Daily Faceoff Live: Does win margin potentially indicate sustainable success in NHL?
In the latest episode of Daily Faceoff Live Frank Seravalli and Mike McKenna talked to Cam Charron about whether analysing win margins can indicate sustained success in the NHL.
Frank Seravalli: Let’s get to this week’s edition of the Next Wave. That’s right, this is this week’s edition of The Next Wave delivered by DoorDash, please to be joined once again by Cam Charron, former Toronto Maple Leafs analyst. And Cam, we’re almost at the one-third mark of the season. And so when you’re looking through in terms of, we always try and sort this out, which teams are for real, which teams are not, what are some of the metrics that you look at at, so whether teams are for real?
Cam Charron: In earlier years, Frank, we would’ve looked at Corsi percentage to be able to easily tell whether teams that are possessing the puck, they’re the ones that would probably get future success. But that’s kind of changed and it goes a little bit to what Steve Yzerman was talking about. You know, I posted this on Twitter last week and it’s interesting, like this was from the 2007 season to the 2012 season. And you see that Corsi is the most predictive after 20 games of the final 62 games, you can predict a team’s 5-on-5 play the most. But if you advance that and if we look at our next slide here, this is from 2013-14 on, we see that it’s actually the 5-on-5 goals for that matters a lot more. And that’s, I think because of the way that teams are just playing in the offensive zone, they’re playing with a lot more motion, they’re playing with a lot more passing and becomes a lot more difficult to defend. So shot quality matters a lot more than it used to. And so that makes things a lot, that makes it a lot tougher to be able to predict whether teams are gonna, you know, whether their success is sustainable or not. I look at teams like Seattle and the New York Islanders teams that have had some good goals for percentages so far this season, but don’t necessarily possess the puck a whole lot. It’s gonna be really interesting to see if they can sustain it because based on what we’ve seen in recent years, it’s really the goals for that matter more than anything else.
Mike McKenna: So Cam, I noticed you got a ring on your finger. I’m curious about that. What that may be.
Cam Charron: That’s my 2018 Calder Cup championship ring. I don’t know.
Mike McKenna: Okay. Alright, well, so as you can see, I’m wearing my jersey from that exact series. I’m really proud of what we accomplished with the Texas Stars. We did fall to your Toronto Marlies club in the finals in Game 7 of that year. But in any case, so the chart that you just mentioned there, I notice the Oilers man, it doesn’t look too great for them. What can you expand on with that club?
Cam Charron: So with the Oilers, not only do they, I was actually surprised I looked this morning and they have a really low goals for percentage on 5-on-5. But the other thing too is that they’ve only won two of their games based on what I would consider clear margin games. So that’s games where you win by more than one goal, not counting empty netters. And that actually profiles a lot too, like last year’s Detroit Red Wings who started off pretty good. They were around .500 around this point in the season and they really fell off because they also only won two games by more than one goal. And you saw last night against against Chicago, the Oilers had a big lead and they just kept letting the Blackhawks back into that game and they only won by one in the end.
Cam Charron: So I think that this is a good indicator of what we can look for, of what we can look at teams going forward is if they’re winning a lot of one goal games, maybe that’s a sign that they’re getting a little unlucky. So some teams that kind stick out for me. There are also Ottawa and the Washington Capitals who have gotten pretty unlucky in the one goal games, but they’ve earned a lot of points in those clear margin games. So yeah, you know, you look at teams at the top, of course, Boston, New Jersey, they’re just winning however, because they’re just really good teams. But yeah, you know, as we kind of go through that chart, and I’ll post that out onto my Twitter feed as well, I think it gives us a good indication of which teams are kind of getting lucky, which teams are getting unlucky. And the Oilers to me are a team that’s kind of picking up a lot of points in one goal games more than they should be. And the other thing, Mike, I would add about that, that 2018 series is you personally made that really difficult on us, and I don’t know if that series would’ve extended itself to seven games without you.
Mike McKenna: Thank you, I appreciate that . That was an incredible series.
Frank Seravalli: Yeah. So Cam, as we wrap up and I was just looking at some of your clear margin games, I’ve also been shocked to see the way things have unfolded for a team like the Anaheim Ducks. I think they have one regulation win to this point in the season. What more can you tell us about the importance of those clear margin games? Like explain that for someone that you know is maybe not as well versed in it, what’s the big metric you’re looking for? What stands out in terms of getting to those? Is it just about getting out to the lead? Is it about maintaining it? What stands out?
Cam Charron: Well, it’s both. It shows that you’re able to get a lead early and you’re able to hold it. And that’s generally the teams that succeed in these types of games. And also just a general indicator for team quality. And you’re not eking out those close victories and you’re not having to hold on against a late push and you’re just kind of living those drama-free games. And it’s a really imperfect way of doing it. I watched last night’s Leafs-Sharks game, I thought the Leafs had a pretty good handle on the third period. They got a late goal and won the game. I didn’t think that they were really being, you know, I didn’t think that they were really outshot or really in any too much danger throughout. So it’s a really imperfect system, but it’s basically a good proxy for did the team jump out to an early lead?
Cam Charron: Were they able to hold it? Did they fend off that late push and did they really just make it easy on their fans? You know, just the not nervous moments and you just see like from, for a team like Anaheim, the one regulation win and it wasn’t by, it was only by one goal. Like they’re not a very good team and that’s the sign of a team that’s just been playing from behind. And when they do win games it’s because they’ve been able to force overtime somehow and pick up points in the overtime period. And those are a lot less sustainable going forward. And especially when you look into the playoffs, there’s no 3-on-3 overtime in the playoffs. Those are just straight wins and losses.
Frank Seravalli: Maybe we should change the name of this metric to something like the coaches pulse rate or something like that because those are the guys that are living and breathing it behind the bench in terms of all of the drama or drama-free situations that could make things a lot easier for these coaches. Thanks to Cam Charron, I think I called this the Next Wave, but it’s actually called the Number Crunch and it’s been delivered by DoorDash. You see the promo code there at the bottom of your screen. Game day 25 gets you 25% off and free delivery on your first order of $15 or more with DoorDash all your favorites and more delivered right to your door. And if you’re not following Cam Charron on Twitter, please do so. You can see some of this stuff that he’s throwing out there all week long in between his appearances on Thursdays with us here on Daily Faceoff Live @camcharronyvr. Thanks a lot Cam. Talk to you soon.
Cam Charron: See you guys.
You can see the rest of the episode here: