Has countering puck possession been successfully figured out?

[Gene Parmesan]

But yet, we've had countless NHLers (players and coaches) come out and say they know nothing about corsy, it doesn't get talked about within the team, or that it's a terribly stupid stat.

These aren't Atom House League players who don't understand the game, and have parents as coaches. These are the best players in the world who spend nearly every day of the season immersed in the game. And yet none of them have come out and offered any comments that would support your theory.

Cosry has never been taken seriously by anyone with an ounce of experience or knowledge about the sport. It was made up to make the people who can't figure things out, believe they have an understanding. But you guys pushed it too much, so people pushed back, and the failure of the stat has been exposed. Please just let it die. It will go down as the worst idea that has been brought to hockey since the glow puck

They have a reason not to talk about it. It's a competitive league. Every team in the league has an analytics department. Yes that includes metrics like Corsi. Coaches and GM's play dumb on purpose.

 

[Hi ImHFNYR]

The opposite is true if you look at the recent history of the Stanley Cup.

Lundqvist, Luongo, Bobrovsky, and Price put together - 0 Cups

Top 5 corsi teams - 7 Cups since the lockout and 3 in the last 5 years.

That sounds good but I don't think a sample size of 5 or 12 (or however long it's been since the lockout. I don't wanna know bc I'll feel old lol) is particularly meaningful. There are too many variables that can influence things like this. Would this account for the fact that the high Corsi teams happen to have premiere talent in the league converting on those chances at a higher rate? IS it that the talents of certain individuals that allows them to have higher Corsi where teams with lesser talented individuals simply can't generate what's needed? In that case Corsi is simply an indicator of greater talent already being on the team instead of serving as a way to show that teams can succeed despite talent with high Corsi. Is it specific coaching systems? Now people are expanding on high danger vs low, possession time. Too many variables not properly accounted for.

Having the puck longer, limiting quality shots against and generating more quality shots for should be more helpful overall to a team's success. That's all Corsi can really show but it's just common sense.

 

[Finlandia WOAT]

Some pretty clear well poisoning going on here. How do you propose a team could even "game Corsi" to begin with?

What I mean is, I don't think there is a team which functions under the central premise that the key to victory is to achieve the best Corsi possible, and thus play a style commensurate to that goal.

If for no other reason that Corsi is an excessively simple stat available to all 31 teams and every curious fan.

 

[GeeoffBrown]

Corsi is an accurate stat for measuring shot attempts. Obviously, not 100% because there is some grey area for what constitutes a shot attempt.

It's not the fault of the statistic that people want to use it to be Nostradamus.

 

[WesMcCauley]

Rangers has been good for years with bad corsi. Amazing goaltending and create high danger chances off the rush is a big reason for that.

 

[JoeThorntonsRooster]

Rangers has been good for years with bad corsi. Amazing goaltending and create high danger chances off the rush is a big reason for that.

Rangers were a top-10 Corsi team the year they made the finals and also top 10 in xGF and FF close

They have a reason not to talk about it. It's a competitive league. Every team in the league has an analytics department. Yes that includes metrics like Corsi. Coaches and GM's play dumb on purpose.

Yep. And I remember near the halfway point of the season, when Edmonton already looked done, Peter DeBoer was interviewed about them and said "They're a good team when you look at the analytics."

Some coaches play dumb, some are honest about it, only a few idiots really pay no sort of attention to it whatsoever.

 

[WesMcCauley]

Rangers were a top-10 Corsi team the year they made the finals.

The last 4 seasons combined NYR are 27th in corsi %. They were top 10 the two seasons prior to that.

 

[ijuka]

Corsi's very good as long as you aren't specifically trying to get a high corsi. If you play for high quality chances and get a high corsi that way, of course you're doing well. But if your game plan's based around getting as high a corsi as possible because you think that that somehow is better than getting high quality chances then that's not a very good idea at all and is a prime example of misusing statistics.

 

[JoeThorntonsRooster]

The last 4 seasons combined NYR are 27th in corsi %. They were top 10 the two seasons prior to that.

And they've won 3 playoff series in the 4 years since then.

 

[WesMcCauley]

And they've won 3 playoff series in the 4 years since then.

three 100+ point seasons. They have been a good team with horrible corsi the last 3 years.

 

[CupsOverCash]

I don't know I think there is too much analysis in this game today. Whatever happened to just get the damn puck in the net and keep it out of yours?

 

[JoeThorntonsRooster]

three 100+ point seasons. They have been a good team with horrible corsi the last 3 years.

Everybody knows you can fluke out a few good seasons with bad Corsi but it's extremely unlikely that you can win the Stanley Cup or be a legitimate sustainable long term contender while being a team that doesn't consistently outCorsi their opponents

 

[Lunatik]

Well, xGF% is a stat with higher correlation to future goals than CF%. But it's still a puck possession proxy and this isn't a thread about corsi so much as possession as a whole. The Kings are a team who saw their puck possession fall off the map compared to the Darryl Sutter years yet they just seem much better this year.

