Friday statistical companion: youth, etc.

Stats post to go with Friday’s story. You’re warned.

My favorite part of the whole Dennis Green “The Bears are who we thought they were” rant from 2006 was that I read it before I saw it. And that I misread it before I saw it. “You want to crown ’em, then crown their (behind).” The emphasis, obviously, is on the second “crown.” I read it with an emphasis on “(behind),” and thought, “gee, that’s an oddly vulgar thing to say, even in a press-conference rant, and how do you intend for us to go about doing that?” But Green was just intensifying, not being literal.

(I was, in my defense, still pretty badly post-concussive.)

What does parsing a seven-year-old press conference have to do with the Bridgeport Sound Tigers? Nothing, really, except that the loud part of that rant came to mind several times over the past 24 hours.

Because the Sound Tigers appear to be who we thought they were.

…..

Youth and inexperience, I wrote for Friday’s paper, manifest themselves in a lot of ways in hockey. And they show up pretty clearly in a chart like so.

a chart of AHL statistics

GP-Games played. GF-Total goals for. GA-Total goals against. ESGF/ESGA-Even-strength goals for/against, removing shootout and special-teams goals. ESGFAvg/ESGAAvg-Average goals for and against per game played. PP/gp-Power plays per game played. TSH/gp-Times short-handed per game played. PythPct-Old-school pythagorean winning percentage with the shootout goals taken out. ES Pyth-Pythagorean using only even-strength goals, for the heck of it.

(Apologies for the jpegification. All these are through Tuesday. Probably wouldn’t be hard to add Wednesday’s game in, but…)

These aren’t #fancystats; these aren’t even really #spiffystats or #somewhatmoregenteelthanusualstats. (Love to have them, but not readily available.) They’re brute arithmetic at work.

Took out shootout goals. (You know where you are.) Separated power-play and short-handed goals. (The original chart is bigger.) That left even-strength goals of all sorts. Divided them by games played. Took power-play chances and times short-handed. Divided them by games played for fun, mostly because of where Bridgeport ranks.

So, yeah, Bridgeport takes a lot of penalties, gives up a lot of goals and doesn’t score enough.

If you’re going to predict three basic results of having a young team, those’d be a good place to start.

To me the most interesting number on there was an ordinal (I sorted the database for it): Bridgeport sitting 18th in even-strength goals against per game. (When I played around with this a week or two ago, the Sound Tigers were even a little bit better.) But then it struck me: This is a straight per-game average. If you’re killing more penalties than anyone, and you’re receiving more power plays than almost anyone, you’re playing less even-strength hockey than most other teams, too.

Bridgeport gives up about 2.6 goals per 60 minutes of even-strength hockey. Let’s go the long way, take one power play away from each team and say they play four more minutes a night at even-strength. Divide 2.6 by 15, add it to 1.88…

…and Bridgeport drops to around 24th.

…..

Where’d that 2.6 come from? If you’ve been hanging around for three years (exactly, as it turns out), you may remember this post. Thought I’d update ‘er.

Year ESGFA ESGAA PPGFA PKGAA
2001-02 2.66 2.17 6.87 6.09
2002-03 2.44 2.32 5.92 4.63
2003-04 1.96 1.63 4.50 3.27
2004-05 2.02 2.26 5.18 6.48
2005-06 2.53 2.79 6.83 6.41
2006-07 2.47 3.25 5.41 5.30
2007-08 2.29 2.81 6.17 6.30
2008-09 2.52 2.25 6.74 6.32
2009-10 2.13 2.38 5.40 6.18
2010-11 2.09 2.96 7.98 7.09
2011-12 2.79 2.36 6.68 6.87
2012-13 2.58 2.77 6.50 7.30
2013-14 (t) 2.17 2.60 5.76 7.18

t-through Thursday (well, through Sunday). All figures per 60 minutes of play: ESGFA: Even-strength goals for; ESGAA: Even-strength goals-against; PPGFA: Power-play goals for; PKGAA: Power-play goals against.

Interesting that the defense is even a little better this year than last year. Wondered where things had stood through 42 games last year (that was Jan. 26 at Norfolk, Game 5 after the lockout):

Year ESGFA ESGAA PPGFA PKGAA
2012-13 (t) 2.91 2.67 7.70 7.13
2013-14 (t)  2.17 2.60 5.76 7.18

t-through Game 42

So after that, goals for went down and goals against went up. (Also going up a few games earlier: Travis Hamonic, Casey Cizikas, Colin McDonald, David Ullstrom.)

…..

Would I love to have that for everybody? Yeah. Reasonably easy for Bridgeport considering the stuff I keep; copy/paste/sum. Would be time-consuming to do for any other team. If somebody’s done that for others (or has raw numbers and wants to pass them on), I’d be interested. I’m borderline tempted to do it for, say, Springfield this year, just to see what it looks like. (I said borderline.)

…..

Bridgeport suffers with defensemen in the box. They’ve allowed five power-play goals on 11 chances when Marc Cantin’s serving. With Scott Mayfield, the opponents are 5-for-22 (including an overtime goal). Mike Keenan: 4-for-21. Donovan, Ness, de Haan combined: 5-for-18. Dallas Jackson: 5-for-13 (not counting the unsportsmanlike conduct minor that followed Graham Skilliter’s pick). Heck, Andrey Pedan: 1-for-2. (Biggest exception: Mike Cornell, 0-for-10.)

The biggest dings among the forwards include a 4-for-10 with Brett Gallant in the box (one of those a five-on-three in which he was the first in), 3-for-12 for Justin Johnson, 3-for-10 with Ryan Strome and 3-for-7 with Alan Quine. I find that interesting in that none of those four are regular penalty killers (though Strome got some shifts).

…..

Last March I started putting together a post that would’ve been called “Hell is other people: (No) Fun With Math.” Bridgeport was six points out of a playoff spot at the time and was given a 10-percent chance at getting there by Sports Club Stats. It was a whole screed about how hard it was going to be for Bridgeport to make the playoffs, complete with a whole bunch of pictures of spreadsheets, based on one simple fact: With a lot of teams in its way, all of them playing each other and thus guaranteed 2-3 points going somewhere, Bridgeport was going to need an impressive record to make the playoffs.

It’s not quite ridiculous yet; the Sound Tigers are 10 back with 34 to play. Sports Club Stats still gives them a 0.1 percent chance — one season in a thousand — at the Top 8. Same reason, earlier look but deeper hole: They’re 14th. “The simplest solution,” I wrote in that post that never saw light of day for reasons I don’t remember*, “remains ‘win your own games, darn it.'”

It’d help. They’re growing; they’re working. Guys have played roles they might never have seen otherwise. They’ve had guys step in and settle roles that were unsettled. But they’re young. They’re inexperienced. And here they are.

*-I’m guessing it was sober reflection in the light of day — really, one of the files is timestamped 3:55 a.m. — about whether I really wanted to post five pictures of spreadsheets. Well, I probably did, but still. BTW, the folder is named “insane,” so there’s the thought process in a nutshell.
**-There is no Footnote 2, but in the footnotes of that post, I wrote, “Never a bad time to link to this.” Remains true, so there you go.

Michael Fornabaio