Cerebral Puck

The Flyers, at 16-14-8, are last in the Metropolitan division. They have been better of late, posting a 6-3-1 record in their last 10 games. Heading towards the February trade deadline, it remains unclear whether the Flyers top brass will decide to be buyers or sellers – but the latter appears more likely. Today we … More In-season update – Philadelphia Flyers: Provorov taking on more responsibility in sophomore season

It’s hard to ignore Mikhail Sergachev’s 2017-18 production to date. Acquired from the Montreal Canadiens in the off-season for Jonathan Drouin, Sergachev has excelled so far in Tampa. At just 19 years old, he’s produced 23 points (10 with the man advantage) and has shown early chemistry playing alongside Tampa’s offensive firepower. But is Mikhail Sergachev … More McAvoy vs Sergachev: A deep-dive into two of the league’s most promising rookie rearguards

Is save percentage a useful metric? Well, in theory it is. By definition, a goalie’s save percentage measures how many saves a goalie makes per number of shots. For example, a save percentage of 90% means a goalie stops 9 pucks for every 10 shots he faces. Seems useful. But in reality, there are many … More Evaluating goaltenders: How an adjusted save percentage metric can create a more ‘level’ playing

The New Jersey Devils, off to a torrid 15-6-4 start in 2017/18, made some noise when they acquired Sami Vatanen from the Ducks this week. The primary piece they sent back was Adam Henrique – a solid 2/3C who became expendable with Zajac returning and Hischier continuing to impress in his rookie campaign. But the … More Examining the Sami Vatanen trade

The next team we check-in on is the high-flying Toronto Maple Leafs. The club is off to an impressive 14-7 start, sitting 2nd in the East and coming off a 6-0 drubbing of the Montreal Canadiens. Matthews, Kadri, Nylander, Marner, JVR, and co. form one of the top offensive units in hockey. Today, we look … More In-Season Update: Toronto Maple Leafs

The Tampa Bay Lightning and Montreal Canadiens completed a blockbuster trade this off-season. In exchange for their now #1 C Jonathan Drouin, the habs dealt prized defense prospect Mikhail Sergachev (picks were also exchanged in the deal). As a result, this trade will inevitably be scrutinized all year long. So we start today. Sergachev has … More Mikhail Sergachev is off to a great start in 2017/18

We are now approximately 20 games into the 2017/18 NHL season and one thing remains truer than ever: puck movement in today’s game is critical.  We kick off this year’s puck moving defensemen analyses with my current hometown – Boston. 2017/18 Season: Charlie McAvoy is off to a great start A couple things to note … More In-season update: Boston Bruins

Our primary focus this summer was on puck-moving defensemen – and for good reason. Puck movement in today’s game is paramount and defensemen are often tasked with “launching” the play from their own end. They are the catalyst for puck movement and, for teams who struggle at it, the bottleneck. Our puck movement algorithm for … More In-Season update: 5 Intriguing d-men we had our eyes on

Draft and develop is often a term you hear next to <insert successful team here>’s success. Drafting well is paramount in the salary cap era and the reason for that is simple. Getting strong production at ‘entry level salary’ is excellent value and gives you the luxury of allocating the excess money to other areas. … More Dissecting draft pick value: using our model to assess pick value and analyze draft day trades

In part 1 of our segment, we reviewed the clear correlation between controlled zone entries and 5v5 primary points production. You can read that in detail here. (Note: It’s again worth noting that micro data is not readily available. Corey Sznajder (@ShutdownLine) graciously made some of his raw output available – which we used here … More Using Micro Data to identify offensive defensemen