As you may know, I normally focus more on the forwards, matchups and other stuff going on, but something struck me about some of the goals the Isles have conceded recently and that's why I've paid a bit more attention to what they're trying to do in their own zone. Some of us talked a little bit about it in the comments after the Washington game.

I'm still not an expert when it comes to the game in the defensive zone and would appreciate comments - I'm also definitely looking forward to watching some other teams a bit more closely during the playoffs. However, my feel is that the Isles play one of the most strict man-to-man coverage systems in their own zone around the league. And I'm wondering if that's playing to their strengths.

After the jump, I'll quickly add some general thoughts and then will break down some of the goals the Isles have conceded over the past few weeks, including both against Toronto last night.

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This is some kind of a follow-up of Ozzy's FanPost "Is Reasoner really an upgrade over Konopka? Numbers say no". I felt challenged by Ozzy's view of Reasoner's offensive and all-around game to add some context and evidence if you like. I understand people value fighting and other intangibles differently and have varying expectations for what the ideal 4th liner should bring to the table. So, it's clear comparing Reasoner and Konopka will always yield various opinions. But I think Ozzy's been pretty harsh on Marty Reasoner, estimating his all-around game and offensive talent below the level of Zenon Konopka's abilities. As much as you may like Konokpa overall, I think that might really stretch things.

To be clear, this is not an angry response to Ozzy or something, not at all. I'm very glad he brought up the subject because I had never paid all that much attention to Reasoner's skills myself. I just felt it would be a fun exercise to take a look at some of his highlights to get a better idea of his potential and therefore decided to put a new FanPost together. So, I just cite him above here to make the connection to what we've been discussing here this week anyway. Thanks again, Ozzy, for bringing it up.

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The Portland Winterhawks are a very interesting club - just generally due to the wealth of talent they've had on their team over the last few years and of course specifically for all Islanders fans and Swiss thanks to Nino Niederreiter (and Sven Bärtschi). Particularly this season, with two top-5 picks of last year's draft as well as three guys likely to be selected in the 1st round this year, they've been so deep it's tough to tell who's doing what for them, who's driving the bus and who on the other hand might mainly benefit from having all that talent around him. That's why I took a closer look at their plus/minus stats.

Plus/minus is far from a perfect stat of course. Even over the course of a whole season the numbers can be skewed quite a bit due to unconsistent goaltending or (un)lucky shooting, as we saw for the Islanders last season. And just due to the nature of the juniors game this might easily be more of a problem even down there. Also, without having watched any games the numbers are more difficult to interpret in the absence of any advanced stats, such as quality of competition, etc. But still, as they don't track any shot metrics, in order to get an idea of the overall game of the kids, plus/minus is still the best stat available in juniors hockey.

By the way, I'm not generally an expert when it comes to the Winterhawks. So, would be cool to read in the comments from everyone who's seen them play and can add stuff regarding who was used in what kind of roles, etc.

Anyway, some of the results might not mean a whole lot, but others provide a hint at what should be considered when talking about expectations for the future of these kids. Most notably, it looks like Nino Niederreiter has struggled away from Ryan Johansen - in fact the Winterhawks have been outscored marginally over the past two seasons when Nino was on the ice without Johansen.

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It's been much debated of course that the 10-11 season has been a roller coaster ride for the Islanders. Most people including the media seem to believe that they played awful hockey early on, that pretty much every aspect of their game has improved in the 2nd half and that they've been a very competitive team as of late. While I agree that they've been a better team overall in the 2nd half and I do think certain mistakes were made early in the season, in terms of coaching or also how the team was put together, I'm not sure some of the predominant narratives withstand a closer look. To examine that I collected some data and tried to find out how much their actual play at even strength really has fluctuated or what the most important reasons were for the highs and lows resultwise in their season.
By the way, don't read all this as an approach to evalute the coaching. Also, the numbers provided here obviously don't tell the whole story. So, for those who've read my comments in the various threads, this might more be a follow-up with some more indications to what I think has been happnening this season. Or of course a starting point for more discussions.

However, it turns out that their EV play, measured in shot/Corsi ratios, actually has been on a pretty consistent and quite mediocre level all season. For some I guess it's nothing new the save percentage and the shooting percentage have been extremely volatile on the other hand and driven the outcome of their results indeed. However, I think some charts you'll find after the jump provide a quite interesting look at how extreme a season it's been in that regard.

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The Islanders are almost there - tonight's game against the Vancouver Canucks will mark the 41st game of the season. Since no one is tracking scoring chances for the Canucks I believe - and apparently no one for the Isles -  we can now take a look at what is the Islanders' scoring-chance summary halfway through the season. At this point you might wonder where the data comes from given no one is tracking the Isles. Well, I actually just went through all the games that had been tracked by bloggers of other teams around the league and put some tables together. 

First of all, a special thanks as always to Vic Ferrari for setting up this whole project and the scripts. Then, for the data, full credit as mentioned goes to all the guys tracking chances around the league. The group includes Derek (Florida), George (Rangers), Olivier (Montreal), "Slava" (Toronto), "Knee high to a duck" (Washington), Dennis (Edmonton) and Kent (Calgary).

