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Calgary Flames

Statistical Summarization – CGY Vs MIN

A brief description of Corsi, a large criticism of the coaching, and spotlighting one of the worst performances from a player this year, buckle up while we break it down.

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To start of today’s advanced stats wrap up I’m going to briefly describe corsi to help the readers better understand just how bad the Flames actually played last night.

Corsi – Corsi includes all shot attempts made by a team/player in a game. This is shots on goal, all shots that missed the net (posts as well), and blocked shot attempts towards the opposition net. All those will add into a player’s and teams CF (corsi for). All those exact same things are also marked against a player contributing to a CA (corsi against). Largely contributed as a “possession” stat as it shows which team had the puck for most of the game, as it attributes to them getting the majority of the chances. 

With that explanation done, lets go ahead and breakdown the 2-1 Flames win against the Wild. All stats are at 5v5 play.

Corsi King – Only one line had a positive corsi game, and no D-man was above the 50% threshold. Andrew Mangiapane bounced back and had a 68.42 CF%, with Matthew Tkachuk (52.94%) & Elias Lindholm (52.63%) following behind. It’s worth noting that of all the reviews I’ve done so far, less than ½ have had Johnny Gaudreau & Sean Monahan in positive CF% numbers.

Corsi Clown – Derek Ryan, despite his nice tip goal, finished with only 8 CF and a big ol 22 CA. That equates to a 26.67%. Dube has also been down there again, I have questions about his defensive ability, but the more it happens the more i also want to question Geoff Ward’s current system as well. The Flames have been winning games, but more often than not they’re play a poor possession game with bad chance metrics and relying on goaltending to pull them through. This is why David Rittich’s struggles have been amplified, and Cam Talbots strong play has come through very noticeably.

Taken by Chance – 9 chances for, 3 chances against, Mangiapane came up as the leader this game. Later at the end of the review I will highlight a player that had literally ZERO scoring chances get directed towards the Minnesota WIld’s net while he was on the ice, that is bad.

xGF% – Mangiapane came, he ate his bread, and it didn’t exactly translate onto the score sheet. That was largely Alex Stalocks fault, with an honourable mention the Wild’s fast paced neutral zone transitions. Mang himself only had 1 high danger chance, but again that Lindy-Chucky-Pane line has been our most consistent, and best.

Game Flow

It started okay, and it usually does, but the second the Flames get a lead in the latter half of a game they go into ““protect” mode. It won the Kings the cup a couple times last decade, but without superb goaltending it tends to not get very far. I’m starting to think this is the Geoff Ward way.

Game Score – Finally, a section to talk about Cam Talbot. The guy straight up killed it last night. He faced an expected goals against of 3.5 and only let in Zuccarello’s early period chance, then stood tall. This needs to happen as the Flames system isn’t built to push play when they have a late lead. I’ll go on record and say i’m not a fan of it, but am a fan of the wins. Something needs to change though because if the Flames expected to make the playoffs and do something, this is not the way to play to go very far. Cam had a game score of 2.50 to blast past his season overage of -0.11

Shot Heatmap

Thank you again, Cam Talbot, for 2 points we didn’t deserve.

Player Spotlight – Zac RInaldo. He had the worst performance statistically from a Flames player that i’ve seen all year, and somehow got 10 mins of ice-time at even strength. WHY?!!? He had a literal 0% SCF% (Scoring CHance percentage) because 0 attempts went towards the opponents net when he was on the ice, for over 10 mins, at even strength. 11/13 shifts were on-the-fly ones, so  he stepped on the ice then got absolutely buried in his own zone. His CF% was 27.78%, not the worst, but none of the attempted corsi shots were classified as a scoring chance.

It was brutal, the 3 points in 5 games “shine” from earlier in the year has worn off, and while I’m glad we are accruing cap space now, there has to be a better option than this.

Flash’s Three Stars – 1) Cam Talbot 2) Andrew Mangipane 3) Elias Lindholm

(All stats compiled from NaturalStatTrick.com, Game score from HockeyStatCards.com)

by Shane Stevenson