Stop calling possession, because it's not puck possession. Puck possession would be measured in time if it was tracked. These stats are nothing more than shots, shot attempts... etc. Unless actual time with the puck is measured, it is not a possession stat.

 

[Captain Mountain]

Its an important stat. Its not the only important stat. And its value is somewhat diminished when the entire NHL has cottoned on to the fact that giving up a ton of shots as long as you block a bunch is a stupid idea. Its not a coincidence that the variance in corsi in the NHL has shrunk from its hayday.

 

[NickH8]

That's part of the formula for xGoals (expected goals), xGoals also includes things like shot types rebounds and even captures some rush chances (which typically have higher shooting %). The methodology was described nearly a decade ago, the problem is that for all the additional complexity it doesn't actually work as well as Corsi. It wasn't a case a of people not thinking of this stuff, when it was looked at and shelved because the simpler metric worked better.

A couple years ago xGolas was revisited by Ryan Stimson and he added a couple things to it. Primarily he integrated historical data on who was taking the shot. His model does outperform Corsi, however he was hired by the Avs at the start of this season and his data has been removed. Some people may still be getting his data but AFAIk it's no longer public domain. The xGoals most people cite is from Corsica.hockey, but but while their model is improving AFAIk it still underperforms Score Adjusted Corsi.

And coincidentally the Avs have had a great season.
Really activates my almonds.

 

[AfroThunder396]

Stats are very hard and people don't want to put in the work to understand how they work and what they mean.

Stats like Corsi are descriptions, not explanations. You don't win because you have good Corsi. If that's your level of understanding then perhaps you should stop posting and take a statistics class.

 

[Machinehead]

That sounds good but I don't think a sample size of 5 or 12 (or however long it's been since the lockout. I don't wanna know bc I'll feel old lol) is particularly meaningful. There are too many variables that can influence things like this. Would this account for the fact that the high Corsi teams happen to have premiere talent in the league converting on those chances at a higher rate? IS it that the talents of certain individuals that allows them to have higher Corsi where teams with lesser talented individuals simply can't generate what's needed? In that case Corsi is simply an indicator of greater talent already being on the team instead of serving as a way to show that teams can succeed despite talent with high Corsi. Is it specific coaching systems? Now people are expanding on high danger vs low, possession time. Too many variables not properly accounted for.

The 2017 Penguins pretty much destroy the bolded. Bad corsi team that won because they score on every other shot.

There's certainly some systems more conducive to good possession than others, but if your system is conducive to bad possession and outright ALLOWS shots because they're "low-quality" (like what the Rangers, Wild, and Caps are currently playing) then you have a bad system.

Having the puck longer, limiting quality shots against and generating more quality shots for should be more helpful overall to a team's success. That's all Corsi can really show but it's just common sense.

Then I agree. I don't know what the issue is with corsi.

I mean, you dismiss the sample for being too short and then in the next paragraph say it's common sense.

So when do you think outshooting the opposition has ever NOT worked?

 

[Machinehead]

three 100+ point seasons. They have been a good team with horrible corsi the last 3 years.

And once they got to the playoffs, in 2016 they got absolutely mopped by the best corsi team in hockey, and followed that up with a loss to an abysmal Sens team in 2017.

And the entire time, their generational goaltender still has no Cups.

The Rangers are pretty much the poster boys for "this will never work in the playoffs" so using them to prove your point does the opposite.

 

[lomiller1]

What I mean is, I don't think there is a team which functions under the central premise that the key to victory is to achieve the best Corsi possible, and thus play a style commensurate to that goal.

Prevent zone entries
Get the puck move it out of your zone with control
make controlled zone entries
Shoot the puck then get tips rebounds
Recover the puck after a shot and keep on the attack.

Clerly these things are just an attempt to "game Corsi" that would never help you win hockey games

If for no other reason that Corsi is an excessively simple stat available to all 31 teams and every curious fan.

Simplicity is good.

 

[WarriorOfGandhi]

I wonder if NHL fans 100 years ago were as adamantly against statistics as some are today

"Don't give me those new-fangled 'assists' and 'penalty minutes'! It'll never compare to the eye-test of looking at the daguerreotypes in the papers!"

 

[Do Make Say Think]

corsi is stupid. i think we all know that

Very useful tool to see if someone's opinion is worth anything.

Thanks to stuff like analytics we know to no take idiots like Travis Yost seriously.

Yes Travis, keep telling us how great Patrick Weircioch is/was

 

[Mubiki]

It's kind of a tenuous proxy measurement though. You could shoot the second you cross the blue line every time and it would be counted as "possession" even though that would mean you never had the puck in your control in the offensive zone. I don't understand why hockey doesn't measure actual possession like soccer. Or zone time.

