Canucks Weekly Prospect Report – December 24th, 2013

While Christmas is here, most of hockey is quieting down, but not all the prospects are idle. This week’s prospect report is a bit shorter than normal but it’s just as full of prospect #fancystats including the first ever Estimated Usage Chart for any league outside of the NHL. As always, follow me @nuckprospects on Twitter for the latest in prospect news and feed free to send me any feedback, on anything prospect related you wish me to cover, and have a Merry Christmas!

Without further ado..

This week feaatured two games against the Abbotsford Heat (2nd in the West, 25th in Possession (47.49%), 102% PDO) at home.  In the first game the Comets dominated the majority of the offensive zone time, in the last minute the Comets were winning 3-1, Utica scored a short-handed (6-4) empty net goal with the Heat quick to return.  The final score for the Comets was 4-2 with goals scored by: Mullen (2), Lain and Biega.  Assists were from Friesen (his first point), Stuart, O’Reilly, Pelletier, Mallet, and Andersson.  Shots were even at 28-28 by the end of the game with Eriksson stopping 26 of 28.  The PP went 1 for 4 and the PK went 4 for 5.

On Friday the Comets played the Heat again in a much more even game but the Comets managed to get the shutout.  The final score was 3-0 with shots close at 23 – 21 for the Heat.  Goals came from Lain, Grenier and Ferriero and assists from DeFazio, Andersson, O’Reilly, Ferriero and Stuart.  Eriksson was in net making 21 of 21 saves.  The PP went 1 for 2 and the PK was 2 for 2.

Players stats who have played at least one game with the Comets, (X) indicates not currently on the active roster, so far are:

Goalies so far:

Currently the Comets are in 15th place with 22 points (10-15-1-1), only 3 points from 14th (with 4 games in hand) and 4.5 games from a playoff position.  They have been out-scored 63 to 80 (-17), and have been out-shot 797 to 733 (-64).  The Comets are controlling 48.40% (acknowledging score effects) of the shots with an on ice shooting percentage of 8.5% and a save percentage of 90.5%.  A simple version of PDO puts them at 98.6% which has increased now that Eriksson has a Sv% over 0.900. Their PP is currently at 20.41% (7th place) and their PK is 75.70% (29th place), both of which have increased.  Puck possession rankings put them at 19th which has been an indication of their more recent success (compared to the first ten games).

Will we see Corrado in the NHL this year?  My gut feeling is not likely, but Pass it to Bulis looks into this deeper.

I have completed more #fancystats analysis in the AHL for Canucks Prospects.  The first thing I’ve run a Quality of Competition analysis to see who has been playing against tougher opponents.  This was done last year on the Chicago Wolves by Canucks Army so I’ve used the same method.  It uses opponents PPG, which does have it’s problems and we do recognize this, this is why it is an Estimated QoC.  I intend to run this later using Gf%, but this requires knowing every player’s, across the league, Gf%. 

Forward Comets:

Defencemen Comets:

Next I ran a Monte Carlo simulation on the remainder of the season to estimate where the Comets will finish.  I will give more details in a dedicated post on this but the idea is that we randomly complete the remainder of the AHL season using rules I’ve discovered from my research to try and estimate the probability of the Comets (or other teams) finishing at each conference position as well as their probabilities of making the post season.  I iterated this 20,000 times to determine the averages.  The Utica Comets currently have a 12.46% chance of making the playoffs, with further breakdown of each conference position is as follows:

I’ve also been working on Estimated Usage Charts for the AHL (and other non-NHL leagues).  They are based on Rob Vollman’s Usage Charts which are often shown around CanucksArmy.  For these Est. Usage Charts for the AHL it shows how the current prospects are performing based on their usage.  The X-axis is the opposing forwards Est. QoC.  The Y-Axis is the opposing defencemen Est. QoC.  The circle size is their Est. TOI and the colour is their Even Strength Goal For % with blue being positive and red being negative. 

The forwards:

The defencemen:

The Comets play three times in the next week, all at home.  December 27th vs the BSens, Dec 28th vs Hamilton and January 1st vs Lake Erie.

Shinkaruk was a last minute cut from the WJC team, but this is actually better for his development as he currently has an injured hip. He can give it some rest and hopefully let it recover rather than play through it.  This is why his development has staggered this year. Canucks Army and Nucks Misconduct covered Shinkaruk being cut with more detail.

Bo Horvat has played in all three exhibition games. Beating Finland 4-2, Horvat scored 1 Goal and 1 Assist.  And against Switzerland, in the 4-1 win, Horvat scored another goal (short handed) and an assist. So far he has 4 points in 3 exhibition games.

The ECHL and the CHL have not quieted down this week either. Polasek was returned to the K-Wings but has not made much of a splash. Corbeil finally started two games for Wheeling. After shutting out the other teams in two games as the relief, in his first start he is back to his old ways of letting in 6 goals on 19 shots. Steven Anthony has clearly improved this year. He now has the same number of points in 16 games as he did last year over 41 in the ECHL (16, 3G, 11 A).  I wouldn’t be surprised to see him called up to the AHL at some point.

Statistics of players in the ECHL so far are:

And Corbeil:

It hasn’t been an extremely busy week on the ice but the statistical analysis keeps rolling.  Until next week (and next year) make sure to follow me at @nuckprospects for all the latest in Canuck Prospect news.  Thanks for all the good feedback I’ve heard from you guys in the three months of posting this series, and hopefully I can keep bringing you prospect news through 2014.