Statistical analysis of sports is nothing new. The big-budget movie Moneyball, starring Brad Pitt and Jonah Hill, told the story of the Oakland Athletics – a down on their luck and cash-strapped organization – and their return to relevancy due to a general manager armed with a calculator, a belief that talent is quantifiable, and the idea that certain players put into certain positions will typically provide similar results each time. Advanced statistics in baseball is now the standard, but for hockey, it is uncharted territory.
The most basic advanced statistic in hockey is called ‘Corsi,’ named after Jim Corsi, the goaltending coach of the Buffalo Sabers. Corsi is, in essence, a shot differential statistic. It measures shots for (whether it hits the goaltender, goes wide, or gets blocked) minus shots against. The idea behind it is that the team that is shooting most often has the puck most often. The correlation between high Corsi and high puck possession time is incredibly strong. Players that have a high Corsi tend to have the puck more often.
So how does this bring us to the Leafs? Let’s look at some of the team Corsi stats for the best teams in the league:
Los Angeles – 57.5%
Chicago – 56.4%
St Louis – 53.9%
San Jose – 53.9%
Boston – 52.1%
The Leafs, are at the bottom of the chart, sitting at 42.4 per cent – and the problems don’t stop there. When the season started, the Leafs won seven of their first ten games, with 17 per cent of their shots ending up as goals. For reference, Sidney Crosby’s shooting percentage in the NHL sitting around 14 per cent. It is very doubtful that the Leafs, as a whole, are better at putting the puck in the net than the best hockey player in the NHL today. After those first ten games, the Leafs’ shooting percentage has dropped to roughly 8.6 per cent, which is just about league average, and their once lethal offense has seemed to dry up. Although the Leafs have been winning more often than not, the statistics seem to indicate that this is not sustainable, and a regression to the mean is inevitable. The last few games, such as the 6-0 blowout at home to an injury-ridden Columbus team, have shown that the type of game the Leafs have been playing is not a formula for consistently winning.
So, why have the Leafs been winning, even though the stats seem to show otherwise? The simplest explanation is the absolutely superb goaltending duo of James Reimer and Jonathan Bernier. The two goaltenders combined give the Leafs a .931 save percentage, which is good for fourth best in the NHL, and was holding the top spot until the aforementioned game against Columbus. As well, the Leafs’ special teams for both power play and penalty kill are top 10 in the league, something that has been the Achilles’ heel of previous Leafs squads.
There is, however, some good news. Like any other statistic, things always seem to even out after time. Although the Leafs do have a laughably low Corsi, it will probably climb as the Buds recovery from injury issues and begin to gel as a team. The season is still early, and coach Randy Carlyle has talked at length about making the Leafs a better puck-possession team. Hopefully the Buds take his instructions to heart before the season is lost.