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Those who follow the discussion at Lowetide’s will know that Andrew Cogliano’s shooting percentage, and the likelihood that it would be replicated this season was a hotly debated topic over the course of the summer (clearly, we’re all sad, sad people). Cogliano scored 18 goals on 98 shots last season, good for an 18.4% shooting percentage. I’m not quite sure the scope of the shooting percentage database at hockey-reference.com, in that I’m unsure when the NHL started tracking this stuff, but it appears to go as far back as at least 1968.

I ran a query of their database for rookie seasons in which the player shot at least 15.0% on at least 98 shots in his rookie season. It’s a pretty stunningly small list - just 119 guys on that list in about 40 years. What’s more, if you treat 1995-96 as the start of the dead puck era, only 15 guys have done it in 12 years. Save percentages have risen dramatically since the early 1980’s; looking at the more recent data is probably a better indicator of how unique Cogliano’s rookie year was.

Entering tonight’s game (in which he scored again), Cogliano was shooting 18.6% on 57 shots, which pro-rates to (obviously) 18.6% on 126 shots. Which of the fifteen on the rookie list ended up on shooting at least 15% on at least 126 shots the following season? Mark Parrish, Petr Prucha and Paul Stastny are the only ones who managed to do so. Parrish followed it up with a 13.8% in year three and is currently shooting 17.5% for his career. Prucha shot 7.9% in year three but has enjoyed a bounceback year this season, shooting 15.8% so far, albeit in 13 games. Stastny is presently in year three and is shooting 11.1% (it’s been a tough year in Colorado).

You can cast this a different way: at least 15% on at least 157 shots in first two NHL seasons. Cogliano sits in a tie for fourth on this list, with Miro Satana. It’s a pretty impressive list of guys - while many of them do see their shooting percentages drop over their career, from eyeballing it, 13-14% still looks pretty sustainable for many of them.

This is, of course, somewhat superficial, because there’s no breakdown into ES/PP/PK - it’s going to be easier to maintain this sort of shooting percentage with a lot of PP shots. Still though, it seems to me that, on the evidence available, there’s an argument that Cogliano is a “true” high percentage shooter - the only guys above him with a substantial enough career to date to make the active leaderboard is Alex Tanguay, who sits at the top.

While I’m not yet sold that Cogliano will be a 18%, or even a 15%, shooter, given the way that the careers of the players who experienced similar starts have gone, at this point it seems to me to be more likely than not that, when all is said and done, he’ll be amongst the shooting percentage leaders of his era. While I’m hesitant to read too much into this because of the context lost when things aren’t broken down into ES/PP/PK, and I’m certainly open to arguments that his particular blend of shooting percentage might not be repeatable, he’s been so far above the norm to date that it really does seem likely to be that he’s got something of a knack for getting to the right spots and finishing when he gets there. It’s a real shame that there weren’t any dissenting voices at Lowetide’s site when he was getting buried this summer.

Scoring Chances for NHL Game Number 20584

Scoring Chances for NHL Game Number 20553

I’m writing a broader PK post that tries to nail down the cost of a lost faceoff but it’s some involved shit. The actual reasoning is pretty easy and straightforward; it’s the data manipulation that’s pure hell. I want to clean it up a little bit before I post it. So, for now, I present the following:

Some general information about defensive zone PK faceoffs (which are, of course, the same thing as offensive zone PP faceoffs): On average, teams had 391 faceoffs in the offensive zone while on the PP and 391 faceoffs in the defensive zone while on the PK. The team on the PP succeeded at a 55.5% clip and the team on the PK succeeded at a 44.5% clip.

Carolina led the league in PP faceoffs in the offensive zone with 489 while Boston finished last with 326. The spread, therefore, was 163 faceoffs. With respect to shorthanded faceoffs in the defensive zone, Philadelphia had the most, at 455, and San Jose the fewest at 312. The spread was 143.

With respect to success rates, Chicago was the best in the league at winning offensive zone faceoffs on the PP, doing so at a 63.1% rate. Nashville was the worst, winning just 45.5% of their offensive zone faceoffs when they enjoyed the man advantage. That’s a spread of 17.6% from best to worst. On the PK side of things, Detroit had the best winning percentage on defensive zone faceoffs when they were shorthanded, at 56.1%. Phoenix was the worst, at 37.1%. That’s a spread of 19.0%.

I’ve got some evidence to suggest that winning a faceoff in the defensive zone is a pretty big deal, which I’ll get into down the road. The problem, as I see it, is that the spread between the good and the bad is too small to amount to much. While 19% is a huge difference, the real difference to me looks to have been more like about 12% between best and worst - Detroit is just on a completely different planet at 56.1%, with the next best team at 49.5%. Over 391 faceoffs, there’s something like 45 lost own zone draws between a team at 49.5% and a team at 38ish% over the course of a season. That might be significant but I suspect when I really drill into things I’ll find that being an atrocious faceoff team on the PK will cost you, at the absolute top end, a win over the course of a season. I suspect that it’s probably more like half a win but we’ll see.

As a complete aside, I’ve always found it to be a bit nuts when you read stories about NFL coaches working 19 hours a day. The more I look at this sort of stuff, the more that I can see how it happens. If I was employed by an NHL team, I’d want to know everything that there is to know about what Detroit was doing on PK faceoffs last season. They’re kicking ass in this department again this year, winning 53.8% of their draws on the PK. Maybe Draper, Datsyuk and Zetterberg are just the best in the word at winning PK faceoffs; maybe the Wings do something to help them out.

Anybody with half-a-brain can see the Oilers need a centre who can win a face-off and kill penalties to make up for the losses of Jarret Stoll and Marty Reasoner. When Horcoff is the Oilers best overall centre on the dot at 51.8 per cent but is just 61-89 shorthanded, it’s tough to argue.

“Maybe now this year, with them (face-offs) being in the zone so much,” Horcoff said when asked if poor performance on the dot is the single biggest factor that has the penalty killing struggling so mightily.

“Face-offs aren’t just one guy’s stat. I think people who know the game and watch the game realize the help is and how important those 50-50 battles are . . . especially on the PK.”

-Robin Brownlee, A Man Who Learns From Watching, OilersNation

When you look at the overall lack of positive correlation, especially in 2008/2009 now that the rules have changed, you can’t conclude that a good faceoff percentage = a good penalty kill. This might be common sense but based on what I’m reading around the internet today I think people are overestimating the impact of faceoffs on Edmonton’s pk train wreck this season. What I’m trying to say is that if one conclusion can be drawn it’s that there are too many elements to a penalty kill to suggest Edmonton should be looking at adding a faceoff specialist alone - faceoff % should take a back seat to players who can actually kill the damn thing off. After all, even a successful faceoff win and dump only shaves 10-15 seconds off the penalty anyway - you still have to kill the whole damn thing off regardless of how it begins.

-Showerhead, Statzi, Irreverent Oil Fans

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Scoring Chances for NHL Game Number 20545

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