Detroit Red Wings: An Early Look Into The Analytics

The Detroit Red Wings top line has been one of the more consistent storylines early on in the season, but there are some other notable takeaways from looking at the analytics for the forwards.

Corsi (CF):

As many would guess, Anthony Mantha leads the Detroit Red Wings in Corsi with Tyler Bertuzzi shortly behind him, followed by none other than Dylan Larkin. Besides the top line, Darren Helm sits near the top of the list, with a 51.4 CF% relative to 46.1 CF% of the team. Another bottom-six forward, Justin Abdelkader, is the next highest forward at 46.8 CF% for the Red Wings.

At the bottom of the list is Christoffer Ehn and Luke Glendening, both boasting CF% more than 13% lower than the team 46.1 CF%. Andreas Athanasiou has posted a 35.9 CF%, which shows how he has not been the same dominant player that he has been in the past.

The Detroit Red Wings brought in center Valtteri Filppula to be able to move Athanasiou to the winger position and put Taro Hirose on the other side of him. In reality, Athanasiou has been centering the second line, and coach Jeff Blashill needs to notice that this is having a direct impact on his point production as well as how much the Red Wings can control play with him on the ice.

PDO (A measure of luck):

The forward that leads the way in terms of “luck” this season for the Detroit Red Wings is Jacob de la Rose with a 108.8% PDO, which is well above the 100% standard rating. Necessarily, the average would be 100%, a PDO rating above 100 implies the player is “luckier,” and a rating below 100% would mean the player has less luck.

Something that needs to be noted is that after de la Rose, the entire top line is the next highest forwards, with whom all of them have PDO ratings above 100%. There is some middle to bottom-six forwards that also received PDO ratings above 100% as well. The unlucky majority of the group in terms of PDO is Adam Erne, Ehn, and Athanasiou. The thing to point out, in this case, is Athanasiou and Ehn appearing at the bottom again.

Zone Starts (oZS% and dZS%):

The offensive zone starts are essential to identify which players Blashill is deploying for ice time in the offensive zone rather than the defensive zone. Coincidentally, two of the lowest-ranked players in terms of PDO, Erne, and Athanasiou were the top two forwards in offensive zone start % (oZS%) for the Red Wings. Vice versa, it is de la Rose who was deployed the most in the defensive area, his dSZ% is 81.3% for the Red Wings so far.

The bottom six forwards populate the rest of that list for players who were deployed in the defensive zone more than the offensive zone, which genuinely does not say a whole lot.

Mostly, it follows the traditional ideals that your bottom-six guys are the defensive players whom you’d expect to see in the defensive zone grinding it out.