The use of “advanced statistics” in hockey has become a topic of constant conversation and more often than not, consternation. It’s pretty easy to get lost in all of it; the Corsis and the Fenwicks, the PDOs and the 60 rates. Sometimes it plays itself out to no more than name-calling and it’s quite unfortunate because there is a lot that has been learned – and a lot left to explore – in advanced statistics. The secret is: they’re not so advanced. The majority of these statistics are basic addition and subtraction.
For the purposes of this article, you need to know what On-Ice Shooting Percentage is (and I talked about this as a component of PDO in my introduction to analytics and fantasy hockey as well):
On-Ice Shooting Percentage is simply the shooting percentage of a player’s team when he is on the ice and this is almost always expressed in terms of five-on-five play. So if the Penguins score 10 goals on 100 shots on goal with Sidney Crosby on the ice, his personal On-Ice Shooting Percentage for those 100 shots is 10-percent.
This is important because anyone that has watched enough hockey can tell you that there are quite a few goals that occur that are fairly lucky in nature: a shot from the point that goes off a skate; a bad-angle shot catching a goalie cheating; a puck that bounces over a defenseman’s stick on the blue line and leads to a break-away for the other team. These are all common occurrences in hockey and they have a luck component built into them.
That means it’s hard to repeat with an elite number in this category. In fact, from 2011-2012 to 2012-2013, the only regular forward to repeat in the top 10 in this category is Martin St. Louis and the only other top 10 in ’11-’12 to finish in the top 20 in ’12-’13 was Steven Stamkos and that shouldn’t shock anyone. The exception to this is Sidney Crosby who just didn’t play enough games but he’s up there with those other two.
Outside of Stamkos, St. Louis, and Crosby, it’s hard for anyone to repeat a high level of on-ice shooting percentage even after a forty game stretch. Among the leaders from last year, you see Nazem Kadri (0.92 points/game last year, 0.59 points/game this year) and Eric Staal (1.10 points/game last year, 0.81 points/game this year). Their respective points rates have plummeted, in part, because the efficiency of scoring by themselves and their teammates when these guys are on the ice and in the case of Kadri, by more than half.
When the rate of goals when you’re on the ice goes down, your point totals are near-certain to decline as well. That seems straightforward, but it gets muddled in the “analytics are nonsense” stuff that gets put out there daily.
As far as fantasy hockey is concerned, this becomes an important factor in knowing when to sell-high on a guy on the trade market. Especially in one-year leagues, most trades are all about timing and knowing when a guy might start to tail off enables the fantasy owner to maximize on their value: they got the best of the player through their (or their teammates’) hot streak and you can get an important piece back in a trade.
With that in mind, here are two guys that have played at least 40 games this year and are sustaining an abnormally high on-ice shooting percentage, making them targets to trade in the coming week (and certainly before the Olympic break).
Jaden Schwartz (STL) – 12.00
Jaden Schwartz is one of three regular forwards in the NHL currently sporting an On-Ice SH-percentage of at least 12.00, the other two being Jamie Benn and Ryan Getzlaf.
There are a couple of reasons why selling high on him right now is the prudent move:
- Alex Steen will probably be back before the Olympic break, giving Schwartz three weeks at the absolute most of playing on the top line in St. Louis. Steen is already skating so it could very well be sooner.
- Schwartz has 15 goals on the year but that’s not what’s surprising; it’s a function of more ice time and shooting more often. What is surprising is that he has 17 assists on the year, which triples his career assist rate. Again, more ice time helps, but that’s a huge jump in assists that is certain to drop off soon, if not before Steen comes back.
His line mates, David Backes and T.J. Oshie, are shooting 20.5-percent and a five-year high respectively (13.3-percent). So either Schwartz went from a good prospect to top set-up guy for the top line in St. Louis in a matter of months or he’s on a hot streak that’s due to end.
Jiri Hudler (CGY) – 11.51
Hudler might be a tougher sell than Schwartz because of where he plays, but this means maybe you could package Hudler with someone else to get a top player, or get a second-tier defenseman to help round out your team. Either way, Hudler is due for a bit of a regression coming up.
The only Flames player with an on-ice shooting percentage over 9.75-percent is Hudler, and he and Sean Monahan (who has been regressing for months) are the only two Flames over 9-percent. That means that Hudler – whose career-high 57 point season was four years ago – is making his team extremely efficient and it’s probably not going to last. On top of that, he’s the only regular Flames forward ( >30 games) to have a plus-rating.
Hudler’s current point/game rate of 0.83 would give him 16 more points than any 82-game pace of his last four seasons. Again, like Schwartz, an increase in ice time is part of it, but part of it is also a PDO that is considerably higher than the rest of his teammates. It shouldn’t be a surprise if Hudler puts up 20 points or fewer the rest of the season and ends up as a minus-player.
In the end, you do what you want with your teams and you can believe in these numbers or not. Both Hudler and Schwartz have been the recipients of a little puck luck and if you were fortunate enough to have them through this stretch, you should see if they can be used to fill holes elsewhere on your roster.
