On Penalty Kill Rankings

by renstar on Oct 27, 2009 1:16 PM EDT Comment 1 comment

As promised, (and just in time for the post lunch slacking) I've compiled similar statistics for penalty kills as I did for power plays (note: the PP statistics will be be updated to include games through 10/26 soon).

Again, the idea is that keeping track of mere occurrences is a fairly coarse metric of penalty killing efficiencies (PK%). Instead, I determine rankings by the number of goals against per 2 minute short handed situation (PK G/2; thanks F&B!). I argue that this is a better metric because if two teams both allow goals on every power play, but one allows them in the first 30 seconds and the other in the last 30 seconds, the second team should have a higher ranking, even if the end result is the same. Also, teams get more credit for killing 5 minute majors in my system, as a full kill essentially counts as 2.5 kills, while under the old system it only counts as 1. Likewise, for my whipping boy play, the 9 minute PP the Caps had vs Calgary last year gave the Flames a perfect 3/3 for killing 7 minutes of penalties. That is the same 3/3 they would have had if the Caps remained ineffective and Nylander had not taken a minor. In my system they effectively killed 3.5 penalties in the game situation. They would have had 4.5 had the Caps not evened up the teams.

When looking at the numbers from the 2008-2009 and 2009-2010 seasons, we see that the old metric (PK/G (NHL)) tends to overestimate the number of short handed situations before a goal is given up (PK/G) by around 1. For teams with better PK units it overestimates by far more than one. I have included the number of goals allowed per 60 minutes of short handed time as well (PK G/60) because, while it is a mere scaling of PK G/2, I find it more readable.

For comparison to a rather well understood season, here are the data for 2008-2009:

		Old Stats					New Stats
Rank	Team	PK GA	PKs	PK/G (NHL)	PK%	Rank (NHL)	Min/PK	PK/G (New)	PK G/60	PK G/2
1	Minnesota Wild	36	291	8.08	87.63	2	01:42	6.90	4.35	0.1449
2	New York Rangers	40	329	8.23	87.84	1	01:38	6.73	4.46	0.1485
3	St. Louis Blues	58	357	6.16	83.75	3	01:38	5.06	5.93	0.1977
4	Calgary Flames	58	349	6.02	83.38	4	01:39	4.97	6.04	0.2013
5	Los Angeles Kings	62	362	5.84	82.87	7	01:40	4.90	6.12	0.2041
6	Philadelphia Flyers	67	393	5.87	82.95	6	01:38	4.81	6.24	0.2078
7	San Jose Sharks	51	304	5.96	83.22	5	01:35	4.76	6.31	0.2103
8	Pittsburgh Penguins	60	348	5.80	82.76	8	01:37	4.73	6.34	0.2113
9	Florida Panthers	54	311	5.76	82.64	9	01:37	4.69	6.40	0.2132
10	Nashville Predators	59	338	5.73	82.54	10	01:37	4.66	6.43	0.2144
11	Boston Bruins	54	307	5.69	82.41	12	01:37	4.63	6.48	0.2161
12	Columbus Blue Jackets	62	346	5.58	82.08	13	01:36	4.49	6.69	0.2229
13	Ottawa Senators	64	346	5.41	81.50	15	01:38	4.44	6.76	0.2254
14	Montreal Canadiens	65	370	5.69	82.43	11	01:33	4.42	6.79	0.2263
15	Buffalo Sabres	61	336	5.51	81.85	14	01:35	4.39	6.84	0.2280
16	Vancouver Canucks	69	371	5.38	81.40	16	01:34	4.24	7.08	0.2359
17	Carolina Hurricanes	59	301	5.10	80.40	18	01:36	4.10	7.32	0.2439
18	Chicago Blackhawks	64	324	5.06	80.25	19	01:36	4.06	7.40	0.2466
19	New Jersey Devils	65	324	4.99	79.94	20	01:37	4.04	7.42	0.2474
20	Anaheim Ducks	78	385	4.94	79.74	23	01:38	4.04	7.43	0.2476
21	Washington Capitals	75	387	5.16	80.62	17	01:33	4.04	7.43	0.2477
22	Colorado Avalanche	64	318	4.97	79.87	21	01:36	3.99	7.51	0.2504
23	New York Islanders	73	361	4.95	79.78	22	01:35	3.95	7.60	0.2535
24	Dallas Stars	70	326	4.66	78.53	24	01:40	3.90	7.69	0.2562
25	Detroit Red Wings	70	324	4.63	78.40	25	01:35	3.69	8.13	0.2708
26	Edmonton Oilers	76	338	4.45	77.51	27	01:37	3.60	8.32	0.2774
27	Tampa Bay Lightning	89	405	4.55	78.02	26	01:34	3.58	8.38	0.2793
28	Atlanta Thrashers	88	366	4.16	75.96	29	01:34	3.26	9.20	0.3067
29	Phoenix Coyotes	68	292	4.29	76.71	28	01:30	3.24	9.25	0.3084
30	Toronto Maple Leafs	78	308	3.95	74.68	30	01:33	3.07	9.76	0.3255

