Last time out, before the weekend of altogether pleasing results against Pittsburgh and Tampa Bay, we touched on the Kings and their zone exit numbers.
The Kings are an altogether efficient team in managing the puck in their own zone and breaking up ice. On the opposite end of the spectrum, they sometimes can look stagnant and frustrating in gaining entry and making things happen in the offensive zone. For reasons completely expected, the Kings break the puck out of their zone much better than they gain entry to the opposing zones.
The season average on getting the puck in right now is at 73.7%. Hopefully over time and an otherworldly effort I can gather data from other teams as well for comparison. For now though, we have to look at the Kings all by their lonesome. Defensively the exit numbers are at 78.6%.
Does this correlate with corsi for? Does this correlate with scoring chances for?
Let's look.
Having trouble making any sense of it?
Likewise.
It is hard to find a team level correlation between zone entries, scoring chances, or fenwick for that has any true meaning. Games where the Kings were bad at entries come back with higher scoring chances than games where they were poor. Unlike the individual correlation that was showing in the zone exit numbers and defensive numbers, the offensive ones a are a bit harder to draw much from on a team level. Some pretty simple explanations come up. If a team fails to gain the zone five out of ten times, but each of those five times they average five corsi events or scoring chances, it looks much stronger than a team that gains nine out of ten time but only manages one scoring chance or corsi event per entry. Some shifts where the Kings gain entry are simply grind down shifts where they generate very little offensively other than zone time, and subsequently less opposing puck time.
Still, you do not track things with a narrative in mind, you do it out of curiosity. So if the question was, "Do successful zone entries lead to more offense?" the answer, at least for the Kings, seems to be in the "No" to "Probably not" range.
Individually things seems to make a little more sense, but the connection between actual offensive generation and successful zone entries is still nebulous at best.
If we are looking at just carry-ins, since the majority of entries are carry-ins, the rankings look like this:
If you have been following along on twitter or on the blog this year, you know that we have talked about Dustin Brown, Trevor Lewis, and Nick Shore quite a bit. They are one of the Kings most potent offensive lines, coming in inside the top five in a ton of categories like scoring chances for, corsi for, and high-danger chances. However, if you were to look at a chart like this, you would see that they rank well in the middle to lower end of the pack of Kings forwards. Meanwhile, Andreoff and Nolan rank far too high for the amount of chances they generate and the limited time they have the puck.
Ergo, it is really difficult to draw any sort of meaningful correlation between how well a team does offensively in relation to entries. It really matter more what you do with the puck once you ACTUALLY get in the zone rather than how frequently you gain the zone. Unlike the defensive zone exit numbers, these ones seem on the point of being scrapped since it is a good quarter of the season tracked with no real meaningful data.
Is it interesting that Dustin Brown and Marian Gaborik have attempted the most total carry-ins? Yea sure. Is it intriguing that Carter has failed only seven times out of 68 attempts this year to gain entry to the offensive zone? Totally. These things tell you a little bit about the style of Carter and Brown as players, but you can see that by simply sitting down to watch the game. Brown loves to carry the puck. Carter uses speed through the neutral zone and often picks his places well when gaining entry. His line also creates tons of odd-man rushes which lead to easy entries.
Is there meaningful things behind this? Not really.
That's rarely why you do the research though. If it the numbers matched up well it would have been worth the time and effort, but that's not always the case. Nevertheless, the defensive numbers presented in the last outing are still worth tracking. Offensively? Done and dusted unless there is some revelation in thought or execution of it.
So after 20 some odd games of tracking zone entries for the Kings what have we learned? That it really doesn't matter all that much, at least in the Kings case. Simply put, raw zone entry numbers mean little in comparison to sustained zone time, shots/chances per entry. Also, a bigger thing may be in a stylistic approach. Do lines that dump and chase (3rd and 4th) versus lines that attempt controlled carry-ins (1st and 2nd sans Tanner Pearson) do better? In the Kings case, Shore, Brown, and Lewis lead the Kings in pretty much all those offensive analytical categories while playing a pretty heavy dump in game. Carter, Toffoli, and Lucic have similar numbers to those three by playing a controlled carry in style that tries to stray away from dumping the puck and potentially ceding possession.
There are a lot of variables, and a lot of research has been done on these topics. For further reading check out this old Grantland piece from just about two years ago.
Defense seems to be simple, get the puck out more frequently and with more success, and you limit chances against. Offense is much more unpredictable, and could throw a bit of a wrench into the defensive numbers as well. That one will be hashed out in time and with more games tracked.
On to more meaningful stats to track, like hits per 60, grit rating, and subtle Bob Miller trolls per 60. (Thank you Sheng Peng for that one)
There is a double game weekend in Ontario that I will be attending against San Diego and San Jose, so stay tuned for some minor league updates and thoughts soon!
Follow me on twitter for news and notes about the Kings and the NHL