SAN JOSE — Ten Sharks have more points than Matt Nieto this season, but traditional categories such as scoring are only part of the stats picture in the modern NHL.

These days, puck possession is all the rage and it’s measured in multiple categories with quirky names. And by one of those new standards, no Sharks player — no player in the NHL, in fact — is better than Matt Nieto, even if he doesn’t know his Corsi from his Fenwick.

“It’s good to hear when someone says that I have positive numbers in those categories,” Nieto said, “but I still don’t really know the definitions.”

Hold that thought.

Players might not yet be immersing themselves in the new stats just yet, but the metrics revolution has reached the rink. Like baseball, which has created acronym-heavy categories such as WAR or WHIP to gauge a player’s value, NHL teams have reassessed the way they slice and dice all measurable aspects of the game.

“A year or so ago, I used to say that maybe a third of the teams are heavily into analytics, a third of them are kicking the tires, a third aren’t doing anything,” said Timo Seppa, the editor-in-chief of the “Hockey Prospectus” reference book.

Sharks at forefront

Now, the buy-in is greater, he said, as more teams have added staff or brought in outside consultants.

The Sharks, according to Seppa, have been among the teams most involved in advanced stats for years. Others include the Los Angeles Kings, Pittsburgh Penguins and Chicago Blackhawks. And, yes, all of those teams have been among the NHL elite.

“It’s been simplistic to say that they’re successful because of analytics,” Seppa said, “but I think it’s in the mix of why they’ve been successful.”

Other teams such as the New Jersey Devils, Toronto Maple Leafs, Edmonton Oilers and Florida Panthers have now jumped on board.

“What’s driven them?” said Seppa, who has consulted for two NHL teams. “Is it the GM? Is it ownership nudging the G.M. and saying it’s time to do this? I don’t know what the reason is, but it’s noteworthy that teams I consider old-school were at the forefront of hires.”

General manager Doug Wilson says the Sharks have been true believers for the past five or six years.

“It’s a part in the process that I think is of value — it might not be first or the second, but it’s certainly part and it enhances our decision-making process,” Wilson said. “Having as much information as possible when you are making decisions, to me is a smart approach.”

Those decisions involve everything from drafting players to making trades to offering contract extensions. The data also can help on coaching decisions, such as determining which player should take a critical defensive zone faceoff.

Now, back to those definitions.

Corsi — the stat named after goalie coach Jim Corsi — provides the foundation of hockey analytics and tracks all shot attempts, not just those on net. During his time on staff with the Buffalo Sabres and now the St. Louis Blues, Corsi also charted the number of blocked shots and those that go high or wide, information available for years, but rarely compiled. That total, advocates say, provides a better idea which team and which players spend the most time in the offensive zone.

Fenwick, another building block of analytics, excludes blocked shots from the Corsi data. Alberta blogger Matt Fenwick, who came up with the variation, says that is a better predictor of future performance, and he’s not alone.

But nothing is really that simple. To be really useful, those numbers have to be crunched in a variety of ways to reflect ice time, zone play, linemates and more — information available to those who invest the time and effort.

Nieto tops charts

Sticking with the basic Corsi, Nieto not only leads the Sharks, but his 60.0 Corsi percentage — the number of shots the Sharks attempt when he is on the ice compared to the opposition — is the best in the league among players with more than 300 minutes ice time.

No one would make the case that Nieto is the best player in the NHL, but the stat does show that he spends more of his ice time in the offensive zone than others even if only by a small margin. On the other hand, Joe Thornton’s 59.2 Corsi percentage does bolster the case he is among the NHL’s best overall.

All that, however, only scratches the surface of what both devotees and critics refer to as “fancy stats.”

One stat tracks the number of times a player carries the puck into the offensive zone rather than dumping it in. Another combines a team’s save percentage and shooting percentage to come up with something called PDO, a number held in high esteem because it is said to factor in luck.

Different statisticians are also developing formulas similar to baseball’s WAR — “wins against replacement” — to determine a player’s ultimate worth relative to others.

One version — called GVT (“goals versus threshold”) by “Hockey Prospectus” — uses goals as the measuring stick to establish a player’s value in comparison to a replacement available from the minors or waiver wire. And looking at GVT, Joe Pavelski was the No. 2 player in the NHL last season, right behind Pittsburgh’s Sidney Crosby and just ahead of Anaheim’s Corey Perry and Ryan Getzlaf.

“People would obviously say he’s a very good player,” Seppa said of Pavelski, “but I think some people would be surprised that he came up that high last year.”

While it’s easy to be overwhelmed by numbers, each team then decides which player traits are most important and which stat most accurately reflects that.

Wilson won’t go into any of that, saying he considers it to be “intellectual property.” But he did indicate assistant general manager Joe Will plays a role in the process and, at times, outside consultants have been used.

One of Wilson’s amateur scouts, Brian Gross, provided some insights in a May 2013 Edmonton radio interview later transcribed by Fear the Fin, a Sharks-oriented blog.

“We have made a real big change in the last two years in how we identify players, how we grade them and we’re moving even farther ahead of that,” Gross said. “For people in the NHL, probably Corsi is used almost exclusively for NHL players. We’re using Corsi for junior players.”

That, according to Seppa, would put the Sharks at the forefront of the movement.

Not ‘be-all, end-all’

Wilson acknowledged the Sharks might have home-ice advantage when it comes to advanced stats.

“We do live in the Silicon Valley and we’ve got some very bright people we’ve been able to utilize. I work for a company that has some great technology and platforms that are very powerful,” he said, referring to Sharks owner Hasso Plattner, co-founder of business software giant SAP.

Seppa said analytics can lead to systems known as “moneypuck” — hockey’s version of “Moneyball,” the term used to describe A’s general manager Billy Beane’s stats-driven method to find bargains in the marketplace.

Wilson doesn’t go that far.

“I’m not going down that path,” he said. “I’m not being disrespectful to it, but baseball’s different. Each team has to apply it to their specific sport.”

Sharks coach Todd McLellan understands the new stats and recognizes that some have value. But he doesn’t buy all the attention they get in some circles.

“The best analytics that we have are our eyeballs,” he said. “Analytics can’t become the be-all and end-all. They can’t become the lazy way of doing things. It still has to be the work, it has to be watching.”

He also finds some of the statistical breakdown flawed and notes that important qualities in a hockey player cannot be quantified.

“How do you measure hard work?” the coach asked.

Seppa, the advanced stats expert, tries to keep things in perspective.

“I think the game gets dull if you just look through the lens of numbers only,” he said. “But if you’re watching the game and the analytics are illuminating how you watch the game, I think that’s great.”

For more on the Sharks, see David Pollak’s Working the Corners blog at blogs.mercurynews.com/sharks. Follow him at twitter.com/@PollakOnSharks.