Thursday, February 07, 2008

Breaking Down Ovechkin's Goals

I got an email earlier noting that if you were to throw out all of Alex Ovechkin's first period goals on the season - nearly a third of the campaign, obviously - he'd still rank second in the League in goals scored with 36. Damn.

That stat led me to take a closer look at his League-leading 46 goals, and here's some of what I found out:
  • If you threw out the goals he's scored at home, he'd rank 14th in the NHL in goals and have enough tallies (25) to lead 17 of the League's teams.
  • If you tossed the road lamp-lighters, he'd rank 27th in the NHL with 21 goals, which is more than the current high-man on seven teams.
  • If you ignored his power play goals, he'd rank seventh overall with 30 markers.
  • If you got rid of all the goals he's scored against the Southeast Division, he'd rank third in the NHL with 33 goals.
  • If you only counted goals scored in games in which he scored more than once, he'd be 35th in the League with 20 goals.
  • If you took away any significant number of his goals, the Caps would be in deep, deep doo doo.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Twenty seven games to go. Russian machine must keep going.

B8ovin said...

I'd be interested to see his percentage of goals against the division, because one way to interpret his third standing in the NHL minus against the division is that he doesn't score much against the division. Somehow this seems counter-intuitive to me.

Of course, I could look it up and do the math myself, but I'm only mildly interested and some guy is going to cover himself with africanized honey bees on Discovery Channel, so I don't have he time.

JP said...

Alex has 13 goals in games against Southeast opponents and 33 in inter-divisional games.

The Caps have played 19 of 55 games within the Division.

In other words, 28% of his goals have come against SED teams and 35% of his games have been intra-divisional.

Put another way, he's scoring .68 goals per game against the SED and .92 goals per game aganist non-SED teams (thanks in large part to those four-goal games against Ottawa and Montreal).

Anonymous said...

Intersting stats there JP. But as I see it...a goal is a goal. It may not always be at the most needed point in a game, such as in a tied game with 2 minutes left. But after reading these types of stats, I was lead to believe that OV's goal Wednesday in Philly was just that, an unimportant insurance goal with the team up by 3. In the end, it was in fact the GW. So I won't complain how many goals he scores. Sure I'd like to see Semin or Kozlov (or any 2nd-4th liner) go on a tear, I feel just as good jumping up and down when any CAP scores.

JP said...

As the saying goes, "They don't ask how - they ask how many."

This was just some fun with the numbers to show how dominant AO has been in all situations.

As for game-winning goals, I'm of the belief that the real game-winner is the goal that puts your team ahead and after which they're never caught. In other words, in the 4-3 win the other night, AO's goal shouldn't be the game-winner (though I obviously understand that it is), but rather the 2nd goal that put them up 2-1. The Caps were never again tied, so that, in my mind, was the more important goal.

Anonymous said...

Wow. Holy shit!!!

Sparrow said...

I would like to see you do this with all top goal scoring players. I doubt they would stand up as well.
Unless you do this, then these stats don't mean nothing...
...not a thing