Name: Phil Kessel

Age: 27 years old

Height: 6’00

Weight: 202 lbs

Experience: 9th Pro Season

Cap Hit: $8,000,000

Stats: 82GP, 25G, 36A, 30PIM, -34

See below for all advanced stats formulas. It helps!

Corsi Relative: -2.5

– A Corsi relative score of -2.5 indicates that the Toronto Maple Leafs get 2.5 LESS shot attempts than their opponents when he is on the ice (60 minute measurement) as opposed to when he is off the ice.

– This number places Phil Kessel right in the middle of the pack among Maple Leafs forwards, which normally would be a decent result on an exceedingly poor possession team. This quickly proves to be somewhat false when looking at Kessel’s quality of competition, more on that later.

PDO: 967

– The average PDO for an NHL player should hover somewhere around 1000 (or 100%).

– This metric is derived from the fact that the on-ice shooting percentage of your team, added to the sv% of the opposing goalie, should equal to 1.000 (.920 sv% + 0.08 sh%).

– Phil Kessel is playing with a PDO that indicates he is being negatively impacted by ‘puck luck’ at this stage of his season and that his scoring and on-ice +/- could be improved.

– The on-ice shooting % for Kessel is 7.10%, which is a full 3% lower than his previous two seasons, which projects to a 35.5 goal average, 10 higher than his total from this season.

– The on-ice save % for Toronto goalies when Kessel was on the ice was .896, dead last among Leafs forwards. The goalies were not helping Kessel’s stats.

Relative Quality of Competition: 0.325

– Phil Kessel has the QoC of a second line forward for the Toronto Maple Leafs, which is interesting given the fact that both Tyler Bozak and James Van Riemsdyk regularly play against the other teams best C/RW combination.

– Leo Komarov is being used against the oppositions best LW.

– Given that Kessel is playing against the other teams second line, his possession statistics should have been much better than they were. You could argue that his on/off ice +/- should have also been better but some of that was impacted by the fact that Leafs goalies were anemic when he was on the ice.



On/Off Ice +/-: -1.57

On Ice +/- per 60 Minutes: -1.67

Off Ice +/- per 60 Minutes: -0.10

– The Toronto Maple Leafs even strength +/- worsened by 1.57 goals per 60 minutes when Phil Kessel was on the ice as opposed to when he was not.

– This result ranks Kessel dead last among Leafs left wingers and equal to his linemates, Bozak and JVR. Given that this was the teams top line, it is a rather telling sign as to why the season tanked after a hot start. When your top players are detrimental to the overall performance of your team, changes must be made.

Face-Off Zone Starts:

Offensive Zone Start: 50.2% of the time. (Finishes there 47.2%)

– Phil Kessel’s even-strength zone usage indicates that Horachek didn’t deploy him in specific situations to impact the offense or defense.

– Some teams will start stronger defensive players in their own end and have offensive players start more prominently in the opposition’s end. The Leafs don’t appear to utilize this strategy as the majority of their forwards have close to an even split in their even strength zone starts.

– When Kessel did start in the offensive zone, the opposition was more likely to clear the puck than the Leafs were to maintain possession and get another offensive zone face-off. This isn’t a glaring weakness on Kessels part, just interesting to note that the majority of Kessel’s even-strength plays result in the opposition getting possession and removing the puck from their zone.

Top Linemate: Tyler Bozak

– Shocking, isn’t it?

– Phil Kessel played 79.2% of his even strength shifts alongside Tyler Bozak, a trend that we have seen over the past four seasons. Kessel also played 67.5% of his time with JVR. When you take into account the fact that these are three of the Leafs worst possession forwards, one has to wonder why a more responsible player wasn’t deployed with two of the three players more often.

– While we saw that Kessel wasn’t able to find chemistry with Kadri like he does with Bozak (debatable as to whether or not that is Kessel sulking or a true lack of chemistry) it is obvious that pairing a stronger possession player (Kadri) with a weaker player (Kessel) would be beneficial to the team overall. Even is Kessel’s scoring touch wasn’t present right away, the team would still control the puck more often and give up less chances against. Also, given Kessel’s anemic 7% shooting percentage this season (with Bozak), I don’t think that shaking up his linemates would necessarily have a detrimental impact on his scoring.

NEW: Bombay Ratings

– A new feature in the advanced stats series will be analyzing the performance of a player relative to his peers at his position (FWD/DEF). Bombay scores measure a number of statistics, such as possession, scoring etc. and compares them to the league wide average at that position.

– The outer edges of the chart represents a 100% Bombay score, which would only occur if a player was statistically the best in every single category, relative to their peers. The solid coloured shape represents the player we are analyzing and the dashed shape represents a hypothetical player who has hit the league average in each category.

– This produces a Bombay score (based on the weighting for each statistic) and the average for a forward is ~46 and ~45 for defenceman.

– From this image we can gather that Phil Kessel is a slightly above average player (FWD average is 46) when measuring his offensive production, TOI%, penalty differential and possession. While this isn’t the be-all-end-all for measuring Phil Kessel it does present an interesting counter point to those who place him in the elite class.

– Kessel plays much more than the average player and this drags down his goals/assists per 60 minutes played ratings and actually makes him look quite normal when adjusting for TOI. His relative Corsi% is below the league average, indicating that Kessel is contributing to negative possession when he is on the ice, which we have seen previously in his -2.5 Corsi Rel rating.

Conclusion:

– Phil Kessel’s offensive production has kept him in the conversation of the upper echelon (not elite) of players for the majority of his tenure with the Toronto Maple Leafs. As advanced stats become more prevalent the narrative has begun to change for Kessel and much more scrutiny has been placed on his game.

– When Phil Kessel is on the ice the Maple Leafs are -1.57 goals per 60 minutes worse than they are when he is off the ice. This represents one of the largest negative impacts to the Maple Leafs +/- that any Maple Leafs regular forward has made this season.

– Bombay scores tell us that Kessel is a slightly above average forward when taking into account offence, possession and penalty differential, which is a scary thought given that he is the highest paid Maple Leaf and will remain so for the foreseeable future.

Stay tuned for the next installment of Maple Leafs Advanced Stats Analysis featuring Leafs forward Leo ‘Corporal’ Komarov

– Brandon Finley

Don’t forget to like the Leafs Diary on Facebook!

Thanks to Behind The Net for compiling the Advanced Stats.

Thank you to War On Ice for the Bombay Scores

Legend:

Corsi Number = (Shots on Target For + Missed Shots For + Blocked Shots Against ) – (Shots on Target Against + Missed Shots Against + Blocked Shots For)

Corsi Relative = (Corsi Number of Player X) – (Corsi of Team with player X not on the ice)

On/Off Ice +/- = (On Ice +/- per 60 minutes) – (Off Ice +/- per 60 minutes)

Corsi Relative QoC = The weighted relative corsi of a player’s opposition