There’s a misconception about how you earn or don’t earn good possession numbers that’s perpetuated every time some under-read guy with airtime or column inches to fill starts blathering. A surprisingly large number of people think that NHL coaches are so dumb that they think they can just shoot from anywhere and win because of the Corsis. Smart coaches – which is pretty much all of them, despite their foibles – aren’t thinking in those terms. They’re thinking about how to do things that they believe will maximize their chances of winning games. Generally speaking, those things line up with producing good possession numbers, which is why possession numbers work as an indicator of teams that are likely to be more or less successful in the future.



This isn’t to say that some teams don’t play in a way that makes their Corsi% a bit misleading, although I don’t think is becuase of stupid coaches. It’s an...