Today AJ over at Mile high Hockey presented an interesting argument for the Avs hiring Dallas Eakins of the Toronto Marlies (the Maples Leafs AHL affiliate) It is an argument that certainly piques my interest. That said, One of the things I really want out of the Avs in this process is a a comprehensive coaching search. In addition to Eakins, I really hope the Avs take a look at a coach who isn't yet available, but may be very soon.

One name that might be available and I think the Avs should look at is the current coach of the Avs much hated rivals Alain Vigneault. I know he's a hated Canuck and all, but I really think he's one of the best coaches in the NHL, and it's because he understand how to best use his offensive players an example:

In 06-07 he started coaching the Canucks and the Sedins. The Sedins were 26, which, in hockey player terms, is the end of their traditional offensive primes. Before AV arrived they had peaked the previous year (age 25) with 75 points for Henrik, and 71 points for Daniel. Their first season with AV they each had greater than 80 (81, & 84 respectively)

What AV did was realize that, even though they are perfectly capable defensively, their talents should really be used in the Offensive zone as much as possible. The Sedins then started increasing in points the next three years until peaking at 29 with 112 pts for Henrik, and 30 with 102pts for Daniel. Hard to tell in a 48 game season, but it appears both are still at their near prime. It'a also important to look at what he's done with Kesler (whom ROR fits a pretty decent mold but with more character!)

The Avs have Matt Duchene, Gabriel Landeskog, and Ryan O'Reilly entering their primes, not leaving them as the case with the Sedins, and they may benefit under Vigneault's willingness to put them in situations that allow them to flourish. Not to be outdone, but the Canucks backline has always been competent as well.

Of concern with AV: he sometimes let public pressure get to him, especially with goal tending. The Luongo/Schneider situation deteriorated when he went with Schneider in the playoffs because, well Canuckistan media. He's also not likely to face that kind of pressure here.

Hopefully the Avs vet both these candidates, and more, before coming to the best decision.

 Eric at the Flyers blog Broad Street Hockey has recently published a couple nice advanced stats primers as well: Team | Individual

As many here have seen here hockey is starting to warm up to fancier statistics. A ton of really smart, advanced statistical analysis has been done by many people over the last 5-8 years that has seen a great deal of new useful statistics (Corsi, OZone%, PDO) replace more traditional statistics (±) in effective player evaluation. I've had a number of people lately ask me to explain some of them to them, and when a Wild fan finally broke down and asked I figured that it was time to put it in a post, instead of individual e-mails. I'll keep the Wild fan's name anonymous so she doesn't get ostracized from her collective. We'll call her E. Wiener for anonymity's sake. Wait that opens way too many childish jokes, I'll call her Emilie W instead.

One of the key points that really gets lost is that the only math you need to know to understand these statistics is: +, -, x ,÷. Yes, there was a lot of advanced statistical mathematics that went into the development and checking of these stats, but that math is completely unnecessary to put them to use in day-to-day player and team evaluation.  I will put some links to some posts that show the math at the bottom, so if you really want you can check it out, but knowing the math behind the stat isn't necessary for knowing what the stat measures.

And that's a key point, a statistic is a measurement. The better the statistic (and the more events that make a statistic), the better the value. Many have heard me say ± is useless, and it's because using ± is like using a sundial to measure a second, or an unmarked yardstick to mark off an inch. The fidelity of ± is so poor that there's no fidelity to the measurement. It's worthless. Luckily for us, some people have developed some statistics that provide a ton more fidelity.

This is not a post where I go out and prove the things I say below. There's a ton of data and thought and math that has gone into a lot of it. I am mentioning conclusions based on those (which I have read, examined a TON of the last 4-5 years, by the way.) So if I say something like "It turns out that teams aren't able to affect their shooting %  all that much" it's not just some opinion I'm throwing out willy-nilly. It's based on a lot of math and stats. Not to say there can't be disagreement, but I'm not saying anything lightly here.

So here's a list of the most important fancy stats out there, in my opinion.

Corsi/Fenwick
What does it measure: Puck Possession

By far the most used and most talked about stats of the advanced stats crowd, Corsi and Fenwick are like fraternal brothers to one another. Corsi is total shots on goal: [shots on goal(including goals) + missed shots + blocked shots)]. (notice only + signs there). Fenwick is the same thing without the blocked shots counted.

