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Evaluating Player Output Against Role They Are In

August 27, 2016, 11:46 AM ET [21 Comments]
Ryan Wilson
Pittsburgh Penguins Blogger • RSSArchiveCONTACT
When evaluating talent in the sport of hockey the more tools available the better. In the past day or so Carolyn Wilke has been producing some clean and easy to read visuals by request about certain players. These info graphics are being used to show how certain players are playing in their certain role when put up against the league average of that role. She is using data from 5v5 which includes weighted Corsi, Primary Points per 60 (no secondary assists), and Zone Start Percentage relative to their team. At the bottom you can see the role that they were playing in (Line 1, Line 2, Line 3, Line 4 etc...)

So far she has created a decent amount of Penguins players which include Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, Kris Letang, and Phil Kessel and I will pass those along here.




The depressing thing about Sidney Crosby's information here is that those two unreal offensive seasons were both in his prime and both cut short by injury (concussion, broken jaw).

Pittsburgh is very spoiled to not only have Crosby but this guy as well




The 2011-12 season was his Hart Trophy year. It is important to remember when reading these that any bar that is in the positive means they are above average for that specific role. Malkin is consistently above average when compared to all other first line centers. You can also see that injuries have taken a little bit of his bite away.




You can't do it on your own in the NHL and that is kind of what the Maple Leafs expected Phil Kessel to do for years. With a better surrounding cast Kessel's numbers have improved.




No idea what happened to Letang in 2013-14 but everything else points to an elite top pairing defenseman year after year. You could make an argument that Letang deserved the 2012-13 Norris Trophy over Subban even though PK was a worthy recipient.

As I said Pittsburgh is very fortunate to have that core of star players on their roster.

Here are a couple of the other ones I found interesting that Carolyn created




Is it a blip on the radar or is a trend developing? Toews is now 28 years old which is on the downswing for most players. His partner in crime, Marian Hossa, has shown signs of slowing down as well.




Everybody's favorite Norris Trophy argument






All of this information was created by request. Check out Carolyn's timeline on Twitter to find more players that don't appear here. It is a nice new visual to look at player performance.

Thanks for reading!
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