The AHL and the Rochester Americans dropped the puck on their season yesterday. This will be your first game report of the season and will give you an idea of what to expect moving forward. It’ll be a combination of observations and manual tracking data.

Don’t expect to see a game recap here. This won’t be that style of game reporting. Instead, it’ll be more of a performance review of the players on the roster.

5v5 Shot Share and Quality

We’ll kick things off by looking at shot share, which will be all unblocked shot attempts at 5v5. I’ll be combing that with a look at shot quality. I’m calling that high-danger chances. Manual tracking doesn’t give you a way to track the conventional expected goals we do in the NHL. Therefore, this is a hybrid of that.

I’m classifying a high-danger chance as any shot attempt made in “the house.” Also, shot attempts that come off of a cross-ice pass below the hash marks and cross-ice passes on the rush will be tallied as high-danger chances.

The first chart above is a look at +/- shot share at 5 on 5. The chart below is the matching data set, but looking at shot quality.

The next two charts are the overall shot share and quality percentage at 5 on 5.

Takeaways

• Mattias Samuelsson and Casey Fitzgerald were the best pair for the Amerks in this game. Not only from an eye test, but from a data perspective as well.
• Sean Fogarty was probably the best forward for the Amerks in this game. We’ll see why in our next section.
• Arttu Ruotsalainen had a strong debut. He ended up way ahead in shot quality share in this game.
• Oskari Laaksonen is an interesting case here. He ended up as a plus in shot share, but as one of the worst in shot quality against. This shows the importance of marrying these two data points together.

Primary Shot Contributions

This next section looks at what players contributed to the offense at 5 on 5. We look at shot attempts, primary shot assists, and second shot assists to see which players contributed to generating shots.

Takeaways

• Fogarty and Asplund paced the Amerks offense in creating offensive opportunities.
• Fitzgerald and Bryson were good at creating offense from the blue line as well. Fitzgerald may have been the player that surprised me the most in this game.

Transition

Now, we’ll shift into looking at zone entries, zone exits, and entry defense. I’ll start off by looking at the defenders on the roster. We’ll look at how successfully they exited the zone with control and how well they defended the blue line against entry attempts.

Takeaways

• Samuelsson and Bryson were the top two defenders in exiting the defensive zone with possession by skating the puck out or making a pass that directly led to an exit with possession
• Bryson also was good in his entry defense and Laaksonen showed up solid in this area as well.

Up next, entry data.

Takeaways

• Bryson was one of the better transition players in the game.
• Asplund was also very good at entering the zone with possession.

One thing I wanted to get a grasp on is the next step after entering the zone. If a player enters the zone with possession but doesn’t do anything with the puck then it’s an empty calorie play. Therefore, I’ll be looking at if a shot or passing play occurs after entering the zone and how often that occurs per controlled entry.

Takeaways

• Ruotsalainen and Fitzgerald created a shooting opportunity or created a passing play on 100% of their zone entries. That’s what you like to see.
• Bryson also grades out well here.
• Asplund’s situation is the reason I did this. Remember in the first chart he was one of their top players in entering the zone with possession. However, only 25% of those entries resulted in a shot attempt or passing play. Thus a lot of his entries were empty-calorie plays.

Hope you enjoyed the recap and look forward to it in the future. I’ll also be adding weekly full-season updates along with the game recaps.

Photo Credit: Rochester Americans Facebook