AP and LP stats in 2009-10 season

I am taking a page out of Lowetide's book: this was the most beautiful women in hollywood, until she decided that she couldn't live without plastic surgery. I personally am quite scared of the future, in which not of the silver-screen beauties age gracefully and they all start looking like their daughters. Why am I starting this post this way: we the Oilers are much to look at these days, might as well dream about. I am even more scared for the Oilers' future, what happens if Gagner, Smid, Peckham, Eberle, or MPS don't age gracefully, and get surgery to turn themselves in RH centers?

First, a shout out to the contributer Sean "needs a cool hockey nickname" Lange. I am going to suggest Seaney, or Langer, in the spirit of crappy hockey nicknames everywhere. But in Sean's brillance, he decided to get the 2009-10 numbers at the same point I started the project last season: at the 27 game mark.

This is this seasons compared to last (the seasons in blue/last season in copper). Today I am going to just look at the stats as they apply to the team as a whole, and not examine the per game or per 60 minutes Aggressive and Lazy Penalties for each individual player (I'll do this later when I have more time).

Team Overall

Total Penalties: 133 / 144

Aggressive Penalties: 55 / 49

% of Aggressive: 41% / 34%

Lazy Penalties: 78 / 95

% of Lazy: 59% / 66%

Ratio of Aggressive to Lazy: 1:1.42 / 1:1.94

I know that most people (including me) don't think an aggressive penalty is easier to kill off then a lazy one, but I am still happy with how the Oilers a tracking this season. The reduction in Lazy Penalties is a good thing overall: that we are both taking less penalties because of this, and that we are taking less stick penalties when out of position. I also like the fact that we are taking more Aggressive Penalties: I like violence, and I want the Oilers to be tough to play against. The league average is 46 AP to 80 LP, or a ratio of 1:1.74. That puts the Oilers with a more Aggressive Penalty count, an average Lazy Penalty, and a better then average ratio.

A Break Down of the Aggressive Penalties

Fighting: 19 / 20

Instigating: 2 / 2

Boarding: 2 / 2

Charging: 0 / 1

Cross-Checking: 5 / 1

Elbowing: 0 / 1

Misconducts: 3 / 4

Roughing: 23 / 16

Goalie Interference: 4 / 2

Unsportsman like Conduct: 1 / 0

Well the numbers look about the same, with the increase of roughing and cross-checking penalties creating the different in the total number of APs this year. Over all I think this is a good sign; I don't have a good reason, but I think it is good.

A Break Down of the Lazy Penalties

Hooking: 18 / 31

High-sticking: 6 / 8

Interference: 11 / 15

Holding: 11 / 9

Diving: 0 / 1

Delay of Game: 2 / 2

Tripping: 18 / 17

Slashing: 10 / 9

Kneeing: 0 / 2

Holding the Stick: 2 / 1

The drop in LPs is all about the number of hooking penalties! Last year 33% of all LPs were hooking calls, and this year 23% of LPs are hooking; the difference in LPs is 17 total this year and the 13 extra hooking calls last year make up 76% of the difference in LPs. Maybe this means that the Oilers' players are playing a better system game and out of position less (or just not taking the penalty under Quinn that they would in MacT's system). The tripping and slashing are about the same while interference is statistically lower as well, so this could support this inductive analysis.

Note on Methodology: Last year I counted the penalties by hand (until the end of the season totals) and this year Sean's magic computer tricks do it for me. There is a small difference in the counting: the computer counts the double minors (i.e. high sticking) as one LP and last year I counted it as two. This makes a direct comparison for the first 27 games a little off. Also, for most of the year I counted the coincidental penalties, especially for roughing. The computer does not count them. Maybe I'll go back through last season and this one by hand to figure this out. I think this would provide valuable information for us. Lastly, I am working on the individual stats and hope to incorporate some of mc79hockey's data into the overall analysis.

