Jerred Smithson Shoulders The Load (Dirk Hoag -- OnTheForecheck)
Wednesday, 08.10.2011 / 10:09 AM
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by Dirk Hoag (OnTheForecheck.com)
While at first glance they might appear to have little in common, football and hockey share some surprising similarities. Sure, the environments in which they are played couldn’t be much more different, when you compare the sweltering heat of a football training camp to the frigid atmosphere of an outdoor hockey game played on a frozen pond, but victory in either sport often depends on which side wins the battle of field position. They may not call it “field position” in hockey, but keeping as much play as possible in the offensive end and playing strong team defense in front of your own goalie are essential elements of the game.
Identifying the individual players who contribute offensively is easy work – just glance at the basic goal and assist statistics and one can see that names like Sergei Kostitsyn, Martin Erat, Patric Hornqvist and Shea Weber led the way for the Predators last season. But on the defensive side, you have to do a little bit of digging to fully appreciate one of the best defensive forwards in the game, Jerred Smithson.
Since joining the Preds for the 2005-2006 season, Smithson has been a mainstay on the penalty kill, and has led Nashville forwards in shorthanded ice time per game for five consecutive seasons, anchoring a unit that has usually ranked among the NHL’s best. In 5-on-5 play, which makes up the vast majority of a typical game, we can also show Smithson’s defensive dominance and his contribution to this battle over “field position”.
Hockey stats analysts use something called the Corsi Rating to reflect the flow of play during an individual player’s ice time. Named for Buffalo Sabres assistant coach Jim Corsi, who came up with the idea as a way to measure a goaltender’s workload, the Corsi Rating reflects the balance of Total Shots for and against a player’s team while he is on the ice. By “Total Shots”, we include any shot fired, whether it misses the net or not, or whether it is blocked by an opposing skater. The standard convention is to isolate this for 5-on-5 ice time, and show it as a rate for every 60 minutes of play. Hockey stats analysts dig into these numbers at sites like Behind the Net, which offers a variety of different ways to view conventional and advanced hockey statistics.
Looking at total shots provides a more detailed statistical view of the game as compared to only using goals. Again building on our comparison with football, examining the balance of shot totals is akin to looking at yardage, while goals are the equivalent of touchdowns and other scoring plays. This adds a layer of information which better informs our understanding of team and individual performance.
The idea here is to use the Corsi Rating as an indicator of which team is spending more time in the offensive end attempting to score, i.e. winning the “field position” battle while that player is on the ice. At first glance, Smithson’s -10.8 Corsi doesn’t appear impressive, since it means Nashville’s opponents attempted about 10 more shots than the Preds for every 60 minutes of Smithson’s 5-on-5 play. That was the lowest figure on the team last season among those who played at least 40 games.
We can set that performance in context, however, by looking at the conditions under which Smithson worked using another advanced stat, called Zone Starts. As one of the best faceoff men in the game (6th in the NHL at 57.4%), Smithson was typically sent out for defensive zone draws, so much so that over the course of the season, he was on the ice for 256 more defensive-zone faceoffs than ones in the offensive zone, the 3rd-greatest such imbalance in the league, behind Dallas Stars center Steve Ott and Vancouver’s Manny Malhotra. Put simply, no matter how effective a player is, starting a shift in the defensive zone greatly increases the likelihood of giving up a few attempted shots by your opponent. The plan, then, is to minimize the damage and get play moving in the right direction as quickly as possible.
To extend our field position analogy, Smithson is Nashville’s specialist at helping the team battle its way out of the defensive zone, and his basic Corsi Rating reflects the difficult circumstances he often faces. We can correct for that mathematically, however, and once those Zone Starts are factored in, Smithson’s Corsi swings from a -10.8 up to +6.9, a stark difference that demonstrates his effectiveness at helping the team escape difficult situations on a regular basis.
He may not show up in the traditional lists as one of the team leaders, but there is no question that by taking on that overly-defensive Zone Start burden, and handling it the way he does, Jerred Smithson plays an essential role on the Nashville Predators. Without players like him who relish and excel at what can be a thankless task, the offensive stars have a much tougher time showing off their talents.
