Henrik Sedin: What does his 'Breakout' tell us?
by Hawerchuk on Jan 22, 2010 9:00 AM EST
14 comments
Jon Willis had a nice piece about Henrik Sedin, also known as 'the guy who passes to Daniel Sedin.' Henrik is almost at his career-high in goals with barely half the season gone thanks to an exceptionally high 21.4 shooting percentage. There are lots of explanations out there that have Henrik shooting that well for the rest of the season, but it's highly unlikely that a guy with a 13.2% career shooting percentage is going to be able to stay at 21%.
I found every player who shot 20% during any 100-shot interval over the last four seasons. I then looked at how they did in every other 100-shot interval. The distribution of their outcomes is shown by the blue bar chart below:
Now we know that anyone who could put away 20 shots out of 100 is a better-than-average shooter. The distribution of all shooters, shown in red, is much less likely to generate a 20% shooting spree than the blue bar chart. Indeed, the average shooter who went 20-for-100 had a 13.2% shooting percentage overall, exactly the same as Henrik Sedin's career shooting percentage. They all had these great runs where they looked like they'd finally figured out how to be truly elite NHL scorers, and they all eventually went back to how they'd done in the past. All evidence points to Henrik regressing to the talent level he established over his career.
If he continues to take shots at the same rate as he has so far and plays all 82 games, he'll finish with 164, which sets his over-under on goals scored over the rest of the season at 9. Anything more than a 30-goal season requires Henrik to play on the right-hand side of our histogram - and way over his head.
(Incidentally, this is not the same case as Vic Ferrari discusses here. If we didn't have 8.5 years of Henrik Sedin's NHL performance to compare to, we would not be as confident in thinking that he's part of the more-talented group of players.)
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I like Sedin for playing the way he has, in part because he just received a big contract and would have every reason to rest on it.
I like your method of illustrating this…would the numbers support the notion that it is rare for a player to “develop” into a high-accuracy shooter? The idea in baseball is that there are players that develop home-run power; I’m thinking the same isn’t the case in hockey.
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by Bettman's Nightmare on Jan 22, 2010 12:33 PM EST reply actions
Also of note is Henrik’s shot rate with Daniel in and out of the lineup. With Daniel out of the lineup he had 2.28 shots per game over 18 games. With Daniel in the lineup he’s taken 1.81 shots per game which is just slightly higher than the 1.74 he managed last season. He’s shooting more this year, but a lot of the increase came when he wasn’t playing with his brother.
question on getting 5v5 toi historically
Nice piece. I also think that Hank will come back down in goal-scoring.
I have a question. Is there somewhere to get a player’s scoring rates or at least TOI for 5v5 prior to 2006/7? The reason is that, since the lock out, the Sedins have been steadily getting a higher proportion of their points 5v5, and I’m wondering if there’s been a change in scoring rate per 60min. I know this is crude, but it’s all I could find. This is a percentage of points that came from PP:
Hank Dan
2000-01 31.03% 41.18%
2001-02 25.00% 28.13%
2002-03 48.72% 22.58%
2003-04 30.95% 29.63%
2005-06 42.67% 45.07%
2006-07 43.21% 40.48%
2007-08 38.16% 43.24%
2008-09 31.71% 29.27%
2009-10 26.76% 27.91%
Then, goal-scoring and point-scoring rates 5v5 for the years I could find (apologies for formatting):
Hank Dan
2006/07 .53 2.70 1.21 3.01
2007/08 .47 2.16 .86 2.09
2008/09 .84 2.79 1.19 2.97
2009/10 1.31 3.75 1.13 3.68
I think there has been a change in how they are used, and how they play, slowly over the post-lock-out period, as teams have adjusted to new rules, and new effective formulas of play. It may only be showing up in their 5v5 scoring rates this season however.
Some memory to back this up: 05/06 was the year they became Van’s 1st line (we all remember Bertuzzi-gate, but people were saying it before that), playing I think with Anson Carter mostly. 06/07 was the first Luongo year, where the team played some major tight D-style trap. 07/08 was the year the team lost 7 players down the stretch, and managed to finish 1-6 to fall out of the play-offs, and the Sedins basically stopped scoring for 2 months near the end. 08/09 down the stretch you suddenly saw them doing different stuff, less chip and chase and different kinds of cycles, and they were put with Burrows at some point after Sundin signed. Kesler went from being the “shut-down” 3rd line center to two-way forward with Sundin. This year has continued the trend from last year post-Sundin (w/o Sundin of course). There’s also a story that they changed their strength training after the disastrous finish of 07/08.
Just a guess, but, if you checked Hank’s Sh% during the second half of last year, it would be comparible.
Burr is trending the same way. Most would have agreed his career-high of 28 (another guess) last year would be his peak. At his current pace he will exceed that.
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The combination of those 3 players have exquisite on-ice chemistry.
Christian Ehroff benefits from this formula, as well.
henrik is leading the league in points, not goals, so this whole discussion is meaningless. ignoring that, henrik will still end up with 35+ goals, so the discussion is also wrong. anze kopitar was overhyped, henrik is for real. there’s no way he regresses.
by rambunctiousrob on Jan 24, 2010 1:29 AM EST reply actions
Yeah, you want to put some money on that? If Henrik Sedin’s shooting percentage from today to January 23, 2011 is 20.0% or higher, I will donate $100 to the charity of your choice. If it’s less than 20.0%, I guess I will just hold you up as an example of someone who didn’t understand regression to true talent levels.
Also Gabe: Sedin’s getting sheltered ice time this year both by the numbers and by eye. He doesn’t need it to produce at a high level, but he does need it to produce at a league-leading level.
I mean it’s pretty obvious after watching a couple Canucks games (painful experience as that may be, what with the constant embellishment costing other teams valuable points in the standings that could affect their playoff chances) that Kesler is taking the tough ice time and the Sedins are the ones Vigneault is always trying to sneak on (sometimes one-at-a-time and with risky line changes) whenever the other team’s fourth line is on the ice.
So a bunch of this scoring is a product of circumstance too. I’d like to see Sedin play Crosby’s ice time and see if he could even break 2.5 EVPts/60.
yes, kesler's emergence seems to be a big part of the explanation
Your explanation of how Vigneault is using the Sedin’s makes sense. This is what I meant above that they seem to be used differently. This is also backed up by the Quality of Comp stats (both +/- and corsi), and zone starts. Kesler is facing much tougher competition, and starting way more in his own zone, as are his usual linemates Mason Raymond and Mikael Samuelsson.
Fun fact on drawing penalties: It’s true that Kesler and Burrows are among the league leaders at drawing penalties, and so one suspects their embellishment helps them. But I just did a quick check at behind the net, and there’s 5 Canucks with 8 or more penalties drawn (8 being about halfway down the screen of the league). On the other hand, there are 11 Flames!
How stable is shooting percentage?
I don’t know how closely you’ve examined this issue but hypothetically, how long would a player have to maintain a significant uptick in shooting % before you start believing they’ve taken the next step? Multiple seasons?
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