Laziness and Aggression: 2010 edition

Thanks to some prodding from Brendan, I finally grabbed the penalty data for the season so far. I'll leave most of the analysis to him but here's a few fun facts for the mean time:

The Oil are at 55 aggresive, 78 lazy penalties. League avg is 46/80 but there's a few teams really dragging the AP's down so we're sitting right in the middle of the curve. One thing that I didn't notice last year is that there's only a small variation in LP's by team but a pretty big spread in AP's. It might be interesting to know how much AP variation comes from fighting and co-incidental roughing. Most teams are somewhere between 1.4 and 2 LP's per AP with one major exception. St. Louis has 61 AP's (3rd most) and only 64 LP's (2nd fewest)

The Curse of the Mullet (or what I felt like writing instead of my methods final)

This is Babe Ruth. Beside him is Ryan Smyth. One normally wouldn't place these two beside each other, but this latest rash of injuries combined with the postmodern plague (swine flu) has got me thinking a little bit more outside the box than usual. Perhaps the reason for the Oilers recent run of suck has to do with the Curse of the Mullet.

Ryan Smyth was the face of the Edmonton Oilers for a long time, much like the Babe was the face of the Boston Red Sox. While the Bambino played for the Sox, they won three world Series titles, with major contributions coming from him in two of those titles. For those that don't give a crap about baseball, it is interesting to note that the Babe's contributions to the '16 and '18 championships came in the form of really great pitching, not his now legendary big bat. The Red Sox sold the Babe to the New York Yankees in late 1919 and the Sox didn't win another championship for 86 years. The Yankees, meanwhile, went to the World Series 7 times with Ruth in the Lineup, winning 4 times.

As we all know, in 2006, the Edmonton Oilers were one healthy Roli away from glory. Upon the completion of that season, Prongergate went down, as well as a mass exodus of other key vets, none as important perhaps as one particularly well-loved mullet. In 2007, after a protracted discussion with then General Manager Kevin Lowe, Ryan Smyth, the mullet, the face of the franchise, Captain Canada, was traded to the New York Islanders for former first round picks Robert "not-so-magic" Nilsson and Ryan "O'Desparate" O'Marra, as well as the Isles 1st rounder in that year's draft, taking Alex "maybe I'll work out, but I shouldn't have been a 1st Round Pick" Plante. The two camps were barely $100k apart on the contract negotiations, but K-Lowe, in his infinite wisdom, pulled the trigger on the deal and Smyth was gone.

Shortly after the trade, the Oilers began to lose players as quickly as they were losing games. The area particularly affected by the injury imp was on defense, as the Oilers were forced to play effectively the entire farm team, even at one point recalling Sebastian Bissaillon from his QMJHL team on an emergency loan to allow the team to dress a full roster. It was the worst Oiler team to play since the dark days of the mid 1990s, skating to a 32-43-7 record. That team was just bad enough to net the 6th overall pick in the entry draft, issuing in the dawn of the smurf era and Sam(wise) Gagner.

The next season was not much better, as once again veteran players were either traded or left to walk away, while the injury imp took its toll on regulars Ethan "thecaptainethanmoreau" Moreau, "St." Fernando Pisani, Ales Hemsky and Shawn "holy shit he made the all-star game" Horcoff. Somehow the kids stepped up and the Oil almost sneaked into the playoffs based on unlikely heroics from Nilsson, Gagner, Andrew Cogliano and Tom Gilbert, not to mention crazy shootout luck from Goalie Matthieu Garon. This once again instilled hope for the team moving into the 08-09 season, and we all know how that went. I needn't bore you faithful readers with a summary of last year, another year where injuries, poor play and a lack of real NHL players hurt the team. Management made no moves to fill the obvious holes before last season or this for that matter, and although the team made a massive overhaul behind the bench, the shortcomings that have existed since the Smyth trade continue to haunt this team.

Thus far, the Oilers lead the league with more than 135 man games lost to injury/illness in only 25 games played. This list has included the bulk of our top six defenseman, with only Tom Gilbert playing in every game, forwards Ryan Stone, Mike Comrie, Gilbert Brule, JFJ, and most notably Horcoff and Hemsky. Horcoff is playing through his pain after a week off, but is still not at 100%, playing on the wing and not taking draws to avoid placing any more pressure on his shoulder. Word on the street is that Hemsky could be out for a really long time, possibly even the season to repair his shoulder.

