Matt Moulson – McKeen's Hockey

MURRAY MAKEOVER

McKeen's Hockey — Thu, 14 Aug 2014 00:18:10 +0000

The Buffalo Sabres hit rock bottom last season finishing dead last with 52 points, 1.83 goals per game, and only a total of 150 goals for. After more front office changes the Sabres seem to be on the right track under new GM Tim Murray.

Murray is a well know talent identifier and is well placed as the GM of a rebuilding team. He wasted little time in his kick start of the rebuild, trading veterans Thomas Vanek, Ryan Miller, Steve Ott, and Matt Moulson for youth and draft picks.

Armed with a bevy of picks, Murray entered the draft and came out with promising prospects Sam Reinhart, Brendan Lemieux, and Eric Cornel to add to an impressive and growing group of prospects including Mikhail Grigorenko, Zemgus Girgensons, Nikita Zadorov, Rasmus Ristolainen, Joel Armia, and Jake McCabe.

Following the draft, Murray added veteran leadership from division rivals Montreal with Habs captain Brian Gionta and defensive defenseman Josh Georges and reacquired sniper Matt Moulson to insulate their developing young players and provide leadership.

As bad as last season was, it could have been much worse if not for the outstanding performance in goal by Miller up until the trade to St. Louis. This season Jhonas Enroth and Michal Neuvirth are expected to split the crease

While a return to contention may still be a ways away, there is a renewed sense of optimism in Buffalo as GM Tim Murray was cheered by fans in attendance at the prospect development camp. For the immediate future however, Buffalo is more likely to be a lottery team than a playoff one with limited fantasy options on their roster.

We have posted the following 2014-15 profiles: Matt Moulson, Cody Hodgson, Tyler Ennis, Drew Stafford, Brian Gionta, Zemgus Girgensons, Marcus Foligno, Chris Stewart, Mikhail Grigorenko, Tyler Myers, Michal Neuvirth,

Let’s Make a Deal

Carl Lemelin — Tue, 10 Dec 2013 13:45:30 +0000

Thirty games or so are in the books and we have a much better read of things than when the season began. Time to assess our roster and determine who out there is about to take off, because in fantasy sports we’re in the business of value speculation. It may be now or never for the trade that could be the difference between second place and the Big Prize everyone seeks.

Here are some ideal “buy low” and “sell high” candidates at the moment.

BUY LOW

Mike Cammalleri (LW) – CAL: The sniper is in a funk with only 2 points in his last 8 games. This is a contract year for the 31 y/o and the Flames, although a competitive group, clearly are not a playoff team. That means Cammalleri will be moved to a team that will have a much better supporting cast, especially where the winger makes his money, the PP (Calgary’s ranks 24^th at 15%). Take advantage of a trigger-happy owner right now, before Cammy starts another scoring streak!

Mats Zuccarello (RW) – NYR: OK maybe this guy is hot right now (3-3-6 in his last 5 games) and may not look more like trade bait than a “buy low” candidate, but I believe in “The Hobbit’s” staying power. At 26, this could just be the tip of the iceberg for this offensive dynamo. The former Swedish Elite League scoring champ has uncanny vision and finally has a coach who gets him and is giving him all the ice-time and offensive responsibility he’s been craving. If you’re in a keeper league, go after him before his current owner realizes exactly what he has.

Matt Moulson (LW) – BUF: After registering 4 multi-point games in his first 8 games as a Sabre, the pending UFA has considerably cooled off (2-1-3 in his last 10 games). Make no mistake, he was acquired to be moved and parlayed into a prospect/draft picks bonanza for the troubled Buffalo franchise. Much like Cammalleri, Moulson will soon find himself in a much better scoring environment. A 4-7-11 line in 17 games for a team on record pace for offensive mediocrity (1.60 G/G) is still impressive. An impulsive fantasy owner may be an easy prey for you here to make a steal of deal.

SELL HIGH

Mark Giordano (D) – CAL: The Flames’ new captain came back from injury as hot as he was before, scoring a goal and assisting on another in his first game back. He is currently the only defenseman in the league to average a point-a-game (11-3-8-11). The 7-year veteran’s best season was in 2010-11 (82-8-35-43) and his career PPG average is 0.41. He is “Mister Everything” for Calgary, therefore he can never focus strictly on his offensive game; his point production has always come in bunches and this fast start is just one of those bunches. Time to get as much value back for this asset as you can.

