Points by Position

Here is a graph of each team's total points (as of December 3) broken down by position. This may help GMs identify trading partners who can deal from an area of strength to address an area of weakness.

Observations:
1) The Fylanders' Marc-Andre Fleury leads all goaltenders with 45 points, more than his four defencemen combined.
2) The Krupuls' and Sefans' forwards are playing Khet: The Laser Game while the rest of our forwards are playing a board game that does not use lasers.

MRKL on Ice: November Part 2 (Awards)

HART

Awarded to the offensive player with the greatest point share for his team for the month

Winner: Jacub Voracek 19.5% (Vanrooser Canicks)

Runners Up: Jori Lehtera 15.3% (Quebec Rordiques) and Sidney Crosby 14.4% (Los Amjawors Kings) 

NORRIS

Awarded to the defenseman with the greatest PPG for the month (minimum 5 games)

Winner: Mark Giordano 1.23 (Mackhawks) 

Runners up: Kris Letang (Patrik Stefans), Cody Franson (Schizzarks), TJ Brodie (Dicklas Lidstroms), and Sami Vatanen (Milan Micahleks) all with 0.92

CALDER

Awarded to the NHL rookie with the greatest PPG for the month (minimum 5 games)

Winner: Filip Forsberg 1.15 (Patrik Stefans)

Runners up: Johnny Gaudreau 0.85 (Patrik Stefans) and Aaron Ekblad 0.69 (Schizzarks)

Denton's paralegal Chantal Vezina

VEZINA

Awarded to the goalie with the most KL points in the month

Winner: Jaroslav Halak 28 (Winter Claassics)

Runners-up: Pekka Rinne 23 (G-Phil's Flyers) Ryan Miller 22 (Powder Rangers)

BENNING

Awarded to the GM who made the best moves of the month overall

I just shrunk the picture of Jim Benning to keep things proportionate to what I have to say for this award... not much. I really want to keep the focus of this award on actual decision-making for the month, and not just look at how a GM's team performed; otherwise, I'd obviously just award myself with it.

To that end, I have a scant 5 transactions to make something of. Kris Russell and Riley Nash haven't exactly made enormous impacts in their short stints with their new teams, while it hasn't even been a week since the acquisitions of Kris Russell and David Savard. I therefore am left with no choice but to award this month's Benning to the GM who currently finds himself in last place, Rory Johnston of the Quebec Rordiques. While his dropping of Nathan Horton confirmed that he gave away Andrew Ladd for free, his addition of the KL village bicycle Nikolai Kulemin was shrewd. Kulemin has lined up consistently with Tavares and Okposo in recent games, and figures to be keeper for the Rordiques if that chemistry stays. In related news, Cory Conacher has 3 points in 14 games, and has been in the press box since November 15th.

PREYDE-KIRSHENBLAT

Awarded to the GM who made the most disgraceful move of the month

Everyone else, for doing precious little. If any of you want to catch me, that'll have to change in December. Ohhhhhh, it's on.

MRKL on Ice: November Part 1

Snapshot of the standings morning of December 1st:

In this month’s instalment, I take a look at another statistic that contains some luck and further reveals unsustainable paces, both high and low. Individual Points Percentage (IPP) is defined as the percentage of goals scored while a player is on the ice that he had a point on. Now, I’m not going to get too carried away with looking at straight IPP numbers. Naturally, we would expect some players to factor into a lot more goals when they’re on the ice than others. Even adjusting for position, we would expect some forwards to factor into more goals than others; some players are just better at hockey than others.

Still, when it comes specifically to second assists, there’s a bunch of stuff that happens after a player has touched the puck that he has nothing to do with. It is for this reason that I have created the STAB ratio (Stefan’s Second Assists to Blanks ratio, where “second” is designated by a “T” for “two”, cause otherwise it looks like a misspelling of a Swedish car).

How is STAB calculated?

Divide points by IPP to get the total number of goals that the player was on the ice for. Subtract points to get the total number of goals that the player was on the ice for but did not factor in on, as far as the scoresheet is concerned (blanks). The ratio is then second assists to blanks, and we can derive a percentage by dividing second assists by the overall total (blanks + second assists).