The fact is, no team in the NHL has lost more man games to injuries in the last 3+ years then the Edmonton Oilers, and it always seems to be really key people that go down. Sheldon Souray missed most of his first season here, Chopper missed most of his first two seasons as captain, Visnovsky missed nearly half of last year, and Hemsky and Horcoff have both missed significant time since their former linemate was shipped out of town.

I submit to you that I am not a superstitious man, that pragmatism does reign supreme in my heart, but it feels to me like something greater then ourselves is making a point of hurting this team and tainting its legacy. I don't know for sure if I believe in curses, Bambino or otherwise, but something strange is happening here. I think we might be seeing the curse of the mullet actually rearing its long, business in the front, party in the back flowing-locked head.

The Oilers play a San Jose Sharks team tonight that is coming off of a 7-2 shellacking at the hands of a hungry young Blackhawks team the other night. Heatley is in town, and the few healthy players left ought to be looking to put his smug, trade-denying face into the boards a few times. Unfortunately, if they hit anyone, they might just break themselves. Maybe the boys will get lucky? I sure hope so...

Go Oilers

SWS

Editor's note: Ales Hemsky is officially out with a torn labrum He will undergo surgery in the next two-three weeks and will be out a minimum of five months. The Curse of the Mullet continues...

The Sympathic Oiler Fan

This is Max Scheler, a German philosopher that is full of interesting contradictions: like his repetitive shifting loyalties between Catholicism and non-religiousness, and lustfulness and skirt-chasing. Personally I think these are some of the reasons I like the guy. Well, he talks a lot about an idea I am working with: it is called 'mitgefuhl' or literally feeling-with. Feeling-with is deeply related to the concept of sympathy or fellow-feeling; as in how do we feel with each other, or how are we in sympathy with each other. So as normal, I am suppose to be writing a paper on this concept (in relation to politics) but instead I am going to write a blog about this.

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This is the hero of 2006, St. Fernando, at his best and the way most of us will always remember him. This week week, we have heard that another flare-up of ulcerative colitis has struck him down. When most of feel for him, we are not engaged in sympathy with him (I am not saying you/me are heartless, just keep reading) but instead we engage in empathy for him. We attempt to 'put ourselves in his shoes,' or that we relate to his emotions by referring experiences or emotions we have had. In empathy, we the other feeling subject either annihilate Pisani by placing our self into his self or eclipse ourselves by bring Pisani into ourselves. In the emotion, or process, of empathy we are not feeling with him, but rather feeling for him. Scheler sees empathy as problematic since it endangers one of the self, and hence does not build community.

Rather then seeing how to apply fellow-feeling to just Pisani, I am going to look at the relationship of fellow-feeling in relation to the fans of the Oilers, or how we create the diaspora that binds individuals to the orange and blue. Scheler does define four fours of fellow-feeling, or sympathy, for use to dissected our feeling with other:

"1. Immediate community of feeling, e.g., of one and the same sorrows, 'with someone.'

2. Fellow feeling 'about something'; rejoicing in his joy and commiseration with his sorrow.

3. Mere emotional infection.

4. True emotional identification."

Community of Feeling

This is when two, or more, individuals directly experience feelings together, as feelings-in-common. These feelings must be of abstract feelings (Scheler would say spiritual or emotion) and never physical feelings: since we can share intellectual emotions but we do not have the same body so we can not have share a physical feeling in this way. Scheler's example is when two parents lose a child: the feeling is one and identical. With the Oilers, I think we can talk about feeling-in-common in relation to not making the playoffs three years in a row. We as fans/bloggers have a immediate feeling with each other, we share the same feeling of sorrow and disgust of having to watch the Flames and the Canucks play in the second season. We, as bloggers, cannot share this feeling with the Oilers' players themselves; that they have different feelings of disgust, shame, and disappointment that are not immediately accessible to fans.

