ZONE FINISH
ZONE FINISH
If a shift started in the defensive zone then the player gets a plus, and a minus for starting in the other end of the rink. Also if your shift ends in the offensive zone you get a plus, and you get a minus if your shift ends at the bad end of the ice.
ZF AND SWINGING TO EQUILIBRIUM
hockey swings very hard towards its equilibrium – no player ever finishes in the defensive or offensive zone to the extremes that players are started in those zones by their coaches
The former clearly speaks to the impact of coaching, you start more in the offensive zone and you end up more in the offensive zone. Some people question this basic aspect of hockey, which is lunacy.
EXPECTED ZONE FINISH
we do know where the disc is both on the faceoff and at the whistle, and which players are on the ice for all such events. In what zone do coaches deploy their players, and in what direction do those players drive the subsequent play?
All players under study had an OZS% between 35% and 65%, with the low-end percentages representing the heavy lifting and the high-end consisting largely of offence-first guys and/or young guys being protected.
Interesting to note that, as a group, the guys below the 50% line also had heavier workloads in GP, in ATOI, and particularly in QualComp which weakens in lockstep with ZoneStarts. Funny that.
It clearly shows that the guys who start at the good end of the ice tend to be outscorers, while the guys starting out in their own end collectively come out on the short end of the scoreboard.
a positive correlation of 0.3 between OZS% and OZF%.
EXPECTED ZONE FINISH II
you have a loose idea of territorial control and coach usage, and the differential (coined “Zone Shift” by Ferrari) gives you a glimpse of whether the player is moving the puck in the right direction.
As Gabe’s noted in the past, Zone Starts vis-à-vis Finishes pull hard to 50%, so anyone starting at 40% in the O-Zone is far more likely to finish with a positive Zone Shift, and anyone starting at 60% in the O-Zone is far more likely to finish with a negative Zone Shift.
BALANCED ZONE STARTS
Balanced Zone Shifts (BZS) and aims to look at how good players are at moving the play from the defensive end to the offensive end.
see whether you do better or worse than other players used the same way.
BZS is a nice way to see who outperforms their similarly-used peers – who’s doing particularly well in the role they’ve been given
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