Thus, twelve statistics have been isolated for skaters, either for their relevance to performance, relevance to them being indicative of an important role they played, or purely for fun, the latter one essentially explaining why PIMs are going to be included. Furthermore, five categories have also been chosen for goalies based on the same factors. Let’s take a look at what these categories are and why some of them were selected.

These three are self explanatory and can offer some perspective on how potent any player was for our offense.

1- Pique Boo – 36 – Season 77

2- Easton Schaffer – 33 – Season 78

3- Hockey Player – 32 – Season 77

4- Benji Hockiwi – 31 – Season 77

5- Pique Boo – 31 – Season 78

6- Benji Hockiwi – 30 – Season 76

7- Hockey Player – 30 – Season 78

8- Florian Hascek – 24 – Season 76

9- Joe Biggs – 22 – Season 77

10- Spaceman Spiff – 22 – Season 78

1- Hockey Player – 53 – Season 78

2- Pique Boo – 51 – Season 77

3- Hockey Player – 47 – Season 77

4- Benji Hockiwi – 46 – Season 77

5- Cob O’Corn – 41 – Season 76

6- Pique Boo – 41 – Season 78

7- Easton Schaffer – 40 – Season 78

8- Joe Biggs – 37 – Season 77

9- Benji Hockiwi – 36 – Season 76

10- Bodhi Echo – 35 – Season 78

1- Pique Boo – 87 – Season 77

2- Hockey Player – 83 – Season 78

3- Hockey Player – 79 – Season 77

4- Benji Hockiwi – 77 – Season 77

5- Easton Schaffer – 73 – Season 78

6- Pique Boo – 72 – Season 78

7- Benji Hockiwi – 66 – Season 76

8- Cob O’Corn – 60 – Season 76

9- Joe Biggs – 59 – Season 77

10- Florian Hascek – 56 – Season 76

An interesting thing to note so far is just how efficient the duo of Boo and Player was for the three seasons they’ve spent together, and this shows with how many times they appear. It’ll be interesting to see how Player can keep up now that his main man down the middle is moving on up, and it’ll be up to fellow S77 player, Peyton Campeau, to step up for his final season in the SMJHL as he’ll look to make the 1C spot his own. Perhaps a candidate to look out for in a future update of these leaderboards.

Akin to goals, assists and points, hits and blocked shots are a reflection of the defensive prowess and are a big part of how we judge a player’s effectiveness in defending their own zone.

1- Easton Schaffer – 183 – Season 78

2- Clarence Worley – 149 – Season 78

3- Cob O’Corn – 160 – Season 76

4- Florian Hascek – 140 – Season 76

5- Fédot Fedorov – 134 – Season 76

6- Demier Bellona – 129 – Season 77

7- Ian Avery* – 123 – Season 78

8- Easton Schaffer – 122 – Season 77

9- Demir Bellona – 118 – Season 76

10- Spaceman Spiff – 117 – Season 78

1- Newton Campbell – 204 – Season 76

2- Master Empoleon – 187 – Season 78

3- Johanna Krakow – 157 – Season 78

4- Clarence Worley* – 115 – Season 77

5- Jacob Maccabees – 107 – Season 77

6- Demir Bellona – 100 – Season 76

7- Marshall Mathers – 86 – Season 78

8- Kaiden Brown – 83 – Season 76

9- Joe Biggs – 74 – Season 78

10- Jeff Buekeboom – 73 – Season 78

* Forward playing out of position

Here’s why this type of endeavour is interesting. We for sure would’ve thought hits were more of a defenseman stat, but as it turns out, only three made the top 10. Now, is that a product of my innate inability to draft defenseman? Probably. We are led to believe that despite that, Schaffer having such a sizeable gap between his record setting 183 hits last season and Clarence’s 149 in the same year, but also Corn’s S76 tally of 160 hits still standing in the top 3 are indicative of a trend where forwards hit more. Deployment is likely to play into this, but not all of them have been playing particularly hit heavy roles, and tactics were the same for all, so it’s a bit of an eye opener and a fun one at that. That being said, blocked shots are absolutely what we thought they’d be, with only Joe Biggs being able to squeak his way into 9th as a forward.

