Five Interesting Statistics

If you use Rotoworld to keep up with the latest news and analysis about the NFL as well as the NHL, then you might be familiar with a weekly column Jonathan Bales does called By The Numbers. In it he lists off five interesting statistics from the week that just passed and that inspired me to do the same this week for the NHL.

These statistics are a fun bit of trivia, but they can also provide you with greater context for a player’s bottom line statistics. That can in turn help you more accurately measure your expectations going forward.

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1) Joe Thornton leads the league with three empty-net goals.

Thornton extended his point streak to six games on Sunday by helping himself to an empty-netter. As it turns out, nearly half of his seven markers have been scored that way this season. To put his three empty-net goals in 20 games into context, it’s worth noting that no one scored more than four empty-netters in the full 2013-14 campaign.

Is this just a statistical anomaly? Probably. It’s entirely possible that Thornton won’t score another empty-net goal for the remainder of the season. Just keep that in mind when you look at the fact that he has seven goals in 20 games. It’s a misleading statistic and the odds of him flirting with the 30-goal mark (he’s currently on pace to get 28.7 markers) are slim.

2) Of the players that still haven’t recorded a power-play point, Jarome Iginla has logged the most minutes (55:40).

Michael Finewax’s Power Play Report helped with this one.

Colorado’s power-play has been weak overall, but that’s not a great excuse for Iginla, who was supposed to be part of the solution. He certainly hasn’t lived up to his three-year, $16 million contract thus far as he has just two goals and 10 points in 19 contests. That’s a big drop off from the 30 goals and 31 assists he recorded in 2013-14 with Boston.

To make things more troubling, Iginla has actually been getting worse as the season’s gone on. He has just two assists in eight November games and his playing time has declined by roughly a minute month-to-month. The only silver lining is he has plenty of time left to turn his campaign around.

3) Semyon Varlamov is the league's best penalty killing goaltender.

Moving to a more positive Colorado Avalanche statistic, Varlamov has turned aside an incredible 94 of 95 shots when the Avalanche are killing of a power play. That’s the highest save percentage (.989) of any goaltender that has faced at least 30 shots under those circumstances.

Varlamov has an unimpressive 2.95 GAA overall, but he’s had to face an unreasonable 35.8 shots per 60 minutes. The Colorado Avalanche didn’t do much to prevent the opposition from peppering Varlamov with shots last season either (he lead the league in shots against), but you could argue that the Avalanche’s luck has run out a bit. Varlamov has still posted a .918 save percentage, which is solid, it’s just not the herculean numbers the Avalanche need to succeed.

4) Nino Niederreiter has only taken 32 shots this season - and has scored eight times.

If you didn’t see Niederreiter’s goal on Sunday then you should take some time to look it up because it was a thing of beauty. That aside, he’s certainly been economical with his shots so far this season. Obviously his 25% success rate isn’t sustainable, but the question is if he’s going to simply slow down or if his recent success will lead to him shooting more.

As it currently stands, his 32 shots in 17 contests is roughly in line with his shots per game rate in 2013-14 when he found the back of the net just 14 times and finished with a 9.8 shooting percentage.

5) Tyler Johnson is tied for the league-lead in even-strength points.

The fact that Johnson has 21 points in 19 games is impressive enough on its own, but when you factor in that 18 of them have been recorded during even-strength situations, he looks even better.

Granted, that’s actually a bad thing from a fantasy perspective as many leagues have a separate category for power-play points, but look at it this way: Johnson is one of the NHL’s top players without even getting a lot of power-play ice time. That won’t be true forever, it might not even be true for the entirety of this season. Johnson will gain more responsibilities as he continues to prove himself and his status grows, so what we’re seeing right now could be just the tip of the iceberg.

Bonus Team Statistic: The New Jersey Devils went over a year without winning a shootout.

This statistic is a couple weeks old now, but it’s worth highlighting. New Jersey lost 18 straight shootouts until they finally came out ahead in the skills competition on Oct. 30 for the first time since March 10, 2013.

They were the only team that failed to win even a single shootout in 2013-14 and that’s critical because the Devils were only five points shy of making the playoffs (that would have tied them with Detroit in points, but the Devils had a higher ROW). In other words, if the Devils were even 5-8 in the skills competition instead of 0-13, they would have made the playoffs last season.

Those squandered points certainly add up.