Both stats are normally displayed either in a ± fashion (such as on the Behind the Net website) or as a ratio in a % fashion (such as on Hockey Analysis website)

Why it's useful: Both these stats heavily correlate with puck possession. It also turns out Puck Possession correlates with winning, pretty well actually.
Team Corsi is extremely useful for measuring how well a team is playing (given a large enough sample size, by the way).  Individual Corsi is good too, but it needs to be put into context a little more (on a team level things like competition level and zone starts even out a lot more than at an individual level)

 So if it's similar to ±, why is it useful but ± useless: sample size, sample size, sample size. Sample Size is the key to any good statistic, and there just aren't enough goals scored in any given season, while a player is on the ice, for ± to tell you anything. This sample size thing is hugely important, and even though it is hugely important, many in the advanced stats world can forget it from time to time (myself included, as I'll explain in a later post). You need hundreds of individual events to form a significant sample size.

ESSV%
What it measures: Even Strength Save % of a goalie/goalies

Why it's useful: Wins and GAA are too dependant on team play to give an accurate judgement of goalies. But Save % is something a goalie has almost, almost, exclusive control over. It turns out that teams aren't able to affect their shooting % all that much For example last season. The ES comes in handy because teams PKs vary, mainly in # of instances (and a goalies Sv% does go down on the PK). (Yes that means players do play a hand in shooting quality, but it turns out that most players are about the same on defense, so it pretty much normalizes out with little variation in the quality of chances being given up at the NHL level.).

So ESSV% is the best evaluator of goaltender play. It's why astute Hurricanes fans weren't that worried about Cam Ward being hurt. His ESSV% was only .917, which is pretty pedestrian, so subbing in a decent backup wasn't as big as a downgrade as some feared. Dan Ellis has one recent season where his ESSV% was lower than Cam Ward's current ESSV%. Carolina's play hasn't suffered.

OZone%
What it measures: Number of time a player starts (takes a faceoff) in the Offensive zone vs starting in the Defensive Zone

Why it's useful: It helps build a picture of how a coach uses a player. In general a player used in the Offensive zone more often is going to score more points than one used in the defensive zone more often. The Sedins took a massive jump in points produced around the same time their Ozone usage went up. In 07-08 they were started in the Ozone in the mid 50% range.

Then the Canucks started shiting them heavily in the Offensive zone starting around 09-10 (check out 10-11 for sure) and their points jumped from the mid 70-low 80 point range to Mid 90-100 point range.

Conversely players in the low %s tend to play more defensive game. and are being used as defensive players. It's why I have defended Stastny's point production this year especially: he's being used very heavily in his own zone this season, the way a 3rd line center would/should be used.

As you can imagine this zone start has a large effect on Individual Corsi ratings, and should almost always be used when looking at individual corsi of players.

CorsiQoC:
What it measures: Corsi of the on-ice competition

Why it's useful: This is, by far, the fuzziest of the stats I have listed here. I don't really trust it as a number, per say, but I usually compare rank on the team. Player X plays the 2nd toughest competition on the team. Player Y plays the softest competition on the team. I usually only use rank on team and not really look at the number too much, unless a major discrepancy shows up.

That said, it's still useful to see who guys are playing against. John Mitchell and Paul Stastny have similar point totals (15, and 17 respectively) but Stastny is playing, by far, the harder competition.  Is 17 points playing against the Toews, Datsyuks, Sedins and Parise's of the world more impressive than 15 points whoever is on those teams third lines? Yeah it is. Those points aren't created in a vacuum, and Stastny regularly goes against the other teams toughest competition.

PDO
What it measures: Fortune

Why it's useful: PDO is actually two other useful stats combined together: ESSV% + ES shooting percentage. ESSV% we covered, and ESsh% is a cousin of it. It's the on ice shooting percentage of a team. For individuals it's the ESsh% & ESSV% while a player is on the ice. It turns out that teams don't have much control over how well they shoot, and have a lot more control over how much they shoot. Shooting %'s tend to be in the 6-9% range for teams, and those %'s aren't repeatable from year to year. So a team with a giant shooting percentage will regress, and a team with a terrible one will egress to the mean.

a player or team with a PDO far away from 1000 is typically having a streak of luck (good or bad depending on the direction away from 1000).  And teams with shooting percentages much higher than 9.5% are said to be shooting well above their true talent level.

The exception here is that really good goalies can maintain a very high ESSV%, this is why teams like Vancouver and Boston in the Thomas years routinely have PDOs over 1000, their goaltenders are head and shoulders better than average.

 
These 5-6 stats are a really good place to start when it comes to Advanced stats. There's a lot more, and a lot of ways to represent these, but If you start to get a handle on these 5-6 it will really provide a lot of insight to your hockey experience.

