-The Sens have announced the signing of Michael Sdao to an ELC (yesterday only his ATO was official). The release notes:
Sdao recently completed his fourth and final season of college eligibility with the Eastern Collegiate Hockey Association’s Princeton Tigers. Sdao played in 31 games this season, scoring seven times and adding eight assists, while recording 36 penalty minutes. In four years with Princeton, he recorded 54 points (26 goals, 28 assists), while registering 236 penalty minutes in 118 games. Sdao was an assistant captain for the Tigers in each of the last two seasons and, following the 2011-12 season, he was named Second-Team All-ECAC Hockey and First-Team All-Ivy League. Originally drafted by the Senators in the seventh round (191st overall) in the 2009 NHL Entry Draft, Sdao has participated in the team’s annual development camp in each of the last three summers.
–Scott had the scoring chances in the Montreal game 16/17.
-Binghamton faces Adirondack (23-31-5) tonight; the Phantoms are lead by Jason Akeson (36 points) and backstopped by Scott Munroe (12-15-0 2.78 .912).
-Yesterday I looked at Binghamton’s last ten games in Binghamton at the sixty game mark.
–Bob McKenzie Tweeted about this year’s crop of FA college players:
DeKeyser generally considered to be head and shoulders No. 1 guy in this college UFA class, which is considered average, at best, this yr. Based on my conversations with NHL clubs, consensus top 3 college free agents are: DeKeyser, D, WMU; Sustr, D, UNO; Laganiere, RW, Yale.
The Sens have already signed one free agent (Rutkowski) and from past comments generally only target two free agents per season, so I wouldn’t expect much more activity.
–Eric T. writes about modern hockey statistics. The article is very involved, but here is a selection:
For starters, if we know that a team’s shot differential is a strong predictor of their future results, then it makes sense to look at what their shot differential is with a given player on the ice. But it’s not that simple. (Is it ever?) If you just rank all of the players in the NHL by Corsi, you come up with a list that does OK but has some clear flaws. The problem is that it is missing context. One way we can adjust for this is with a statistic called Relative Corsi (often abbreviated Corsi Rel), which compares the team’s shot differential with a player on the ice to their shot differential with him off the ice. Corsi Rel isn’t perfect, though. It does a reasonable job of accounting for the forwards [playing] in front of [a defenseman], but it is quite closely tied to their defensive depth — if the guys who come on the ice whenever he goes off are inept, that will make him look better by comparison. The simplest thing to do is use Corsi Rel with a bit of subjective modification, recognizing that it is easier to have a good Corsi Rel on a team with little depth at your position.
We have more direct metrics for assessing a player’s quality of competition. The most widespread is one calculated at behindthenet.ca, called Corsi Rel QoC. Corsi Rel QoC assesses the average Corsi Rel of a player’s opponents and does a pretty good job of showing who goes against the opponents’ top lines. The other important piece of context is zone starts. Offensive zone faceoffs are often followed by a shot attempt, so a player who is used for a lot more offensive zone draws than defensive zone draws will see his Corsi inflated by his usage. The current revolution in advanced stats is starting to break things down from team-level results to individual contributions — figuring out exactly what a player is doing to help drive shot differential. We’ve talked about zone entry data a couple of times this year, and now perhaps you can see how this fits into our evaluations. The stats show that carrying the puck into the offensive zone generates more than twice as many shots and goals as dumping it in, so a player who is very good at gaining the line will help drive his team to have a positive shot differential.
–Stu Hackel states the obvious that the NHL’s suspensions don’t actually work as a deterrent for behaviour (specifically in regards to head shots).
-ISS has released its latest 2013 draft rankings (for their previous list go here):
1 – Jones, Seth – D – Portland – WHL
2 – Nichushkin, Valery – F – Chelyabinsk Chelmet – RusS
3 – MacKinnon, Nathan – C – Halifax – QMJHL
4 – Drouin, Jonathan – F – Halifax – QMJHL
5 – Nurse, Darnell – D – S.S. Marie – OHL
6 – Barkov, Aleksander – F – Tappara – FinE (+1)
7 – Zadorov, Nikita – D – London – OHL (-1)
8 – Lindholm, Elias – C – Brynas – SweE (+1)
9 – Monahan, Sean – C – Ottawa – OHL (-1)
10 – Ristolainen, Rasmus – D – TPS Turku – FinE
11 – Lazar, Curtis – C – Edmonton – WHL
12 – Pulock, Ryan – D – Brandon – WHL
13 – Shinkaruk, Hunter – F – Medicine Hat – WHL
14 – Dickinson, Jason – F – Guelph – OHL
15 –Valentin Zykov – RW – Baie-Comeau – QMJHL
16 – Rychel, Kerby – F – Windsor – OHL (+4)
17 – Burakowsky, Andre – F – Malmo – SweAl (-1)
18 –Alexander Wennberg – C – Djurgarden – SweJr (NR)
19 – Morrissey, JT – D – Prince Albert – WHL (-2)
2o – Gauthier, Frederik – C – Rimouski – QMJHL (+1)
21 – J. T. Compher – C – USA Under-18 – NTDP (+4)
22 – Santini, Steve – D – USA U18 – NTDP (-2)
23 – Hagg, Robert – D – Modo – SweJE (-1)
24 –Bo Horvat – C – London – OHL (NR) (-1)
25 – Madison Bowey – D – Kelowna – WHL (-1)
26 – Ryan Hartman – RW – OHL (NR)
27 – Anthony Mantha – LW – QMJHL (NR)
28 –Max Domi – C – London – OHL
29 – Nic Petan – C – Portland – WHL
30 – Ian McCoshen – D – USHL (NR)
Falling out of the top thirty were Adam Erne (26), Artturi Lehkonen (27), and Keaton Thompson (30).
This article is written by Peter Levi (@eyeonthesens)
eyeonthesens 