The data through October 26, 2009 for the 2009-2010 season is here:

		Old Stats					New Stats
Rank	Team	PK GA	PKs	PK/G (NHL)	PK%	Rank (NHL)	Min/PK	PK/G (New)	PK G/60	PK G/2
1	Minnesota Wild	4	38	9.50	89.47	2	01:48	8.58	3.50	0.1166
2	Ottawa Senators	4	39	9.75	89.74	1	01:41	8.24	3.64	0.1214
3	Atlanta Thrashers	5	36	7.20	86.11	4	01:41	6.11	4.91	0.1636
4	New York Rangers	8	59	7.38	86.44	3	01:34	5.79	5.18	0.1727
5	Colorado Avalanche	8	51	6.38	84.31	6	01:40	5.36	5.60	0.1866
6	Philadelphia Flyers	6	41	6.83	85.37	5	01:31	5.21	5.76	0.1921
7	Chicago Blackhawks	6	37	6.17	83.78	7	01:39	5.10	5.88	0.1960
8	Washington Capitals	8	49	6.13	83.67	8	01:34	4.81	6.24	0.2081
9	New York Islanders	7	37	5.29	81.08	11	01:42	4.53	6.62	0.2207
10	Pittsburgh Penguins	9	50	5.56	82.00	10	01:37	4.50	6.67	0.2224
11	San Jose Sharks	9	50	5.56	82.00	9	01:35	4.43	6.77	0.2256
12	Vancouver Canucks	9	47	5.22	80.85	14	01:39	4.31	6.96	0.2319
13	Carolina Hurricanes	11	58	5.27	81.03	12	01:36	4.26	7.05	0.2350
14	Columbus Blue Jackets	8	42	5.25	80.95	13	01:34	4.13	7.27	0.2424
15	St. Louis Blues	8	40	5.00	80.00	15	01:37	4.08	7.36	0.2453
16	New Jersey Devils	7	34	4.86	79.41	16	01:34	3.81	7.87	0.2623
17	Buffalo Sabres	6	28	4.67	78.57	17	01:35	3.71	8.08	0.2694
18	Tampa Bay Lightning	9	39	4.33	76.92	20	01:36	3.48	8.61	0.2870
19	Edmonton Oilers	10	43	4.30	76.74	21	01:36	3.45	8.69	0.2896
20	Detroit Red Wings	8	35	4.38	77.14	19	01:31	3.32	9.03	0.3010
21	Dallas Stars	10	41	4.10	75.61	23	01:36	3.30	9.10	0.3034
22	Calgary Flames	10	42	4.20	76.19	22	01:33	3.26	9.20	0.3067
23	Montreal Canadiens	10	44	4.40	77.27	18	01:27	3.19	9.40	0.3132
24	Anaheim Ducks	11	44	4.00	75.00	26	01:35	3.18	9.42	0.3141
25	Boston Bruins	10	41	4.10	75.61	25	01:32	3.17	9.46	0.3153
26	Phoenix Coyotes	10	41	4.10	75.61	24	01:27	2.98	10.06	0.3354
27	Los Angeles Kings	14	50	3.57	72.00	29	01:38	2.92	10.26	0.3419
28	Nashville Predators	9	35	3.89	74.29	27	01:23	2.69	11.14	0.3713
29	Florida Panthers	11	40	3.64	72.50	28	01:26	2.62	11.45	0.3817
30	Toronto Maple Leafs	13	35	2.69	62.86	30	01:29	2.02	14.89	0.4963

In this data we see that while Ottawa has the highest ranked power play in the old metric, Minnesota is truely the dominant team. And boy are they good. Their penalty kills last a full 7 seconds longer, on average, than the next closest team, 14 seconds longer than the average, and 25 seconds (almost 1/4 of a PP) longer than the worst. Additionally, while the old metric shows that they actually would allow a goal 30 seconds earlier than Ottawa, we see that they would actually last more than 30 seconds longer. We also see how bad they Leafs penalty kill really is. The Leafs are allowing goals at a rate of slightly less than 1 for every 2 full penalty kills.

As for the Caps (this being a Caps blog and me being a Caps fan, after all), they aren't too shabby given the relative lack of discipline. They don't take a hard hit in the new metric (unlike the new power play metric).

I'll be updateing these stats as the season progresses. When grad school gets out of the way for a few hours I will post everything on an external site, rather than cluttering fan posts with updates.

Next in the series will be a look at 5v3, 5v4, and 4v4 situations.

If this FanPost is written by someone other than one of the blog's authors, the opinions expressed in it do not necessarily reflect those of this blog or SB Nation.

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Comments

As with the PP rankings, great work. The stats back up what has been obvious even to a casual observer – the PK is the one area of definite improvement 10 games into the season.

by CP2Devil on Oct 27, 2009 9:02 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs

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