Friday’s Hot Coals: Possession and scoring chances

While there hasn’t been much news on the Flames, there has been plenty of other hockey-related stories to follow. From stats to draft prep, there is a ton to keep your puck-related cravings at bay.

• Brian Cazeneuve had an interesting article at SI about the increasing focus on puck possession in the game today. For some reason though, he neglects to mention that possession-statistics do exist and have been rigorously validated.
• Kent Wilson had a response to the SI piece over at The Score with this post on the importance of possession-stats like Corsi, while questioning whether or not the GM’s interviewed were being a little coy in their responses.
• Speaking of possession and scoring chances, I found this post at Copper n Blue to on the scoring chances in Game 5 of the Sharks-Nucks series to be eye-opening. There is still not always a perfect correlation between shooting and scoring chances on a game-by-game basis.
• Finally, if you’re really eager to get your pre-draft prep done, head over to Hockey Prospectus and check out Corey Pronman’s top 100 draft prospects list along with all the more detailed articles explaining his ranking.

Hopefully the rain ends soon and we can all discuss this on a patio somewhere.

by Ryan Popilchak