League Leaders: Around the Net

by Hawerchuk on Nov 13, 2009 9:00 AM EST Comment 1 comment

This is thoroughly unscientific, but I couldn't think of a better way to combine the league leaders in deflections, hits, rebounds, takeaways, penalties drawn and wraparounds. So, in the spirit of corrupt Russian figure skating judges, I added together each player's league-wide rank in each category and threw out the highest and lowest figures. Ranking the players by lowest score gives us the following top 25:

		Deflections	Rebounds	Takeaways	Draw Pens	Hits	Wraps
1	Ryan Smyth	X		X	X		X
2	Eric Staal	X	X	X	X		X
3	Zach Parise	X	X	X	X
4	Ryan Malone			X	X		X
5	Alexander Ovechkin		X	X	X	X
6	Henrik Zetterberg		X	X	X		X
7	Rick Nash			X	X		X
8	Vaclav Prospal		X	X			X
9	Thomas Vanek	X	X	X			X
10	Sidney Crosby		X	X	X
11	Andrew Brunette	X	X				X
12	Jonathan Cheechoo	X	X			X
13	Shane Doan	X		X	X
14	Martin St. Louis	X	X	X
15	Brian Gionta	X	X	X
16	Olli Jokinen		X				X
17	Jarome Iginla	X	X		X	X
18	Mike Knuble	X	X
19	Alexander Frolov			X			X
20	Corey Perry	X					X
21	Justin Williams			X			X
22	Daniel Sedin	X	X
23	Chris Neil			X	X	X
24	Mike Richards				X
25	Dustin Brown				X	X

Players who ranked in the top 30 in the NHL in a given category have an 'X' under that heading. Offensive-zone hits are the least predictive of the six categories, followed by wraparounds. Ryan Smyth is the most complete player in these categories, with several top ten rankings - he fell just outside the top 30 in rebounds. Eric Staal and Zach Parise also have a broad skill-set, and if we just consider the first four ratings - excluding hits and wraparounds - Parise is #1 in the league. We can argue about the exact order of the top 10-20 players on this list, but it's clear that we've figured out basically who the best players in the league are around the other team's goal.

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Comments

Methodology

Might it be better to take each value and normalize by the average number of events? (i.e. if there are 5 times more penalties than rebounds, divide penalties drawn by 5, etc). I know any amalgamated ranking is just for run, but it would give you a way to reward those who excel in a category without throwing it out.

by Tom Awad on Nov 22, 2009 9:30 AM EST reply actions