Semyon Varlamov (G) – COL: This one may have come one game too late (coming off an awful 8 GA performance), but Varlamov is still having a career year (13-7-0 and .923 SP). If you can identify an owner desperate for goaltending, the 25 y/o is at the peak of his potential value; even more so in keeper leagues. Focus going forward may become difficult, with the pending trial and possibility of deportation on his mind. Another issue that may hurt Varlamov’s numbers going forward is that the Colorado defense is starting to revert to what we thought they would be before the Avs shot out of the gate with that great October run.

Jaromir Jagr (RW) – NJD: At 41 there is no getting around the likelihood of a dip in Jagr’s PPG in the season’s second half. Yet his line of 31-11-13-24, +9 is very appealing to someone in need of a boost on the wing. You could get much more for Jagr however in a seasonal format rather than a keeper league. The fact that the Devils are an unlikely candidate to acquire offensive help before the deadline is yet another reason to parlay the big Czech into a bigger asset.

NHL: Top 30 Scorers Fenwick/Corsi by Game

Gus Katsaros — Fri, 22 Mar 2013 21:44:28 +0000

It’s been written that a picture is worth 1000 words.

If that’s true, then this is going to be a 30,000 word blog post .. if there ever was one. This is actually going to be around 30,500, but hey, who’s counting.

Before presenting the following, a little explanation is in order.

The hockey world (fuelled by bloggers and math nerdlingers) is breaking new ground with the ability to analyze players and using technology to better capture the nuances missed in game to game situations.

Websites like Gabe Desjardins Behind the Net and David Johnson Hockey Analysis have become valuable resources to decipher the numbers and put meaning to the way player’s performance is analyzed.

Two of the measures act as a proxy for a team’s possession of the puck, providing estimates of player’s time with the puck. A good primer for advanced stats is here (and I will delve more into using analytics in this space here on McKeen’s)

Corsi (a stat named after Buffalo Sabres goaltending coach Jim Corsi) is a ratio measuring shots on goal, blocked shots and missed shots fired at the opposition net, over the same criteria fired upon the players own net. JP at Japers Rink has a good introduction to the statistic and Broad Street Hockey advances the discussion with a comprehensive look at Advanced stats over a series of posts.

The logic dictates that the team that has greater possession of the puck will likely be firing upon the opposition’s goal rather than a player’s own goal is a signal to indicate that team has puck possession.

Fenwick is a similar measure, however it removes the blocked shots, while still providing a ratio of shots on goal and missed shots. The measure is defined here from Raw Charge – a Tampa Bay Lightning blog on SB Nation:

Fenwick: Measure of shots for and missed shots for as a percentage of all shots taken. Used more for teams than players. Often divided into game situation : Score-tied, 1-up, 1-down, 2-up, 2-down, 3-up, 3-down. This is because teams that are behind tend to shoot more than teams that are ahead, and the further behind they are the more pronounced this "score effect" is. It's so pronounced after falling 3 behind that everything goes out the window and there's no real point in separating it out any further.

Fenwick is also occasionally divided by period, as shooting tendencies change the further into a game one gets.

Fenwick measures tend to be more predictive of win-loss records for a season than Corsi measures, but Corsi is better for short-term analysis of puck possession, as it includes more events and so accounts for outliers (randomness) better. Just remember Fenwick = teams, long-term; Corsi = players and teams, shorter-term.

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These measures are more indicative of trends and apply for better use over greater sample sizes, but I was curious to see the game-to-game effects of both Corsi and Fenwick measures.

To do that, I was able to get all the game data from timeonice.com measuring each game’s corsi and fenwick events broken down by each individual components. An example is here, using the Leafs and Sabres game from March 21, 2013

After compiling all the data for each individual game, I was able to put together a game-by-game look at the differences of each measure, by team and then by player.

This is where the 30,000 words come into play. The following is a visual representation of the top-30 scorers in the NHL (as of Mar 22, 2013) based on their individual Corsi and Fenwick measures on a game-to-game basis. Note the numbers across the horizontal axis are the game numbers assigned by the NHL.

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