A quick bit on the month that was before we move on to Flames-Jets game day.
How do you feel about the steps taken of late by the Calgary Flames?
It’s hard to peg the last month as a win for Calgary given that the team went on a five-game losing streak between Dec 9-16. That said, there have been some encouraging results in terms of their on-ice product. The team has started to get back to the form of last year when they finished at the top of their division with 111 points. At the front of this issue is the resurgence of their first defensive pairing in Rasmus Andersson and Noah Hanifin. The two finished the month with an eight and nine even-strength goal differential respectively. Even Strength Goal Differential — October to November
Rasmus Andersson: -2 Noah Hanifin: -3 Even Strength Goal Differential — December
Rasmus Andersson: +8 Noah Hanifin: +9 Frequently this statistic is disregarded given the anecdotal nature of any given positive or negative. The discrepancy is certainly notable.
Taking a look at their more advanced stats, per Evolving Hockey, the pairing of Hanifin and Andersson has spent much of the season at the bottom of the Flames blue line in terms of expected goals percentage. That being the amount of goals for and against any given line or player is expected to be on the ice for.
Through December, the two have working this metric to the top of the list among the more consistent pairings on the Flames.
This stat is becoming a standard in the analytics community due to the depth of stats used to put together expected goals. Every site seems to have their own model, but the numbers are usually fairly close in aggregate.
Disclaimer: If you’re not interested in advanced stats or simply don’t have the time — just scroll down until you see a picture of Kramer. Game day starts there.
Evolving Hockey has this description for exactly how they calculate expected goals. If it doesn’t interest you, just skip this. It just feels disingenuous to list a stat based off of a model without somewhat explaining what said model is. I will link more specifics of Evolving Hockey’s model in the comments.
While Expected Goals (often abbreviated as xG) is a term used similarly to the Corsi and Fenwick, xG is different in several ways:xG is the result of a model output. xG is not “standardized…. In the public at any given time, there are multiple models that one may come across (the model available on our site, Natural Stat Trick, HockeyViz, MoneyPuck, among others). Each site has their own model that is built using NHL play-by-play data. That said, xG as a concept is relatively streamlined, and all public models are (most likely although it’s never been properly investigated for numerous reasons) quite similar in aggregate. An Expected Goal model works like this: take a certain number of unblocked shots (Fenwick), use any number of additional features describing those shots, and build a model that predicts how likely a given unblocked shot is to result in a goal. We use unblocked shots as our observations since the NHL does not currently track the location of where blocked shots were taken on the ice. There are numerous descriptive features that are used in these models including distance and angle to the net, shot type, events prior to the shot, score and game state, among many other features. The modeling problem itself for xG is referred to as binary classification: a model that attempts to classify two outcomes (in our case, whether a shot becomes a goal or does not become a goal).
The output of the model is in the form of a probability between 0 and 1 for a given shot – the higher the number, the more likely a given shot is to be a goal in a predictive sense. The outputs of this model are the values used for xG. Instead of counting 1 the way we do for Corsi, Fenwick, or shots on goal, we count the raw probability for every shot. This number is then used in the same form as any other metric, but we instead use the probability for counting.
With that out of the way, let’s look at the conventional pairings and their 5v5 xGF% 37 games into the season.
Hanifin-Andersson TOI – 542:51 xGF%: 53.64
Tanev-Weegar TOI — 330:45 xGF%: 54.66
Stone-Zadorov TOI — 231:30 xGF%: 53.72
Weegar-Zadorov TOI — 244:46 xGF%: 53.97
Tanev-Zadorov TOI — 65:46 xGF%: 62.13
Zadorov-Andersson TOI — 63:21 xGF%: 49.68
Mackey-Stone TOI — 46:22 xGF%: 48.42
Tanev-Gilbert TOI — 45:10 xGF%: 62.93
Weegar-Andersson TOI — 34:08 xGF%: 72.92
Sick of stats yet? What we can glean from this is that playing the lion’s share of minutes seems to drag a pairing closer to 50%. The pairings playing under 100 minutes together tend to have more drastic scores.
We also see that there is some burgeoning potential in a Tanev-Gilbert pairing should an injury arise.
Weegar-Andersson might be the hidden gem. An extremely high xGF%. Checking the tangibles, they haven’t been scored on in roughly 35 shifts on the ice together.
Interesting to those interested.
Jumping out of the nerd aspect, we have a game today.
With both teams on two-goal winning streaks, we have ourselves a good one ahead of us tonight. Rick Bowness and the 23-13-1 Winnipeg Jets have found new life in their current partnership. Josh Morrisey is having a Norris calibre season with six goals and 36 assists in 37 games. The Montreal-bound Pierre Luc Dubois continues to pluck away with nine goals, ten assists and a league-second-best 20 penalties drawn. Mark Sheifele is finishing plays with an absurd 23 goals and eight assists.
Not to mention Connor Hellebuyck is second in the NHL in save percentage at .928 over 28 games.
We’re seeing some career years out of the opposition. They’re not slumping, they’ve been scored on only three times in their last two, they have three players scoring at over a point per game over the last 17 days.
Calgary is also playing at the top of their game. The team is scoring by committee — six players have seven or more points in their last eight games. The tempo has never been higher this season. The aforementioned top pairing has come into form. Oh, and Milan Lucic is rocking a top-six spot with the team’s most talented passer.
Tonight has the potential to be one of the best games of the season.
Projected Lineup — Calgary Yesterday’s practice lines courtesy of Pat Steinberg. @Fan960Steinberg
Markstrom starts.
Per Wes Gilbertson, Ritchie will see a specialist today for an injury incurred in the New Year’s Eve game. @WesGilbertson
Dube-Lindholm-Toffoli Lucic-Kadri-Huberdeau Mangiapane-Backlund-Coleman Zohorna-Ruzicka-Lewis
Hanifin-Andersson Weegar-Tanev Zadorov-Stone Mackey
Markstrom Vladar
Projected Lineup —Winnipeg Courtesy of Paul Edmonds. @UtilityVoice Don’t ask me why it’s in jersey numbers. It’s worth noting that Sam Gagner is number 89 on the first line.
81-80-89 17-55-20 36-28-71 12-19-87
44-2 5-14 54-4
37
Game time is 6:00 pm MST. Catch the broadcast on Sportsnet West and TSN3.
Trevor Neufeld
@Trevor_Neufeld
Stats via evolving-hockey.com, naturalstattrick.com, and nhl.com. Image of Kramer courtesy of Wikipedia.