Gorilla Crouch

Corsi numbers is a metric used to measure how successful a player is at generating shots on the opponent’s net while limiting shots on your own goal. It functions in much the same way as your typical plus/minus rating that is based on goals scored and goals allowed.

Hockey Numbers has crunched the numbers. I have listed the numbers for Red Wings players below. These stats are through the first 15 games.

Corsi Numbers

Player	Corsi +/-
Tomas Holmstrom	+28.74
Henrik Zetterberg	+23.34
Pavel Datsyuk	+22.36
Matt Ellis	+23.63
Niklas Kronwall	+19.79
Tomas Kopecky	+18.67
Nicklas Lidstrom	+18.41
Aaron Downey	+18.24
Brett Lebda	+16.48
Mikael Samuelsson	+16.03
Brian Rafalski	+14.59
Jiri Hudler	+14.56
Johan Franzen	+14.31
Andreas Lilja	+13.68
Dan Cleary	+12.59
Chris Chelios	+10.06
Valtteri Filppula	+6.16
Kirk Maltby	+4.60
Kris Draper	+3.07
Derek Meech	-1.52
Dallas Drake	-5.76

Thoughts:

-One thing I prefer about plus/minus is it’s more of an apples-to-apples comparison. Sure, playing at even strength is significantly different while playing against the opponent’s first line rather than their third or fourth line. These numbers are skewed based on the following:

1. Tomas Holmstrom is a key part of arguably the best line in hockey and a top ten power play. But he doesn’t play on the PK at all, so he has the team’s best Corsi number. That’s pretty misleading.

2. Jiri Hudler plays on the second power play unit and it hopefully looks like he’s just starting to hit his stride and become a consistent point producer. But he doesn’t play on the PK. Valtteri Filppula, on the other hand, doesn’t get much PP time unless someone is injured and is one of Detroit’s primary PK’ers, so his numbers don’t look quite as impressive.

Here’s a smaller chart that focuses strictly on guys who play in all situations: even-strength, PP, PK.

Corsi Numbers

Player	Corsi +/-
Henrik Zetterberg	+23.34
Pavel Datsyuk	+22.36
Niklas Kronwall	+19.79
Nicklas Lidstrom	+18.41
Brian Rafalski	+14.59
Johan Franzen	+14.31
Dan Cleary	+12.59

Kronner’s stats really stand out so it will be nice to have him back in the lineup tonight. Dominik Hasek will get the start tonight. Chris Osgood’s been unbeatable [literally] thus far so it will be interesting to see how Dom looks. His last start was on October 24th when the Wings beat the Nucks 3-2.

It looks like Aaron Downey was put on waivers once again to provide the team with flexibility in case they need to add any players to their lineup. Downey has been put on waivers and cleared them once before but was never sent down to Grand Rapids. I personally would prefer to have Dallas Drake face waivers since I doubt anyone claims him and Downey does provide something no one else on the roster can provide if he were to be claimed.

Gameday Threads

Matt over at On the Wings has his Gameday Thread up. Jiri Novotny will be centering the top line for Columbus so that will be an interesting matchup to watch. He also includes links to many of the Columbus hockey blogs out there. Here are some links if you want to get their perspective:

Army of the Ohio
End of the Bench
Neutral Zone Trap
Bethany’s Hockey Rants

No Gameday threads are up yet! However I did just check the Center Ice lineup and the game IS listed there. No NHL Network for tonight’s game. So at least we have that going for us.

UPDATE: this isn’t really pertinent for the game tonight, but I saw that James Mirtle posted the link to the Forbes valuation of NHL franchises. The Wings are tied with Montreal for third, behind the Leafs and Rangers.

Columbus Blue Jackets Red Wings

November 9th, 2007
Categories: Red Wings . Author: Dave

2 Comments

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