Don’t forget the most recent demotion of Mikkel Boedker, who is the latest of talents to use his skills in the AHL and arguably the greatest talent (I trying not to be biased as a Dane, but I think it’s evident). He’s already gathered five points in three games. However, it is a strong team.

It’s a testimony to the changed focus - and probably improved competence - of the organisation to see talents used extensively by Gretzky now playing in the AHL. Especially Porter, Tikhonov, Turris and Boedker. The Phoenix Coyotes have a better and broader team this season, and off to a good start while the talents develop at their natural pace getting quality ice time.

If not for the external circumstances and related uncertainty, it has the makings of a success story.

Posted by Moq from Denmark on 10/19/09 at 01:11 PM ET

TPSH,

I came across an article in David Staples’ The Cult of Hockey blog that I thought might be of interest to you:

http://communities.canada.com/edmontonjournal/blogs/hockey/archive/2009/10/18/what-good-are-hockey-stats-if-we-can-t-even-figure-out-who-scores-and-causes-goals.aspx

While the general discussion on hockey statistics is worth reading, here was the particular item that caught my eye prompted me to write you:

“For example, Scott Gomez has always had a very high Corsi, but he also takes a ton of incredibly low quality shots which misleadingly makes him seem like a top player in terms of Corsi rankings.”

There is a subjective in that statement—the amount of low quality shots taken by Gomez —but is that a measurable subjective? Is there an individual player shot quality index that can be used as a interpretive filter on the Corsi numbers?

Posted by Matthew McCallum from Redding, California on 10/19/09 at 04:34 PM ET

Dave Staples post is worthy of a longer responce than this, but here is my first impression.  Scott Gomez does take a significant number of shots (as compared to his goal total).  Last year, he was 16th league wide in shots (with 271).  He scored 16 goals, which puts him around 150th in goals scored in the league.  That is a bit of an extreme year.  The year before he had 242 shots (30th) and again scored 16 goals.  That year is probably closer to a recent term average.  Nevertheless, Gomez does tend to have a worse shooting percentage than the average player.  Exactly how that looks when you include missed and blocked shots (as Corsi does) is not clear to me, but I imagine he takes some missed and blocked shots also.

Gomez is a generally considered a better steup man than a goal scorer.  A lot of his value in terms of Corsi is not the shots he takes, but the shots his teammates take that he sets up.  It seems that when he lacks opponents to set up he will shoot - often poor percentage shots (he isn`t a sniper in the best of times).  Last year on a low scoring Ranger team, he was left to take low percentage shots a little more frequently than is the trend in his career.

The question that I ask, is it such a bad thing that he takes low percentage shots?  How often does a low percentage Gomez shot result in a misplay or a rebound or some other favorable outcome that would not have happened for a non-shot?

On the whole, it seems Dave Staples is rebelling against a very statistically minded Edmonton Oiler blogosphere.  He has done this in the past.  Here is something he wrote last year and my responce to it .  His argument seems basically that sabermetrics cannot solve every problem (which is quite obvious) therefore they are useless and he will rant against them (and that part I disagree with strongly).  In the proper context, sabermetrics can offer a lot of insight into hockey.  Denial of that fact usually is motivated by irrelevant underlying reasons (i.e. I dont wanna do math).

As for measuring the quality of shots a player takes, here is where I would start.  However, I am not sure how useful such a study would be.  I think a good gage of ther shot quality a given player takes is very likely given by his shooting percentage.  Players with low shooting percentages tend to take lower quality shots that those with high ones.  That said, I think a lot of good often comes from putting the puck on the net even in poor percentage situations.  Rebounds, deflections etc often create scoring chances when the initial shot was not a high quality one.  I would hesitate to criticize a player who takes a lot of shots (especially in Gomez’s case where he usually appears to think pass before he thinkls shoot - I take Gomez’s high number of shots and passes to show that he controls the puck well when he is on the ice).

Posted by PuckStopsHere on 10/19/09 at 05:13 PM ET

Go Rampage! Woo-hoo! I love when the home team is in the lead. let’s hope they can keep this up.

Posted by Jay from San Antonio on 01/07/10 at 01:38 PM ET