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In my previous article, I introduced Delta, a Corsi-type number that uses weighted shots instead of raw shots as its plus-minus data. I also discussed how to adjust Delta for Situation, specifically faceoff location, as well as Opponents, producing DeltaSO. All that remains is to adjust Delta for Teammates, and we will have a first stab at a complete measure of a player’s contribution to scoring chance advantage, which I have baptized DeltaSOT.
To do this, I took each player’s DeltaSO, calculated the amount of 5-on-5 time that they spent with each of their teammates, and subtracted that teammate’s DeltaSO / minute multiplied by the number of minutes they played together times 0.2. For example, if Alex Ovechkin, Nicklas Backstrom, Alexander Semin, Mike Green and Jeff Schultz all played together all the time, and each one had a DeltaSO of 10 in the same amount of ice time, then this process would give each of them a DeltaSOT of 2 (subtracting 10 * 0.2 four times from each of them). Conversely, if Ovechkin played half of his time with these four players, and half of his time with 4 other players who each had a DeltaSO of 5 (again in the same amount of ice time), then his DeltaSOT would be 4.
Here are the DeltaSOT leaders for 2008-09:
Player Pos Team DeltaSOT
ERIC STAAL C CAR 11.5
PATRICK O'SULLIVAN C LAK 10.8
RYAN SMYTH L COL 10.0
COREY PERRY R ANA 9.6
MARKUS NASLUND L NYR 9.5
JONI PITKANEN D CAR 9.3
MARC STAAL D NYR 9.0
MARC METHOT D CBJ 8.9
ANDREW LADD L CHI 8.9
JOHAN FRANZEN C DET 8.8
RYAN GETZLAF C ANA 8.7
JAROSLAV SPACEK D BUF 8.6
ZACH PARISE L NJD 8.4
DAYMOND LANGKOW C CGY 8.3
ALEXEI PONIKAROVSKY L TOR 8.3
SEAN BERGENHEIM L NYI 8.3
JASON BLAKE L TOR 8.1
STEPHEN WEISS C FLA 8.0
CHRIS KUNITZ L ANA 7.8
RYAN MALONE L TBL 7.5
DAVID BACKES R STL 7.4
KYLE QUINCEY D LAK 7.3
ALEXANDER SEMIN L WSH 7.2
DAVID BOOTH L FLA 7.2
T.J. OSHIE C STL 7.0
MARK GIORDANO D CGY 6.8
LOUI ERIKSSON L DAL 6.7
DANIEL SEDIN L VAN 6.7
ANZE KOPITAR C LAK 6.5
DAVID KREJCI C BOS 6.5
MARK STREIT D NYI 6.5
DUSTIN PENNER R EDM 6.5
And here are the DeltaSOT leaders for 2009-10, as of Sunday:
Player Pos Team DeltaSOT
DUSTIN PENNER R EDM 9.5
WOJTEK WOLSKI L COL 7.7
MARK GIORDANO D CGY 7.4
KYLE BRODZIAK C MIN 7.3
ALEX OVECHKIN L WSH 7.3
LUBOMIR VISNOVSKY D EDM 7.2
ALEXEI PONIKAROVSKY L TOR 7.2
ZACH PARISE L NJD 7.1
CHRIS PRONGER D PHI 7.0
NICKLAS LIDSTROM D DET 7.0
PETER REGIN C OTT 6.8
JOE PAVELSKI C SJS 6.4
PATRIC HORNQVIST R NSH 6.3
MATT GILROY D NYR 6.1
JONATHAN TOEWS C CHI 5.9
KEITH YANDLE D PHX 5.9
ANTOINE VERMETTE C CBJ 5.8
PATRICE BERGERON C BOS 5.8
DREW DOUGHTY D LAK 5.6
GUILLAUME LATENDRESSE L MIN 5.6
MIKE RIBEIRO C DAL 5.4
JASON BLAKE L TOR 5.4
RADIM VRBATA R PHX 5.4
MIKE RICHARDS C PHI 5.2
MASON RAYMOND L VAN 5.2
MARTIN ST. LOUIS R TBL 5.2
ANZE KOPITAR C LAK 5.1
PAUL STASTNY C COL 5.1
BRIAN RAFALSKI D DET 5.1
TOMAS KABERLE D TOR 5.1
Okay, that’s a lot to digest. What do we notice? There is no more team bias as there used to be with my previous list, as the 2008-09 list features a player from the best team in the league (Johan Franzen) as well as the worst (Mark Streit), and the same goes for the 2009-10 list (Joe Pavelski of the Sharks, and league leader Dustin Penner). There is some stability on this list, with Penner, Parise, Ponikarovsky, Kopitar, Blake and Giordano appearing both years, but not much. And lastly, this looks like no list of league leaders I’ve ever seen of any metric, no matter how eccentric.
Whenever I see a list of leaders in a new metric, I always look for the black sheep, to see what it tells me about the type of player that breaks the metric. In this case, the most obvious standout is Patrick O’Sullivan, who had a pretty good year with the Kings last season but nothing like #2 in the league, and who one of my readers who now follows him with the Oilers called “an atrocious defensive player”. O’Sullivan, Anze Kopitar and Kyle Quincey all outshot the opposition heavily while they were on the ice, but O’Sullivan was traded at the deadline and the Kings stumbled to the end, losing 11 of their last 16 games of the season and getting outshot in most of those games. O’Sullivan wasn’t there for the last fifth of the season, thus his numbers were unaffected and the stats see him as the difference between those earlier, more successful Kings teams and the later edition. He only posted a DeltaSOT of -1.3 in his 19 games with Edmonton last year and -1.7 so far this season. It’s likely that O’Sullivan was a much better fit in L.A. than he is in Edmonton.
A similar case can be seen with Guillaume Latendresse in Minnesota. While Latendresse has been a revelation for the Wild, he was also lucky enough to be absent for the first 6 weeks of the season, as the Wild struggled under new coach Todd Richards. Since Latendresse has been there, the team has excelled and so has he; I’ll leave it to the readers to decide whether this is cause or coincidence, but Latendresse still posted a DeltaSOT of +1.2 last season and +2.0 in 23 games with Montreal this year.
DeltaSOT is not meant to be an all-encompassing statistic. It doesn’t factor in many things, most notably offensive or shooting ability, which is why players like Jason Blake and Markus Naslund are found among the leaders. Blake is almost in a category of his own, with 804 shots over the last 3 seasons and only 50 goals, but if nothing else this shows that he is still capable of creating scoring chances, if not capitalizing on them.
Overall, I’m happy with DeltaSOT. It still requires some adjustments to take into account the varying level at which teammates play, but overall it has the right feel to it, and given the scale of the problem it attempts to solve it is a valiant try. And any statistic in which Dustin Penner leads the NHL has to have something going for it.
Tom Awad is an author of Hockey Prospectus.
You can contact Tom by clicking here or click here to see Tom's other articles.
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