As most reading this site already know I've been tracking scoring chances for the Colorado Avalanche this year while JLikens has been tracking scoring chances for the Wild. The two teams played each other on Wednesday and both of us scored the game. Although we agreed that the scoring chances were 20-15 in favour of the Wild we had scored several chances differently. In fact, there was only agreement on 27 of the 35 chances which means we each counted eight chances that the other didn't. I thought it would be instructive to look at each of those potential chances in more detail:
17:20 of the first period, chance for the Wild, scored by JLikens only: We had both scored a chance for the initial shot at 17:23 but JLikens scored another chance on the rebound. On that play there was a scramble in front of the net for the rebound. Zidlicky was able to direct the puck on net through some feet but without much force. The puck came from the slot area and the goalie was facing a rebound so I can see why JLikens scored a chance. I decided not to score a chance because I didn't think Zidlicky had a chance to take a clear shot and, as such, didn't really have any opportunity to put the puck on net dangerously.
10:17 of the first period, chance for the Wild, scored by JLikens only: This shot came off a rebound. Neither of us counted the initial shot as a scoring chance. On this play Pouliot attempted to put a backhand on net with Craig Anderson out of position. Given that situation, I can see why this would be scored as a chance. I decided not to score this as a chance because it was a play where Pouliot's attempted shot was contacted simultaneously by the defender's stick and the puck sailed over the net and wide. I generally don't include a play where a defender gets a stick on the puck and the puck goes wide as a chance.
9:48 of the first period, chance for the Wild, scored by Scott only: On this play the attacking player shot the puck from the boards. Normally this would not be considered a chance and so I can understand why JLikens did not include it. I did score it as a chance because the puck was tipped on the way to the net which I thought made it good enough for a scoring chance.
7:38 of the first period, chance for the Wild, scored by Scott only: We had both scored a chance for Brent Burns who had put the puck off the post. Immediately thereafter Anderson attempted to cover the puck. I thought Burns had a good opportunity with another shot on goal but there was very little separation between Anderson and the puck. I assume JLikens thought that Burns either didn't have clear control of the rebound or that he was too close to Anderson to have a good chance to score. This play is very similar to the one at 17:20 except we've reversed positions.
19:48 of the second period, chance for the Wild, scored by JLikens only: Martin Havlat had the puck at the side of the net and tried to pass it to a teammate out in front of the net. To be honest, I don't understand why JLikens scored this as a chance unless I didn't see the play correctly.
15:38 of the second period, chance for the Avalanche, scored by Scott only: This was Darcy Tucker's goal. We both scored the goal as a chance. Even though Ryan O'Reilly never touched the puck, I also credited his play toward the net as a chance. Backstrom had made a save on Tucker but didn't know where the puck was. As O'Reilly skated hard toward the goal Backstrom panicked and went down, knocking the puck in. Although there was no shot, O'Reilly's play toward the net created the goal. I can certainly see why JLikens didn't include this as a chance (he never shot the puck after all) but without O'Reilly's separate play on net the goal isn't created.
9:32 of the second period, chance for the Avalanche, scored by JLikens only: Marek Svatos took a backhand from the bottom of the faceoff circle. At the time I didn't think this was from a dangerous enough area to be counted, especially since Svatos didn't have any passing options in front of the net. It was a tough angle and Backstrom needed to focus only on the shot. I can definitely see why JLikens included it but I still don't think it was a good enough opportunity to be included.
8:08 of the second period, chance for the Wild, scored by Scott only: Martin Havlat takes a shot that misses the net from just above the faceoff dot with traffic in front. I include this kind of stuff. I'm not sure why JLikens didn't include this one. Perhaps it was some combination of Anderson being set for the shot, the distance of the shot, the lack of puck movement preceding the shot and the fact that Havlat missed the net.
8:02 of the second period, chance for the Wild, scored by Scott only: Andrew Brunette takes a shot from in front of the net, just outside of the crease. He received a pass from behind the net and shot the puck wide. Maybe JLikens thought the defender got his stick on the puck. At least from the feed I'm watching it's quite difficult to tell.
6:21 of the second period, chance for the Wild, scored by Scott only: On a 3-on-2 Belanger is set up for a one-time shot just inside the faceoff circle. He connects and the puck makes it on net but only feebly because Belanger's stick breaks. I see both sides of the argument here pretty clearly but I still think it should be included.
1:18 of the second period, chance for the Avalanche, scored by Scott only: On an Avalanche PP Milan Hejduk takes a shot from just below the faceoff circle. Backstrom is square for the shot and there's no traffic in front. I counted it as a clear opportunity from a dangerous area. I imagine JLikens viewed it as a routine save.
18:30 of the third period, chance for the Avalanche, scored by JLikens only: David Jones receives a pass in front of the net and shoots the puck wide. If he hits the net it's probably a goal. I didn't include it because I thought Havlat disrupted Jones as he shot causing the miss. It's hard to tell. Similar to the play at 8:02 of the second period where I scored the chance and JLikens did not.
