Flames vs Canucks: All Joni Need is One (Stats Recap)

You can look at this game a few ways:

1. We won.
2. We won and Joni Ortio is amazing.
3. We need serious help despite the win.

Herein lies the problem: shot attempt generation and limited scoring among other things. Last night we were Buffalo Sabres bad.

Courtesy of HockeyStats.ca we have the lovely visuals you all know and love:

• Another game, another goal off the first shot attempt for the Flames. By that point, it was 10-1 in attempts for the Canucks giving the Flames a differential of -9. Not strong.
• By the end of the first, it was then a -13 differential for the Flames as the Canucks due to a few lulls in play, fighting penalties, and the Brad Richardson penalty slowed them down a bit.
• The single shot attempt at the beginning of the second period followed by lapses in overall attempts until a brief surge was one of two intervals of "sustained" play. Meanwhile the Canucks got back to form and continued for the most part of the Shelling of Ortio. I think I might make a Wikipedia page about this and frame it around some World War II event.
• Three shot attempts in all strengths to start the final period, followed by an almost expected boost of attempts within the last five minutes of play cap off a night were Miikka Kiprusoff's ghost possessed young Joni and allowed him to do the saving.

• This is worse to look at than Alex Burrows' face.
• Friendly reminder that Ortio is an AHL All-Star now after a shaky start at the beginning of the year and he bailed out the Flames.

Via NaturalStatTrick we have our period summaries (prepare to cry) and player data (prepare to cry more):

• What can you say about Mikael Backlund that we haven't already? He scores goals, kills penalties, drives possession, and well...just about does it all. If injuries hadn't have plagued him the last few years he might be even better than he is now. The point is: He's healthy and he's a legitimate benefit to this team.
• In ES situations, he matched up against the following players the most: Kevin Bieksa - 5:19, Shawn Matthias - 4:38, and Brad Richardson - 4:31. All of which he was a positive possession player; going 53.85% CF / 50% against Bieksa, 72.73% CF / 57.14% FF against Matthias, and 63.64% CF / 50% FF against Richardson. It doesn't stop there for Backlund's strong play. He was a positive FF% player against all but five players too. Insane.
• Of the Canucks he played against, he was 70%+  against three (Matthias, Frank Corrado, and Zack Kassian), 60%+ against three (Radim Vrbata, Richardson, and Alexander Edler), and 50%+ against six (Chris Higgins, Bieksa, Henrk Sedin, Luca Sbisa, Nick Nonino, and Daniel Sedin). Of the players he was below 50% CF, it only included Derek Dorsett, Hannik Hansen, Ryan Stanton, Bo Horvart, shitlord Alexandre Burrows, and Christopher Tanev. All of which besides Stanton had very limited sample sizes against.
• David Jones was the only other positive possession player in terms of CF% and FF%. In terms of who he was with; it was predominately Johnny Gaudreau and Backlund. Gaudreau was stolen away from his father for this game and I'm sure it impacted the team.
• Jones didn't have as strong of a game as Backlund but it's important to find some positives here. He was most successful against Matthias (75% CF / 60% FF), Kassian (75% CF / 60% FF), and Corrado (71.43% CF / 100% FF). Worst match-ups? Hansen (16.67% CF / 25% FF), Dorsett (20% CF / 33.33% FF), and Horvat (20% CF / 33.33 FF).
• Gaudreau was the third most successful last night despite he and Jiri Hudler's separation. I'm not sure what Bob Hartley was trying to prove by doing this but I'm not an NHL coach. Though if I was, I think I could do a better job with lines than Hartley. Gaudreau was most successful against Kassian (70% CF / 50% FF), Burrows (66.67% CF / 75% FF), and Corrado (57.14% CF / 66.67% FF). This game featured some of his most difficult starts to date and he fared better than he might have at the beginning of the year.
• Continuing with the thought on zone starts, they do have impacts though limited at times; and often it depends on a variety of factors like FO win/loss, composition of players on ice, play off the FO, was the puck iced?, and etc. This game forced the Flames to spend much more time than usual in their own zone The only remotely positive OZS% comes from Brandon Bollig. No surprise there.
• The Flames blueline woes continue with depth problems of driving possession. When Kris Russell is 18-38 for 32.14% CF% / 10-25 for 28.57% FF we have issues. When Dennis Wideman is 38.30% CF and 37.04% FF we have problems. When our final pairing is even lower? Brad Treliving needs to do something. Having Mark Giordano and TJ Brodie play constantly insane starts, competition, and still be the only driving forces on the blueline isn't the best way to keep this team going.
• That said, another night of heavy lifting and being murdered for Gio and Brodie. The very fact that their Corsi Rel (SMALL SAMPLE) was positive shows just how important they are to the team. Meanwhile Deryk Engelland and Raphael Diaz had their legs broken and were left for dead.

War on Ice has been a crazy great resource for a lot of this data, among other sites like Hockey Stats and Natural Stat Trick. Below you'll see an example of what they've been doing for game data:

Legend: M - Missed, B - Blocked, S - Shot, G - Goal

That way we can illustrate some more perspectives on performance overall. Also I'm looking for some more feedback from you folks on this stuff. I know a lot of the community isn't big on the stats stuff, but there is a growing voice in the Flames fanbase for more of this stuff.

We've had a lot of feedback and positive words about how we're becoming the defacto place for stats writing on the Flames; and I can't speak for Ari but we're extremely grateful for that. We want to provide the best stats analysis we can so I've included a poll as well as I encourage you guys to comment here or on Facebook about any stats digging you may want to see.

If you're a newer reader and you want a more basic stats primer developed for the site, it may even happen so we can get you all up to speed. Though there are tons of stats primers online, it may be time we do our own. Remember if you have any suggestions (within reason, so don't be dicks) we'll consider it!