What’s the best way to increase Team Puck Possession numbers?

[oldnews]

22 hours ago, appleboy said:

Possession starts with your defense. If you have a really bad defense then you will have bad numbers. Beagle is great at holding the puck along the walls. If that is what you call possession. 

Hard to say if you're serious or not, so I'll try to answer as if you are.

 

The idea that "possession" starts with your defense is oversimplified / reductive.

 

Possession only starts with your "defense" if you've lost the faceoff - otherwise it starts with Jay Beagle.

 

'Possession' is 'accumulated' when you're in possession - so half of possession is "offense".  When you're not in 'possession' - that is when it 'starts' with defense - once the opposition's 'possession' has ended.

 

I'm assuming by "defense" you mean "defensemen" but forwards play defense - the entire team plays "defense"  - Beagle plays defense - Beagle ends opposition possession. 

 

I have no idea what you're on about "holding the puck along the walls" -  I think it's sarcasm - but would be more effective imo if there were some more depth to your one liner concept of "possession".   Yes - holding the puck along the walls - that is 'possession' - that's a great working definition - and that's what makes Beagle such a good possession player.  "Possession" being shot diffential, obviously not shooting and holding the puck on the walls would significantly enhance his 'possession' numbers,  Not sure why I never thought of that.

[oldnews]

20 hours ago, Salacious Crumb said:

Not to 100% disagree with you but not all posters are as optimistic as @apollo and the contrarians do bring some good things to the forum.

 

If we all drank the blue and green koolaid this place would be pretty vanilla and boring quite quickly.

 

I do appreciate your research and stats and ability to debate with other posters whilst I mostly lurk and learn.

I thought we were talking about Botchford and Paterson - and then the smarmy and Yosts analyticz gooroos - I wasn't referring to "posters" - I didn' think that conversation was about this forum or 'contrarians...   I don't expect people here to inform themselves - that's their prerogative - and I don't care whether or not they drink koolaid or what colour it is if they do.

When it comes to 'professional' mouthpieces though, the bar is exceedingly low, unfortunately.

[oldnews]

9 hours ago, Maniwaki Canuck said:

Agree very much:  shots are a poor proxy for possession.  Corsi and all derived numbers are based on this really flawed equivalence.  In soccer, they actually measure time of ball possession for each team.  While that has its challenges too, it's a lot closer to the mark. 

I think the point becomes even more relevent when you're talking about the truly prolific puck possession players - and on the other end of the spectrum, the high end shutdown/matchup guys.

The Sedins for example probably actually possessed the puck as much as any pair of players in the league - or certainly close to it.  They may not have had the best possession numbers in the end - or relative to their deployment - but they were notorious for their high percentage of pass completions between each other, their cycling, pitch and catch - and were also relatively notorious for making another pass - or two - when the vast majority of players would have taken a shot.  For some folks, that was to a frustrating extent - but part of the beauty of it was that they could relatively neutralize opponent's superior speed using their two principal strengths:  they could move the puck at an elite level - and the puck moves faster than any skater, so by playing pitch and catch they reduced the deficit of their footspeed.   Additionally, their conditioning was also elite, so as they moved and moved the puck, cycled and cycled - they wore on opponents - and midway through their shifts they'd often relativel sapped the energy of defenders - who'd lose a step, and not only might not be able to sustain as well as the Sedins, but if they got caught in the trap of chasing the Sedins, they could wind up actually with less footspeed as well.... In which case they are gassed, the Sedins are playing keepaway, and their energy isn't diminishing anytime soon.

If that aspect of the game were measured - the actual possession time - then those infamous shifts where they are possessing and possessing the puck - their 'possession' numbers probably would have been that much better, regardless of the fact that they weren't particularly good defensive players.   Part of the problem with +/- is that people tend to believe it indicates a two-way player when those numbers are strong, or a poor defensive player when those numbers are heavily in the negative column -neither of which is necessarily true.

[MikeyD]

This team is too afraid to make mistakes. That's the crux of why we aren't a possession team. Too afraid to give it away in our end so we chip it out, too afraid to get caught being tired, so we get lazy when we dump it in and we literally have zero forechecking and allow an easy exit out of their end (this has been our biggest problem since AV left), too afraid to reset the play because then we might cough it up in the neutral zone. 

