Through 16 games, the Devils have separated themselves from the pack when it comes to expected goals. They are crushing this analytical metric. But in the other popular metric, possession (Corsi), they are not, at all.
The New Jersey Devils have had a fairly strong last couple of weeks, managing to go 2-1-0 on their Western Canadian trip and putting up a strong performance against Montreal ahead of their tilt tonight against the Isles. It isn’t perfect, but it is enough to currently stand 2nd in the Metro and in a fine position a month into the season. There are plenty of things to work on for this team, but that can be said about basically every team in the league right now that doesn’t hail from Winnipeg. And the Jets will come back down to earth at some point too.
When looking at their performance to date, two of the easiest and quickest analytical metrics we always look at are possession, as measured by Corsi, and expected goals. These tell us if the team’s performance is truly good, if there is a nice helping of luck involved, or if perhaps the success is strictly limited to special teams, as these are of course 5 on 5 stats.
Well, when looking at these two stats so far, the Devils are doing quite well in one of them and very mediocre in the other. Expected goals, perhaps the more important one as it tries to show how well the team’s goal differential should actually be, is going great. Check out the chart of expected goals for versus against from MoneyPuck:
As you can see, the Devils have really separated themselves in this metric. You can argue, based on that graph, that they are basically as good as any team when you compare expected goals for and against. Perhaps Washington is a little better, and you can argue about Carolina, but that would be it. The Devils are doing really well in the combination of expected goals for and expected goals against. This bodes very well for maintaining a strong record and a top 3 position in the Metro throughout the season.
Another big stat that is talked about a lot in analytics is Corsi, or possession. Here, unlike expected goals, the Devils have not managed to separate themselves at all. They currently have a CF% in the red at 49.73%, so this makes sense. That is good for only 17th in the league and could be an issue. Of course, it is not mandatory to playing well, just look at the Rangers’ Corsi stats over the last half decade and compare it to their performances. However, that is more the exception, not the norm. Anyway, once again, check out MoneyPuck’s graph comparing Corsi For and Corsi Against:
So, the good news is that they are not particularly bad at possession. The graph has the Devils straddling the line between good and boring, right below the origin. But of course, they are not particular good either. You can see that Carolina has managed to separate itself in both expected goals and possession, the only team to do so. They are always analytical darlings, and that has not changed this year. Expect another playoff run from them. Colorado is sort of separated in both as well, but they have been struggling a little bit over the last couple of weeks, so they might fall back to the pack a little if that keeps up.
What it all means is that the Devils do have some good underlying numbers that could indicate sustained success throughout the season. We do not have to entirely fear regression back to mediocrity. But the possession numbers show that they are not doing this while tilting the ice against their opposition. The ice really isn’t tilted against them either, but they are not suffocating teams and are allowing them opportunities. This could bite them at some point, and it could really keep them from being one of the top teams in the Eastern Conference.
It will be interesting to see how these metrics change over the next month. It is a somewhat small sample size so far, only 16 games for NJ and less for every other team, so things might look somewhat different come December. Will they be able to improve on possession? Will they be able to maintain strong expected goals each game? If they can at least do the latter while getting league average goaltending, they should be fine almost regardless of possession. But if they start to play worse and expected goals falls back to the pack as well, that could become an issue. Only time will tell, but let’s just start with another win tonight!