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Top Corsi Rates

by PuckStopsHere on 07/28/09 at 04:18 AM ET
Comments (6)

This summer in my look at sabermetrics and hockey, I have been looking at the Corsi Number.  They are much like +/- ratings, except since they include all shots directed at the goal (including missed shots and blocked shots) they give much larger numbers with less random fluctuations in them,  They show who is driving puck possession (those players with good Corsis) and remove the element of goaltending from +/-.  When players play defensive roles that do not drive puck possession, their Corsi is not always a good method of rating their play (with the best example of this being Jan Hejda).  Thus far, I have only looked at Corsi Numbers treated as counting numbers and not as rates (per minute).  This is how they are treated at behind the net.

Here are the top twenty players (with 50 games played or more last year) ranked by Corsi per minute of 5 on 5 play:

Rank  

Player   

Team   

Corsi   

Clearly there is a need to adjust these ratings to account for team effects.  The top 18 players on this list come from only three teams - Calgary, Detroit and Washington.  These are the top three teams when ranked by team Corsi Numbers.  It is team effects that get most of the players onto this list.

We see that many of the same players who appear on the top 20 counting number list also appear here.  That is not a surprise.  However, there are a significant number of players who had good Corsi rates but did not have enough ice time to get onto the counting number list.  That is most clear at the top of this list where Sergei Fedorov and Eric Fehr both appear.  Neither made the top 20 counting number list.  This list can be adjusted in a similar manner to the way +/- ratings are calculated on/off ice.

This is a list of the top Corsi rates is a list of players on good teams who had good puck possession.  We will see in the future how much the team element can be removed to better measure individual players.

Filed in: | The Puck Stops Here | Permalink
 Tags: Calgary+Flames, Detroit+Red+Wings, Pavel+Datsyuk, Sergei+Fedorov, Washington+Capitals,

Comments

Any stat that has 10 of the top 20 players from one team and just three teams making up the top 18 clearly seems to be a flawed stat.  Sure, you can see what teams play a puck possession style game and a controlled defensive game but shots for and against would tell you pretty much the same thing.  The only thing Corsi number does is factor out the effect of the goalie on +/- and we all know how useless +/- is.

Posted by David Johnson on 07/28/09 at 07:36 AM ET

David

I know you like to poo-poo any stat that you didn’t dream up but there is some value to Corsi.  Comparisons on the same team are possible now.  Of course we need to remove team effects to compare between different teams.

Posted by PuckStopsHere on 07/28/09 at 07:45 AM ET

I am poo-pooing the stat because it is pretty much useless.  What I hate most is that you have spent an inordinate amount of time discussing Corsi numbers (7 or 8 posts I think) but have yet drawn and useful conclusions other than it identifies players on teams with good puck possession and yet I am confident that some moron out there is going to come along and look at your Corsi number list above and use it to say that Sergei Fedorov was the best player in the NHL last year and that Eric Fehr is a near god on the ice, just like what people do when they see David Krejci and Blake Wheeler at the top of the +/- list.

Posted by David Johnson on 07/28/09 at 08:31 AM ET

If you are looking for a statistic to prove that somebody is the best in the NHL, you are mostly living in fantasy land.  That is true of Corsi or anything else (points, goals, +/-, whatever).

If you want a list of 20 very good players that Corsi has picked out here is your list.  Is it a better list than the top 20 goal scorers last year (for example)?  Hard to say, but its on par.

Now I want to do the same using it as a rate stat and will get there in a few posts.

No stat shows somebody is the best in the NHL by itself.  If you expect that of Corsi or any other stat, you are going to be disappointed.

Posted by PuckStopsHere on 07/28/09 at 08:49 AM ET

Used to be, the best thing about hockey was that we didn’t have the asshat stats geeks that baseball has, who can’t simply enjoy a game or a play or a player, but need to analyze every little number and give it a bigger meaning.

Thanks for ruining that, PSH.

Posted by Garth on 07/28/09 at 09:24 AM ET

The one-trick pony strikes again. Maybe you should change your blog’s name to The Corsi Stops Here.

Posted by OlderThanChelios from Grand Rapids on 07/28/09 at 05:54 PM ET

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