11:42 of the third period, chance for the Wild, scored by JLikens only: A shot from Greg Zanon from inside the faceoff circle but above and outside of the faceoff dot. Anderson is set. However, the shot is tipped by Svatos on its way to the goal. It was a difficult save for sure but because I didn't want to score the original shot and the tip was an intentional one by a defender (and because it didn't result in a goal to be perfectly honest) I didn't include it.
5:27 of the third period, chance for the Wild, scored by JLikens only: Brent Burns takes a shot from the top of the faceoff circle that's tipped early on its way to the net by an Avalanche defender so that it's floating softly and high toward the goal. Anderson has already gone into the butterfly so it's a very awkward save. I'm not sure if the puck was on goal or not but I can see why JLikens would score this as a chance. In this case I didn't want to include because it was partially blocked by a defender and may not have been on goal.
5:07 of the third period, chance for the Wild, scored by Scott only: The Wild are on the PP and the puck is passed from Koivu on the left side to Havlat behind the net who relays it to a pinching Zidlicky on the right side. The shot comes from below the faceoff dot and inside the faceoff circle. I included it as a chance because of the rapid puck movement though Anderson did make the save look easy. I assume JLikens thought it was a routine save and that the angle on the shot was poor.
1:17 of the third period, chance for the Wild, scored by JLikens only: The shot comes from the point and hits something on the way to the net just missing. It was certainly a close call but my tendency is not include deflections on point shots unless they hit the net.
So that's it! Those are the differences. A lot of them are rebounds or situations where it's difficult to tell if the player got off a clean shot as opposed to something the defender may have tipped. There are a few cases where shot location seems to be the biggest factor but most of these examples are marginal cases where if we were giving the chances letter grades they would receive the lowest grade. If I use Vic's fancy application to tell us what kind of correlation we have with one another I only get a Kappa correlation score of 0.66 which I understand is not terrible but not great (I've never used a Kappa correlation before, so feel free to correct me in the comments if it's either terrible or great). It will be interesting to see if these numbers improve over the course of the season.
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4 comments:
This is a great summary.
Thanks for doing this.
My commentary:
17:20 of the first period, chance for the Wild, scored by JLikens only: We had both scored a chance for the initial shot at 17:23 but JLikens scored another chance on the rebound. On that play there was a scramble in front of the net for the rebound. Zidlicky was able to direct the puck on net through some feet but without much force. The puck came from the slot area and the goalie was facing a rebound so I can see why JLikens scored a chance. I decided not to score a chance because I didn't think Zidlicky had a chance to take a clear shot and, as such, didn't really have any opportunity to put the puck on net dangerously."
You're correctly identified my reasoning here. I also agree that the scoring of the chance was discretionary.
10:17 of the first period, chance for the Wild, scored by JLikens only: This shot came off a rebound. Neither of us counted the initial shot as a scoring chance. On this play Pouliot attempted to put a backhand on net with Craig Anderson out of position. Given that situation, I can see why this would be scored as a chance. I decided not to score this as a chance because it was a play where Pouliot's attempted shot was contacted simultaneously by the defender's stick and the puck sailed over the net and wide. I generally don't include a play where a defender gets a stick on the puck and the puck goes wide as a chance.
Watching it again, it does appear that the defender deflected the shot with his stick. This shouldn't have been scored as a chance.
9:48 of the first period, chance for the Wild, scored by Scott only: On this play the attacking player shot the puck from the boards. Normally this would not be considered a chance and so I can understand why JLikens did not include it. I did score it as a chance because the puck was tipped on the way to the net which I thought made it good enough for a scoring chance.
To be honest, I wasn't sure whether the shot actually got completely through or not. Typically, if a deflected shot reaches the goalie and/or narrowly misses the net, I record it as a chance.
7:38 of the first period, chance for the Wild, scored by Scott only: We had both scored a chance for Brent Burns who had put the puck off the post. Immediately thereafter Anderson attempted to cover the puck. I thought Burns had a good opportunity with another shot on goal but there was very little separation between Anderson and the puck. I assume JLikens thought that Burns either didn't have clear control of the rebound or that he was too close to Anderson to have a good chance to score. This play is very similar to the one at 17:20 except we've reversed positions.
Yeah, I wasn't sure whether Burns had actually directed the rebound back at Anderson after the initial shot, and therefore decided against counting it as a chance.
Continued...
19:48 of the second period, chance for the Wild, scored by JLikens only: Martin Havlat had the puck at the side of the net and tried to pass it to a teammate out in front of the net. To be honest, I don't understand why JLikens scored this as a chance unless I didn't see the play correctly.
I scored it as a chance because I thought that Anderson had been forced to make the save. Looking at it a second time, it appears to have been an attempted pass deflected by the defenceman's stick, and therefore should not have been counted.
