August 7, 2014

Red Wing Goals


Inspired by mc79hockey’s post a few weeks ago, I wanted to look at how the Red Wings generated goals this past season. First, I coded each goal and determined how long the puck was in the zone before the Red Wings scored to the nearest second. The distinctions were by no means exact; I defined a rush goal as any goal occurring as a result of an odd or even man rush. Every other goal was coded an in-zone goal, goals where the majority of the opposition was inside the defensive zone. After removing empty net and power play goals, which I will revisit later, I am left with 157 goals.


This chart supports the results found by mc79hockey, despite the old school strategy of grinding teams down low, most goals come immediately after entering the zone. Even when looking at the goals not coming off the rush, there seems to be an advantage to scoring quickly



Intuitively this seems to make sense, as was discussed after the publishing of mc79hockey’s piece. Rush plays allow for offensive teams to take advantage of their speed and keep the defense moving. Even after ignoring rushes, by scoring quickly you take advantage of potential mismatches or players not being in the proper position.

Even on the power play this trend seems to hold, although we do see a decrease in rush goals on the power play since teams focus on trapping in the neutral zone. The one exception to this rule was the increased presence of goals over 30 seconds after entering the zone on the power play. With the ability to control the play without exerting energy, it would follow there should be an advantage to controling the puck for an extended period of time.



After looking at each and every Red Wing's goal this offseason the numbers seem to support the theory recently put out by new Edmonton Oiler's hire mc79hockey. Team defense is now focused on providing multiple players, providing each defender with assistance if they are beat. The result is offenses find it more challenging to find open space or odd man situations when deep in the zone. Red Wings fans can recall the playoff series against the Boston Bruins. When deep in the zone the Bruins were able to provide help whenever Pavel Datsyuk beat his man. When Pavel is on the rush, defender's roles become less clear and Pavel creates moments like his GWG in game 1. Next time I will share some of the other info I coded, including the percent of goals coming off odd-man rushes and rebounds.

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