This is actually a poor criticism, as it assumes stupidity when reality is clearly the opposite. Yes, a team COULD do that, but no team is doing that. The reason Corsi has been relatively effective is because all teams are generally trying to find the best scoring chances. If every team is trying to generate legit chances, then corsi is an effective measurement. While this still requires one make an assumption, it's based on a reasonable assumption. Your criticism would be akin to saying "We can't put any stock in consumer spending reports because people might just be spending all their savings on rubber chickens." Sure, but it's so unlikely it's not worth considering.

The reason they use shots taken is simply because it's objective. Much easier to track that way.

 

[Saskatoon]

In all honesty, I've used last year's Pittsburgh team in the past as an example of how tanking dominated but they are probably not the best model for sustainable success. The 2016 Pittsburgh team is one of the best teams ever and their Corsi reflects that.

I feel bad for Joe Thornton and co., they finally get over the hump and make the SCF.............only to run into probably the best team the East has sent to finals in a decade.

The team with the better SV% won every playoff series last year except 2(both the Oiler series). The team with the more shots put on net won their series about a 1/4 of the time.

The team with the high SV% in a series will often win but I think what other people have pointed out is that it is hard to guarantee that your team will have higher save %. We have seen goalies like Holtby and Rinne collapse and likely cost their teams the series.

 

[JoeThorntonsRooster]

I feel bad for Joe Thortnon and co., they finally get over the hump and make the SCF.............only to run into probably the best team the East has sent to finals in a decade.



The team with the high SV% in a series will often win but I think what other people have pointed out is that it is hard to guarantee that your team will have higher save %. We have seen goalies like Holtby and Rinne collapse and likely cost their teams the series.

Right, I still lose sleep over it. That 2016 Sharks team was a very, very good team - probably better than some of the weaker iterations of the 3-headed tank monster (CHI, LA, PIT) that won 8 of the last 9 Cups. Their analytics were fantastic, their goaltending was elite, they had plenty of players playing above their head, scoring plenty of timely goals. They would have completely destroyed any one of the NYR, NJD, PHI teams that made it to the SCF, and would have also probably beat the Lightning, '13 Bruins, and maybe even the Cup winning '11 Bruins and '17 Pens.

And then they ran into what may have been the very best team assembled post lockout. Of course, the one other team that would likely pop up in this argument as best contender since the lockout would be the 2010 Blackhawks - a team that also destroyed a very strong Joe Thornton led Sharks team that had made it to the WCF, which was previously the hump they couldn't get over.

One thing I tend to notice when looking back on history is that some of these Cup winners found themselves pitted up against weak opponent after weak opponent in their runs, while perennial "chokers" like San Jose and Washington always seem to run into the best teams early on. Washington had 3 amazing teams in 2009, 2016, and 2017 - all of them played the Penguins in the 2nd round and they all lost in game 6 or 7. San Jose's strongest teams were in 2010, 2011, 2014, and 2016. 2010, they lose to the (circumventing)CapHawks. 2011, they lose to the Canucks, who quite honestly are up there with the best teams assembled post lockout - they just choked in game 7. 2014, they go up 3-0 against the Kings, only to suffer an injury to their #1D on a dirty hit and lose the series - that Kings team never looked back, and won the Cup. 2016, they destroy 3 strong teams in the first 3 rounds, and then run into the 2016 Penguins who were likely the best NHL team post lockout. Meanwhile, teams like the 2012 Kings got the depleted 2012 Canucks, the weak 2012 Blues, the motherf***ing Coyotes, and the NJD. Those 4 teams combined won only 4 games against the Kings and then won only 2 playoff games the following year - both coming from the Blues who won those games against the Kings.

There is a clear correlation between tanking and Stanley Cup victories. There is a clear correlation between strong CF%, FF% Close, xGF%, and Stanley Cup victories, with a few exceptions in both cases (2011 Bruins for CF%, FF% Close, xGF%, and tanking; 2017 Pens for CF% & FF% Close), but a big part of it is luck. It's depressing to see not a single team that didn't draft top-5 in back to back years win a Stanley Cup since Boston in 2011 and prior to that since Detroit in 2008 but one thing to consider is that some random variance has played a part in this and we could see some more non-tankers win the Cup and we could see more weak Corsi teams win the Cup.

Of course, my dream is to see a well built team with elite metrics that NEVER TANKED win the Stanley Cup. Hopefully my Sharks can do that this year.

 

[SladeWilson23]

There's certainly some systems more conducive to good possession than others, but if your system is conducive to bad possession and outright ALLOWS shots because they're "low-quality" (like what the Rangers, Wild, and Caps are currently playing) then you have a bad system.

This is the greatest single paragraph ever typed into an HF text box! I'm gonna copy and paste this exact paragraph, and send it directly to John Hynes.