Five Interesting Statistics

Occasionally this season I've used this Tuesday column to highlight statistics that I think you'll either find useful or interesting or both. I'll occasionally dip my toes into the world of analytics for this article and while I personally use War on Ice to get that information, NHL.com now has enhanced statistics too and those are certainly worth a look.

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1) Alex Ovechkin is having one of the best seasons of his career from an analytics perspective

Ovechkin led the league in goals last season, but also had a horrible minus-35 rating. A lot of people are quick to dismiss a player's plus/minus rating as not fairly representative of the person's contributions or even a simply luck-based statistic. There's certainly merit to that as there's only so much a single player can do to control his plus/minus.

Relative Fenwick For Percentage in 5-on-5 situations (FF%Rel) might be a more reliable gauge. Fenwick For Percentage is how your team does from a shot differential perspective when you're on the ice and the Relative means that it compares how the team does when you're on the ice to when you're not in an attempt to factor out the team's overall strength (so a player on Buffalo can have a positive FF%Rel just like a player on Nashville can have a negative one). With Ovechkin, he had a 47.9% Fenwick rating back in 2013-14, but that was still better than the team did when he was off the ice, so from that perspective, his presence on the ice was beneficial to the team's overall game even if that wasn't reflected in his plus/minus.

This season though, he has a FF%Rel of 5.3 (54.8% when he's on the ice to 49.5% when he's off), which is his best differential since 2009-10 and the third highest of his career. So by that metric, his presence has had a more positive effect on the team than it has in a while.

Take that with a grain of salt of course, but there's an argument to be made that Ovechkin is having an even better season than his numbers imply.

2) Among players with at least 20 power-play points, Claude Giroux is the only one to have recorded a majority of his points with the man advantage.

Giroux has 32 power-play points compared to 29 in all other situations. That's also a nod to the Philadelphia Flyers in general as they rank fourth in the league with a 22.8% power-play success rate, but are 22nd in the league with a 0.97 even strength goals for/against ratio.

The Flyers are also one of the worst teams when it comes to killing penalties. That might sound particularly problematic given the Flyers broad street bullies reputation, but that isn't the case this season as Philadelphia has gone from taking the second most minor penalties in 2013-14 (357) to being in the middle of the pack in that regard this season (236 through 67 games).

Either way, it's clear that the power play has been one of the few advantages that Philadelphia has enjoyed this season and Giroux's numbers certainly reflect that.

3) Among players that have participated in at least 10 games, Michael Raffl has the best FF%Rel

We already touched on what FF%Rel is when discussing Ovechkin and pointed to his 5.3 rating as one of the best of his career. Well if you're looking for the cream of the crop by that metric it's Philadelphia Flyers forward Michael Raffl, who has a league-leading 10.6 rating through 52 games. That's obviously not suggest he's twice the player Ovechkin is - this is just one of many metrics - but it does suggest that Philadelphia has done far better when it comes to possessing the puck in five-on-five situations when Raffl is on the ice compared to when he's warming the bench.

Just behind Raffl is two-time Selke Trophy winner Patrice Bergeron at 10.3.

4) Cory Schneider has faced a league-leading 1,643 shots this season.

That averages to 27.9 shots per 60 minutes. Schneider has been very effective despite the workload though as he ranks second behind only Carey Price in terms of save percentage (.928). He's not as high up on the GAA leaderboard, but even there he's doing great (2.18).

Schneider isn't likely to see his shots faced taper off in the final weeks of the season as evidenced by the fact that he's faced 33 or more shots in four of his last six games.

5) Corey Crawford is one of the best road goaltenders this season

Crawford is having a great season with a 2.23 GAA and .923 save percentage in 45 contests, but he's been particularly good away from home with a 1.94 GAA and .931 save percentage. That makes him one of the best netminders on the road this season, with the only one beating him in that regard being Carey Price with his 1.94 GAA and .935 save percentage in 24 games.

Despite Crawford's success on the road, Chicago has actually been only 18-12-1 in those situations, compared to 21-9-5 at the United Center where Crawford has a 2.50 GAA and .917 save percentage.