If you want to look more in depth into these stats, here's some articles I found interesting and illuminating:

Using Adv Stats to evaluate a players performance - Cam Charron: Canucks Army, Leafs Army, The Province, others.
Randomness of ± - N Greenburg: Japer's Rink
Shot Quality correlation to Corsi - Eric T NHL Numbers/Broad Street Hockey
Shots, Fenwick, & Corsi - JLikens Objective NHL
Forrest vs Trees - Vic Ferrari: Irreverrant Oilers Fans

Saving the best for last:

Zone Time - Vic Ferrari Irreverant Oilers Fans

The Avs are currently 20th in Goals/Game with 2.52. Since Feb 1st they have 2.65 G/G which would be a respectable 16th.

The Avs are currently 27th in GA/G at 3.07 GA/G. since Feb 1st they have given up 3.25 GA/G which would tie for 29th.

On the Season, The Avs goaltending is 11th in ESSV%.

The problem with this game is the defense. It's the Defense. It's the Defense.

CopperandBlue sent me an appropriate clip after I learned Tyson Barrie was being sent down:

That about sums it up. Aside from Duchene and Parenteau, Tyson Barrie has been the nicest story for this Avs team, a rookie who was expected to maybe contribute who quickly became one of the Avs best defensemen. Just like that, Avs management/coaching ruin it because old time hockey guys are dumb and think being a rookie and making a couple mistakes is dar worse than being a veteran and making a ton of them. 

But how good has rookie Tyson Barrie been for the Avalanche? Very Very good. How bad a decision is this by Avs management? Barrie Barrie bad. What does sending him down prove: The Avs are a bunch of incompetent nincompoops.

Speaking of decisions Avs management botched so magnificiently they may make a Dennis Quad disaster flick about it: Earlier this year I showed a graph on how good Ryan O'Reilly was last year for the Avs, based on O'Reilly's Corsi with teammates and without them.  Here's what Tyson Barrie's graph looks like (full size):

For comparison, here's every defenseman on the Avs (save Ryan Wilson, who's been hurt)

Erik Johnson
Jan Hejda
Shane O'Brien
Ryan O'Byrne
Matt Hunwick
Greg Zanon

So Tyson Barrie only makes everyone he plays with better, or more accurately, when his teammates are on the ice with him, they possess the puck more. Like a lot more. Let's highlight a guy who hasn't been a healthy scratch this season Ryan O'Byrne:

This is Ryan O'Byrne. Notice how, when everyone else is on the ice they somehow are worse at possessing the puck. It's because Ryan O'Byrne isn't very good this season. (Tonight he had 4 PIM, and a terrible pinch that started the Oilers the other way for their 1st goal.  So Kudos to him for proving my point)

Now lets look at the numbers for Avs defensemen straight up:

Barrie - 1st in Rel Corsi, 2nd in Corsi on, & second in Dzone starts.

O'Byrne - Last in Corsi on, Last in Corsi Rel,  3rd in dzone starts. (he is, apparently, playing tougher competition somehow, although as of 3 games ago that wasn't the case. Qualcomp is a weird one)

 It's pretty conclusive that Barrie contributes to puck possession more than O'Byrne (and Zanon, Hejda, and Hunwick for that matter)

 What makes this even more baffling is that it's pretty clear that, up until a couple games ago, the coaches saw the same thing. They saw a very good player in Tyson Barrie. Don't believe me: He led the Defense in ES TOI/game & PPTOI/game. As recently as the game prior to the one he was benched he was being sent out against Datsyuk and Zetterberg extensively. In fact 70% of his ES ice time was against those two forwards. And how did he do against those two? Well he was +7 in Corsi on the night (led team).

So the coaches trusted him up until his second to last game in the league. Yeah he had a couple bad plays against the best team in the league, in his last game. Specifically Patrick Sharp used him a couple times 1v1. But Barrie has been, on average, a splendid player.

So one bad night for Barrie (or even two, as he was bad in Columbus. but EVERYONE was bad in Columbus) and he's sent back to the minors. That's ridiculous.

Seriously, my blood is boiling about this. Barrie was in the middle of a breakthrough year and Sacco and Sherman just sent him to a league he doesn't belong in. Barrie is an NHL player, a pretty good one too. Yes, he makes some mistakes, as rookies do. But he takes care of the puck, and is able to move it out of his own zone, which is something that not many players on the Avs can say.  Going back to the OZone starts and finishes, look at where he finishes his shifts: he finishes his shifts in the Ozone 62% of the time, despite starting in the Ozone 45% of the time. He's moving the puck up the ice damnit.

