by Bill Kostroun - AP

Play defense, guys!

View full size photo »

We've seen in numerous contexts that the key to winning hockey games is outshooting your opponents: in the long-run (like a decade), your shooting percentage will converge to near the league-average, as will your goalie's save percentage, making shot differential and goal differential one-and-the-same.  So it should come as no surprise that four of the top five teams in outshooting their opponents were also at the top of the leaderboard in wins:

The Blues are the only outlier here, and it's because they were simply unable to put together a good goaltending tandem before this season.  For nearly a decade, they could barely find a league-average starter, but still managed to make the playoffs six times.  Given their dominance in shot counts, it was an egregious oversight in the team-building department.

What about the opposite end of the spectrum?

There aren't many surprises down here either: three expansion teams, a Panthers team that made the playoffs three times in 16 years, and a Penguins team that was bad enough to be able to draft Marc-Andre Fleury, Evgeni Malkin and Sidney Crosby in the span of three seasons.  Well, there is one exception on that list, the Jacques Lemaire-led Minnesota Wild:

PDO is the sum of shooting percentage and save percentage.  At a team-level, over nine seasons, with changing personnel, it gets pulled very strongly towards 1000.  Clearly, some teams, like Ottawa, Colorado and San Jose, are able to exceed it, usually by having a very good offensive team that gets more power-plays than its opponents.  But Minnesota is a clear outlier, pushing its PDO to the top of the league through exceptional defense and suppression of shots in the slot.  Montreal's story isn't quite as clear since the Habs cycled through six coaches in less than a decade, but they appear to have had tremendous goaltending as opposed to an exceptional defensive strategy like Lemaire does.

As for the other end:

I don't think anybody's surprised to see Tampa at the bottom of this list given their goaltending and defensive woes.  Chicago and the Islanders have iced some very bad teams too.  Columbus plays adequate defense but has always had trouble putting any goals on the board.  But what about Carolina?  The Hurricanes have simply had really bad goaltending during the season but have turned it up in the playoffs - Cam Ward has posted .915 and .920 save percentages in the post-season, while an Arturs Irbe/Kevin Weekes tandem hit .938 on the way to a Stanley Cup loss in 2002.  We tend to remember Carolina's strong finishes, but they've frequently been very, very bad during this decade.

More photos » by Paul Sancya - AP

The Detroit Red Wings have had a lot to celebrate over the last decade!

Browse more photos »

James Mirtle had the great idea of doing a statistical run-down of the top teams of the past decade.  I'm actually using the 1999-2000 season through the beginning of this season, with adjustments if any of the teams have moved up and down the list.  Without further ado, here are the winningest teams of the last decade:

The top two teams are no surprise: six of the last nine Stanley Cup finals featured Detroit or New Jersey, and they each won two cups.  Both teams made the playoffs every single year.  But the next three teams have had mixed playoff success: Ottawa and Dallas each lost one cup, and San Jose's playoff performance has been well short of expectations.  On the other hand, Carolina, Anaheim and Pittsburgh won the other three cups and were runners-up in three others despite having losing records over the last decade.  As they say: "flags fly forever" - sustained good teams are no substitute for one or two exceptional seasons sandwiched between mediocrity.

I don't actually find "wins" to be the best indicator of team performance, especially with extra points flying all over the place and rules changing from year-to-year.  So let's look at regulation winning percentage instead:

We have the same five teams, with teams 2-5 switching spots.  Philadelphia and Colorado are a distant 6th and 7th and haven't caught this group in 2009-10.  Surprisingly, the Toronto Maple Leafs were 9th overall.

And what about the bottom of the league?

Perhaps the only surprise is the Chicago Blackhawks - in a few weeks, they'll have passed the Florida Panthers for 25th place overall.  But Hawks fans will surely remember that they had six coaches and just one playoff win in eight seasons.

Next time: a look at shooting, and perhaps more evidence for the genius of Jacques Lemaire.

by Elise Amendola - AP

Poor Zdeno Chara: can't find anyone his size to hit...

