When I resurrected Chris Hollis’ Common Sense Scoring Index last season, I had no idea what I was getting myself into, nor did I have any idea how satisfying the project would be at the end of the season. Thanks to all of the commenters and emailers who helped with the game-by-game ratings, we were able to accomplish an excellent scoring system which would allow us to say with confidence which of the Red Wings‘ players were pulling their weight and which were more detrimental to the squad.
Going forward, we’ve got a slew of improvements to the index. First and foremost, instead of tallying them up at the end of the season, we will have a running tally of the subcategories which lead to total adjustments. Both points and plus/minus adjustments will have complete breakdowns laying who is doing what and how. Those categories are laid out below. Each recap will have by-game ratings and will include a season running tally.
More important than that, the stats themselves will be housed at HockeyCSSI.com. Thanks to the programming work done by ChuckyD, these stats will not only be corrected for the context of the game, but also included in the context of each player’s total ice time, tracked exhaustively and able to be cross-referenced with any number of other statistics. Want to know how many of Holmstrom’s screener’s assists happen on power plays as opposed to 5-on-5? We’ll be able to show you that. Want to know which players shift it on and assist on their own goals when the Wings are trailing? That won’t be hard to look up either at HockeyCSSI.com.
Keep reading for the categories.
Points Adjustments:
| Screener’s Assist | Given to a player whose body position prevented a goaltender from seeing a puck to make a save. | ||
| Third Assist | Given to a player judged to be the third person in a play worth of earning an assist for a goal. | ||
| Fourth Assist | Given to a player judged to be either fourth or fifth in a play worth of earning an assist. | ||
| Self-Assist | Awarded to a player judged to have made an assist-worthy play on a goal he scored himself. | ||
| Non-Touch Assist | These are given to a player who, by positioning, prevented a player from the other team from being able to make a play to prevent a goal being scored. | ||
| Bonus Assist | Awarded to a player on a play which has been judged that, by its virtue, is special enough to warrant giving the same player more than one assist on the same goal. | ||
| Assist Lost | Designed to keep track of times when an official assist has been taken from a player due to context. | ||
| Goal Credit | Designed to track goals awarded or lost due to the context of a scoring play. |
Plus/Minus Adjustments:
| Goal-Scored Plus | These are plus ratings awarded to a player when it was deemed that a defensive contribution he made on the ice (whether by starting or preventing transition) helped lead directly to a goal. | ||
| Coverage Minus | Given to a player who made a mistake in defensive coverage that was determined to have led directly to an opponent scoring. | ||
| Turnover Minus | Given to a player who was judged to be directly or indirectly at fault for a turnover that the opposition used to score a goal against his team. | ||
| Overall Plus | Given to a player whose overall play during the game was ascertained to have positively impacted puck possession for his team in a way that he was not properly credited for in the official stats. | ||
| Overall Minus | Given to a player whose overall play during the game was ascertained to have negatively impacted puck possession for his team in a way that he was not properly credited for in the official stats. | ||
| Penalty Plus | Given to a player who worked to force the opposition to take a penalty. | ||
| Penalty Minus | Given to a player who either committed a bad penalty of his own or made a mistake which forced his teammate to take a bad penalty. | ||
| Shift Change Plus | Created to allow for correction of official plus/minus stats to either give or take away credit on a play when a goal is scored during or after a line change in which a more deserving player was not on the ice during the scoring play. | ||
| Shift Change Minus | Created to allow for correction of official plus/minus stats to either give or take away credit on a play when a goal is scored during or after a line change in which a more deserving player was not on the ice during the scoring play. | ||
| Power Play Plus Lost | Designed as a minus category to clear undeserved plus ratings from players who were on the ice when a goal was scored between the time a power play ended and the penalized player was able to get back in the play. | ||
| Penalty Kill Minus Cleared | Designed as a plus category to clear undeserved minus ratings from players who were on the ice when a goal was scored between the time a power play ended and the penalized player was able to get back in the play. | ||
| Goal Against Minus Cleared | Given to a player who was deemed to have been in position and not-at-fault for a goal scored. These are also given to players on the ice for a bad goal against. A player may have minuses added on for specific faults, but he will have his official minus cleared to track goaltender fault. | ||
| Goal Saved Plus | Given to a player who does anything that prevents what should be considered a surefire goal. Lifting the stick of a player preparing to receive a pass on a wide-open backdoor and outright making a save on a shot are both examples of this. |
Adjustments can be made by half-points or whole and players are not limited to a maximum of one on a plus or a minus. If a play is good enough, a player can find himself with more than one assist. If a turnover is bad enough, he can find himself with multiple minuses on the same goal. Large adjustments are uncommon, but are used when called for.
Goalie Ratings:
| Bad Goal | Given each time a goalie allows the puck in the net on a shot or play that he is deemed to have been expected to make the stop. | ||
| Goal Forgiven | Credited to a goalie who was judged to have done everything right to prevent a goal, but saw one getting by him through bad luck or bad play by his defense. An example would be for one of his own players deflecting a puck past a goalie. | ||
| Head-to-Head Plus/Minus | A rating of -1, 0, or +1 given to a goalie as a measure of how well he played in comparison to the opposing goaltender. | ||
| Overall Game Rating | A rating on a scale of -3 to +3 (0 being average) given to a goaltender for his performance during a game. Ratings on the severe end of the scale should be used very judiciously. |
Bad goals will be given throughout the game and will always result in a player getting a +1 (or +0.5) worth of plus credit. In situations where a bad goal is scored and players still deserve fault, they will be given additional minuses credited with the kind of mistake they made to allow the opposition to get the shot off which led to the bad goal.
The other two ratings are a result of a hybrid system to track goalie play. The Head-to-Head Plus/Minus is built with the idea that a goalie’s ultimate job is to be better than the guy on the other end of the ice. This will help us track whether a goalie over the course of the season is the kind of guy a team can count on to consistently perform at the level he needs to. The Overall Game Rating is an alternate system by which a goalie is rated against a consistent standard of how well he should perform, regardless of whether the goaltender on the other side of the rink has a good game. As the season goes on, we will get a much better idea as to how well these ratings systems work.
The most important thing to the CSSI is user feedback. Posts will generally go up the morning after games. While I strive for consistency and relative objectivity, your perspective is crucial in making sure the ratings stay consistent.
Please feel free to ask any questions about this Index or specific situations and how they would be scored. Also, please check out last year’s posts (under CSSI in the Sections area of the left sidebar) for guidance on how things will be scored.
Here’s to another great year of Red Wings hockey!
