A Look At The Panthers Offense

Last year, the Florida Panthers struggled mightily on offense and their record showed as they finished last in the Eastern Conference. In the 2010-2011 season, only the Ottawa Senators, New Jersey Devils, and Edmonton Oilers scored fewer goals, and only seven teams had a worse goal differential than the Panthers. The Cats enjoyed a relatively good early season.   Let’s take a look at their offense and see if it has improved.

Scoring Distribution

The Panthers top four scorers are Kris Versteeg, Stephen Weiss, Tomas Fleischmann, and Brian Campbell. These players have 12, 11, 11, and 11 points for a total of 45 points. Their 45 points are out of a team total of 84, so four players have scored 53.6% of the team’s points. How does this compare to last year’s Panthers? During the 2010-2011 season, Panthers players accumulated 525 points, and the top four scorers were Weiss, Mike Santorelli, David Booth, and Dennis Wideman with 49, 41, 40, and 33 points . The top four last season scored 163 points, or 31.0%, of the team’s points. Looking at this distribution, it’s clear that the Panthers are not distributing the offense very well past their first line, for Versteeg, Weiss, and Campbell are mates on that line.

Also interesting is how this year’s point distribution compares to some of this year’s top teams in the league. Let’s start with the Washington Capitals, the leaders in the Southeast Division with 18 points. The Capitals have accumulated 120 points thus far, and the top four scorers are Nicklas Backstrom, Alex Ovechkin, Dennis Wideman, and Alexander Semin with 16, 12, 10, and 7 points . These four players have scored 45 points, or 37.5% of the team’s points. In 2010-2011, Ovechkin, Backstrom, Semin, and Brooks Laich were the top scorers and accumulated 252 of the team’s 588 points, or 42.8%. How about the Pittsburgh Penguins who lead the Eastern Conference with 21 points? The Penguins are led this year by James Neal, Kris Letang, Jordan Staal, and Pascal Dupuis who have scored 47 out of the team’s 113 points for a share of 41.6%. Last year, Sidney Crosby, Letang, Chris Kunitz, and Tyler Kennedy scored 209 out of the Penguins’ 616 points for a share of 33.9%. Finally, let’s look at the Western Conference’s top team, the Chicago Blackhawks. For the Hawks, Patrick Kane, Marian Hossa, Patrick Sharp, and Jonathan Toews have scored 49 of the team’s 109 points, or 44.5% of the points. Last year, the same four players led the Blackhawks in scoring and accumulated 277 of the team’s 688 points for a share of 40.3%.

What does all of this tell us? We see that the Panthers actually distributed their points better last season than some of the top teams. In 2010-2011, the Panthers’ top four scorers accumulated 31.0% of the team’s points while the share for the Capitals, Penguins, and Blackhawks was 42.8%, 33.9%, and 40.3% respectively. This year, the offensive distribution for the Panthers is alarmingly bad with Versteeg, Weiss, Fleischmann, and Campbell scoring 53.6% of the team’s points. If the Panthers are to sustain their play, they’ll need to find more points from players such as Tomas Kopecky, Scottie Upshall, and Mike Santorelli.

The Power Play

The power play was much maligned last year, and it was frustrating to watch for Panthers fans. In 2010-2011, the Panthers power play converted 13.1% of the time and over the season scored 35 goals. The Cats were last in power play percentage and second to last in number of power play goals scored with only the New Jersey Devils scoring fewer power play goals, 34, although their percentage was 14.4%. This year, the Panthers are enjoying a markedly better power play. The team has already scored 11 power play goals and has done so on 48 opportunities for a conversion rate of 22.9%. With this high percentage, the Panthers rank fourth in the NHL only behind the Colorado Avalanche, Ottawa Senators, and Washington Capitals.

What is most interesting to me in the power play numbers is the percentage of goals scored by defenseman. The Panthers’ Jason Garrison has scored 3 of the team’s power play goals and Ed Jovanovski has scored 1 goal on the man advantage. Thus, defensemen have scored 4 out of the 11 power play goals for the Panthers for a share of 36.3%. How do other teams in the early season top 10 compare? Check out this chart:

What does the chart show us? Only one other team gets a higher percentage of their power play goals from defensemen, and that team is the Washington Capitals. Let’s see what the numbers are for league leaders over a whole season by examining the 2010-2011 top 10.

As you can see from comparing last season’s leaders to this season’s, power plays are most successful over a season when the forwards are scoring between 80% and 90% of the goals. Only the Montreal Canadiens were anywhere close to some of the unbalanced scoring percentages that we have seen from top power play units this season. Overall, what 2010-2011 shows makes sense because the long shot by the defenseman is more of a “lucky” goal which sees its way through traffic. Power play units with killed forwards that can find the open man for a goal have better success. What we see is that the success of the Capitals, Panthers, Los Angeles Kings and Oilers does not seem sustainable. For the Panthers, they need more from Stephen Weiss who just two seasons ago scored 12 goals on the power play out of his 28 as compared to 3 out of 21 last season and 1 out of 5 this season.

Scoring in General

Let’s take a broader look at things and just talk about scoring in general. The Panthers ranked 27th out of 30 teams last year with 2.33 goals per game. This year, they are not much better and are averaging 2.50 goals per game which ranks 19th out of 30 teams. The inability to score, especially of late, is shown in the amount of close games the team is playing. The Panthers have played 12 games this season and have played in 3 shootouts and 3 one-goal games. Thus, half of the Panthers games are tight, stressful contests. Just as a baseball statisticians have started counting stressful innings for pitchers, close games can take a toll on a team.

The relevant question is whether the amount of goals that a team scores is indicative of success as measured by whether a team can make the playoffs. Below is a chart showing the 16 playoff teams from 2010-2011 and how they ranked in goals for per game, “GF/G,” and goal differential, “Diff.”

What we see from this chart is that goal differential is much more indicative of a team’s ability to make the playoffs than the amount of goals they score during the season. In fact, the two tops team in differential – the Vancouver Canucks and Boston Bruins – played in the Stanley Cup Finals. The Panthers this year rank 15th out of 30 teams in differential, so they seem to be in the right neighborhood to be a successful team and make the playoffs.