Watching The Spreadsheets: Why the Dallas Stars are the best rush team in hockey
There is an asterisk, however.
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It has been said that they don’t ask how, they ask ‘how many’. But how do you know ‘how many’ to expect in the first place?
Evaluating any team’s offense is not about evaluating goal totals. Yes, the end game is scoring goals because scoring more than your opponent leads to wins. But if we accept that goal-scoring can be and often is random, then tallying up goals to assess offense is not where we should start. Last season, Vancouver was ranked sixth in goals scored. Does that mean they were the sixth-best offensive team? Detroit scored the ninth-most goals that year too. Same question. It’s worth noting that both teams were nowhere near the rank the previous season, and—surprise, surprise—they are nowhere near that rank this season either.
So where does leave us? It’s not that complicated. And it’s not semantics. Goals and offense are not synonymous in the same way that eating and cooking is not synonymous. Goal-scoring can be random, but that doesn’t mean it’s always random. Teams may not always earn those offensive outcomes, but it’s hard for the hockey gods to deny them if the how > how many. In this case, how = the offense that is anything BUT random: possession (control of shot attempts), shot quality (expected goals), and timing (rush versus the cycle). Part of the problem with teams like Vancouver and Detroit is that they didn’t have anything going for them except the randomness of goal scoring. Conversely, what was the story of those L.A. Cup-winning teams? Couldn’t score; dominated everywhere else. So maybe people should ask how instead.
I know this is silly semantics, but I don’t find semantics silly at all. Dallas is an interesting case study in this regard. They are 11th in offensive outcomes, having scored 167 goals, just below New Jersey, and just above Buffalo. At even-strength, their 114 goals ranks ninth, and on the power play, their 19.5 percent conversion is 22nd. So their How Many is just okay, split between very good outcomes at even-strength and bad outcomes on the power play. So what about the How? That’s what today is all about.
(Major thanks to Corey Sznajder for everything he does in manually tracking literally every game. You can follow him on BlueSky, check out his Substack where he occasionally writes, or support him via his Patreon.)