Follow me on twitter
The data from this blog is from Corey Sznajder's amazing manual data tracking project.
You can choose to donate to Corey's project by clicking here. If you hit a certain donation level you too can have access to all of data he has charted to this point (~45-50 games).
****
In the past two weeks I have looked at the Penguins ability to
leave the defensive zone with control as well as their ability to
gain the offensive zone with control. Today I want to shift gears and focus more on the Penguins ability to defend against controlled zone entries.
Why is defending against controlled zone entries so important? Last year through the ~45-50 game mark the Penguins generated .65 shots per controlled entry as opposed to only .27 shots when they were forced to dump the puck in. The more you force the other team to dump it in, the less chance they have to score, pretty simple concept.
While the previous data had around ~45-50 games tracked to this point, the data I have available right now on defending zone entries is limited to the games played between November 18-January 28th plus the two Los Angeles games. This is not a large sample size, I don't think any definitive conclusions can be drawn from this, yet.
Why even bother analyzing the data? Because I think it will be interesting to see if the trends (which are in their infancy) continue on.
Here are the numbers for the Penguins defensemen last year:
What trends can we forming from this limited sample size?
Paul Martin is really good at the under the radar things in hockey. Gap control isn't something that always leaps off the television screen but it's pretty clear that he has a decent handle on things.
Matt Niskanen has the largest sample size here and he too does a great job with his gap control. Losing Niskanen would have stung a lot more if the Penguins didn't land Christian Ehrhoff.
From the looks of things teams should have done a better job of trying to target Orpik instead of Martin when they played together. Likewise the opposition should have done a better job of targeting Maatta instead of Niskanen.
Something that was surprising to me was Kris Letang's sample size. Letang is as good as anybody from a skating standpoint and he certainly isn't afraid to play physical, why would his carry in numbers be so poor? Corey Sznajder gave me a little insight about some of the observations he made while tracking these games, Letang was playing with Scuderi.
Rob Scuderi only played in 13 games during this time frame but his numbers are clearly below everybody here. Other teams did target him more often than the others and for good reason. They were very successful when they did. Scuderi is an anchor in every sense of the definition, from zone exits, to zone entries, to defending zone entries.
What about Christian Ehrhoff? He played for the Buffalo Sabres last year who were amongst the worst possession teams of all time. This is an important factor when comparing his numbers to the other Penguins players. Ehrhoff had a carry in percentage of 54.2%, but that was actually the lowest amongst regular defensemen in Buffalo. Look for that number to shrink dramatically in Pittsburgh, especially if he plays with Letang or Martin. His break-up percentage is second only to Paul Martin.
My hypotheses from this data are as follows:
Look for Paul Martin to continue his trend of being awesome.
Look for Kris Letang's numbers to improve drastically when he isn't saddled with Scuderi.
Look for Maatta's targets per game to increase as opposing teams try to test him rather than Martin, Ehrhoff, Letang.
Christian Ehrhoff will more than make up for the loss of Matt Niskanen.
These are small sample sizes but by looking at the numbers I believe we have some interesting trends to follow heading into next season. When Corey's project is finished I will take a look back at the entire season's worth of data and see what it tells us.
Thanks for reading!
Follow me on twitter
Pittsburgh Penguins Blogger • 
Join the Discussion:
»