Zawaski: Rejoice! NHL.Com Finally Adds Advanced Statistics
(CBS) -- It's been a long time coming, but the NHL and NHL.com have finally made "fancy stats" accessible on their site.
Friday, the site re-launched its stats page with new categories and a new search method. Of course, it's still easy as ever to find the league leaders in goals, assists, PIMs and more, but now the NHL has added Corsi, Fenwick, PDO and several other modern units of analysis.
Opponents of the advanced stats movement long argued that the names of the stats didn't make sense, and therefore made these new concepts harder to grasp. Of course, anyone who took five minutes to read what these stats were figured it out in short order, but their point is valid. After all, Corsi is named after current Blues goalie coach Jim Corsi, who developed the stat. PDO is actually named after a user name on a message board.
With the re-launch, the league has changed the names of these stats to make them easier to understand, and breaks them in to four categories.
From NHL.com
Shooting Statistics
- SHOT ATTEMPTS FOR
(SAT FOR) - Calculation = (5 on 5): Team shots on goal + team missed shots + opponent blocked shots (excluding empty net). Also called Corsi for
- SHOT ATTEMPTS AGAINST
(SAT AGAINST) - Calculation = (5 on 5): opponent shots on goal + opponent missed shots + team blocked shots (excluding empty net). Also called Corsi against
- UNBLOCKED SHOT ATTEMPTS
(USAT) - Calculation = (5 on 5): (5 on 5): team shots on goal + team missed shots (excluding empty net). Also called Fenwick for
Shooting Percentages
- SHOT ATTEMPTS %
(SAT %) - Calculation = 100 x (shot attempts for / shot attempts for + shot attempts against) or 100 x (SATF / SATF + SATA). Also called Corsi for%.
- UNBLOCKED SHOT ATTEMPTS %
(USAT %) - Calculation = 100 x (unblocked shot attempts for / unblocked shot attempts for + unblocked shot attempts against) or 100 x (USATF / USATF + USATA).Also called Fenwick for%.
- SHOT ATTEMPTS % CLOSE
(SAT% CLOSE) - Calculation = shot attempts % (SAT%) when team is within one goal of their opponent in periods 1 and 2, or tied in period 3. Also called Corsi for% close
Shooting Stats per Time on Ice
- SHOT ATTEMPTS/20
(SAT/20) - Calculation = (Shot attempts for / 20 TOI in minutes) – (shot attempts against / 20 TOI in minutes). Also called Corsi/20
- SHOT ATTEMPTS FOR/20
(SATF/20) - Calculation = (shot attempts For x 20 ) / TOI in minutes. Also called Corsi for/20
- UNBLOCKED SHOT ATTEMPTS FOR/60
(USATF/60) - Calculation = unblocked shot attempts for (USATF) x 60 / TOI in minutes.Also called Fenwick for/60
Scoring Stats
- ZONE START %
(ZS%) - Zone Start percentage is the ratio of how many faceoffs a player is on the ice for in the offensive zone relative to the total offensive plus defensive zone faceoffs he is on the ice for. Neutral zone faceoffs are ignored. Players with a higher zone start percentage tend to have more opportunities to generate shot attempts.
- SHOOTING % PLUS
SAVE %
(SPSV%) - SPSV% is 5-on-5 on-ice shooting percentage plus 5-on-5 on-ice save percentage. It is usually expressed out of 1000 and it trends toward 1000 over the long term. Very broadly, SPSV% can indicate "puck luck"; players with SPSV% well below or above 1000 can be expected to get more (or fewer) bounces in the future. Also called PDO
I applaud the NHL for making these advanced stats easy to find and easy to navigate for fans. Sites like stats.hockeyanalysis.com, puckalytics.com, War-On-Ice.com and others do a fine job of supplying readers with these same numbers (and more), but NHL.com's bandwidth, financial backing and commitment to updating in real-time will be a game changer.
Head over to NHL.com/stats/enhanced and mess around a bit. I'll think you'll like what you see.