This one is a bit different to hits and blocked shots but supports the defensive prowess analysis of a player. Safe to say possession of the puck is one of if not the most important parts of the game. You can’t score without it, and you’re also vulnerable to getting scored on. Players who shine at keeping the puck (low giveaways) and at retrieving it (high takeaways) can often be overlooked if it means being more defensively sound and less offensively gifted, and this is a way to further highlight their important contribution to the team.

1- Demir Bellona – 6.00 – Season 76

2- Newton Campbell – 5.50 – Season 76

3- Jacob Maccabees – 4.75 – Season 77

4- Jacob Maccabees – 4.67 – Season 76

5- Demir Bellona – 4.64 – Season 77

6- Bohdi Echo* – 4.10 – Season 77

7- Hotdog Lunch – 2.32 – Season 78

8- Jeremy Snugglemuffin III** – 2.25 – Season 77

9- Spaceman Spiff – 1.97 – Season 78

10- Hockey Player – 1.62 – Season 78

* Forward playing out of position

**DFA – 18 games

Shout out to the flerken for having such an immediate impact on the team despite only a quarter of the season of games played. The S77 DFA class was one to remember as they had an incredible impact on the cup run we had. As far as main takeaways go, this very much highlights the defenseman. This isn’t forward erasure, but there’s a clear gap between the first forward inclusion, Hotdog Lunch, and the stat ahead of him. This is one of the stats that is going to likely see some of the top inclusions stand for a while, a ratio of 6 being very impressive and likely to hold the number 1 spot for quite some time.

This is a less tracked statistic perhaps, but one we’ve found to be pretty paramount to team success at times. This relates back to the historic season 77 run that the Highlanders had, a season that saw the Ottawans finish 5th in the standings, and where an important part of their success came from an elite powerplay. They finished the regular season with a 29.2% success rate, scoring a nice 69 goals which constituted 27.6% of their goals for. This really cemented the importance of specialty players, players who may not have as big of a role in the lineup but shine when called upon on special teams. To illustrate this point, again in season 77, rookie Easton Schaffer had 22 points on the powerplay (10 goals, 12 assists) deployed on the 1st wave, but saw on average 3 minutes less of 5 on 5 ice than his PP1 linemates.

