As the season trudges forward towards the trade deadline, my neutral zone data set increases in kind. Yesterday I was able to  synthesize the Vancouver Canucks zone entry data through the month of November, to show the impact made by each player through the neutral zone.

Today I’m going to look at the data as a whole, on the team level, to see the sum of all Vancouver’s parts. I also hope to gain some insight into the Canucks systems, although, a limited leaguewide data set makes this a difficult exercise.

On the one hand, it’s not overly surprising that team coached by Willie Desjardins shows so favourably by neutral zone metrics; on the other, one might expect a team entering the zone with control 54% of the time to leave most shot-based metrics in the black. Of course, hard to place too much emphasis on this data set when I haven’t the oppositions set to counter with.

It’s not overly surprising to see the forwards doing the bulk of the legwork here. Forwards, generally, bear the burden of carrying the puck and that’s what these metrics hope to quantify. Had I the zone exit data, though, I’m sure that data would be more evenly distributed.

Without a contemporary point of reference, I can’t say whether any one group or the other is doing better or worse than what one might reasonably expect – or where they stand against their peers, etc. Intuitively, though, I find it encouraging that the Canucks defenders are carrying the puck into the offensive zone with control on roughly one out of every three entries.

Certainly didn’t expect the defencemen to come ahead in terms of shot volume on a per entry (with control) basis. Initially, I thought these numbers were being inflated by Matt Bartkowski’s gaudy totals, but he only accounts for eight percent of the blue lines on-ice entry shot totals.

The Canucks held their own through the neutral zone as recently as two months ago. This certainly goes a way in explaining their ability to extract results that exceed what one might expect based on the available underlying data. Win the neutral zone and there’s a good chance you’ll win the game and so on.