Average Production By Position in The Lineup: Flames vs. NHL Average

[SuperMatt18]

Sean Tierney (The Athletic & Hockey Graphs) posted a pretty interesting analysis on Twitter.

He looked at the entire NHL and the top 31 players at each "slot" on the roster to determine what the average production is by each "role".

ex)Looked at the 31 centers that could be defined as "1C" for their team and averaged their production.

The results are based on offensive production to date this season, I also added the Flames players in brackets next to where they have slotted on our roster for the most part this season.

Center:
1C: ~66 points (Monahan 62)
2C: ~47 points (Backlund 41)
3C: ~37 points (Jankowski 20 ...24 if you pro-rate him to playing all 71 games)
4C: ~19 points (Stajan 10)

Left Wing:
1LW: ~47 points (Gaudreau 80)
2LW: ~26 points (Tkachuk 49)
3LW: ~15 points (Bennett 26)
4LW: ~5 points (Lazar 8)

Right Wing:
1RW: ~49 points (Ferland 37)
2RW: ~21 points (Frolik 23)
3RW: ~8 points (Hathaway 10)
4RW: ~2 points (Brouwer 19)

Defense:

1D: ~40 points (Giordano 36)
2D: ~26 points (Hamilton 40)
3D: ~17 points (Brodie 32)
4D: ~13 points (Hamonic 11)
5D: ~11 points (Stone 5)
6D: ~6 points (Kulak 8)

It's a bit interesting. When you look at slot on the roster only really Gaudreau, Tkachuk (LW in general if you add Bennett), and our Top 3 d-men are performing above what is "average' for their slot on the roster.

As has been clear 1RW continues to be a hole on this team - even though Ferland had filled that spot admirably for the most part.

[FBI]

Can you prorate those totals for 82 games, the right number would match the number better on the left I think.. For example Janko has missed a lot of games so his 20 number prorated to 82 would be closer to that 37.

[Monahammer]

Originally Posted by FBI

Can you prorate those totals for 82 games, the right number would match the number better on the left I think.. For example Janko has missed a lot of games so his 20 number prorated to 82 would be closer to that 37.

I believe that you would have to prorate it by the amount of games played to date total (71) rather than 82. But yes.

[SuperMatt18]

Originally Posted by FBI

Can you prorate those totals for 82 games, the right number would match the number better on the left I think.. For example Janko has missed a lot of games so his 20 number prorated to 82 would be closer to that 37.

It's a good call.

Can't do it right now myself but something I can suggest to Tierney on twitter.

[GioforPM]

Originally Posted by SuperMatt18

It's a bit interesting. When you look at slot on the roster only really Gaudreau, Tkachuk, and our Top 3 d-men are performing above what is "average' for their slot on the roster.

As has been clear 1RW continues to be a hole on this team - even though Ferland had filled that spot admirably for the most part.

Well, Frolik is slightly above, so is Hathaway. According to this, Bennett and Brouwer are killing it.

I would imagine some positions are skewed by people like 2C Malkin or 2RW Laine.

[Monahammer]

Using Janko as an example:

20 points / 61 games = .327 ppg x 71 games (games played to date) = 23.27 points. Not all that much closer.

Plus, in Tierny's case I don't think he was accounting for lost time of all players in each position, so Janko's "lost time" wouldn't actually be counted for this purpose.

[Monahammer]

Using Janko as an example:

20 points / 61 games = .327 ppg x 71 games (games played to date) = 23.27 points. Not all that much closer.

Plus, in Tierny's case I don't think he was accounting for lost time of all players in each position, so Janko's "lost time" wouldn't actually be counted for this purpose.

[SuperMatt18]

Originally Posted by GioforPM

Well, Frolik is slightly above, so is Hathaway. According to this, Bennett and Brouwer are killing it.

I would imagine some positions are skewed by people like 2C Malkin or 2RW Laine.

Think one thing that skews this is it's not only looking at 5V5 production.

Brouwer is skewed for sure since he has bounced around the lineup, gets lots of PP time, and more ice time than your average 4RW.

Bennett I think does show that he is decently productive for the ice time he gets.

[CorsiHockeyLeague]

Yeah, they should really be doing this using 5v5 production.

Also it's damned odd that there's such a huge gap between average center production and average winger production. Additionally, an average third line center is producing at a 40+ point pace over a full season? That just seems amazingly high to me.