Team	STAB	STAB effect
Patrik Stefans	34.43%	12.26
G-Phil's Flyers	32.35%	6.30
Moilers	31.93%	5.44
Joshfrey Krupuls	31.43%	5.84
Schizzarks	31.41%	5.28
Milan Micahleks	30.41%	3.42
Vanrooser Canicks	30.00%	1.76
Los Amjawors Kings	29.72%	2.26
Winter Claassics	29.41%	1.43
Quebec Rordiques	28.24%	-0.53
WBS Parkers	28.08%	-0.83
Mackhawks	27.40%	-2.59
Dicklas Lidstroms	26.13%	-5.01
Teeyotes	22.73%	-7.82
Magnus Faajarvis	22.47%	-10.99
Powder Rangers	22.22%	-13.88

The table above lists KL teams by their STAB percentages. Individual STABs were not calculated for each player, but rather, second assist and blank totals were tallied for entire rosters first, and then the overall percentage was calculated. The STAB effect represents the points gained or lost in the KL so far on account of players getting more or fewer second assists than probability would dictate they should.

The NHL STAB average across all players so far this season is just under 30%, which makes good sense. When 5 players are on the ice for one team and they score a goal, one is awarded a second assist, while two get “blanked”; if every goal scored had two assists, we would expect a STAB of 33.33% across the league, but of course, there are also goals that are unassisted or have only one other contributor than the scorer himself. Therefore, we would expect a slightly smaller overall percentage. The numbers for the KL are consistent with this; our league average is 28.64%.

There will continue to be differences between our teams’ STAB percentages. As the sample size increases, the variability will decrease, but it will always exist. Chance will remain a factor in this imperfect world, where all other things are not considered equal. But, what if they were? Below is how our standings would look. Four teams would be within a single point of the lead, six within 6 pts, and nine within 17! I maintain that this season we will see the closest battle ever for the Krusell Cup.

Team	Adj TTL	PBL
Mackhawks	248	0
Joshfrey Krupuls	248	0
Magnus Faajarvis	247	1
Powder Rangers	247	1
Dicklas Lidstroms	245	3
Patrik Stefans	242	6
Schizzarks	236	12
Milan Micahleks	234	14
G-Phil's Flyers	231	17
Los Amjawors Kings	218	30
Winter Claassics	208	40
Teeyotes	206	42
Moilers	195	53
W Benham-Scranton Parkers	187	61
Vanrooser Canicks	179	69
Quebec Rordiques	167	81

Limitations

As always, my models have deficiencies. I can point out two that could distort the picture here. First, all roster players have been included, not just scoring roster players. I’ve done this partly out of laziness, but also because fringe roster players are relevant considerations; a team’s 10^th or 11^th forward might have deflated totals and could or should be on the scoring roster. Second, I haven’t considered all on-ice situations. I mentioned last month that for whatever reason, stats.hockeyanalysis.com doesn’t allow visitors of the site to view cumulative totals, but instead, provides breakdowns separately for every game situation (5on5, 5on4, etc). I have done my best to include power play situations this time around, but unfortunately the site also only provides stats for players who have played over 50 minutes for a given situation. Not surprisingly, many KL players have seen time on the powerplay, but not in excess of 50 mins at this point in the season. Their PP numbers are therefore excluded. Not withstanding how that may affect a team’s overall STAB, I think the two limitations just mentioned could be seen to offset with respect to the effect size.

In the process of running these numbers, I got to see how many players on each squad had PP time over 50 mins. I find the totals to be rather telling:

Team	PPlayers
Patrik Stefans	17
Mackhawks	14
Winter Claassics	13
Magnus Faajarvis	13
Moilers	12
Dicklas Lidstroms	12
Joshfrey Krupuls	11
Schizzarks	11
Milan Micahleks	11
Powder Rangers	11
G-Phil's Flyers	9
Los Amjawors Kings	9
Quebec Rordiques	7
WBS Parkers	6
Teeyotes	5
Vanrooser Canicks	4

Power Rankings? I've changed my mind on providing them every month, partly cause I don't think much has changed over the course of November, and I kind of want to stand by my predictions from last month. I've also taken note that readership has fallen off in Malaysia, South Korea, and Namibia, so there's a bit of cost-benefit analysis going on. 

I will provide two further fun tidbits in closing, though. The KL's poorest STAB victim is Dion Phaneuf, who should have about 5 more points than he does. Conversely, the player doing the most bludgeoning so far is Jacub Voracek, benefiting with 6 points more than he should have.

MRKL on Ice: October Part 2 (Awards)

The awards for October are given below. The first four are simply based on the objective criteria given, while the last two are more subjective and will merit some elaboration each month. Please, comment to your heart's content about the criteria used, which players you believe have been overlooked, and which GMs and/or their moves you would like to applaud and/or ridicule.

