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

* I utilized www.hockeystats.ca and www.nhl.com for all the statistics in this article.

So, the Panthers won 2-1 in Philadelphia last night. It took three and a quarter periods and six extra rounds to take care of the Flyers. We’ll break down the stats to find out why. If you’ve been following along, you’ll know this is my second attempt at breaking down advanced statistics. For the Panthers victory over the Capitals on Tuesday, I used Corsi and all situations for my computations. Starting now, I’ll primarily utilize Fenwick and Even Strength situations. This will give us a better overall picture of what exactly happened on the ice. For the uninitiated, Fenwick is the same as Corsi, except it includes blocked shots in it’s tabulation.

In terms of shot generation, the Fenwick chart above shows that Florida thoroughly outplayed the Flyers in the first period, allowed Philly a chance to get back into it for most of the second, and pulled away a bit in the third. Overtime looks like it was all Flyers. You’ll notice the Panthers flatlined for a swath of time from 13:24 in the first to 3:20 in the second, just short of 10 full minutes they played without generating a single shot towards the goal. During the corresponding span, the Flyers produced seven shots towards Roberto Luongo.

EV Corsi/Zone Start Breakdown

Florida Panthers

Florida won the simple shots-on-goal category as well, taking 32 to 26 for the Flyers. On reflection of their even strength Corsi and Zone Starts, it becomes clear that they probably should have won last night’s game before extra time was required. That is, their clear advantage in Zone Starts was not accurately reflected by the modest amount of shots they took.

• Derek MacKenzie comes out as Florida’s top dog in the C/ZS category. He was on Florida’s side of the blue line for exactly half of the faceoffs he was present for in 11:37 of even strength ice time. This, while Florida outshot the Flyers 17-to-6 in his presence. Scottie Upshall (10:05), Dylan Olsen (16:41), and Tomas Kopecky (12:01) also looked good last night when measured with this metric. Clearly, the 82-17-19 line was the best on the ice last night for the Panthers.
• A lot of Panthers didn’t come out smelling like a rose on this table, most notably Tomas Fleischmann (18:14) and Jonathan Huberdeau (15:52). Only 36% of Corsi events with Fleischmann on the ice were of the positive variety, even though he started 80% of his shifts with the puck in the offensive zone.
• Aaron Ekblad’s (21:13) minus-30 rating on this scale, as well as the results from Aleksander Barkov (15:51), Nick Bjugstad (17:51), Sean Bergenheim (14:54) and Brandon Pirri (12:29) I can only attribute to Florida’s sometimes inability to keep the puck in the offensive zone. Over the course of the season, I believe last night’s results will prove to be an outlier, and not an indication of a larger problem.
• Again, the Upshall (79%) MacKenzie (74%) and Kopecky (70%) line thoroughly outplayed their counterparts on the other side of the stanchion. Ekblad (despite his minus-30 C/ZS) tied MacKenzie and Kopecky for second on the club with a Corsi-Diff of plus-11.
• Those Panthers who were closest to even include Erik Gudbranson (19:20), Jussi Jokinen (16:22), Dmitry Kulikov (20:22), Jimmy Hayes (12:47), Dave Bolland (16:38), and Willie Mitchell (23:11). Each of these players was within 10% variance from Corsi to Zone Start. This is an indication that they were on ice for roughly as many Corsi events as you may expect from an average NHL player on ice for a corresponding amount of positive zone faceoffs.

Philadelphia Flyers

• The Flyers, considering their poor possession stats in terms of faceoff location, did a lot better than they should have in terms of shot generation.
• Wayne Simmonds was Philly’s big winner in 14:20 of even-strength ice time. Of the 21 Corsi events in his presence, 13 of them were towards Florida’s net for a team high 62 Corsi%. He led the C/ZS metric based on his having only 30% of his zone starts in Florida’s zone, a sharply worse number than we should expect to see from a player with such a high Corsi%. Braydon Coburn (23:32) trailed him incrementally based on a 19% Zone Start and a 50% Corsi. Nick Schultz (20:56), Claude Giroux (19:41), Brayden Schenn (14:55), Zac Rinaldo (9:58) and Scott Laughton (11:21) also came out looking good. /

The rest of the Flyers were in pretty standard deviation between their Corsi% and their ZS%, all within 10%. A good example of a player performing exactly as you’d expect an “average” NHLer is Sean Couturier (17:54). He was on-ice for only nine positive Corsi events, versus 21 against for a 30% Corsi%. This is exactly the percentage of faceoffs he was on-ice for in Florida’s zone.
Thank you for reading more on last night’s game. Check back later today for a five questions with Pensburgh. Tomorrow we’ll have a Caterwaul, a History Lesson, and of course our award winning GameThread.