[Strange Brew]

Thanks for this. The fourth line RW average sure looks odd. 2 points? There would have to be a bunch of guys with goose eggs and absolutely no one busting the average. I don’t think that can be right. Brouwer alone would be bringing up the league average by 0.5 points.

[Oling_Roachinen]

Originally Posted by SuperMatt18

ex)Looked at the 31 centers that could be defined as "1C" for their team and averaged their production.

The results are based on offensive production to date this season, I also added the Flames players in brackets next to where they have slotted on our roster for the most part this season.

Center:
1C: ~66 points

The top 31 centers, listed by NHL, which would include multiple centers on certain teams (Crosby, Malkin, Tavares, Barzal etc.) and players not playing center (Girioux, Marchessault, Draisaitl etc.) have an average production of 64 points. This would include the actual point production of players who missed significant time, like Matthews and Eichel, but there's clearly some funky math going on here.

If you were to remove Malkin, Barzal, Marchessault, Girioux, Draisaitl, Rakell, Point, Gourde, Backstrom, Marner, etc. from the top 31 list, as none of them are characterized as the number 1 center on their team, you would be getting significant lower average than 66 points in terms of actual production from the top line centers of each team. (Again, not accounting for injuries to Bergeron, Matthews, Eichel).

[Monahammer]

Something doesn't smell right to me here. In spite of the flames scoring at a lower rate than league average, our forwards and defensemen have substantially more points than they're 'supposed to' according to this analysis.

Expected F point totals: 342 Flames actual F point totals: 385 11.3% increase over avg
Only the 3rd line didn't outproduce the expected (they came within 4 points).

Expected D point totals: 113 Flames actual D point totals: 132 16.8% increase over avg
Again only the 3rd pairing didn't exceed the expected.

Meanwhile the league GPG rate is 2.95 while the flames are at 2.76 (6.88% decrease)

Something is not adding up and it kind of invalidates the numbers imo. Or, it makes them less useful in actually analyzing the holes in our roster.

[SuperMatt18]

Originally Posted by CorsiHockeyLeague

Yeah, they should really be doing this using 5v5 production.

Also it's damned odd that there's such a huge gap between average center production and average winger production. Additionally, an average third line center is producing at a 40+ point pace over a full season? That just seems amazingly high to me.

It stood out to me too.

I looked at NHL.com number (not great since they don't always correctly classify positions) but they have:

30 Left Wings at 40+ points
25 Right Wings at 40+ points
57 Centers at 40+ points currently (72 have 37+ which is where that 3C threshold is set)

So my guess here is that Tierney may have included some guys listed as a center but whom actually play as a winger on the deeper teams.

[It's a great day 4 hockey]

I'm not too concerned where we stack up against the NHL
average, I would like to see this stat with the Flames up against the past ten Stanley Cup winners.

[GioforPM]

Originally Posted by SuperMatt18

It stood out to me too.

I looked at NHL.com number (not great since they don't always correctly classify positions) but they have:

30 Left Wings at 40+ points
25 Right Wings at 40+ points
57 Centers at 40+ points currently (72 have 37+ which is where that 3C threshold is set)

So my guess here is that Tierney may have included some guys listed as a center but whom actually play as a winger on the deeper teams.

If you look at hockeydb, half the forwards in the league are listed as centres. Calgary has 8 forwards on the roster listed as a C - Bennett, Shore, Lazar are all Cs.

[delayedreflex]

Originally Posted by CorsiHockeyLeague

Yeah, they should really be doing this using 5v5 production.

Also it's damned odd that there's such a huge gap between average center production and average winger production. Additionally, an average third line center is producing at a 40+ point pace over a full season? That just seems amazingly high to me.

Agreed - the average 3rd line winger only has 11-12 points and 4th line winger 3-4 points? That seems surprisingly low. If it isn't scaled for games played that would kinda make sense - since it seems like he included the extra players who are carried as healthy scratches, it seems like they would add a lot of low points data points dragging down the average.

Would be curious how it looks on a PPG basis. Uncorrected, it looks like Calgary's bottom six actually is above average - Jankowski, Bennett, Lazar, Brouwer, Stajan, Hathaway combine for 93 points compared to the "average" 3rd + 4th line combining for 86 points.

[Oling_Roachinen]

Apparently he used Corsica, which is even more lenient on giving players center positions than the NHL. Kessel, Marchand, Huberdeau, Bailey, etc. would all make the cut...