Ryan O'Byrne barely is able to get it out of his own zone when he gets it (this isn't just stats, but a very noticeable problem with him). The goal against in Barrie's first game was all on O'Byrne and Hunwick being unable to get the puck out of their own zone. Tonight Ryan O'Byrne had the puck on his stick, after it was passed backwards to him, under minimal pressure and he still managed to give up a scoring opportunity (and take a penalty) all because the guy cannot handle the puck. At all. Zanon has the exact same deficiencies, except he's worse positionally than O'Byrne. Barrie may be a little weak in 1v1 defense, but 1v1s happen maybe once every other game. Defensemen handle the puck dozens of times a game. Being able to execute simple passes is a more valuable skill than 1v1 defending, even if it isn't as glamorous. 

The stats are just screaming off the page: TYSON BARRIE IS A QUALITY NHL PLAYER. The eyeballs are screaming off the page: HE IS A QUALITY NHL PLAYER. Now, he's a superb AHL player, which isn't right. 

Avs management are a bunch of nincompoops.

#FreeTysonBarrie

Well, that ended rather abruptly. A lot went on, and here's my final thoughts:

The Avalanche had to match

I could go into a long detailed post about it, but there's a really good one here by Hockey Prospectus. Bottom line, Calgary is already a better team than their record indicates, and the addition of O'Reilly would have made them even better, making their 1st round pick a marginal asset. The Avs had to match.

The Avalanche management lost - Big.

The lynchpin of the Avs harball strategy was that no other team was going to be willing try and offer sheet O'Reilly. The gamble here was that: if a team did throw an offer sheet the Avs way, it was going to have to be huge, or the Avs would easily match. Well the offer sheet was huge and the Avs still (correctly) matched within hours.

Reports surfaced that the O'Reilly camp probably would have settled for ~$4M/year over the next 2 seasons. Now they have a cap hit of $5M over the next two.

But the bigger loss comes in what they have to Qualify O'Reilly at the end of this contract. Because of the way Calgary structured this contract the Avs matched they will have to qualify ROR at $6.5M. The only other thing they can do is file for arbitration and hope the arbitrator agrees with Avs management. IF that happens the minimum the arbitrator can award is 85% of $6.5M, which is $5.525M. So, the very minimum the Avs will be paying ROR after next season is more than they would have paid him if they just caved to his demands in the first place. Had they negotiated they certainly would have come out of this much, much better off.

Oh, and for added pleasure, as Adrian Dater points out, this bare minimum $5.525M contract will come when Gabe Landeskog and Matt Duchene are up for contracts, meaning this could have the ripple effect that everyone feared paying O'Reilly more than the original $3.5 offer would lead to.

There's also any lingering residual feelings that may be out there, between the Avs and O'Reilly or the Avs and Calgary. Not to mention this protracted negotiation certainly helped further alienate a fanbase that has already, in general, has a tenous view of Avs management after years of losing and a recent NHL lockout. This played into the, sometimes overstated but mostly earned, perception by many (although not all) fans that Avs management cares more about nickel and dimes than their hockey team.

Again, the Avs put themselves in this predicament. They refused to negotiate on their, fair, $3.5M contract offer. An RFA offer sheet was always a possibility, one that became more likely as teams saw their playof hopes falter and needing to make a big splash.

The end result was an unmitigated consummate catastrophe for Greg Sherman and the rest of Avs management.

Avalanche, the hockey team, won big

The only place where the Avs come out ahead, albeit 6 weeks late and for $2M more, is on the ice.

The current NHL standings have the Avs four points (and five teams) outside a playoff spot, and they have a game in hand over the next 4 above them. They are five points, and an astounding eight teams, outside the #5 seed in the playoffs. Of those 8 teams the Avs have a better Fenwick close than 3 of them (EDM, MIN, NSH) and are within spitting distance of another (PHX). This fenwick comes, mostly, without Landeskog, Erik Johnson, Ryan Wilson and Ryan O'Reilly. The Avs are adding three of these four very good players within a week. They have a legitimate chance at making the playoffs.

But had the Avs settled with O'Reilly early they may have been in even better shape. Certainly he may have helped with that 4-1 blown lead against Edmonton. It's easy to sit back and throw what if's out (O'Reilly could have aggravated his ankle injury and been out for the season. The contract dispute could have been a blessing in disguise for healing his ankle), but it's hard not to think this team would be in better shape with 15 or so more games of O'Reilly in the lineup.

The NHL's future RFAs lost.