Fellow Feeling (seriously the translators should have come up with a better term for this sub-group of Fellow Feeling)

In this type of sympathy, my experience of feeling and yours are two separate feelings, unlike the previous case: for example, their is your suffering and my commiseration. I do not direct my commiseration at you as a person, as 'stepping into your shoes', rather I directed it at your emotion itself. When you feel for an injured Oiler, say the Big Sexy and his concussion, you are are directing your sympathy at his frustration of not being able to play: that you, as a fan, feel frustrated that your best dman can't play and he, as an player, is feeling frustrated that he has to watch and can do anything. You both have feelings of frustration, but they are not one and the same feeling. You emotion functions on two levels: your frustration with the luck of the Oilers' blue line, and your commiseration with Souray's frustration. In the former case, I can commiserate with you, as two fans, that you experience the frustration and I can feel with you. In the latter case, we as fans can commiserate with the Big Sexy as we relate our feelings to his emotions of frustration but not him himself. These are two different process fellow-feelings, not one and the same.

Emotional Infection

Scheler sees this as the most immoral of all fellow-feelings, that there is no societal benefit to this type of feeling-with. He relates it to mob or herd mentality: his examples included the feeling of gaiety one experiences when they go into a cheerful party or pub. It is not that the person, entering the party, is themselves happy but instead they are infected by the happiness of others. He excludes this type of fellow-feeling from community building emotions because it is not your happiness I am sharing-with, but I take your happiness as my own (that we cannot share feelings in a constructive way since one self is always diminished, but not annihilate, at the expense of the other self). The most obvious Oiler examples is the Whyte Ave riots in 2006: in these moments we where not sharing our feelings-with each other, but rather being catch up in emotion. There were individuals that had no feelings about the Oilers at those riots, and I would say that they were not just trouble makers, but individuals actually feeling the emotions of extreme happiness without the experiences that make those feelings meaningful to me or you. Another examples, is when you go to Rexall Place: if you are having a bad day, just walking into the arena picks up your spirits. You are infected with the anticipation and cheerfulness of the crowd, just as I have found the most kind hearted fans booing the Oilers in a crowd during blowouts, they are infected with the anger being shared with other fans.

Emotional Identification

This type of feeling-with is the highest and most important, for Scheler. It is where the true forms of community are formed, not through based infection of identity but a actual emotional bond between, but not of, people. One way to understand this phenomenon is through mutual coalescence: that it is a state of emotion that "neither . . . one individual self despotizes, as it were, the other, nor . . . in which the one self is entirely 'lost' in the other." The partners of this type of feeling have "an impassioned suspension of their spiritual personality (itself the seat of individual self-awareness), [they] seem to relapse into a single life-stream in which nothing of their individual selves remain any longer distinct, though it has equally little resemblance to a consciousness of 'us' found on the respective self-awareness of each." I find this type of fellow-feeling within the community if bloggers around the Oilers (actually it is the ontological force that creates the bloggers as a community). That is this type of feeling that creates a new 'life-stream' of a fan, or a feeling that exceeds our individual feelings for the Oilers and creates a new set of selves that feel with each other. Materially, or I guess electronically, you can see this manifest itself in a certain type of blog: Covered in Oil and recently the hilarious Inebriated Oiler Fans. These blogs are not a sole creation of one self, but a collection of selves that create them. It does not stop at this level, rather these blogs create a space for a new feeling of fandom, in the comments and visceral emotions that are expressed on them. While Scheler might be disgusted that I am using blogs often referred to as immature to demonstrate his highest moral type of fellow-feeling. he can go fuck himself: as I love these blogs, I often have to wear diapers while I read them to avoid ruining good pairs of pants. I would say that these blogs serve as a physical place to create a new life-stream of (spiritual or intellectual) emotions for Oiler Fans, since they allow us to create new emotions, not of yours or mine, in common with each other. Scheler would say that these emotions are a creation of love for each other, but I am arguing that they are solidarity with each other: that it is in these new emotions that we create ourselves as a community.

uh, what?