1- Hockey Player – 17 – Season 78

2- Hockey Player – 16 – Season 77

3- Pique Boo – 13 – Season 77

4- Pique Boo – 12 – Season 78

5- Demir Bellona – 10 – Season 77

6- Benji Hockiwi – 10 – Season 77

7- Easton Schaffer – 10 – Season 77

8- Fédot Fedorov – 8 – Season 76

9- Florian Hascek – 8 – Season 76

10- Easton Schaffer – 8 – Season 78

1- Pique Boo – 27 – Season 77

2- Benji Hockiwi – 24 – Season 27

3- Hockey Player - 23 – Season 77

4- Demir Bellona – 19 – Season 77

5- Easton Schaffer 18 – Season 78

6- Hockey Player – 18 – Season 78

7- Pique Boo – 17 – Season 78

8- Bodhi Echo – 15 – Season 78

9- Benji Hockiwi – 15 – Season 76

10- Cob O'Corn – 12 – Season 76

1- Pique Boo – 40 – Season 77

2- Benji Hockiwi – 34 – Season 77

3- Hockey Player – 39 – Season 77

4- Hockey Player – 35 – Season 78

5- Demir Bellona – 29 – Season 77

6- Pique Boo – 29 – Season 78

7- Easton Schaffer - 26 – Season 78

8- Benji Hockiwi – 22 – Season 76

9- Easton Schaffer – 22 – Season 77

10- Bodhi Echo – 21 – Season 78

These leaderboards essentially support the main observation or the main point of interest when it comes to tracking powerplay production. First and foremost, it highlights Schaffer’s impact as a player with less icetime who’s S77 powerplay contributions have him sitting at 7th for goals, tied at 10th for assists and 9th for points over a season, which is something to applaud. In the same spirit, Bodhi Echo really turns out to be the standout here. In even more dramatic fashion, Bodhi really took the opportunity of playing some powerplay minutes on the second wave in stride and had an immediate impact in S78. While Ottawa’s powerplay would reduce to 26.7%, which remains a very potent powerlay, Bodhi who averaged 17:29 of even strength TOI and 2:55 of powerplay TOI would have nearly half of his 46-point production come from the powerplay. With 6 goals and 15 assists, totaling 21 points, he makes a first appearance at 8th for assists and 10th for points over a season. This just further reinforces the role-player dynamic and how important they are to a team success, and why its something we look at!

This is obviously more of a meme statistic category perhaps, shots in themselves being of little analytical value and would usually be better analyzed through the shot % metric. That said, shots were kept instead of its % counterpart, due to the latter often being skewed through low shot volume and high conversion rates, which can occur when there’s a smaller sample size, and thus require a lot more analysis to understand it than simply looking at volume which in itself at the very least provides some information on how involved a player was in trying to generate scoring chances. PIMs is really just how much of a bully one was, and this is getting more important to track given the recent resurgence in agitators/enforcers being created. Perhaps at some point, fights are also going to get tracked! Finally, Plus-Minus has heavily been talked about in terms of it being a very non-factor thing to look at, considering it omits special teams and generally doesn’t take into account the many nuances of why or how a goal went in, but also the context of a goal. You can be a passenger on the ice and still got a + or a – despite not being involved in a goal. It’s a very black or white stat line in itself, but it can trend over a season or a couple and is somewhat indicative of if a player shows some ability to play the full 200 feet.

1- Easton Schaffer – 244 – Season 78

2- Spaceman Spiff – 238 – Season 78

3- Florian Hascek – 232 – Season 76

4- Benji Hockiwi – 228 – Season 76

5- Pique Boo – 214 – Season 77

6- Pique Boo – 207 – Season 78

7- Easton Schaffer – 204 – Season 77

8- Demir Bellona – 203 – Season 77

9- Ian Avery – 191 – Season 78

10- Clarence Worley – 190 – Season78

1- Easton Schaffer – 64 – Season 77

2- Kaiden Brown – 56 – Season 76

3- Benji Hockiwi – 54 – Season 76

4- Newton Campbell – 47 – Season 76

5- Fédot Fedorov – 46 – Season 76

6- Pique Boo – 46 – Season 77

7- Demir Bellona – 46 – Season 77

8- Florian Hascek – 45 – Season 76

9- Demir Bellona – 44 – Season 76

10- Benji Hockiwi - 42 – Season 77

1- Jacob Maccabees – 15 – Season 77

2- Jeremy Snugglemuffin III* – 12 – Season 77

3- Benji Hockiwi – 11 – Season 77

4- Newton Campbell – 10 – Season 76

5- Walbilly Koala* – 5 – Season 77

6- Bodhi Echo – 5 – Season 77

7- Demir Bellona – 4 – Season 76

8- Master Empoleon – 4 – Season 78

9- Easton Schaffer – 1 – Season 78

10- Easton Schaffer – 1 – Season 77

*DFA – 18 games

It gets a bit easier, a bit more straightforward as far as goalie statistics are concerned. Unfortunately, GSAA wasn’t something readily available through player pages on the index, and it’s planned to go through files to gather that data in a near future, but for now its been omitted. Now, there’s some debate to be had as far as how efficient Goals Saved Above Average (GSAA) is at evaluating a goalie’s contribution to their team’s performance, Goals Saved Above Expected (GSAx) being argued to be a better metric, the former being more of a reflection of the team’s general ability on defense than that of the goalies as it doesn’t account for shot quality, which GSAx does. That said, GSAA is what we have available and what we’ll be using for the time being.