 

First and foremost we can't be doing full line changes on dump ins. Teams make us work to get out of our end, but we never reciprocate. This team used to be a heavy forechecking team with guys like Hansen, Burrows, Kesler, Malhotra, Torres, etc. and now who do we have? It's sad when Biega is one of your better forecheckers. He forechecks more often than the forwards do. Motte used to hunt the defense down, but he stopped doing that, which is why we liked him on the team out of camp. Pettersson forechecks, but he doesn't get any support from Boeser and his other winger when doing so. Beagle doesn't seem to do it much anymore either. We have a whole bunch of defensive forwards, yet none of them are tenacious anymore. Has to be a systems thing. Otherwise these guys aren't playing as hard as they should be for 12 minutes a night. Virtanen, Motte, Beagle, Sutter, Schaller, Eriksson, etc. should all be excelling at that job yet how many of us can say they're consistently good at it? We have Biega, Horvat and Pettersson (and maybe one else?) that was can say consistently forechecks. Not good enough. It's one of the most important aspects of the game and for years we have failed to do so and we wonder why we put up awful offensive numbers. You capitalize on mistakes, but you can capitalize if you're not forcing the other team to make any. 

[-AJ-]

Just now, oldnews said:

I haven't compared these metrics on a linear basis - and I'm not sure what you mean by zone starts moving more liberally than corsi (there tend to be fewer zone start 'event's than corsi events, so in a smaller sample there may be more variance, but over the course of a season zone starts are a pretty good indication of a coaches' intent / how they utilize a player - and that is absolutely fundamental to making any relative sense of corsi - while there are a whole range of additional factors.

Sorry,  I should've been more clear. Players are more likely to have zone stats of 30% or 70% than corsi. You'd almost never see corsis that extreme, but you might sometimes see some starts that extreme (Sutter, Gaunce, and the Sedin twins, for example).

[oldnews]

17 minutes ago, -AJ- said:

Sorry,  I should've been more clear. Players are more likely to have zone stats of 30% or 70% than corsi. You'd almost never see corsis that extreme, but you might sometimes see some starts that extreme (Sutter, Gaunce, and the Sedin twins, for example).

Yes, zone starts can be more extreme, whereas even in those more weighted deployment, corsi gets relatively mitigated by neutral zone starts, the fact that shifts may originate in a zone, but transition from one to the other and back - and there being so many events, the fact that stoppages play less of a determinant role.  I think the relevence of zone starts is more as an indicator of deployment than as a hard determinant of 'possession' - although wih zone starts heavily weighted one way or the other, you have to expect a relative impact on corsi - it's just that it's not - as you say - a linear relation, but one with a number of other factors also involved.

[Pete M]

fix the "D", they will fix the puck possession numbers to the better. 

 

Offense starts with good defense, they need to improve the talent on "D" ....and not with old guys.

 

Trade for Fox

[SingleThorn]

10 hours ago, Pete M said:

Trade for Fox

The player that will be a UFA and has strongly indicated that NYRs will get first refusal ! Asset management at it's worst ! JB would be lynched !

[Pete M]

13 hours ago, SingleThorn said:

The player that will be a UFA and has strongly indicated that NYRs will get first refusal ! Asset management at it's worst ! JB would be lynched !

only if he wants to play for blue and green...lol

[mll]

1 hour ago, Pete M said:

only if he wants to play for blue and green...lol

He's from New York State and word is that he wants to stay on the east coast.

[Timråfan]

On 4/2/2019 at 4:39 PM, 189lb enforcers? said:

Don’t dump and chase, not even for a line change. 

You work so hard to gain possession. Why give it away? 

This is part of the modern era that I’ll never understand. 

That isn't modern era at all... Timrå played like that in the beginning of the nineties. 

Swedish commentators described it nowadays as NHL-style. 

 

[vannuck59]

The best way to increase the Canucks possession numbers is get a better coach. A better  defensive core would help as well.

[Timråfan]

4 hours ago, vannuck59 said:

The best way to increase the Canucks possession numbers is get a better coach. A better  defensive core would help as well.

And shove Utica away. Utica is only there to cement old school hockey. 

[oldnews]

6 hours ago, Timråfan said:

That isn't modern era at all... Timrå played like that in the beginning of the nineties. 

Swedish commentators described it nowadays as NHL-style. 

 

in fairness to the NHL - it's easier to achieve entries on ice that is 15 feet wider.

[oldnews]

43 minutes ago, Timråfan said:

And shove Utica away. Utica is only there to cement old school hockey. 

I'm not sure what you mean by that.

[Timråfan]

2 minutes ago, oldnews said:

in fairness to the NHL - it's easier to achieve entries on ice that is 15 feet wider.

And the players don't need to cover all that extra ice in NHL... In fairness to European players. 

[oldnews]

3 minutes ago, Timråfan said:

And the players don't need to cover all that extra ice in NHL... In fairness to European players. 

and that's the point. 

 

But there are plenty of "European players" in the NHL - so it's not about that.  It's NHL vs international ice.

 

It's easier to challenge entries in the NHL, on smaller ice - and therefore you see teams needing to mix it up - ie use dump and chase when they're being stood up at the blueline.

 

In "fairness to European players", it's difficult to do that on international ice,  so we won't criticize them for their inability to prevent entries.