, but a true average of the 4 years.)

Size of bubble: total EV TOI, so TOI per game (actually per-60) multiplied by games played.... For the 4-year avg (black bubbles) I divided by 4 so that the bubbles would be similar size to single seasons.... Note that Year 3 was only 48 games season, so smaller bubbles in general.

Purple dot in the middle is the average point (as far as X-value and Y-value) for all of the rest of the information on the chart. In other words, it is the average for these forwards.... Again, weighted by TOI, so Conacher's numbers (from two seasons) count much less than others-- and Lee + Strome + Nelson counts about as much as Conacher, as he played about the same amount in his young career as the three rookies combined.

Yellow line is my first attempt for a "line of impressiveness." The tougher the competition and zone starts, the more impressive any given Corsi On/Rel numbers. So that line is hopefully around average for impressiveness for top-9 forwards at EV. I am having trouble nailing down that line because (a) coaches tend to play their best forwards against relatively good competition and (b) it is actually probably a curved line that drops exponentially as it goes to the right.... The farther away from the line to the upper right, the better. The farther from the line to the lower left, the worse.

"NeLeeStrome" combines the numbers of the three Isles rookie forwards from last season.

Kulemin was off the chart two years: (2.36, -34.7) 2012-13 and (1.32, -25.1) in 2013-14.

I thought about including Martin, Cizikas, and McDonald, but they would be poor.... Actually, McDonald would be around (0.1, -4) for last two seasons, which isn't terrible.... A little worse than Conacher.

Here is the DIRECT LINK to the graph. May show clearer.

NYI 4 year chart, year by color

From this graph:

- Bailey, Nielsen, and Grabner each had extremely impressive corsi seasons against tough competition-- the best of anyone in tough roles past 4 seasons, according to this graph. (Dark blue bubbles.) Garik will be posting about Bailey soon. I'll have another graph for that, but basically these three are surrounded by very good (and some great) NHL forwards, according to these numbers.... Oddly enough, Bailey and Nielsen didn't do especially well with each other, according to WOWYs. (But I'm guessing they faced very tough competition while togehter.) Similar with Bailey and Grabner.... So This suggests that Isles perhaps could form two excellent shutdown lines, if they wanted to. (Especially if Nelson centers one of the two and Nielsen the other.)

- The bubbles on the right are all blue, so the toughest roles were held in past couple seasons. Looks like that helped to allow Tavares (blue bubble on left) and Strome (on left) to face lesser competition.... And 1.2+ for Corsi Rel is pretty rare in the NHL. Only 26 forwards in the NHL (minumum 40 games) were above 1.2... Twelve of those forwards were positive in both Corsi Rel and Corsi on, and NYI had three of those 12.

- The light blues (lockout season) are largely below the yellow line, whereas dark blues are much more impressive, so these players played better last season than lockout, as far as possession. (View in relation to yellow line.)

- Nelson had a very solid season. As others have noted, he was moved around and helped others to have better corsi numbers in virtually every instance.

- Lee was a small sample size this season. But in his 22 games he did well, despite taking more penalties than he drew.

- Grabovski seems to have the best 4-year average numbers by a good margin.... I know Nielsen has been very good too, so perhaps my yellow line isn't quite as steep as it ought to be.... Despite being buried by TOR, Kulemin had decent corsi numbers in his last 4 seasons, averaged out.

The next chart shows color-coded by player:

DIRECT LINK

- Grabovski (light orange) was farthest from the yellow line when he faced average-to-less QoC. But he also was above the yellow line facing extremely high 1.76 competition, so it appears he is versatile.

- Nielsen had a subpar 2012-13, but bounced back with a great 2013-14.

- Kulemin has done notably better when not facing extremely tough competition. (And not getting 30% zone starts.)... So giving Bailey, Nielsen, and Grabner defensive starts and tougher competition compared to Kulemin seems logical.

- Bailey has improved each of the past two seasons in possession numbers.

- Collectively Nelson, Lee, and Strome did better than average last season, it appears, in about 130 games. Nelson seems the best bet to have a good Corsi season coming up, but Strome and Lee are each pretty good bets as well..... Going through Metro teams I've been noticing that for rookies to have good corsi numbers (relative to competition) is pretty rare. I want to create a chart for rookies the past season or two.... Maybe later this week.

- Clutterbuck wasn't nearly as "good" on this chart as I thought he would be, though the past two seasons appear to be his best possession-wise. (And it seemed he was playing not-100% for at least a month this season.)... Similar with Grabner. But again that was pretty much from one poor (lockout) season.

End.

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