I am continuing my summer sabermetrics series by looking at the top players in 2014/15 by their Corsi.  In the past season this information has become available on the nhl.com website when looking at enhanced stats here.  This makes Corsi more accessible to fans.  On the NHL webpage it is called shot attempts or SAT.  It means the difference in attempted shots (shots on goal, missed shots and blocked shots) for a team when a given player is on the ice and those allowed by their opponents in 5 on 5 situations.  It is essentially a measure of puck possession as teams need to possess the puck to attempt a shot.  In many ways it can be considered like +/- but with a larger sample size since it measures every attempted shot and not merely every goal. 

Here are the top 20 players in 2014/15 by their raw Corsi:

1.  Drew Doughty Los Angeles +410

2.  Jake Muzzin Los Angeles +401

3.  Anze Kopitar Los Angeles +363

4.  Joe Thornton San Jose +353

5.  Mike Ribeiro Nashville +343

6.  Duncan Keith Chicago +338

7.  Tomas Tatar Detroit +328

8.  Patrice Bergeron Boston +319

Eric Staal Carolina +319

10.  Marian Gaborik Los Angeles +313

11.  Pavel Datsyuk Detroit +309

12.  Filip Forsberg Nashville +308

13.  Joe Pavelski San Jose +305

14.  Justin Faulk Carolina +289

15.  Justin Williams Los Angeles +288

16.  Nick Leddy New York Islanders +282

Mattias Ekholm Nashville +282

18.  Anton Stralman Tampa Bay +279

19.  James Neal Nashville +268

20.  Jeff Carter Los Angeles +267

Looking at this list we see it is composed of players from nine teams.  It should be obvious that teams that possess the puck well will have several players with good possession numbers.  Thus a team correction is necessary to make this a more individualized stat.  Of these nine teams only five made playoffs in Nashville, Detroit, Chicago, NY Islanders and Tampa Bay.  Los Angeles, San Jose, Carolina and Boston all missed playoffs despite having players on this list.  With the exception of Carolina none missed the playoffs by much of a factor.  This clearly shows that puck possession is not the only factor in playing winning hockey, but it has been shown to be significant over the years. 

Los Angeles has a league leading six players on this list including the top three in Drew Doughty, Jake Muzzin and Anze Kopitar.  Los Angeles was a fundamentally slid team despite missing playoffs.  I would be surprised to not see them in a playoff berth again this year. 

This year's top Corsi players are more dispersed between playoff and non-playoff teams than in oother recent years.  I am not certain if that is a meaningful result or not.  I cannot adequately explain it right now - it may be a one time fluke.  Had Los Angeles and Boston made playoffs instead of barely missing them, that comment would be moot. 

I will write about Corsi leader Drew Doughty next. 

Comments

Add a Comment

Please limit embedded image or media size to 575 pixels wide. 

Add your own avatar by joining Kukla's Korner, or logging in and uploading one in your member control panel. 

Captchas bug you?  Join KK or log in and you won't have to bother.