Ducks Flameday -- Players and team success

Calgary Flames (12-15-2) at Anaheim Ducks (14-13-4), 7 pm
Matchsticks and Gasoline and Anaheim Calling -- blog brothas.

Boy it's been a busy week -- even though I'm now back a second time from Vegas, I've got quite a bit to accomplish today.  That's why today's post is so late and why it's atypically picture-less, and I'll even admit -- I haven't read either of the last posts from Meg or Rudy yet.

But overall, working has been going pretty well -- I think I'm kicking ass in what's been a rushed project (though now it's been extended into January), and even though it's been a while since I worked a regular workday, that hasn't been a huge issue for me yet.  The work itself has been pretty good, too -- I'm an ace with spreadsheets when called upon, and I'm getting plenty of opportunity to show that off.

So it's perhaps ironic that in order to take a break from all the spreadsheet work, I decided to create a quick-and-dirty spreadsheet about the Ducks this season.  What I've done is looked at what games individual players played in, and totaled up how the Ducks did in those games.  It's not the most meaningful measure of a player by any means -- sometimes guys just show up during lucky times and others appear during unlucky stretches -- but it's not meaningless either.  Players can contribute to team success.  Do be a bit critical when reading this table, as it's not always the case that a statistic will be relevant to a player -- Curtis McElhinney has very little to do with the team's power play success, and Teemu Selanne doesn't particularly affect its penalty kill percentage, for example.

Here's the table; players are sorted by the team's winning percentage when they are in the lineup:

Anaheim Ducks' Record with Player in the Lineup

Left out of this table are the Ducks who have appeared in 31 games -- Ryan Getzlaf, Corey Perry, Bobby Ryan, and Saku Koivu -- plus also the players who have appeared in 30 -- Jason Blake, Todd Marchant, George Parros, Lubomir Visnovsky, and Paul Mara.  Their results won't be meaningfully different from the "Everyday Guys" line.

Now I'm busy enough that I won't write too much on the results -- you can judge for yourself about what's in there, and discuss the results or the problems with the methodology in the comments.  Or feel free to theorize or explain why you think a particular player is very high or very low on this list -- is it a matter of luck or actual contribution?

I also took a look at shot differential in games players played in -- though that's kind of a depressing exercise, as the Ducks have been outshot by 189 shots this season.  Nobody has played in a combination of games where the Ducks have actually outshot their opponents.

Anaheim Ducks' Shooting Results with Player in the Lineup

Dan Sexton has the best showing here, and that makes some sense, as the Sex Offender is a shoot-first kind of player.  On the other end of the spectrum, though, by a fairly wide margin, sits Curtis McElhinney.  Poor guy.  It could be that he's a rebound machine, but that's tough to see -- his teammates should try to play some hockey in front of him once in a while.

Anyways, I have to get back to the day job for a while, but again -- discuss whatever you want in the comments.

Prediction: I'm watching tonight's game on DVR delay, so don't text me any score updates, Spade!  Ducks 3, Flames 2.  Goals by Teemu, Sbisa, and Beleskey.

Go Ducks.