What We Learned: The problem with projecting goalscoring
Interesting article in the Vancouver Province over the weekend, with Jeff Paterson trying to predict the goal output for next year’s Canucks team.
This is a worthwhile exercise in theory, because knowing how many goals will be scored by any given team would give you a lot of insight into how well things would go for them. But the problem is that hockey is incredibly hard to predict in this way; harder than, say, baseball, where the PECOTA system usually does a good job of figuring out a given player’s expected output for the upcoming season. Hockey isn’t close to having a PECOTA-like predictive tool. At least, one that actually works with any kind of reliable effectiveness.
The closest thing we have is VUKOTA, the similarly named projection tool developed by Tom Awad, which can predict goals and assists per 82 games played for every player, and therefore overall team performance. It had the Canucks down for about 90 points as a team, and correctly predicted that they would have trouble scoring goals.
Struggle in the goalscoring department they did, finishing with just 186 in 82 games thanks to some injuries, but also an ineffective power play (15.8 percent). Their goal total was second from the bottom in the NHL, ahead of only New Jersey and about 16 percent behind the league average. Consequently, they finished with just 75 points despite the fact that, altogether, Ryan Miller and Jacob Markstrom were very slightly better than average in goal.
(Side note: Do you know how hard it is to be so bad offensively that you can’t ride .916 goaltending out of the league’s bottom-3? That’s an incredible feat.)
That’s one team prediction out of 30, and on the balance VUKOTA typically lands somewhere in the approximate ballpark, but so too could someone just saying, “This point total looks about right.” Occasionally, you’re just going to get something very wrong because maybe a good goalie has a bad season, or a mediocre one is electrifying, or an entire team shoots 11 percent for four months. Again, that kind of thing is hard to predict.
So when it comes to what Vancouver is going to do next year in terms of offense, well, who really knows? The best we can do right now is kind of guess at it. And you’d have to say that the projections Paterson puts forth are extremely optimistic. He guesses 31 for Loui Eriksson, 24 for Daniel Sedin, and 22 for Sven Baertschi, for example. As you go down the list, you realize, “Hmm, this seems like an awful lot of goals,” and when you get to the bottom, it is. Paterson believes the top 10 Vancouver goalscorers next year could score as many as 182. Last year, the team’s top-10 goalscorers netted just 137. And again, the entire team only scored 186.
It’s hard to predict things like shooting percentage, or even shot volume, because you just never know how things are going to go in a season, with injuries, with linemates, with luck, etc. Wingers who play with the Sedins, for example, tend to have fairly high shooting percentages because, even at their advanced age, they put linemates in position to generate an awful lot of high-end chances.
Just as an example the Sedins’ most common linemate since 2007-08 has been Alex Burrows, playing more than three times the minutes as the next-closest guy. He regularly shot north of 14 percent when playing with them. So is it possible that newcomer Eriksson scores 31? Sure it is. But you have to keep in mind that last year he scored 30 for the first time in seven years, and he did it by shooting 16.3 percent. The last time he scored even 29 he shot 13.4 percent, and that was in 2009-10. The Sedins are undoubtedly going to put him in a good position to score, but 31 is a big ask for just about anyone; only 18 guys in the entire league last year netted that many. Jannik Hansen was on pace for about 27 alongside the Sedins if he’d played the full 82.
It’s also not outside the realm of possibility that Daniel Sedin scores 24, because he had 28 last year. So even if he takes fewer shots because he’s deferring to Eriksson more often, or if his shooting percentage dips, he still generated 258 SOG last year, tying him for 13th in the league. That’s impressive, and shows he could keep it up and suffer that minor setback of “only” netting 24 this time around.
What you often see in these predictions, however, is huge expected jumps in outputs for younger guys. And let’s be honest, here: The possibility that Eriksson and Sedin take steps back next year due to the fact that they’re both north of 30 years old is a very real one. The Canucks are working on something of a “team of the future,” even if, given the quality of players involved right now, the future isn’t all that bright.
If Sven Baertschi, for example, is your projected No. 3 goalscorer, that might tell you something, right? But the fact is that he was fourth on the Canucks last year despite playing just 69 games for them. But that goal total was just 15 in 69, a pace for a little less than 18 in the full season. Now, four additional goals might not sound like a lot, especially if his role gets expanded. But again, he didn’t take a huge number of shots (1.6 a game) and shot almost 14 percent.
Does that shooting success rate come down? It’s hard to say. Maybe a good chunk of the 108 shots he took last year were of high quality, because maybe he’s one of those Alex Tanguay-types who only shoots the puck when the net is wide open. Tanguay has a career 18.6 shooting percentage for that exact reason. And given his average shot distance was only a little more than 24 feet, it’s theoretically possible. But also: the difference between 18 and 22 goals is, coincidentally, a 22 percent increase in scoring. It’s tough to justify that kind of optimism regardless of a player’s age, especially if you’re not expecting a huge uptick in shots on goal.
The idea here really isn’t to pick on the Canucks in general. You could have a smart hockey person guess what the top-10 scorers on the Penguins are going to put in the net just as easily, and still come out just as overly optimistic. If you say 30-plus for Crosby and Malkin sounds reasonable, well, hey, it sure does. A full season under the new system and so on. But as you go down the list, it gets harder to predict. Can you expect a combined 33 from the guys who fill the Chris Kunitz and Matt Cullen roles again? Do you believe Kris Letang gets 16, which was a career high by a mile, once again? You can go on like this.
Pretty much everyone is optimistic in the summer, unless your team has you habitually beaten down into resignation. But to see an increase of almost one-third in the goalscoring department among your 10 best players is borderline impossible, especially when the three best players in that group are over 30, especially when the best young guy of the bunch is Sven Baertschi.
