Five More Interesting Stats
About a month ago I did a column Five Interesting Statistics, based off of Jonathan Bales' By The Numbers for the NFL section of Rotoworld. I felt that column was pretty well received, so I decided that it was time to make a follow up to it.
I wanted the statistics to be less common this time around without diving into analytics. To help me accomplish that, I leaned partially on the website War on Ice, which is a nice resource for both advanced statistics and interesting situational breakdowns.
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1) Jason Spezza has a very high ratio of secondary assists to primary ones.
Of Spezza's 18 assists so far this season, 12 of them are of the secondary variety. No other player with at least 11 assists has a ratio that skewed towards secondary assists. That's not normal for Spezza either - in fact, until this season he had never recorded more secondary assists than primary ones over the course of a campaign.
The reason for Spezza's shift likely has everything to do with his linemates: Tyler Seguin and Jamie Benn. Although the original plan in Dallas was to have Spezza center the second line to provide the Stars with an effective one-two punch, coach Lindy Ruff has instead decided the form an uber line with his top three forwards. The trio has worked well together, but it's meant that the addition of Spezza hasn't solved the Stars' secondary scoring issues.
2) No team leans on a center to take their faceoffs as much as the Flyers do with Claude Giroux.
A startling 41.9% of the Flyers draws are taken by Giroux, which is up from 35.1% last season. It's not hard to see why Philadelphia has gone down that path though. Giroux has a 55.3% success rate on the draw while the rest of the team has only won 49.1% of their faceoffs. Since Scott Laughton made his season debut on Nov. 19 though, Giroux has gotten some help. Laughton has won 53.1% of his 130 faceoffs, which makes him the only Philadelphia player other than Giroux to have won more than half of the time after taking a minimum of 25 faceoffs.
After Giroux, Tyler Bozak is next in the NHL in the percentage of team faceoffs he takes. Bozak has been responsible for 36.9% of Toronto's draws despite the fact that he's only won 48.7% of them.
3) Of Vladimir Tarasenko's 32 points in 30 contests, 28 of them have been recorded when the St. Louis Blues or their opponents were within one goal.
In other words, nearly all of Tarasenko's points have come when St. Louis is either trailing by a goal, leading by one, or tied. The implication with a statistic like that is that he's a clutch player, but you might shrug that off and say that's because Tarasenko has primarily been on the ice in those situations and you would be mostly right as that consumes roughly 15 minutes of his average 18:16 minutes per contest.
It might be better to look at how many points he's averaging per 60 minutes in games that are within one because that cancels out the skewed playing time and when you do that, you find he's averaging 3.7 points in those situations, which puts him in a tie for third in the NHL (among players that have participated in at least 15 games) despite being eighth in the overall scoring race.
The leader is Tyler Seguin with 4.2 points/60 minutes, although only 29 of his 37 points have been recorded in games that are within one.
4) The Honda Center hasn't been a friendly environment for Ryan Getzlaf this season.
Getzlaf leads the league with 22 points on the road, but he only has 11 points at home in 2014-15. The Ducks have played in an even number of home/away contests and have a similar record in both scenarios (10-3-3 at home, 11-3-2 on the road), so this isn't part of some team-wide trend. In fact, of the Ducks players that have recorded at least 10 points, no other player favors the road to the extent that Getzlaf does.
This isn't a situation that's normal for Getzlaf either. Of his 87 points in 2013-14, 46 were scored at the Honda Center. Over the course of his career, 351 of his 641 points have been recorded at home.
On the other side of the coin is Evgeni Malkin, who has 23 points and home and 14 on the road despite Pittsburgh's schedule thus far only being slightly skewed towards home games (16 to 14).
5) Mark Giordano and Jiri Hudler have stepped up for the Calgary Flames when they're down going into the third period.
The Calgary Flames have found themselves trailing through 40 minutes in 15 of their first 32 games this season. To put that into context, the lowly Edmonton Oilers were only behind after two periods in 17 of their 31 games. In fact, the Flames are a pretty bad team at the start of games, but they have avoided the Oilers' fate by fighting back late in contests. Calgary has scored a league-leading 41 third-period goals compared to just 48 goals over the first 40 minutes. That's allowed them to maintain a 6-9-0 record in games where they were trailing through two periods, which ties the Flames with Detroit for the best winning percentage in that category.
As mentioned up top, Giordano and Hudler deserve recognition for their part in that. While they're far from the only Flames players to excel in the third period, they are the most noteworthy. Giordano leads all players (forwards included) with 16 points in 15 contests when trailing after two periods while Hudler is tied for fourth in the league with 11 points in 14 games.
BONUS - Dallas Eakins was the Edmonton Oilers fifth head coach in six-plus seasons.
While Calgary is one of the best third period teams, Edmonton has yet to win a game this season when trailing after two periods (0-16-1). Ultimately, I could have dedicated a column to sad Oilers statistics.
