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Thelastheraclid · 08-14-2020, 09:45 AM

I’m a defenseman so I am kind of obsessed with looking at the defensive side of the SHL. Because of my obsession I wanted to take a look and try and see how many goals players have prevented with their defensive play.

I went about creating a formula to figure this out and got something that looks right to me but if any of you advanced stat people have suggestions or critiques I would love to hear them.

First I went about determining the average shooting percentage and corsi for percentage for the SHL. The average shooting percentage came out to 8.50% and the CF% came to 49.61. With these two averages I went to work. The first bit of the formula was using shot blocks and shooting percentage. I used the league’s average shooting percentage with each player’s blocked shot totals to see how many of those shots would have been goals if they had not been blocked. The second bit was using CF%, shooting percentage, and takeaways. I combined CF% and shooting percentage and then used takeaways to see how many goals were prevented by disrupting the opposition’s possession. I then added the two results together for a total of prevented goals.

Does this hold any weight? Don’t ask me I stopped taking math classes once I graduated high school. The results make sense giving it a cursory look though. The top ten in goals prevented are:

Nat Emerson BAP 15.84
Mathias Seger MIN 14.95
Liam O'Callaghan TBB 13.85
Jakob Hamr TBB 10.02
Cal Clucker TOR 9.9
Collin Gibbles MIN 9.59
Guy Zheng HAM 9.51
Ursin Zimmermann TOR 9.47
Dominic Montgomery NEW 9.43
Craig Finley TBB 9.34

These players shouldn’t be surprising since they are the leaders for blocked shots and takeaways. The number of goals prevented doesn’t seem out of the realm of possibility so I think it works out. It is interesting that Gibbles is the only forward to break the top ten.

If we want to break it down by position further (top 5):

Center
Mika Kandinsky TOR 6.54
Tom Fiddler TBB 6.03
Gordie Boomhover TEX 5.56
Andreas Kvalheim TEX 5.05
Esa Parmborg CGY 4.97

Left Wing
Jeff Brogen SFP 5.69
Danny Marston TOR 5.61
Philipp Winter LAP 5.18
Rhys Pritchard TOR 4.92
Piotr Czerkawski TEX 4.46

Right Wing
Collin Gibbles MIN 9.59
Herb Robert TBB 8.84
Mega Tron TBB 7.05
James Ronlain TBB 5.99
Henrik Lekberg Osterman SFP 5.86

Left Defense
Nat Emerson BAP 15.84
Mathias Seger MIN 14.95
Liam O'Callaghan TBB 13.85
Jakob Hamr TBB 10.02
Daniel Kuster TOR 9.01

Right Defense
Cal Clucker TOR 9.9
Guy Zheng HAM 9.51
Ursin Zimmermann TOR 9.47
Dominic Montgomery NEW 9.43
Craig Finley TBB 9.34

Again please let me know if you have any suggestions to make this more accurate.

Link for those interested:
link

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