I was inspired by a piece at Pensburgh by GoPens!, looking at Giveaways and Takeaways for the Penguins the past season. So I've had a go at replicating that work for the Flyers.

Hartnell in his classic giveaway position

Extract from GoPens! article

The data below is for all on-ice situations (ES, PP, SH) because NHL.com only reports total numbers on the season.How do we look at who's the most effective in terms of giveaways and takeaways?

I think the first place to start is to develop a rate statistic, so that we're looking at giveaways and takeaways per 60 minutes of play. This will control for differences in ice time and allow us analyze all players on the same level. The next step should be to subtract giveaways/60 from takeaways/60. The reasoning is that getting a lot of takeaways means nothing if you're also giving the puck away a lot. The most effective players will minimize giveaways and maximize takeaways.

It is important to note at this stage that no comparisons should be made between the numbers for the Penguins and the Flyers numbers, because of rink scoring bias. What is recorded as a takeaway at Mellon Arena might not be a takeaway at Wachovia and vice versa. However, it is quite interesting to compare within a single team to see who is taking the puck away more than turning it over.

Now, I'm discussing this with fairly arbitrary cutoffs points of four for the top and bottom, mainly because all the numbers are so close.

The names at the top of the list are a bit erm; Darroll Powe, Carter, JVR (!!!!!!!1!!) and Asham. I honestly don't know what to say about that, other than surprised much? Powe and Asham are grinders doing their role, but Carter and especially JVR being so high was not expected. I checked and double checked, the numbers are right. Explanations welcome.

The names at the bottom are surprising as well because you've got goats of the season; Parent, Bartulis, Hartnell, Coburn, as well as Pronger and Carle. Following the game threads, a lot was said whenever one of the goats would turn it over, but I can't think of many times I read "Pronger gives it up again". Certainly, we need an improvement because the names in the bottom make up a big part of the defense for next season.

Having Mike (seriously, I don't feel right calling him Richards) in the negatives is also worrying. While he does carry the puck a lot leading to more turnover chances and he did take the puck away at a high rate too, I think it is not too much to expect a number closer to 0 in the difference column (or even better a positive).

Tidbits:

• Giroux gets a stick tap for having the highest TkA/60, and I can't help but wonder if most of his giveaways came from him not finding a linemate to pass to
• Timonen is the only defender to be in the positives, yet will continue to be criminally under-rated by everyone.
• Lappy and Betts played their roles pretty well. Take the puck away from the other team more than you give it to them.
• Briere came out of this a lot better than I thought he would tbh. 
• The forwards with limited ice time also didn't do too badly by these numbers (from a small sample size, mind you). 

I originally had the title as Flyers givers and takers, but decided to change it. If anyone wants to see playoff stats I can do that fairly easily.