By matching The Avs confirmed what many GMs site as the lack of RFA offers in general: Why go through the trouble of crafting an offer that's going to be met? My guess is that the Avs would have to have been blown away in compensation in order to not match an RFA offer sheet. According to the compensation list, I think that would have had to have been a $6.7M+ salary and compensation of 2 1st round picks, a second round pick and a third round pick.

But another team would have had to have been astooundingly crazy to offer that to ROR. (Calgary couldn't have, because they didn't have a second round pick.) This saga exposed how broken the RFA system is. A $5M (cap hit) is quite the substantial offer for a player, and the compensation is only a 1st and a 3rd. If the players union want a real RFA system that works they need to negotiate higher compensation for offer sheets. The NHLPA can do that in, oh, 7-10 years.

Indirectly the Avs can claim to have kept RFA salaries down, since the offer sheet will become even more rare after this. It only cost them dearly in the short term.

Ian LaPaerriere

Andrew Brunette

Craig Anderson

Chris Stewart

Colby Cohen

Kyle Quincey

Kevin Porter

TJ Galiardi

Dan Winnik

Ryan O'Reilly

These were all names that I came up with, off the top of my head, that have had comments or actions that belay some level of criticality with Avs brass over the last few seasons (feel free to add any I missed in the comments). This doesn't include guys like Chris Drury and Alex Tanguay, who also had some issues with Avs management, but in a different era with different management (save one important guy!)

Now, it would be unfair to not acknowledge players I thought the Avs treated fairly. The Avs appeared to give Peter Mueller a more than fair chance with his concussion problems (glad he's doing well in FLA, by the way). They had the utmost patience with the enigmatic Wojtek Wolski (he's not Russian so I think I broke a rule calling him enigmatic). And there are a lot of former Avs who are still connected to the club, especially from the glory days.

But as I said on twitter tonight, the Avs appear to be like the mafia: Family if you're in, persona non-grata if there's a probelm.

Not all these guys handled their situation with the most maturity. Anderson, Stewart, Quincey and now O'Reilly could have handled their situation better (not to mention C. Cohen and Galiardi). Some of these guys have behaved immaturely and childish. But how many players have to leave disgruntled before we start to acknowledge there may be two sides to the problem? Maybe Avs management, and their famous (some {me} would argue notorious) take-it-or-leave-it negotiation style have been a hindrance on the club. That there may be behind-the-scenes stuff that have an impact. Part of the job description for an NHL general manager, and the entire management, these days is dealing with immature millionaire athletes who may have a bit of an ego to them. This is certainly not absolution for any or all of the players here, but it's still a dose of reality that Avs management appears to be unable to accept.

At what point does enough smoke reveal fire?

One's an anomaly, two's a variance and three's a pattern right? What's 10?. I don't like it when sports columnists spitball, because sometimes I think it's an easy out for writing a smart story, but it can be justified on occasion. So I'm just going to spitball here; but maybe the Avs management (code: Pierre LaCroix) isn't cut out to handle modern NHL athletes. What percentage of late teen to mid-20 somethings that you know aren't immature dumbfucks? Now how many more would be that way with millions of dollars and a modicum of fame to their name? That's not absolving it, but part of the job of an NHL management is dealing with rich, star (or not-really-star) athletes. Maybe the Avs aren't thrilled with some of these guys behavior and attitude towards the business side of hockey, but it's no secret that modern athletes have much more savvy and experienced business advice at their disposal than they did even ten years ago.  It seems to me that the Avs have adjusted poorly to the new breed of athlete.

At some point it's the Avs responsibility to act like the responsible party and be the more mature men, bury the hatchet and act like reasnable aduts, right? My dad (sorry, this is a backwoods parabale so I should state it better) My Pappy always told my sister and I that he doesn't care who started it, but it takes two to fight. well the Avs have quite a few fights here, and they can't possibly be innocent in all of them. 

Sure, seasoned vets, like Laperriere and Brunette, may have handled their comments more maturely, but they were seasoned mature vets. The rest of those guys made some level of public comments criticising Avs management. On some level these are still bland, boring, vanilla, hockey players who don't give opinions on anything, so the fact they spoke out on anything shouldn't be as easily dismissed as it has been, IMO. Yet there are a lot of players that seem to be ok calling out Avs management, saying that playing for the Avs is a bad situation. The only other team that I can think of with as much player-management dysfunction is the Isles. I'm not sure why Avs management hasn't gotten more slack for this.

Sure, there's nothing definitive here, but is has sure gotten pretty smokey at the Pepsi center.