Carolina Hurricanes Versus Boston Bruins By The Numbers

Carolina Hurricanes took on the Boston Bruins yet lost 2-1.  The reason why is all in the numbers.

Okay, I know it’s a little late but I’m trying to take a look at the stats of the Carolina Hurricanes after each game as a kind of recap of what happened.  Basically this is just an excuse for me to practice Tableau, and hopefully, you find these graphs as enlightening as I do.  All data will be taken from 5v5 stats unless otherwise noted.  Also, all stats sourced from Corsica unless otherwise noted as well.  If you enjoy articles of this sort, please donate to Emmanuel Perry’s Patreon to help keep things going.  Without further ado let’s get to the graphs.  Some of these may change as I become more skilled with stats and Tableau in general, and if there is something, in particular, you would like to see please reach out to me on twitter either at @Cardiaccane or @matt_barlowe.

Shots and Corsi Events

The stats for this graph came from HockeyStats.ca and are for all situations

As one can see here the Carolina Hurricanes dominated the first period and pulled a little ahead in the second which resulted in their one goal lead.  But the third period, oh the horror, the horror.  The Bruins had only three fewer shot attempts in the third period than the Hurricanes attempted in the first two combined.  And it still took Teuvo Teravainen kicking in the puck to tie the game.  Of course, some can be explained by score effects, but that much more than the Canes shows the Bruins were handily outplaying them.

Corsi Differentials

As a result of that horrible third period, there are only a few players left in the positive in the Corsi differential.  The biggest surprise in this is Jaccob Slavin’s horrible -18 in this stat.  Him, along with Pesce, are usually one of the best on the team but he didn’t have his best game obviously.  In this next graph, we plot the Hurricanes Corsi differential into for and against.

Again nobody is in the Good quadrant and a lot are in the Bad quadrant.  The fact that all the damage happened in one period makes it an even more impressive feat by the Bruins.

Expected Goals

The last metric we’ll look at is the expected goals for the team.  This is an algorithm developed that takes into account shot quality.  Using such things as location and who is shooting it tries to predict the number of goals scored.

Again this graph contains no surprises and is very similar to the Corsi charts above.  Perhaps the biggest surprise is the great game by Noah Hanifin.  Although some of his stats are colored by the fact that holding a one-goal lead, Bill Peters hesitated to put him out on the ice a lot in the third period.  That same line of thinking probably explains Slavin’s large negative numbers as well.  Because if I was Peters, and I had a one goal lead to keep, I would send Slavin and Pesce over the boards as many times as I could.

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