October 29, 2010 - Vancouver Canucks

(*) On-ice shooting% differs from a shooters shot% in that all shots for his team when
he is on the ice are counted as well, not just his own shots.
Anyone who has observed the Sedins play for any length of time knows that they pass
up shooting opportunities constantly, in order to create better quality opportunities with
their sublime works of wizardous sedinery. For the most part, their style of play is
exceedingly effective, partly because Daniel and Henrik are two of the leagues best
passers.**
(**) Among hockey analysts, shot location is a surprisingly controversial topic,
considering how intuitive it seems conceptually. Gabe Desjardins, who runs
behindthenet.ca, is among the more outspoken detractors of shot quality‘s analytical
utility (or lack thereof), whereas others such as Tom Awad and Michael Shuckers,
whose DIGR stat has captured many folks‘ attention recently, are convinced it matters.
Because of the Sedins style of play and the quality of their passing, they have been able
to perform alchemy and turn a number of replacement level top-six forwards into
bonafide twenty-five or even thirty goal scrorers. Sometimes it seems as if my
grandmother could pot twenty-five goals on the Sedins right-wing (granted, she‘s a
feisty lady).
I thought it might be fun to calculate the shooting percentage of every Sedin line-mate
since the twins entered the league. I was wrong. It took a long time, was arduous and
my findings are ultimately imperfect.
Still, I think it‘s cool to look over, and allows me to make a basic point.
While the list of Sedin triggermen isn‘t exactly awe inspiring, my hypothesis is that their
shooting percentage will be. Sadly, some of the information I‘d require to do a more
comprehensive table isn‘t available and so some assumptions will be required.
First of all, I have no method of separating even-strength shots from PP shots until 07-
08, which, is too bad and probably skews the numbers somewhat. To maintain
consistency, I‘ve included PP goals and shots for most Sedin line-mates. This isn‘t a
major flaw because most Sedin line-mates have also spent time on the man-advantage
with the twins, with Alex Burrows being the most notable exception.
Secondly, there are also gaps in what I‘m able to definitively figure out from the gamelogs
and boxscores. For example, in 2001-2002, the Sedins lined up with Trent Klatt for
34 games and with Todd Warriner for 13. That leaves 35 games unaccounted for, and
as best I can tell the twins played with an irregular combination of wingers including
Todd Bertuzzi, Jan Hlavac, Trevor Linden and Matt Cooke. It‘s impossible to ferret out
who took which shot while they were on the ice with the twins, so I‘ve only included
games in which the identity of the Sedin line-mate is clear. This means, sadly, that the
likes of Jeff Cowan, Ryan Shannon and Mats Lindgren, all of whom I remember taking
shifts here and there with the twins over the past decade, don‘t qualify for our list.
The logic also results in us losing a few blocks of time: we lose from February through
to the end of the season in 03-04 because Crawford never managed to find a good fit
for the twins after Magnus Arvedson went down. He tried the likes of: Bertuzzi,
Rucinsky, Naslund and Sanderson with the twins in search of a good fit and never really
found one. Often the boxscore suggests that Bertuzzi would double shift and play 7 or