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Old 08-23-2013, 01:28 PM   #1
ricardodw
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Default RGI - Index to Measure players Grit and competiveness

After taking heat from using low PIM as an indicator of a soft player I thought how can I use stats to show the grittiness (or lack thereof) .
I thought that I could show that there are no successful teams that had as many soft players as the Flames and Oilers.

I came up with Ricardo’s Grit Index (RGI). I take the plays which require grit and physical sacrifice (hits, blocked shots and Take-aways) and subtract Give-aways to get a raw grit score.

I then do a simple grit / games played . This does not show how gritty a player is relative to his peers. Someone like Bouwmeester playing 25 minutes/game has over twice the opportunity to make gritty plays than Jackman. So I took the TOI and normalized it to regular games. A average forward should get 15 min/game of ice time (12 forwards dressed) and an average D-man should get 20 min/game of ice time. The Total TOI /15 for forwards and Total TOI/20 gives something I call regular games played.

I ended up with some surprising results.

Baertschi who I had classified as tiny skilled play scored 1.2 /game played and 1.3 for regular game played on the RGI. This was driven by his 12 Take-aways versus 5 give-aways. Statistically he is strong on the puck.

Glencross, who is one of my favorite players, scored really low in my estimation with 1.5 /game and 1.2/ reg game.

Butler has far grittier numbers than anyone would guess.. His 53 hits and 74 blocked shots made up for his poor Giveaways and left him with a 3.1 /reg game rating second only to Sarich on the Flames Defense (Cundari is up there but very small sample)

At the bottom the Flames had 4 regular forwards below 1.0: Cammalleri, Tanguay, Hudler and Cervenka……. The Flames have addressed this (bye bye Tanguay and Cervenka)…. If anyone is looking for a statistical analysis as to why Edmonton with world class talent will never make the playoffs see below

player -- grit / gm -- grit/reg game
Tim Jackman -- 2.7 -- 5.3
Carter Bancks -- 5.0 -- 5.1
Brian McGrattan -- 2.0 -- 4.2
Steve Begin -- 2.2 -- 4.2
Mark Cundari -- 4.0 -- 4.1
Cory Sarich -- 2.5 -- 3.3
Blair Jones -- 2.3 -- 3.2
Chris Butler -- 2.6 -- 3.1
Mark Giordano -- 3.4 -- 2.9
Blake Comeau -- 2.4 -- 2.9
Brett Carson -- 1.3 -- 2.4
Ben Street -- 2.2 -- 2.4
Dennis Wideman -- 2.6 -- 2.1
Roman Horak -- 1.9 -- 2.0
Mikael Backlund -- 1.9 -- 1.9
TJ Brodie -- 1.9 -- 1.8
Derek Smith -- 1.1 -- 1.8
Matt Stajan -- 2.0 -- 1.7
Akim Aliu -- 1.2 -- 1.6
Jarome Iginla -- 2.1 -- 1.6
Ben Hanowski -- 1.4 -- 1.6
Jay Bouwmeester -- 2.0 -- 1.6
Sven Baertschi -- 1.2 -- 1.3
Maxwell Reinhart -- 1.3 -- 1.3
Lee Stempniak -- 1.5 -- 1.3
Anton Babchuk -- 0.7 -- 1.2
Curtis Glencross -- 1.5 -- 1.2
Paul Byron -- 0.8 -- 1.1
Alex Tanguay -- 1.0 -- 0.7
Mike Cammalleri -- 0.8 -- 0.7
Jiri Hudler -- 0.6 -- 0.5
Roman Cervenka -- 0.3 -- 0.3

Compared to Chicago With 1 player under 1.0

player -- grit / gm -- grit/reg game
Brandon Bollig -- 1.9 -- 3.6
Brent Seabrook -- 3.9 -- 3.6
Jamal Mayers -- 1.6 -- 3.5
Daniel Carcillo -- 2.0 -- 3.4
Sheldon Brookbank -- 2.1 -- 3.4
Bryan Bickell -- 2.8 -- 3.2
Michal Rozsival -- 2.6 -- 2.8
Michal Handzus -- 2.1 -- 2.6
Michael Frolik -- 2.0 -- 2.4
Andrew Shaw -- 1.8 -- 2.4
Niklas Hjalmarsson -- 2.4 -- 2.3
Jimmy Hayes -- 2.1 -- 2.2
Johnny Oduya -- 2.0 -- 2.0
Dave Bolland -- 1.9 -- 1.7
Nick Leddy -- 1.5 -- 1.7
Viktor Stalberg -- 1.4 -- 1.5
Duncan Keith -- 1.7 -- 1.5
Marcus Kruger -- 1.3 -- 1.3
Jonathan Toews -- 1.7 -- 1.3
Brandon Saad -- 1.4 -- 1.3
Marian Hossa -- 1.5 -- 1.2
Patrick Sharp -- 1.4 -- 1.1
Patrick Kane -- 0.7 -- 0.5

Oilers are in deep deep hole that they refuse to address.
player -- grit / gm -- grit/reg game
Ben Eager -- 3.4 -- 7.0
Mark Fistric -- 5.3 -- 6.9
Ladislav Smid -- 5.3 -- 5.2
Mike Brown -- 2.8 -- 4.8
Jeff Petry -- 3.8 -- 3.5
Nick Schultz -- 2.9 -- 3.1
Lennart Petrell -- 2.3 -- 3.0
Chris VandeVelde -- 1.4 -- 2.9
Ryan Jones -- 2.4 -- 2.9
Corey Potter -- 2.2 -- 2.6
Jerred Smithson -- 2.0 -- 2.5
Teemu Hartikainen -- 1.3 -- 1.8
Eric Belanger -- 1.4 -- 1.5
Ryan Whitney -- 1.3 -- 1.4
Ryan Nugent-Hopkins -- 1.6 -- 1.3
Magnus Paajarvi -- 1.1 -- 1.2
Anton Lander -- 0.6 -- 1.1
Ryan Smyth -- 1.1 -- 1.1
Nail Yakupov -- 1.0 -- 1.1
Shawn Horcoff -- 1.0 -- 0.9
Sam Gagner -- 1.1 -- 0.9
Taylor Hall -- 1.0 -- 0.8
Jordan Eberle -- 0.9 -- 0.7
Ales Hemsky -- 0.5 -- 0.6
Justin Schultz -- 0.6 -- 0.6

A sample of other teams non-gritty players:
Sharks (4) Marleau, Thornton, Havlat (if you get paid that much you shouldn’t have to hit or block shots) and Gomez.
Canucks(4) Sedins (2), Mason Raymond and Roy … adding Roy for the playoffs!!!!
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