Philadelphia Flyers Scoring Chance Summary: Games 1-11

On a game-by-game basis, scoring chance results provide an insight as to how the team played in that game. For example, a team can play well but lose and the scoring chances can illustrate that if a few bounces went their way, the outcome might have been different.

A scoring chance is recorded when an unblocked shot is taken from within the scoring chance zone, shown below, and thanks to a Vic Ferrari script, information about who was on the ice at that time is pulled from NHL.com and turned into a presentable chart.

While an individual games' scoring chance results can be interesting, the true power of this data is found over a large set of games. Scoring chances have been found to correlate strongly with Corsi, which is known to correlate with winning. Moreover, the information is collected from watching the game, which will hopefully convince the "saw him good" crowd of the usefulness of these data.

Of course, after saying this I have to add the caveat that eleven games isn't actually a very large sample size. At the team level, we could say that the Flyers are dominating chances in total and at even-strength, but this could be (and is) affected by a couple of very good games. At the player level, the sample size effect is even greater as the player having the most even-strength minutes is Matt Carle with 187.

Nonetheless, there is value in reviewing the data and seeing how the team has performed, and cautiously making predictions of future results.

Scoring chance zone

Total team chances

This table is shown from the Flyers perspective, so SH CF/CA indicates the totals while the opponent is on the powerplay.

• The Flyers are generating a greater number of chances than they are allowing, 58% in total and 57% at even-strength.
• They are good in the first period, great in the third and bad in the second (looking at even-strength chances).
• The powerplay has generated 49 chances from 54 opportunities. While I don't think it's unreasonable to expect one chance every powerplay, the Flyers powerplay tends to take a lot of shots from the point which generaen't counted as chances. Allowing only 1 shorthanded chance is good too
• The penalty kill has allowed 40 chances on 54 opportunities, as well as getting 10 chances of its own

Individual even-strength chances

ES TOI, even-strength time on ice; ES CF/CA, total even-strength chances for/against; chance%, percentage of chances for when on the ice ES C/60, number of even-strength chances per 60 minutes of ice time; SC +/- per 60, chances for-chances against per 60 minutes of ice time.

• The players at the top of the SC+/-per60 list are fairly unsurprising. Jagr, Giroux, Pronger and Carle are all +8 over 60 minutes.
  
• As a rookie, Sean Couturier stands out amongst the next group of players (I'm ignoring Nodl and Gus due to even smaller sample size). Him and Talbot have done a good job so far getting positive chances with 3rd/4th line minutes.
  
• Matt Read has been on the ice for the same number of chances for as against, despite playing mostly with forwards who are above the team average.
• Worse is Jakub Voracek and Andreas Lilja, who are both a -1 over 60 minutes.
  
• Rinaldo and Shelley are at the bottom, although neither have played a large number of minutes 

Individual total scoring chances

• Jaromir Jagr is good.
  
• JVR and Simmonds are taking shots from the right areas, hopefully they will start going in the net soon.
• Voracek has been on the ice for 33 total chances, 18 of which were by him.
  
• Hartnell has 11 chances and 4 goals.
  

Powerplay individual scoring chances for

Note: For the special teams section, the goalies and players with low TOI have been removed

PP TOI, powerplay time on ice; PP CF, total chances for; PP CF/2min, powerplay chances for over 2 minutes

•  The top unit is living up to its name, creating more chances than the collection of players used on the second unit.
• Seeing Timonen at the bottom is weird. I realise someone has to be there, I can't think why it would be him though.
  

Penalty kill individual scoring chances against

SH TOI, short-handed time on ice; SH CA, short-handed chances against, SH CA/2min, shorthanded chances against over 2 minutes

• Fairly interesting result here, with the players assumed to be the top penalty killers at the bottom of the list. I am guessing it is something to do with which of the opponents powerplay unit each PK unit faces, but without that information it's hard to say. Nonetheless, it's impressive to see Read and Couturier towards the top
• While it's not chance related, I think it's worthwhile noting that Couturier has more than twice as much time shorthanded as Giroux. Couturier and Talbot are being used extensively short-handed. 

That's all I have, though there are lots of interesting tidbits here that I haven't written about. I'd like to add that I'm open to input either on information presentation (I realise there are a lot of numbers in this post) or other things I could do with the data.