15:38 of the second period, chance for the Avalanche, scored by Scott only: This was Darcy Tucker's goal. We both scored the goal as a chance. Even though Ryan O'Reilly never touched the puck, I also credited his play toward the net as a chance. Backstrom had made a save on Tucker but didn't know where the puck was. As O'Reilly skated hard toward the goal Backstrom panicked and went down, knocking the puck in. Although there was no shot, O'Reilly's play toward the net created the goal. I can certainly see why JLikens didn't include this as a chance (he never shot the puck after all) but without O'Reilly's separate play on net the goal isn't created.
I can see your reasoning here, although I prefer to consider the event as one distinct sequence.
9:32 of the second period, chance for the Avalanche, scored by JLikens only: Marek Svatos took a backhand from the bottom of the faceoff circle. At the time I didn't think this was from a dangerous enough area to be counted, especially since Svatos didn't have any passing options in front of the net. It was a tough angle and Backstrom needed to focus only on the shot. I can definitely see why JLikens included it but I still don't think it was a good enough opportunity to be included.
This was a borderline chance. I counted it as a chance as the shot was taken fairly close the goal , and because Svatos released the puck as quickly as he did.
8:08 of the second period, chance for the Wild, scored by Scott only: Martin Havlat takes a shot that misses the net from just above the faceoff dot with traffic in front. I include this kind of stuff. I'm not sure why JLikens didn't include this one. Perhaps it was some combination of Anderson being set for the shot, the distance of the shot, the lack of puck movement preceding the shot and the fact that Havlat missed the net.
Again, I'd consider this a borderline chance. If Havlat had been slightly inside the faceoff dots, rather than slightly outside, I'd probably have counted it.
8:02 of the second period, chance for the Wild, scored by Scott only: Andrew Brunette takes a shot from in front of the net, just outside of the crease. He received a pass from behind the net and shot the puck wide. Maybe JLikens thought the defender got his stick on the puck. At least from the feed I'm watching it's quite difficult to tell.
Yeah, I wasn't sure whether the defender directed it with his stick on it or not.
6:21 of the second period, chance for the Wild, scored by Scott only: On a 3-on-2 Belanger is set up for a one-time shot just inside the faceoff circle. He connects and the puck makes it on net but only feebly because Belanger's stick breaks. I see both sides of the argument here pretty clearly but I still think it should be included.
This was a tough one. If his stick doesn't break, it definitely qualifies.
1:18 of the second period, chance for the Avalanche, scored by Scott only: On an Avalanche PP Milan Hejduk takes a shot from just below the faceoff circle. Backstrom is square for the shot and there's no traffic in front. I counted it as a clear opportunity from a dangerous area. I imagine JLikens viewed it as a routine save.
Looking at it again, I think that this should have been counted.
18:30 of the third period, chance for the Avalanche, scored by JLikens only: David Jones receives a pass in front of the net and shoots the puck wide. If he hits the net it's probably a goal. I didn't include it because I thought Havlat disrupted Jones as he shot causing the miss. It's hard to tell. Similar to the play at 8:02 of the second period where I scored the chance and JLikens did not.
This was another tough one, as I wasn't able to tell whether Havlat had caused Jones to miss the net or not. If he did, in fact, disrupt him, it probably shouldn't have been counted.
11:42 of the third period, chance for the Wild, scored by JLikens only: A shot from Greg Zanon from inside the faceoff circle but above and outside of the faceoff dot. Anderson is set. However, the shot is tipped by Svatos on its way to the goal. It was a difficult save for sure but because I didn't want to score the original shot and the tip was an intentional one by a defender (and because it didn't result in a goal to be perfectly honest) I didn't include it.
I could have gone either way on this one, but ultimately decided to include it as the deflection, albeit an intentional one by a defender, forced Anderson to make a tough save.
5:27 of the third period, chance for the Wild, scored by JLikens only: Brent Burns takes a shot from the top of the faceoff circle that's tipped early on its way to the net by an Avalanche defender so that it's floating softly and high toward the goal. Anderson has already gone into the butterfly so it's a very awkward save. I'm not sure if the puck was on goal or not but I can see why JLikens would score this as a chance. In this case I didn't want to include because it was partially blocked by a defender and may not have been on goal.
Another judgment call.
5:07 of the third period, chance for the Wild, scored by Scott only: The Wild are on the PP and the puck is passed from Koivu on the left side to Havlat behind the net who relays it to a pinching Zidlicky on the right side. The shot comes from below the faceoff dot and inside the faceoff circle. I included it as a chance because of the rapid puck movement though Anderson did make the save look easy. I assume JLikens thought it was a routine save and that the angle on the shot was poor.
Yep.
1:17 of the third period, chance for the Wild, scored by JLikens only: The shot comes from the point and hits something on the way to the net just missing. It was certainly a close call but my tendency is not include deflections on point shots unless they hit the net.
Yeah, not a clear cut chance by any means. I tend to include deflected shots that either hit the net and/or narrowly miss. In this case, it seemed like the shot narrowly missed.
Wow! Thanks for putting in your own details. It's amazing how many difficult choices there are every game. When I was watching the disagreements over again almost every time I could see why both us chose to count or not count. I'm looking forward to seeing if the level of agreement we had here is typical.
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