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Ty: they’ve honestly shaken me to the point where I have to see it to believe it. I mean, yes, I’ve seen them roll off some nice out-chancing stretches this season but 10’s been muffing so many birdies lately, I’m just apt to say, “fuck it, not gonna happen for him.”

Anyway, when it comes to 10, I’ve seen it before. Very early in the ‘07 season, he had the game-tying goal on his stick in Cgy and shot it on net only to hit the ass of a crease-sitting Lupul.

And the luck was downhill from there.

He needs to go back to that stick factory in Mexico and bathe in a vat of chicken blood.

But, let’s say you’re right for a second;), 19 certainly looked like he might be a fit.

I’m wondering if Horcoff had to switch back to stiffer sticks given all the F/O work he is taking.

Thanks for all this scoring chance stuff, Dennis. Just terrific.

On the first line, I’m really impressed with O’Sullivan, I had no idea that he was this good of a hockey player. Penner was the best option before, which is akin to being the prettiest Sutter brother. But 19 looks for all the world like a bonafide difference maker at evens.

Horcoff’s icetime is bordering on abusive at this point though, jebus. You guys have gotten me paying attention to faceoffs, beyond the zone, and it’s beyond reasonable at this point. They have him taking all the right side own zone draws against good players too. Using his forehand to try and win it to the boards, at least usually, went to his backhand against Stastny on the right home dot late in the game the other night though.

And dude turns the play around a lot. I haven’t checked numbers in ages myself, but check the faceoffs.php and xfaceoffs.php and playershots.php stuff for this one, Dennnis. Off the hook for Horcoff.

Having just run a few simple numbers so far (total scoring chances (+ and -) while a player was on the ice) that meshes with icetime extremely well. A correlation of .99 iirc, just as a convenient measure.

And over just one game it meshes only moderately well with any territiorial advantage measure (corsi, fenwick, hits-by-zone, take/give-away by zone, puck over glass, etc.) … but over a bunch of games it meshes really well. Which makes sense.

I don’t know if you’ve ever played snooker, but what you leave on the table is really important. And that’s obvious in that game. In hockey, it’s not as easy to see, and the guys getting the counting stats by their names … they owe a debt to the guys who played the shift before them. We all know that, of course, it’s the ‘how much’ that’s big here. And this will give us a reasonable measure of that.

The thing that’s impressive is the similar level of quality of scoring chances as well. Looks like you were wise to ignore my advice on this count. We’ll hit that in a mathy way in the summer though, in a ‘no reasonable Oiler fan left behind’ kind of way. I’ll start with one roll of the dice at Yahtzee … build it from there. And if any of Lain, yourself, Tyler, Andy or Pat drop … I’ll bail on the project. Fair, no?

Dennis: Or the PK, or the backup goaltending (and yes, I still think the Garon trade was a good move when it occured).

Just my opinion, but I wouldn’t give a different value to different scoring chances. It’s a subjective (albeit rational - I have no issues with the number) study as it is, but when you start assigning points to different chances rather than a simple +/- I think you’re getting to an area where it’s too subjective.