[Kovaz]

He has Zuccarello listed as his example 2C, which makes me suspect there's something weird going with his player classifications.

I also wonder how he accounted for disparities in # of games played for the bottom half of the roster especially. A team's #4RW might only have 5 points because they've got 4 guys who've been rotating in and out of that spot throughout the season. Who's our true #4RW? Brouwer? Lazar? Hathaway? Where do Jagr and Versteeg fit in?

[Classic_Sniper]

Like the idea, but in reality, kind of difficult to do comparisons. I like the more simple idea of picking a team that's ahead in goals, say for example the #10 team in goals scored (Wild) and just comparing their forward depth scoring with our forward depth scoring.

Just chose goals as the barometer instead because it just makes things simpler in regards to the complication of all the unassisted goals, multiple assists and etc. Just easier to compare and see how we stack up to a better goal scoring club.

PLAYER GP G G/GP
Sean Monahan 70 30 0.43
Matt Tkachuk 68 24 0.35
John Gaudreau 71 22 0.31
Micheal Ferland 66 20 0.30
Mikael Backlund 71 13 0.18
Mark Jankowski 61 12 0.20
Sam Bennett 71 11 0.15
Michael Frolik 59 10 0.17
Troy Brouwer 65 5 0.08
Matt Stajan 61 4 0.07
Kris Versteeg 22 3 0.14
G Hathaway 48 2 0.04
Curtis Lazar 54 2 0.04
Jaromir Jagr 22 1 0.05

Flames = 159


PLAYER GP G G/GP
Eric Staal 70 37 0.53
Jason Zucker 70 28 0.40
Mikael Granlund 65 19 0.29
N. Niederreiter 51 16 0.31
Mikko Koivu 70 13 0.19
Charlie Coyle 54 10 0.19
Matt Cullen 68 10 0.15
Chris Stewart 47 9 0.19
Tyler Ennis 66 8 0.12
Marcus Foligno 65 7 0.11
Zach Parise 31 7 0.23
Daniel Winnik 70 6 0.09
Joel Eriksson Ek 63 3 0.05
Zack Mitchell 21 3 0.14
Luke Kunin 19 2 0.11
Landon Ferraro 2 1 0.50

Wild = 179

As you guys can see, we are about 20 goals behind the Wild.


*RATS, chart is not centered properly. Will have to fix it later.

[VilleN]

Originally Posted by Classic_Sniper

Like the idea, but in reality, kind of difficult to do comparisons. I like the more simple idea of picking a team that's ahead in goals, say for example the #10 team in goals scored and just comparing their forward depth scoring with our forward depth scoring.

Just chose goals as the barometer instead because it just makes things simpler in regards to the complication of all the unassisted goals, multiple assists and etc. Just easier to compare and see how we stack up to a better goal scoring club.



PLAYER GP G G/GP
Sean Monahan 70 30 0.43
Matt Tkachuk 68 24 0.35
John Gaudreau 71 22 0.31
Micheal Ferland 66 20 0.30
Mikael Backlund 71 13 0.18
Mark Jankowski 61 12 0.20
Sam Bennett 71 11 0.15
Michael Frolik 59 10 0.17
Troy Brouwer 65 5 0.08
Matt Stajan 61 4 0.07
Kris Versteeg 22 3 0.14
G Hathaway 48 2 0.04
Curtis Lazar 54 2 0.04
Jaromir Jagr 22 1 0.05

Flames = 159


PLAYER GP G G/GP
Eric Staal 70 37 0.53
Jason Zucker 70 28 0.40
Mikael Granlund 65 19 0.29
N. Niederreiter 51 16 0.31
Mikko Koivu 70 13 0.19
Charlie Coyle 54 10 0.19
Matt Cullen 68 10 0.15
Chris Stewart 47 9 0.19
Tyler Ennis 66 8 0.12
Marcus Foligno 65 7 0.11
Zach Parise 31 7 0.23
Daniel Winnik 70 6 0.09
Joel Eriksson Ek 63 3 0.05
Zack Mitchell 21 3 0.14
Luke Kunin 19 2 0.11
Landon Ferraro 2 1 0.50

Wild = 179


As you guys can see, we are about 20 goals behind the Wild.



*RATS, chart is not centered properly. Will have to fix it later.

And the real drop off happens at Troy Brouwer and below. Clearly our depth scoring is a huge issue.