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Editor's Note: More interesting work from BenHasna, who gives us some food for thought inside the numbers of guys like Kyle Okposo, Bruno Gervais, Blake Comeau and -- well pretty much the whole team...

In some of my recent comments about certain players I talked about how the goalies affected their individual stats. I found for example that Kyle Okposo's bad plus/minus was largely caused by the fact that Martin Biron struggled horribly when KO was on the ice. KO was only -3 combined with Dwayne Roloson and Rick DiPietro, but -15 with Biron, who stopped only 85.37% of the pucks when KO was on the ice.

There are a few similarly interesting cases and I thought some might want to take a look at all numbers, although we honestly can't draw too many conclusions about the performances of the last season and certainly can't make any predictions about the future based on these numbers. But it's fun and if anything shows that +/- numbers can be distorted quite a bit. The big table and further explanations follow after the jump.  

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I've been more busy than expected lately and it's been quite some time since part 3 of my Corsi WOWY series indeed, but I've found some time to put together another piece. With the Isles' season being over for more than two months, I thought it was a good idea to not exclusively look back, but also ahead the next season. Thus, I'll have a look in this part not only at the numbers of Freddy Meyer, but also at how recent addition Mark Eaton compares.

Explanations what this Corsi WOWY is all about can be found particularly in part 1 of this series. Once again, a big thanks to Vic Ferrari who delivers all the data on his great sites. As always, please comment or correct in case you find something suspicious.

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Editor's Note: Front-paging a report from the World Championships from BenHasna.

Originally a comment, now a FanPost. For those who don't know, I live in Switzerland and attended today's upset of Denmark against USA at the Worlds. And wow, that Denmark team is fun to watch

Going in, as you’d expect, I was neutral. But looking at how Denmark played the game, I had to be happy for them at the end. And pretty much the whole crowd was. There anyway were more Danish people than I expected and most of the German and Finnish fans supported Denmark, too. As the ranking presents itself now, not sure, if that was smart, though. However, I think everyone could feel how much this game meant to Denmark and how well they played it with their young, fascinating group.

Actually, this Danish team is more talented than any Swiss team I’ve seen. They obviously still have a tough road ahead in this tournament and could perhaps just about miss the top 8. And in the years to come, they might lack a bit of depth, as they don’t have a very good league in their country, but sooner or later I see them playing the role Switzerland played at this year’s Olympics.

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In case you missed it, I posted a little update in the comments of part 2. After finally having figured out all tools of Vic Ferrari's sites, I was able to deliver the exact numbers for the discussed line combinations. The conclusions remain the same, though, Bergenheim put up the most impressive numbers together with Nielsen and Hunter.

In this part 3 I'll try to get back from line combinations to individual players. I first wanted to include all the centers, but after having put something together about John Tavares, it's enough for now, I'd say. I'll be back with a summary about the rest of the centers - Rob Schremp Hockey, Bailey and Park that is, as I already looked at the brilliant numbers of Frans Nielsen in part 1, where you can also find what this is all about and how to read the tables, etc.

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Editor's Note: Further examination of the Nielsen Effect courtesy of BenHasna.

A few interesting questions have been brought up following part 1 of my Corsi WOWY analysis, such as why do Sean Bergenheim and Frans Nielsen seem to work not nearly as well together as Trent Hunter and Frans Nielsen? Or who might benefit most from playing LW on a line with Nielsen and Hunter?

Although we won't find all the answers, I'll try to give a better idea and will look more closely at the numbers of Hunter and Bergenheim. Again, in case you'd like to know what this is all about, please check part 1, where I praised Nielsen almost as much as Dom normally does.

To tell which left winger worked best with those two is more difficult than just looking at the numbers of one single player. Generally, these numbers only tell us whose Corsi ratio benefited or suffered from playing with or without a certain other player. But they don't tell anything about how well whole line combinations worked. By combining a few numbers or remembering certain things from watching the games, we should still get a pretty good idea. But it's definitely a bit more vague. I'll give it a try, but not sure if my reasoning makes any sense and I'd surely welcome any comments.

By the way, over at the Cult of Hockey, there's an interesting interview with Jim Corsi about how it all started and what he thinks about "his" number. 

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Editor's Note: BenHasna takes a great look at the effect for Islanders players with and without Frans Nielsen on the ice to help them. We are not the only ones -- non-Isles fans have noticed Frans' Selke-like qualities, too. For those of you who have some interest in these "advanced" stats to measure what's going on, this is a nice way to dip your toe in. A quick explanation is after the first table. The links explain the rest, but ask questions or make corrections in comments.

Advanced stats have drawn my interest quite a bit over the last few months. Reading about the Oilers, Canadiens, Avalanche is great, too, but I obviously would prefer to read about the Islanders. As there isn't much out there, I'll give it a try here myself.

Advanced stats don't explain everything, but there's so much going on during play and you can't catch everything just from watching the games. So, in my opinion, as long as you don't try to predict the future solely based on these numbers and always use them in context, they indeed help a lot to understand what's going on on the ice. I don't know too much about statistics, but I can understand most of the things and I'll try to reproduce a few here. Tyler Dellow inspired me with two interesting pieces about Horcoff and Ovechkin. And thanks to the great sites and new tools of Vic Ferrari, I should be able to do the same for the Islanders.

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