A little mid-week statistical dump...

Spent some time last night entering some numbers into a database. You'll never find this sort of stuff on the WHL website and some of it might be useful. On the other hand... some of it may mean absolutely nothing but it might be interesting to see.

I broke a bunch of things down by period and the only thing I really came up with is that maybe Jake DeSerres has not played as poorly as we think he has in the 1st period of games.

Shots by Period and Average.

1st - 92 shots, 8.36
2nd - 106 shots, 9.64
3rd - 108, 9.82

Goals by Period and Average.

1st - 8, 0.73
2nd - 9, 0.82
3rd - 8, 0.73

Shots Against and Average

1st - 139, 12.64 (that is a lot of 1st period shots)
2nd - 111, 10.09 (improvement)
3rd - 91, 8.27 (wow much better)

Save Percentage by Period

1st - 88.5 %
2nd - 87.4 %
3rd - 82.4 %

This is interesting... as the goaltending appears to get worse as the team gets better. This number might also be moved by the fact that in Vancouver the Giants scored 3 times on 3 shots in the 3rd period.

Yuck...

5 on 5 scoring For and Against

1st - 3 GF, 11 GA (ugh)
2nd - 7 GF, 14 GA (not much better)
3rd - 5 GF, 9 GA

Minor Penalties by Period and Average

1st - 20, 1.82
2nd - 22, 2.00
3rd - 32, 2.91

One might think that maybe the goaltending has been influenced by the increase in penalties in the 3rd... but check out the next one.

Short Handed Chances (or times Short Handed) by Period and Average

1st - 18, 1.64
2nd - 19, 1.73
3rd - 21, 1.91

So the Minor Penalties haven't resulted in more PK's

How often does a Minor Penalty result in a Power Play for the opposition

1st - 90.0 %
2nd - 86.4 %
3rd - 65.6 %

A much higher number of the penalties in the 3rd period are coming in offsetting situations.

Penalty Killing by Period

1st - 66.7 %
2nd - 94.7 %
3rd - 81.0 %

Power Play Chances by Period and Average

1st - 20, 1.82
2nd - 9, 0.82
3rd - 20, 1.82

Power Play Conversion Rate by Period

1st - 25.0 %
2nd - 22.2 %
3rd - 20.0 %

These are actually pretty solid numbers on the Power Play... the 5 on 5 action is what is really killing the team. They have surrendered 11 goals Short Handed and have scored 11 on the Power Play.

All in all... I would say there is some pretty compelling evidence that the team has played just as poorly if not worse than Jake/Calvin has played in the 1st periods.

This team has to get off to better starts as they typically close games strongly.

Also... A word of note to fans who always yell "shoooooot" all game long when the team is looking for a "good shot". The shot totals go up from the 1st to the 3rd period and the scoring doesn't... so keep in mind that while sometimes more shots on goal will produce more goals there isn't necessarily a correlation between shooting more and actually scoring more.