So far this season I have picked a player or a topic to discuss while sharing our updated Amerks tracking data. This week I’m going to shake things up. I’m going to go through each of the dashboards I’ve created so far and talk about their takeaways.

I’ll touch on specific players or overall topics relating to the team that aligns what I’ve watched and with the data that has been collected.

Individual 5-on-5 Data

We’ll start with the individual tracking dashboard. This gives us a glimpse of each player’s shot attempts, high-danger passes, offensive controlled entries, and penalty differential. Each chart beside the penalty differential is broken in a per game played rate. The reasoning behind that is that not all of these players have played the same amount of games. Thus to get a fair comparison we want to avoid just using the counting stats to view as that would favor the players that have played more games.

We can see here on this chart that from a forward perspective, Jiri Kulich is leading the way in shot attempts per games played in the games that I’ve tracked. Linus Weissbach is right behind him. Aleksander Kisakov is an interesting guy to examine on this specific chart/data point.

He doesn’t have the same production as Kulich, but he shoots the puck at a high rate. He seems to be around the play consistently in the offensive zone. The Russian-born forward hasn’t seen the puck luck on shooting conversion, but he has performed better to this point than I was anticipating.

Brandon Biro returned from injury over the weekend and stepped right back in as the best play-maker on the Amerks. He created a lot of opportunities for his linemates and sits well atop the board in high-danger passes at 5 on 5.

Primary Shot Contributions

This passing and shooting data feeds into our next dashboard, primary shot contributions. This chart takes into account shot attempts, primary shot assists, and secondary shot assists to give us an idea of which players are having the most impact on creating offense.

Once again, you’ll see Weissbach, Kulich, and Isak Rosen near the top of the board. This also gives you a nice look at how the players are impacting offense. Kulich is more of a shooter, Biro is a set-up guy, and Rosen has been a 50/50 split.

Kulich and Rosen have been playing primarily together this season and have started to feed off of each other very well. It reminds you a little of how Jack Quinn and JJ Peterka meshed last season in the AHL while playing together.

Jiri Kulich wires home his fifth of the season to put the Amerks up 2-0 at Cleveland at the first intermission. Kulich has goals in three straight, points in five straight. 🔥 pic.twitter.com/Ei7ucW2o50

— Kris Baker (@SabresProspects) December 2, 2022

5 on 5 Offensive Zone Entries

Another area in that we’re seeing Kulich succeeds is in his ability to enter the offensive zone with possession. Kulich and Anders Bjork are by far the two players on the team with the highest offensive-controlled entries per attempt.

Where Kulich stands out is how often those controlled entries are leading to a shot attempt. You can see in the chart above that he’s the furthest to the right on the x-axis. One of the things that I like to see from players is how entry rates translate to actual opportunities. Being good at entering the zone with possession doesn’t mean anything if you can’t create scoring opportunities off of it.

Defensemen Dashboard

We’ll shift our focus to the defensemen in the next chart. There are not a lot of prospects to consider in this area. The only one is Oskari Laaksonen and he has been a healthy scratch now for over two weeks. The former third-round pick appears to be done in the Sabres organization. You can see in the data below why that may be the case.

Overall we look at three things in the dashboard above. How well the player exits the zone with possession, how often they fail to exit the zone per opportunity, and their ability to defend entries against. Jeremy Davies grades out highly in all three categories. Kale Clague and Chase Priskie have good numbers in these areas as well.

By the way, the different shades in the failed exit chart indicate how many exit opportunities that player has had in relation to all players. The lighter the shade the fewer opportunities.

Forechecking and Defensive Disruptions

The last dashboard is a look at players that are strong on the forecheck and disrupting plays in the defensive zone. I give a player credit for an offensive forechecking play if they steal back the puck from the opponent to keep the play alive.

A defensive disruption is credited to a player that steals back the puck in the defensive zone that leads to an exit or breaks up a play by getting their stick in a passing lane. This gives us an idea of which players are providing impacts beyond just scoring opportunities.

Once again, Kulich grades out well here at both ends of the ice. Tyson Kozak has strong numbers in the defensive zone as a disruptor.

There are other things I’m tracking such as stats on rush offense, but I haven’t collected enough data there to put it out publicly yet. As the season goes along there may be some more things I add as I get a good grasp of what things are manageable to track or don’t provide any relevant detail.

Photo Credit: Rochester Amerks/Facebook