NJ Devils Scoring Chances: Weekly Post: Part 1: Introduction

Welcome, to your new weekly Wednesday feature- Devils scoring chance results! A great many ILWT readers are already fully savvy on what is a scoring chance and why it is an important tool. If this applies to you, feel free to skip forward two paragraphs. Everyone else: I understand you may have heard of the elusive creature known as a "Scoring Chance", but perhaps never seen one in its natural habitat. Well, just very quickly, for those of you not familiar - there is a zone that looks exactly like the home plate area seen below:

Any clean (not blocked) shooting attempt that occurs from within this zone, whether it be on goal, off the post, wide of the net, high into the glass, into the seats, counts as a scoring chance. It doesn't reward the luck of the action (goal, miss, save), but rather the quality of the opportunity. It goes to reason that if your team or player are consistently creating lots of opportunities from this area, its a good sign for the future success of your team. And, it obviously also goes to reason that giving up a lot of opportunities from inside the scoring chance zone bodes very poorly for the future success of your team. Every player who is on the ice at the time of the scoring chance is logged, and a +/- is created for all players and the team over the course of a game, and ultimately, season. The events are broken down by situation (5v5, 5v4, 4v5, etc), so you can see who created more than they gave up, ultimately, over the course of a season.

Okay, having gotten that out of the way, lets proceed to what these and future Wednesday posts will entail. Specifically, results from 2 - 4 Devils games; some from the distant past, some that have just occurred over the course of the past week. Ultimately, a compiled +/- rating over the course of a half season and season for all players and the team. We are mercilessly far behind at this point. Never fear, however. If an elderly man such as myself could even develop a limited framework of moderately unviewable charts to track such data using what I now understand to be known as a "computer", anything can happen.

To delve into the details of these moderately unviewable charts, please click on them. They will appear in a separate window in a very much viewable form. The first chart for all games will be simply a list of all the scoring chances. It will indicate who was the shooter, and then will list the result of the action (goal, save, miss), and the number of every player on the ice at the time.

The second chart will provide the breakdown of how many chances for and against (+/-) each player was on the ice for during the game. It will have totals for the team also. Totals for the team and player will be broken down by even strenth (5v5, 4v4), power play (5v4, etc.), and shorthanded (4v5, etc). In general, please at least glance at these in passing to get a great sense of who gets job done, and Bryce Salvador. (He actually wasn't that bad in these particular games. But, trust me. You'll see.)

Today's premiere will feature two Islanders games from much earlier in the season.

2/16/13 Devils at Islanders

1/31/13 Islanders at Devils

Questions about anything scoring chance related are greatly encouraged, and all will be answered as soon as I can locate my bifocals. Comments are encouraged too. Perhaps moreso, because they require no response from me. Just kidding. I greatly look forward to all of our future scoring chance discussions.