Tag Archives: WoodMoney

Beer League Hero, Edmonton Oilers, Fancy Stats, G Money, NHL

G-Money on Dealing Nugent-Hopkins

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***Yesterday we posted an article speaking to the disappointing seasons that Ryan Nugent-Hopkins and Jesse Puljujarvi were having and I asked the boys for their thoughts on what we should do with the Nuge. You can read that article HERE.

I did the same on Twitter with this poll and I’m not surprised with the results. It’s not like my followers are wrong 🙂

It’s funny, each time I’ve decided to post an article detailing how unimpressed I am with a specific player, they decide to go ahead in the following game and put up some points… Maybe I should do it more often.

Now, as I mentioned in the article yesterday, G-Money’s (@oilersnerdalert) excerpt was lifted from a longer reply to my question and now I’d like to share G-Money’s full reply with you. Bon Appetit! – BLH***

Q: What’s wrong with Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, and Should the Oilers Trade Him?

A: a. Nothing other than a run of bad luck, and b. God no!

On point a, one of my lenses for looking at a player is “WoodMoney“, the matchup-based quality of competition methodology that @Woodguy55 and I put together. Here’s a look at how much time Nuge is spending facing the various levels of competition, and how he is doing so far this year as compared to the other two main centres (I’ve included both Corsi and DangerFen for the Elite tier, but only CF% vs the others so as not to turn an intimidating table of numbers into an overwhelming one ):

Nuge

% TOI vs Elite – 41%
CF% –  45.9%
DFF%  – 44.9%
% TOI vs Middle – 39%
CF% – 53.9%
% TOI vs Gritensity – 20%
CF% – 59.7%

McDavid 

% TOI vs Elite – 32%
CF% – 53.4%
DFF% – 56.0%
% TOI vs Middle – 46%
CF% – 55.1%
% TOI vs Gritensity – 22%
CF% – 56.8%

Draisaitl 

% TOI vs Elite – 27%
CF% – 49.5%
DFF% – 48.0%
% TOI vs Middle – 49%
CF% – 50.0%
% TOI vs Gritensity – 24%
CF% – 55.0%

Conclusions

On point a:

1. McDavid is stupid good. He destroys everyone.

2. Nuge is being used by TMc as the shutdown power vs power centre this year. Not McDavid. Not Draisaitl. Nuge is the guy spending 41% of his time against the best players in the NHL. That’s creating a ton of clear air for McDavid and Draisaitl. If you’re comparing things like points, you better take that into account. Nuge’s points are being sacrificed to give the other two a chance to score more.

3. When Nuge is up against those great players, it’s true he’s struggling to keep his head above water.  Moreso than in years past.  And he’s not the only one. My suggestion: give him Eberle and Pouliot on an ongoing basis. Let those two (who are both struggling) right their ships. Nuge’s ship will get fixed right along with them.

4. When Nuge is not against those great players, against pretty much every one else, he runs roughshod.  The Nuge is Yuuuuuuuge!

5. So there is nothing wrong with Nuge, except:

On point b:

Nuge is shooting at 5.1% this season. He has a career average of 11.2% prior to this season. So he’s shooting at less than half of his career average.

He’ll find his groove again, guaranteed.

Every player’s sh% varies wildly above and below their long-term average. And it’s more or less random (if a player could control it, they’d always shoot above their average, which would raise their average, which means they’d shoot at random above and below that average, which…)

That’s just how it goes. Sh% controls you, you don’t control sh%.

Now as for trading Nuge … well, my thought process is always that whether it makes sense to trade a player is based entirely on the return.  Anyone is on the block if what you’re getting back is good enough.

But you know what would be stupid though? Trading a player at what would in effect be the maximum possible discount because of one of those sh% lows.

***With G-Money’s balanced analysis and down-to-Earth reasoning, it’s hard, for me at least, to want to move Nuge ASAP because I’m curious as hell as to what the Oilers might look like if they have all three of McDavid, Draisaitl, and RNH humming along on the offense.

What do you think? Let us know in the comments below!***

Grab a Nugent-Hopkins 16-Bit Superstar shirt by clicking on the pic above!!

Edmonton Oilers, Fancy Stats, G Money

Is Antoine Vermette a fit for the Oilers?

Antoine Vermette

This is Antoine Vermette.

Vermette is a 34 year old centre who was just bought out by the Arizona Coyotes, which makes him an unrestricted free agent. Could he be a fit for the Oilers bottom 6?