Ok, this is just a weird week... The Flying Fridge is wearing an A and dominating, with 9 points in 7 games; Ladi is +8, yeah, you heard me, +8, and the Oilers are making the most of some surprisingly glorious chances.

And I don't hate Comrie as much as I used to. He is a useful NHL player with a hot girlfriend. Good for him.

I don't get it. I thought this team was supposed to be a rag-tag bunch of people who didn't like each other in the slightest, had no balls (which is better than having the balls of a hamster like last year's team), and had no chance at winning, let alone finding ways to hang around in games that they had no business even surviving.

Patrick O'Sullivan is a whale of a hockey player, known as shooter, yet possessing some really slick hands and unreal hockey sense. He's developing some really solid chemistry with Penner and Gagner. Gilbert Brule has 7 points in 7 games, looks damn good with basically anyone he's skating with, and hits as hard as anybody his size.

I am lost. Topping off all of this madness is the fact that Souray and Staios aren't around, we still have Cogliano taking draws (to which he appears to be less terrible, and actually looks great flying around with Chopper and the Animal), and Hemmer isn't at 100% And while we're on the subject of the Animal, he scored twice, including a PPG?! Are we living in the bizarro world?

I am just putting it out there, despite my instincts telling me to calm the hell down and remember that the team started 4-0 last season and we've beaten some teams that weren't supposed to be great anyway, but they look almost like a real team, and that they're having fun.

I am convinced that is the key in all of this; sure Quinn is running a tight ship and Renney bag-skates the crap out of them a lot, but they seem to be having fun together, as a team. They are playing loose, fearless and as a team. Maybe this has something to do with the coaches, maybe the fact that a bunch of smurfs are playing for contracts, maybe something happened in the offseason that allowed them to not live in fear of a public thrashing anymore. I don't care, I just want it to continue. Eventually things like tightening up defensive zone play will come, but these players want to play together and they want to win.

It's a nice change of pace, especially to see a team that won't quit, even in the face of a 30-12 shot differential, a team that defends each other, a team that has players that bounce back after getting levelled by Boogaard and make sick behind-the-back passes to the A wearing flying fridges for goals at timely moments. Basically, what I am saying is that the team looks like "the little team that could" again, for the first time in years. They have a new identity, but it is an identity that actually looks and feels like Oilers Hockey again. I hope it lasts. It's been fun!

Go Oilers

SWS

So this is the new year...

This is the 'Bulin Wall celebrating his 300th win last night, a sloppy, chippy affair that was a back and forth battle between two teams not expected to be very good. In truth, the Oilers didn't look all that great, but they did show something I don't think I saw in any game last year; heart. Quite frankly, that was present in both the Calgary loss and the win last night. This is a good sign. At one point, the Oilers were outhitting Dallas 9-0 and ended up with a 24-14 advantage. They scored twice on the power play, and came back three times to tie it up, rallying to the win behind some reasonable (I didn't say great) goaltending and the play of the second, third and fourth lines. Now both Khabibulin and Quinn have that first win monkey off of both their backs and can get down to the business of winning games in a less skittish fashion. Furthermore, the team won about 60% of the draws last night as well, a welcome improvement to be sure.

It must be said that the players who needed to step up have done so in spades so far. The much maligned flying fridge has two goals, as does the hockey hobbit, Samwise Gagner. Comrie has two points, Grebs looks awesome, Patty O has been getting all kinds of opportunities and soon enough he'll bury a bunch of them and Brule is hitting and generating chances, scoring a goal-scorer's goal saturday night, coincidentally from the same spot that Gags scored yesterday. The offense looks fine.

