Today we’re gonna take a look at which bottom-six forwards in the NHL are helping keep their team above board and which top-six forwards are sinking their team. We’ll break it down using on-ice stats.
Breaking down on-ice stats
A quick introduction to on-ice stats, which feature heavily in this article. On-ice stats are team stats taken only when a specific player is on the ice. For example, when Connor McDavid is on the ice and Zach Hyman scores a goal, that is counted as a goal for. When he is on the ice and the opposing team scores, that’s a goal against. However, none of the goals scored while McDavid is off the ice have any weight on his on-ice stats.
Goals For percentage (GF%) for Connor McDavid is calculated as GF/(GF+GA), but only the goals that are scored while he is on the ice count. In that way, the purpose is to see how well the team does while he is one the ice. If you have a GF% over 50%, it means your team scores more goals than your opponent does while you’re on the ice. Obviously, that’s a good thing. The same stat can be taken for Shots For Percentage (SF%), Corsi For Percentage (CF%),which is shot attempts, and many other things.
Team dependency for on-ice stats
One of the first things you’re going to notice about these graphs is that there’s quite a bit of team dependency. Carolina and Colorado dominate in the world of Corsi. Nobody on the Carolina Hurricanes nor the Colorado Avalanche who played any real amount of time had a CF% under 50. So naturally, it’s not surprising to see a lot of bottom six Colorado and Carolina players on this graph. Did that individual player earn it? Or are they being propped up by their line mates? And in the name of early Montreal Canadiens great Odie Cleghorn, who is propping up who?
This is the number one criticism of on-ice stats: that they are too team dependent to tell anything about an individual player. That is absolutely true. Hockey is, in my opinion, more of a team-based game than any other, maybe with the exception of soccer. The thing about hockey though is that it is so fast paced and unpredictable that mistakes and turnovers are very common. No one player has any hope in completely controlling the game.
Those factors make it so that even when a player is executing the exact correct play, as perfectly as is possible, it can lead to a turnover and a bad situation. When those things happen, you need to be able to rely on your team to bail you out. If they don’t, then your on-ice stats suffer; if they do, then your on-ice stats are saved.
That was the driving force behind my idea to look at which top-six players, guys who are playing with great hockey players, have poor on-ice stats. As well as which bottom-six players, guys who are playing with a lower calibre of players, have solid on-ice stats.
I have assigned each team’s top 12 forwards in 5v5 ice-time to be a top-six or bottom-six forward. I placed the top-six forwards with 5v5 CF% and 5v5 GF% below 50%, and the bottom-six forwards with 5v5 CF% and 5v5 GF% above 50% on their respective graphs. CF% is on the x-axis and GF% is on the y-axis. There are some forwards who could only really be considered middle-six forwards that I did not include on either graph.
Without further ponderous rumination, or perhaps ruminous ponderation, here are the bottom-six forwards who put up good on-ice stats.
The bottom-six heroes
There are some players here that may not be considered bottom-six players, but I wouldn’t have placed them here if they didn’t spend significant time in a bottom-six role last regular season.
Again, you probably notice that there are a lot of Carolina and Colorado players, which reflects those teams high skill level and style of play, but they are still true bottom-six forwards putting up good numbers. Guys like Mark Jankowski, A.J. Greer, William Carrier, and Joel Kiviranta are putting up great numbers.
The player that impresses me the most though is Kailer Yamamoto. He is the only Utah player on the list which means he is putting up good numbers even while his linemates are putting up poorer numbers, and he played a true bottom-six role last year.
Other players that impressed were Noah Ostlund as he is still very young, Corey Perry as he is still very old, and Ben Kindel as he is young and playing on a non-playoff team.
Now here are the bottom-six forwards who put up poor on-ice stats.
The top-six forwards with low on-ice stats
The names that run together on this graph are Morgan Frost, Alex Iafallo, Brad Marchand, Emmitt Finnie, Pavel Buchnevich, Owen Tippet, Vincent Trocheck, and Will Cuylle.
What I noticed while doing this is that this was a far more team dependent graph. Vancouver, Chicago, Toronto, and Calgary, the 32nd, 31st, 28th, and 29th placed teams respectively, all have a good amount of names on here. That is mostly to be expected as they are rebuilding teams whose top lines are mostly filled with young guns and would be bottom-six players on other teams.
Some surprises and tough looks though are Elias Pettersson ($11.6M per year), Ryan Nugent-Hopkins (second line centre on an offensive powerhouse), and John Tavares and William Nylander (big name players on a team that was not purposely rebuilding last year). In the end though, I found the bottom six graph to be more exciting and revealing.