To assess the player, let’s look at the results in four different areas of his game:

  • Boxcars – how much did he score?
  • Shot metrics WOWY – who did he play with, and how did he do?
  • Shot metrics vs competition – who (if anyone) did he win the shot battle against?
  • Faceoffs and zone starts – how did his coach use him, and how well did he do? Did his usage potentially impact his results?

Boxcars*

Vermette scored 17 goals with 21 assists in 76 games, playing between 16 and 17 minutes a night. His scoring rate of 0.5 pts/g is right in line with his career average of 0.512, which is damn impressive for a 34 year old! Lowetide has a more in depth look at Vermette’s scoring here.

Looking solely at scoring rate, Vermette would have been eighth among regulars on the Oilers – certainly on the surface a decent pickup for the bottom 6.

But let’s look below the surface.

*Boxcar data from hockey-reference.com

WOWY*

Vermette’s most common forward partner was Mikkel Boedker. Their numbers together (45.9%) are roughly in line with their numbers apart, with an edge to Vermette (46.9% vs 45.6%).

They were not good together – but they were not good apart either.

Vermette’s most common defensive partner was Oliver Ekman-Larsson. As OEL is the unquestioned #1D on the Coyotes, this surprised me somewhat.

What didn’t surprise me were the results. Together, they were a poor 46.5%. Vermette away from OEL remained a poor 46.2%, while OEL away from Vermette was a solid (especially for Arizona) 51.3%.

Vermette was a major anchor on OEL.

More broadly, if you look at this WOWY visualization (from hockeyviz.com):

I’d conclude that (shots wise) Vermette for the most part is at best neutral and more commonly a negative influence on his teammates.

*WOWY data from stats.hockeyanalysis.com

Shot Metrics and Competition

For this analysis, I’m using the WoodMoney metrics (read the background on this metric here). Here’s the WoodMoney visualization for Vermette, the “Vizmette” as it were:

(click to embiggen)

Bear in mind that at the moment, using WoodMoney for analyzing forwards should be done cautiously, as we’re only looking at F vs F matchups, while F vs D matchups (for forwards) likely matter for qualcomp at least as much, and almost certainly more.

That said, head to head forward matchups do have relevance, so there is valuable information buried in this group of charts. Here’s my read:

1 – Vermette’s TOI vs the competition bands is relatively balanced, suggesting a second/third line(ish) utility forward used up and down the lineup. His TOI and zone starts (see next section) would appear to confirm this, as he’s pretty much 50% in both total and true zone starts.

2 – By raw shots (Corsi, CF on the chart), he gets caved by all comp except the lowest tier labeled ‘Gritensity’ where he is slightly above breakeven.

3 – By Dangerous Fenwick (DFF, my own danger weighted shot metric statistic, details here) he gets caved by all comp except the lowest Gritensity tier, where he almost breaks even.

4 – His “rels” – that is to say, how he does relative to his teammates against the various competition bands, as shown on the last chart in the diagram – are below zero for all comp except vs Gritensity.

So … he’s playing on a pretty poor possession team (surprise), but at least you can say that possession wise he is still above average as a fourth liner on that team. He’s not being used as a fourth liner, but if he was, he’d be OK at it.

Faceoffs and Zone Starts*

Vermette’s faceoff % was 55.8%, a stellar number (and in line with his career). This is clearly a strength and probably helped him generate the numbers he did.

His offensive zone start is ~50%, slightly below his true zone start. So he was used very neutrally by the coach, confirming his role as something of a utility player.

*Faceoff percentage from hockey-reference.com. Zone start and true zone start data scraped from NHL play by play data.

Conclusion

Vermette’s poor possession results, especially against higher competition, clash with his decent boxcars.

Putting these together suggests that the way he scored is that he did so by giving up more than he got. You can see that in the wide gap between his ‘for’ and ‘against’ lines in both the raw metrics (CF) and especially the danger weighted metrics (DFF).

I suspect that his good boxcars are at least partially attributable to his faceoff prowess, which remains stellar.

Now this analysis is purely numerical and results-based. Perhaps a detailed video-based scouting project would shed light that might show he’s better (or worse) than what the numbers imply.

All in all?

I’d say stay away, regardless of price. He’s probably going to score more than Letestu (at least next year), but in terms of overall play, he gives up a lot more than he gets, even though he spends a fair bit of time with OEL.

In case you haven’t noticed, the Oilers do not have an OEL.

So Vermette is not likely (much of) an upgrade on Letestu. And at age 34, he’s about to hit the steep part of a downhill slope. These results suggest that his buyout is not that surprising.

The Oilers need an upgrade in the bottom 6.

Vermette isn’t the droid we’re looking for.