Praisin' Prucha

AKA Props to Petr

So, I'm not normally inclined to enter the transient, partisan world of the immediate post-game blog, but I felt the need to comment following tonight's increasingly-rare in-game sighting of this man:



I'm not the inveterate Renney-basher than seems to make up much of the Rangers fanbase, but Prucha's treatment over the last couple of years still doesn't make much sense to me.

Yes, he'll probably be anonymous for the next few games. Yes, he'll never be a regular top-six forward. Yes, he's so lightweight he'd have to be scratched from an outdoor game because the wind would knock him over.

But...he's clearly got a scoring touch that is lacking in most of an offense-starved line-up, hasn't complained a bit about being scratched so often and he is still as hardworking and as gutsy a player as anyone. His excellent game tonight showed that - and it was good to see the fans acknowledge it amid the usual (but increasingly justified) negative reaction to Kalinin, Redden and the powerplay.

I was still surprised to see Prucha only got 12 minutes of ice-time tonight - hopefully this will increase a bit if he gets Renney's confidence again and he gets a fraction of the security afforded to the other underperforming forwards (I'm looking at you, Messrs Gomez and Drury).

The game itself?

• As expected, the Isles were hard-working enough to make a game of it longer than they should've, but just lack enough talent
• As expected, Kalinin and Drury screwed up big time leading to a goal conceded
• Still way too shaky on defense from the Rangers, but a win is a win is a win at the moment
• Hopefully Trent Hunter is OK - nobody (even a Fishstick) should end up injured because someone forgot to close the penalty box door properly

Behind The Numbers: Part 374b

Which players are most clutch in NHL shootouts?

Many, many of you will have no doubt read my thrilling breakdown of team performances in what I defined as "clutch" shootout attempts since the tie-breaker was introduced in 2005-06 - shootout attempts where the shooter has the opportunity to either keep the shootout going or to win it.

(If by some miracle, you haven't read it, link is HERE)

Months of painstaking labour (the real reason Mats Sundin took the first part of the season off) have led to the breakdown shown below - "clutch" attempts taken or faced by individual players (only those who have taken/faced five or more such attempts in their career are shown):

Shooters:



Goalies:



Thoughts/Notes:

• Not really full of the names you might expect at the top end of either list
• As before, the record across all attempts is obviously more important (for example, you won't see players who almost exclusively take the first few attempts in a shootout on this list, such as Lecavalier and Zubov) but this looks at those shooters who arguably face the more pressurised attempts
• Nobody with at least five attempts has managed to score them all - the legendary Petteri Nummelin managed to go 4-for-4 in his brief NHL career though
• As I'm legally bound to mention Pittsburgh's #87, reasonably interesting to note that Mr Crosby has gone a respectable 5-for-10 in attempts to win a shootout, but has a league-worst 0-for-6 record when behind and trying to keep one going. Guess it generates more headlines doing it that way...

Behind The Numbers: Part 374a

AKA More Shootout Stats For Insomniacs

My previous blog (HERE) looked at shooting percentage on "clutch" shootout attempts, i.e. those where the shooter had the opportunity to either keep the shootout going or to win it. That ranking looked like this:



Since it was a fairly quick and easy job (and the Rangers were ranked much higher...), I've flipped it to look at the record ("save" percentage - though it includes shots that missed the goal) of the goalies for each team when facing a clutch attempt. This ranking looks like this:



Still not entirely sure what conclusions can be drawn from this...

Behind The Numbers: Part 374

Everyone loves the shootout, right?

In an attempt to create yet another spurious statistic to rank the 30 NHL teams by, I have tried to break down some numbers behind the 528 shootouts that have taken place since they were introduced (through 13 December).

There is obviously a huge amount of information, so I'm only dipping a toe into the water (for this blog at least) and I've only tried to look at team stats rather than individual players - there's plenty of interesting team/player stats on nhl.com that don't need repeating.

Before looking at my usual table of numbers, a miscellaneous selection of shootout facts:

• Not a single shootout yet has seen the first six shooters all score (nor has there been a sequence of miss/miss/score/score/score/score)
• Teams have opted to shoot first 67% of the time (257 times out of 383 - the choice only came in from 2006/07)
• 8 teams have never chosen to shoot second but New Jersey and Phoenix have never opted to shoot first (I might try and figure out whether it pays to go first or second at some point...)
• The entire league is 1-for-1 in "circus-shot 30th attempts in the shootout":
  
  

So, the main thrust of this blog? "Clutch" shootout goals - i.e. teams' shooting percentages when facing an attempt to either keep the shootout going or to win it.

The table below shows overall shooting percentage (far right columns) alongside that for clutch attempts only:



The teams become a bit more spread when looking at clutch attempts only - these figures explain in part why a team's overall rank may be high or low. This doesn't tell the whole story, however, since

• Some of the numbers are probably too small to be statistically credible
• "Non-clutch" attempts are clearly still important (for example, the first attempt can never be "clutch" by this definition but goes a long way towards deciding whether you even need to take a "clutch" attempt)
• It obviously doesn't consider which players were involved and many won't still be with the same teams