Panthers 2, Capitals 1 (SO): A Second Look

Aside from the obvious (a record-setting 20-round, five-elimination-saving goal, marathon shootout victory) what else can we take from last night's game (LBC recap here)?

Courtesy of www.hockeystats.ca:

Just based on Corsi in all situations, you'll see that the Panthers were left behind in the first, hung even in the second, and absolutely owned the Caps in the third. Notice the sharp uptick near the start of the third, and that it coincides with an extended Capitals flatline that spans parts of two periods and a total of 11:40. Washington did not direct a single shot toward the net from 2:31 remaining in the second until 9:09 had elapsed in the third.

A quick disclaimer - I'm new at this advanced numbers crunching, so I focused on Corsi% and compared it to Zone Start%. A Corsi% higher than ZS% indicates a player who was on ice for more positive events than a truly neutral player based on where he was for the faceoff. A good example would be Brian Campbell's stats. He was on ice for 22 shots in Braden Holtby's direction and nine shots directed toward Bobby Lou. That breaks down to a 71% Corsi. His ZS% was at 44%, which means that of the faceoffs he was on-ice for, only 44% were in a favorable (offensive) zone. For all events, simple math will tell you he was at 27% C/ZS diff. On this stat, if the entire league were measured for a whole season and the numbers combined, the metric would read zero. Thus, any number above zero indicates a "good" player, and anything below zero, "bad."

Florida Panthers

• This simple breakdown shows us that Aleksander Barkov had the best game, metric-wise, through the first 65 minutes of play. He totaled a forward corps leading 18:27 on the ice, spread over 24 shifts. He was in action for 24 shots directed at a goal, including 17 of them at Holtby, for a Corsi% of 71. When matched up next to his 44% Zone Starts, we can see that he finished with a team high C/ZS Diff of 31.
• Willie Mitchell had the worst Corsi Diff on the team, at minus-11 in 22:30. However, he ended up somewhere near the middle of the road in terms of where he started versus that shot generation. Although only 36% of the Corsi events while he was on the ice were positive, that roughly matches up with his starting location on each faceoff, 60% of which happened on the Panthers' side of the playing surface.
• Tomas Kopecky was an unlikely hero last night, with a Corsi% of just 47%. However, that number was sharply north of where it should have been, considering just 29% of his Zone Starts were on the offensive end of the ice. He played third line minutes, totaling 13:56.
  
• Jonathan Huberdeau was the biggest dud of the evening, not even counting his unfortunate shootout attempt. His Corsi% broke even, with 14 events for and 14 against with him in the contest, which doesn't bode well considering that he started a team-high 71% of the time on the Panthers' half of the ice in 14:40. /

Washington Capitals

• Alex Ovechkin had the highest Corsi Diff on the Caps. He was on ice for 34 Corsi events, 23 of them directed at Bobby Lou. This number is right in line with his zone starts, which was also the highest on the Caps, at 69%. Correspondingly, his C/ZS was directly in the middle of the road, at -1 in 20:48.
  
• Brooks Laich looked dynamite in the shootout, and was also the top Washington player in terms of my little made up statistic here. 17 of the 30 Corsi events with him in active play were positive, for a 57% rating. He comes out smelling like a rose when that number is matched up next to his 38% ZS - at positive-19.
• Michael Latta started 50% of the time on each end of the ice, but he had only a 31% Corsi%, thanks to his being involved in only four positive Corsi events versus nine negative ones. /

I'll get a little more in-depth next time, after I've played around with these numbers a little more. If you have any questions - drop them in the comments below. If not, I'll see y'all tomorrow night in the GameThread.