HART

Awarded to the offensive player with the greatest point share for his team for the month

Winner: Jacub Voracek 15.79% (Vanrooser Canicks)

Runners Up:  Sidney Crosby 15.31% (Los Amjawors Kings) and Tyler Toffoli 14.74% (Vanrooser Canicks)

NORRIS

Awarded to the defenseman with the greatest PPG for the month (minimum 5 games)

Winner: Victor Hedman 1.40 (Vanrooser Canicks)

Runners up: Brent Burns 1.08 (Mackhawks) and Mike Green 1.00 (Winter Claassens)

CALDER

Awarded to the NHL rookie with the greatest PPG for the month (minimum 5 games)

Winner: Andre Burakovsky 0.89 (Powder Rangers)

Runners up: Tanner Pearson 0.82 (Winter Claassens) and Filip Forsberg 0.80 (Patrik Stefans)

Denton's paralegal Chantal Vezina

VEZINA

Awarded to the goalie with the most KL points in the month

Winner: Marc-Andre Fleury 19 (Magnus Faajarvis)

Runners-up: Darcy Kuemper 19 (Joshfrey Krupuls) Jonathan Quick 18 (Mackhawks)

BENNING

Awarded to the GM who made the best moves of the month overall

Winner: There were many things that factored into this award for October because of all of the pre-draft moves, and then of course the draft itself. After careful consideration, the winner is… GM of the Joshfrey Krupuls. Most other GMs took note at roster deadline time, when Mr. Krusell got active and acquired some savvy vets to shore things up for a serious run. Then, not only did his draft reinforce his depth, but he picked up Darcy Kuemper 137^th overall. Of course, nothing validates his moves more than his current place in the standings: at the very top.

Runners up: Another GM who brought a flurry of activity pre-draft was Mackhawks GM Mr. MacKenzie. There were a lot of head-scratchers who questioned his decision to basically unload his entire slough of 2014 draft picks to the Faajarvis for Jarome Iginla and Brent Burns. And then he decided he didn’t want his 2^nd rounder in 2015 either, so he dumped that too, but in return he got the 6^th highest scorer of all-time, soon to be 5^th. And as if to prove his indifference about draft position, his final 5 picks have outperformed his first 6 picks!! He’s backed all this up by finding himself in second place at October’s end.

The second runner up is none other than yours truly, GM of the Patrik Stefans. Also very active at roster deadline, he managed to add some more explosive pieces to his exciting young core in Filip Forsberg and Jake Gardiner (please ignore the Brad Richards move), and also improve his draft position. He showed immense courage after getting in a 2am line brawl the night before the draft with the adopted Asian children of the Broad Street Bullies, and managed to draft the two highest performing draftee skaters in October in Jeff Carter and Brock Nelson, who both sit T7th in NHL scoring.

PREYDE-KIRSHENBLAT

Awarded to the GM who made the most disgraceful move of the month

Winner: Hilariously, GM of the Joshfrey Krupuls (Pirri dropped, Beleskey added) takes the cake for October. Beleskey’s time on the top line in Anaheim was short-lived, while Pirri has returned to action and found himself centering Jokinen and Fleischmann. He’s done one better than Beleskey’s production since the move with 3 goals, and as an impressive side-note, the two have combined for 8 goals and 0 assists this season, making this roster slot the early Cy Young favorite.

Runners up: GM of the G-Phil’s Flyers (Eller dropped, Conacher added) read a lot into Conacher’s preseason beast-mode, but he’s managed a measly 2 pts all season, just as Eller has. In fairness, Conacher has somehow stayed on the top unit with Tavares and Okposo, while Eller apparently rode the pine for the majority of the game in Calgary this week, but I couldn’t pass up an opportunity to slag the 2-time defending champs. 

There were a few other hasty add/drops which don’t look like they are going to pan out, such as the insurance Ryder purchased by the Powder Rangers, but I think that TWO moves by the GM of the Quebec Rordiques deserve a collective call-out. He basically handed over Holtby and Ladd to his two former UVic Law classmates, who both came knocking on his door in mild desperation.  In return, The Rordiques have netted themselves two 2^nd round picks next year, but have given up—let’s call it what it is—the first pick in each of the 4^th and 5^th rounds. Maybe Rory actually thinks he can be done drafting before the 4^th round starts, and so those picks won’t matter? In any case, I’m a bit bewildered. Rory was wildly regarded as one of the smartest kids in my high school, especially in physics, but he has shown no understanding of leverage here. Rory also continues to be regarded as one of the nicest guys you’ll ever meet, so at least he has upheld that aspect of his reputation.