This is also irrespective of the fact that a lot of other teams in the Canucks’ division got better — most notably Calgary adding two very competent goaltenders and a coach who might not be among the very worst in the league, but also Edmonton getting a full year of Connor McDavid, etc. — to the point that it’s difficult to expect increases of this size. It’s basically expecting the Canucks to go from 29th in terms of what their higher-end scorers produce to the top-8 or so in the league, in last year’s lowest-scoring division in hockey.
The Paterson article concludes like this: “That may be an ambitious leap, to think the Canucks can inject that much offense over the summer, but they’ve got no choice but to find a way to generate more offense it they’re going to be competitive.”
Yeah, but that doesn’t mean they’re going to. They added Loui Eriksson (and lost Radim Vrbata). They’ll probably improve at least a little because of that and younger players’ development. That doesn’t add 45 or so goals to your offense. If only wishing made it so.
What We Learned
Anaheim Ducks: The Ducks’ jerseys would be a lot better if they adopted a red, white, and blue color scheme. Good lord their uniforms are awful.
Arizona Coyotes: The reason the Diamondbacks, Coyotes, and Suns think they should get publicly funded new arenas is because they know suckers when they see ’em.
Boston Bruins: Recent Bruins first-rounder has basically spent the entire World Junior Evaluation Camp sending notice to everyone in Hockey East that he has ill intentions for next season.
Buffalo Sabres: I have to feel like, from a top-to-bottom organizational standpoint, the Sabres are better than 17th in the league, but not so much better that I’d really make a stink about it.
Calgary Flames: The “few items” left on Brad Treliving’s agenda this summer are “get contracts in place for Johnny Gaudreau, Sean Monahan, and Matthew Tkachuk.” With Tkachuk signed there are still some fairly big things to have left on the to-do list.
Carolina Hurricanes: A lot is going to have to go right for the Hurricanes to make the playoffs. The vast majority of them are in goal.
Chicago: We’re only one week away from Vesey Watch theoretically being over. Thank god.
Colorado Avalanche: This is bananas. Imagine feeling like you need to forgive the current players for making Joe Sakic and Patrick Roy look bad. Wowwwww.
Columbus Blue Jackets: I’m surprised Jarmo Kekalainen didn’t give the team’s plane one last $6.5 million deal.
Dallas Stars: Tyler Seguin is back to 100 percent. Bad news for everyone at the World Cup who isn’t Canada.
Detroit Red Wings: Make sure you are not taking a sip of anything before you click this link.
Edmonton Oilers: Milan Lucic, who isn’t fast and is very physical, wants to play past his 35th birthday. Good luck with that one, chief.
Florida Panthers: If you think Vegas is going to take the Dave Bolland contract in the expansion draft, well, you’re incorrect about that.
Las Vegas No-Names: They’re down to just four potential names. This whole thing might be settled within the month.
Los Angeles Kings: Tyler Toffoli’s next contract is one of those things you’re probably better off not thinking about for a while longer.
Minnesota Wild: I don’t necessarily see this going well.
Montreal Canadiens: I bet P.K. Subban will be working out the entire time Shea Weber is golfing. And I don’t mean next April, by the way.
Nashville Predators: Yeah I mean, you gotta be pretty psyched for a season-opening home-and-home between Nashville and Chicago.
New Jersey Devils: You’re not gonna believe this but the Devils don’t have designs on spending much more of their $13 million in cap space.
New York Islanders: Oh yeah of course Kieffer Bellows and a few other incoming BU freshmen are tearing up WJEC alongside Charlie McAvoy. Why even play a college hockey season next year, honestly?
New York Rangers: Remember when Glen Sather got Ryan McDonagh for Scott Gomez? Ah jeez.
Ottawa Senators: This is what I’m talking about, though: Why will Bobby Ryan become a 30-goal guy again? Because Derrick Brassard is gonna get him up to 250-plus shots again? C’mon.
Philadelphia Flyers: Is Ivan Provorov NHL-ready? He’s probably better than Sam Morin, at least.
Pittsburgh Penguins: What a nice boy.
San Jose Sharks: Logan Couture says Brent Burns is one of the toughest defensemen he’s ever faced. Yeah, I can see that.
St. Louis Blues: The Blues offered David Perron more money than Montreal did, which I find surprising because Montreal needs Perron a lot more than St. Louis does. And also he’s French-Canadian and so on.
Tampa Bay Lightning: The Bolts are close to selling out their season ticket allotment.
Toronto Maple Leafs: Mitch Marner is probably gonna be with the big club next year. That is as it should be.
Vancouver Canucks: The Canucks signed Olli Juolevi this weekend. He has half a chance of making the NHL roster next year, but really maybe you just ought to let your defensemen develop.
Washington Capitals: The Caps are also likely to infuse some youth into next year’s lineup. No surprise there either.
Winnipeg Jets: Why, exactly, are the Jets wearing Coyotes throwbacks for the Heritage Classic?
Gold Star Award
It’s the freaking Olympics, folks. And even better, it’s the kind where Canada never wins more than bronze!
Minus of the Weekend
Fact that the U.S. hasn’t won every gold medal so far seems like a very unfair thing.
Perfect HFBoards Trade Proposal of the Year
User “The Finnish Forehead” loves a big trade.
To WPG: Lindholm
To ANA:
Hertl
WPG top 5 protected 1st 2017 or unprotected 2018 1st
Drew Stafford
2018 lesser pick if needed
To SJ: Trouba
Signoff
Well, let’s see. Tide, Cheer, Bold, Biz, Fab, All, Gain, Whisk. I believe today I will try Bold.
Ryan Lambert is a Puck Daddy columnist. His email is here and his Twitter is here.
(All stats via Corsica unless otherwise noted.)
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