What looks better is the sense of urgency that the team is showing, as a team. There is no quit in these guys right now, they hit, they score, they chase after the puck and get in the dirty areas, and they are saying the right things in interviews, about going to the tough areas, playing aggressive and having a desire instilled to make RX1 a hard building to come into. This was the M.O of the Lowtide era, the early MacTeams and most recently, the 06 near glory boys. I'm not suggesting we start planning on burning every car on Jasper Ave tomorrow (though I wouldn't be opposed to such things either), I am beginning, ever so slightly, to consider having a taste of the Kool-Aid, just a sip and maybe have some hope for this season after all.

Let it also be said that this gritty effort yesterday was without Fernando (who would have helped a slightly discombobulated PK) and thecaptainethanmoreau, as well as a lack of anything offensive from the 1st line. Horc did win draws, but JFJ looks like he's having growing pains, and Hemsky did nothing aside from giving the puck away or hang on to it for too long...until the third when he blocked a shot and set up Greb's beauty of a goal. But let's be honest, it was not his strongest outing. That the Globe and Mail claimed Hemsky carried this team to victory is a serious misnomer, considering aside from the plays I just mentioned, he bordered on invisible for most of the game. Ok, he scored the shoot-out winner, but he even went on record to call it dumb luck and admitted that he wiffed on the shot.

But I don't want to get greedy. It's early, I'll take the good with the bad, and so far there has been less bad then expected. This is a team that won't let itself get pushed around, making me relish the chance to watch them take on the flames again thursday night. My hope is that Stone or the Crazy Train take out Rehger at the knees, that Stortini eats Phaneuf (literally...that would be sweet) and the scoring and grit keep coming like they have been. So far so, well, better... I am not ready to say good just yet.

In the meantime, just some food for thought. The play-by-play guy for the Stars made a comparison of Zorg to Animal from the Muppets last night. I know that ideas from the enemy are normally bad, but in this case an exception can be made. I vote that Zorg be removed in favor of this new moniker and plan to use it from now on. The proof is in the pictures below. Yeah, I thought you'd like that...




Go Oilers

SWS

Lessons from the Book of Maciocia

This is Danny Maciocia. He is often cited by fans of the Eskimos as the most terrible mistake that the team has ever had: that he is not a good coach because he has never played, and he can't get the players we need as a GM because he was a bad coach. I realize folks taking this position have a point, because of the losing record (33-38-1) suffered through when he was the head coach. But today I am going to tell you what Tambi can learn from this man. Today, the Eskimos dealt with some of its problems through player movement!!!

First of all, Maciocia traded for a defensive back Bryan Parker. We have had to sit through over half of a season of inept secondary coverage. Maciocia didn't just sit back and hope the guys gelled or grew into their positions, he did things about it. He release Jonte Buhl, after terrible coverage all season long. Now he has gone out and got Parker, who has 99 tackles, 18 interceptions, and 6 TDs in his five year CFL career (oh he was a CFL allstar in 2006 and 2007, too) Good move, Maciocia.

Second of all, Maciocia signed defensive lineman Jerome Haywood. This will be his 8th year in the league and has an impressive 225 tackles and 29 sacks over that time. Why did Maciocia sign Haywood, because he had a veteran go down to injury. Instead of relying on solutions from with (aka practice roster), the GM went out and found a experience hand for his coach. Coach Hall should be getting Briadwood back on the defensive line soon, as well.

While most of Eskimo fans love to bitch-and-moan about Maciocia's incompentence, at least he is pro-active. He, as did any one watching the green-and-gold's games, saw problems in the defense side of the ball and has attempted to fix them. Tambi still gets the benefit of the doubt by a lot of Oiler fans, but he has never be pro-active, or even reactive. Tambi just does not make player acquisitions: we are still in the developing from within pattern. The problem is it takes years to develop veterans, and the Oilers need them now. Tambi go and sign a veteran forward, and trade a smurf for another while you are at it. I am tired of this crap: Poo is not going to be a veteran center this year, and we have PK winger problems as well. I don't care if we lose SMac, Reddox, or Stone on waivers, I want veteran solutions.

*PS: shameless plug for a Friend, if you like humor or the CFL, go check out Henry Svec's CFL sessions, it will be the best few minutes of your day, unless the Oilers trade for a veteran 3C also that day.*