View full size photo »

The question of tall players hitting short players and whether these hits should be called as head shots came up in the SB Nation discussion list.  So I started wondering if there are any consistent trends around size differentials in hits.  First, there's a league-wide bias: taller players hit shorter players, though the average difference is small - just 1/4-inch.  Here's the distribution of heights by hitters and guys who got hit:

Continue reading this post »

More photos » by Jeff McIntosh - AP

2 months ago: Montreal Canadiens goalie Jaroslav Halak, from Slovakia, loses track of the puck during first period NHL hockey action against the Calgary Flames in Calgary, Alberta, Tuesday, Oct. 6, 2009. (AP Photo/The Canadian Press, Jeff McIntosh)

Browse more photos »

In their last 12 games, Montreal has been outshot by 67%, or 33-23 per game.  Miraculously, they're 5-4-3 in regulation, and they've scored 33 goals and allowed 32.  They've managed to do this with a 12% shooting percentage and a 920 save percentage, both well above their marks through the first 21 games - 7.7% and 905, respectively.  The Canadiens have had a shockingly lucky season: they won their first eight games in extra frames, and now that their luck has subsided on OT and the SO, they've had a shooting percentage that's way over their heads.

The Leafs, on the other hand, are 7-3-2 in their last 12; have outshot their opponents by 17% (vs 8% for their first 20 games) and have outscored them 41-37.  What we see now is a very bunched up set of standings in the East:

The Bettman point makes the standings look a little different, but the 8th-14th teams in the East are all within 4 points of each other.  Going forward, what I've shown here is a much better predictor of team performance than each team's "actual" record, and it's highly unlikely that Boston's going to get a lottery pick this season via Toronto.

More photos » by Jimmy Jeong - AP

Vancouver Canucks' Rick Rypien punishes Edmonton Oilers' Zach Stortini during first period NHL hockey action in Edmonton on Monday, Oct. 19, 2009. (AP Photo/The Canadian Press, Jimmy Jeong)

Browse more photos »

Every once in a while, you see an obvious innovation in a game that makes you wonder why it wasn't obvious to every single player.  Rick Rypien of the Vancouver Canucks has brought one to NHL fighting: he actually protects his face while he's fighting.  Most fighters in the NHL try to block head shots, but Rypien actually does a great job of it.  The net result is that he dominates fighters who are way out of his weight class:

Once you start clicking on those videos, you are almost certainly to waste half an hour of your day watching Rypien pummeling guys who had no idea what they were getting themselves into.  In the 21 fights with footage, Rypien gets abused precisely once: when Douglas Murray pulled Rypien's sweater over his head over two years ago.  In the last two years, Rypien has not had an NHL fight where he lost convincingly. 

Now, Rypien has not yet fought any of the top ten heavyweights (based on the ELO analysis I did of the data on hockeyfights.com), mostly because he hasn't even played a full season in the NHL yet.  But it's only a matter of time before he fights someone who also mops the floor with Zach Stortini - it will certainly be an epic battle, and if Rypien prevails, it will validate technical fighting and secure his reputation as an innovator in the NHL.  Right up there with Jacques Plante, Bill Chadwick and Frank Zamboni...

More photos » by Paul Vernon - AP

18 days ago: Calgary Flames' Jamie Lundmark (45) celebrates with teammate Daymond Langkow after scoring the winning goal against the Columbus Blue Jackets in a shootout an NHL hockey game in Columbus, Ohio, Saturday, Nov. 28, 2009. The Flames won 4-3. (AP Photo/Paul Vernon)

Browse more photos »

I rarely watch the Hockey Night in Canada intermission panels, but I was too lazy to change the channel during the Flames-Sharks game on Saturday.  What drew Glenn Healy's ire?  The Flames didn't use Jarome Iginla in their last shootout.   Healy reminded us that Iginla was the "hottest" NHL player in the month of November.  Iginla did indeed shoot 27.6% over 14 games, and presumably Healy believes this indicates Iginla's shooting ability has gone way over his career figure of 13.4%.  Like the old NBA Jam arcade game, Iginla's temporarily "on fire" and Calgary can't afford to let this ephemeral talent of his slip away.

Let's take the longer view: Iginla is 7-for-25 on shootouts in his career.  (The other shooter Healy suggested was indispensable was Stephen Weiss, who's 3-for-18 in his career.)  Assuming he saw a set of goaltenders who were, on the whole, league-average, here is the distribution of Iginla's true talent in the shootout:

Not only is Iginla not a lock to score in the shootout, it's fairly unlikely that he's even a better-than-average shooter: the probability of Iginla's true shootout talent exceeding the league average is just 31%.  And the probability of Iginla being one of the best dozen or so shooters in the league, at 41% or more?  Barely 10%.

So is that a guy who absolutely has to be one of your top three shooters?  No chance.  Is it likely that Flames coach Brent Sutter picked his shooters based on how successful they were in hundreds of shootouts in practice?  Very.  Are we better off trusting lots of reps than looking at last month's shooting percentage?  I think you know the answer.