On Individual Point Percentage: What is it? Why does it matter? And how can we incorporate it into player analysis? http://t.co/rMjbDmeNk0 — Travis Yost (@travisyost) August 25, 2015

Another metric I like to look at is 'Individual Point Percentage' ("IPP"), which shows how frequently a player was awarded a point in an event his team (a) scored; and (b) the player was on the ice. Much like our on-ice save percentage example for defencemen, IPP regresses substantially towards league averages. On average, forwards usually receive a point on about 68 per cent of goals scored when they are on the ice. That number sits at about 30 per cent for defencemen.



Context is key: we simply can't treat all players as equals in a hockey vacuum. Sidney Crosby (84.8 per cent) and Erik Karlsson (49.4 per cent) lead career IPP and it's not a fluke – they're constantly involved in the run of play, and as such, pick up extra points along the way. If we want to identify outliers, we must first observe strong deviations from the league norms, and then observe strong deviations from a player's career norms.

Yesterday Travis Yost of TSN wrote about the stat IPP. IPP stands for Individual Point Production.Travis explains this stat in his articleIn the TSN article the example used was Jiri Hudler. The Calgary Flames forward had a terrific season last year on the points front but his IPP also shot sky high. Hudler was hovering around the 90% mark (remember league average is 68%). This was a career high mark for Hudler and considering the variance involved with this metric one would think it would come down closer to league average in the future.As Yost mentions that doesn't take away from his 2014-15 season but using IPP regression can help in forecasting future performance decline like in Hudler's case.How does this pertain to the Pittsburgh Penguins?Chris Kunitz.As we can see last year was by far his worst year in the IPP department. If this is indeed a variance inflicted statistical measure one would think that Chris Kunitz's IPP will not stay in that woeful 51.2 level he was at in 2014-15.Chris Kunitz was a possession monster for the Penguins last year but his offensive contributions were minimal for what his role was. For those still holding out hope that Chris Kunitz can be an effective left winger for Sidney Crosby or Evgeni Malkin IPP is another measure that points to Kunitz staring at a bounceback season in 2015-16.If Kunitz sees a bump in his shooting percentage and IPP he will once again put up the offensive numbers he has in the past during his Pittsburgh Penguins tenure.Thanks for reading!Follow me on twitter Follow @GunnerStaal