Dirk Hoag is the managing editor of OnTheForecheck.com, which provides news, opinion and analysis on the Predators and the NHL at large.
While at first glance they might appear to have little in common, football and hockey share some surprising similarities. Sure, the environments in which they are played couldn’t be much more different, when you compare the sweltering heat of a football training camp to the frigid atmosphere of an outdoor hockey game played on a frozen pond, but victory in either sport often depends on which side wins the battle of field position. They may not call it “field position” in hockey, but keeping as much play as possible in the offensive end and playing strong team defense in front of your own goalie are essential elements of the game.
Identifying the individual players who contribute offensively is easy work – just glance at the basic goal and assist statistics and one can see that names like Sergei Kostitsyn, Martin Erat, Patric Hornqvist and Shea Weber led the way for the Predators last season. But on the defensive side, you have to do a little bit of digging to fully appreciate one of the best defensive forwards in the game, Jerred Smithson.
Since joining the Preds for the 2005-2006 season, Smithson has been a mainstay on the penalty kill, and has led Nashville forwards in shorthanded ice time per game for five consecutive seasons, anchoring a unit that has usually ranked among the NHL’s best. In 5-on-5 play, which makes up the vast majority of a typical game, we can also show Smithson’s defensive dominance and his contribution to this battle over “field position”.
Hockey stats analysts use something called the Corsi Rating to reflect the flow of play during an individual player’s ice time. Named for Buffalo Sabres assistant coach Jim Corsi, who came up with the idea as a way to measure a goaltender’s workload, the Corsi Rating reflects the balance of Total Shots for and against a player’s team while he is on the ice. By “Total Shots”, we include any shot fired, whether it misses the net or not, or whether it is blocked by an opposing skater. The standard convention is to isolate this for 5-on-5 ice time, and show it as a rate for every 60 minutes of play. Hockey stats analysts dig into these numbers at sites like Behind the Net, which offers a variety of different ways to view conventional and advanced hockey statistics.
Looking at total shots provides a more detailed statistical view of the game as compared to only using goals. Again building on our comparison with football, examining the balance of shot totals is akin to looking at yardage, while goals are the equivalent of touchdowns and other scoring plays. This adds a layer of information which better informs our understanding of team and individual performance.
The idea here is to use the Corsi Rating as an indicator of which team is spending more time in the offensive end attempting to score, i.e. winning the “field position” battle while that player is on the ice. At first glance, Smithson’s -10.8 Corsi doesn’t appear impressive, since it means Nashville’s opponents attempted about 10 more shots than the Preds for every 60 minutes of Smithson’s 5-on-5 play. That was the lowest figure on the team last season among those who played at least 40 games.
We can set that performance in context, however, by looking at the conditions under which Smithson worked using another advanced stat, called Zone Starts. As one of the best faceoff men in the game (6th in the NHL at 57.4%), Smithson was typically sent out for defensive zone draws, so much so that over the course of the season, he was on the ice for 256 more defensive-zone faceoffs than ones in the offensive zone, the 3rd-greatest such imbalance in the league, behind Dallas Stars center Steve Ott and Vancouver’s Manny Malhotra. Put simply, no matter how effective a player is, starting a shift in the defensive zone greatly increases the likelihood of giving up a few attempted shots by your opponent. The plan, then, is to minimize the damage and get play moving in the right direction as quickly as possible.
To extend our field position analogy, Smithson is Nashville’s specialist at helping the team battle its way out of the defensive zone, and his basic Corsi Rating reflects the difficult circumstances he often faces. We can correct for that mathematically, however, and once those Zone Starts are factored in, Smithson’s Corsi swings from a -10.8 up to +6.9, a stark difference that demonstrates his effectiveness at helping the team escape difficult situations on a regular basis.
He may not show up in the traditional lists as one of the team leaders, but there is no question that by taking on that overly-defensive Zone Start burden, and handling it the way he does, Jerred Smithson plays an essential role on the Nashville Predators. Without players like him who relish and excel at what can be a thankless task, the offensive stars have a much tougher time showing off their talents.
Dirk Hoag is the managing editor of OnTheForecheck.com, which provides news, opinion and analysis on the Predators and the NHL at large.
