The Neutral

Zonestart Power Rankings

A “fancy” stat that doesn’t get a ton of play anymore in the advanced stats community in hockey is even-strength zonestarts at the team level. Zonestarts are always brought up when evaluating specific players since those who start an inordinate amount of their shifts with an offensive zone faceoff will inevitably have the puck more often, create a greater number of scoring opportunities and score more goals while the reverse applies to players buried with starts in their own end of the ice. But while a large number of offensive zone starts at the individual level are essentially a handicap that needs to be accounted for, teams that start shifts in the opponent’s end more than their own have earned that right through sustained possession and other plays that force the opposing goaltender to freeze the puck.

Way back in 2008, the great Vic Ferrari looked at all four NHL seasons between 2003-2008 and discovered that the correlation between teams’ offensive zone start% at even strength and their even strength goal ratio was an impressive 0.71 while the repeatability of receiving offensive zone starts at a given rate at the team level over those four years was 0.87, further suggesting starting in the bad guys’ end of the ice more often than your own is a persistent team talent. While I don’t believe it’s a superior indicator of true talent and thereby a better predictor of future success than shot-based metrics like score-tied Corsi, score-tied Fenwick and scoring chance differential, it’s still a great proxy for even strength puck possession and interesting to take a look at. Click through for team zonestart rankings through Sunday’s games.

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