Also to note, wins are tracked, but not considered and will not be given too much thought as they don’t pertain to a goalie’s performance. They are tracked to offer some data points that can be used moving forward if needed on other analytical projects and to perhaps highlight an anomaly of a season if the case presents itself.

The five tracked stats are shots against (shot volume, aka how alone a goalie was to hold the fort), saves, GAA, SV% and shutouts. These are the usual + volume and saves being added to give goalies a bit more to look at given there are less data points for them to begin with.

It’ll be a while before we start seeing more diversity in the goalie leaderboard. With one starter essentially being the main character in net for 4 seasons straight, its tough to see much competition for those top spots outside of that. This means we only truly see two starting goalies and one backup competing for this for now, in Tanner Pitts, our S76 starter, and Bishop Van Apeldoorn, our starter for the past two seasons and for next season, but also our current backup and goalie for the future, Jeff Kirkstone III. This means we’ve been taking into account or BUG’s as well, although they’re identified as such to try and dissociate small sample sizes and low opponent strength which is often the context in which a BUG is called upon. Nonetheless, its important to mention these statistics for now, and we might drop BUG seasons altogether when Ottawa can build some longevity and history.

1- Bishop Van Apeldoorn* – 3.37 – Season 76

2- Bishop Van Apeldoorn – 3.40 – Season 77

3- Jeff Kirkstone III* – 3.58 – Season 78

4- Tanner Pitts – 3.68 – Season 76

5- Bishop Van Apeldoorn – 3.79 – Season 78

1- Bishop Van Apeldoorn – 0.900 – Season 77

2- Bishop Van Apeldoorn – 0.899 – Season 78

3- Jeff Kirkstone III* – 0.896 – Season 78

4- Bishop Van Apeldoorn* – 0.894 – Season 76

5- Tanner Pitts – 0.892 – Season 76

1- Bishop Van Apeldoorn – 4 – Season 77

2- Tanner Pitts – 2 – Season 76

3- Bishop Van Apeldoorn – 2 – Season 76

4- Jeff Kirkstone III – 2 – Season 78

1- Bishop Van Apeldoorn – 1874 – Season 77

2- Tanner Pitts – 1627 – Season 76

3- Bishop Van Apeldoorn – 1620 – Season 78

4- Jeff Kirkstone III* – 800 – Season 78

5- Bishop Van Apeldoorn* – 448 – Season 76

1- Bishop Van Apeldoorn – 1686 – Season 77

2- Bishop Van Apeldoorn – 1457 – Season 78

3- Tanner Pitts – 1452 – Season 76

4- Jeff Kirkstone III* – 716 – Season 78

5- Bishop Van Apeldoorn* – 448 – Season 76

*BUG Season

It’ll be interesting to see how our seasons evolve and how our goalies are able to keep up. For the time being, its been a lot of action for our goalies who receive a lot of shots and do a fine job stopping them, despite our best efforts to apparently field a non-existing defensive core. We’re looking at doing a better job moving forward to pay it back to these fine tendies who’ve taken all the punches without complaining.

A few things that we’ll be keeping an eye out for in the coming seasons is going to be the Blocked Shots record first and foremost. With 204 blocked shots, Newton Campbell’s feat has held strong for the last two seasons but is being challenged by rookie player Master Empoleon who recorded 187 blocked shots last season. With some development surely to come, the record could fall in the hands of our young player. Perhaps then, Master could take aim on the SMJHL record of 972 currently held by Jack Booth. Furthermore, Hockey Player sniffed the lead of the points leaderboard last season. With a bit of improvement up and down the roster and some growing chemistry between the players, surely the Ottawa veteran and first draft pick in franchise history has his sights on besting the record set by Pique Boo at 87 points back in season 77. Moreso, he’ll look to improve on his 53 assists recorded this past season and inch closer to the assist-per-game territory. As a general element, seeing new faces pierce the top 10’s is going to be great as they’re currently being dominated by the same players, which is very understandable given the short history of the team so far.

As we move forward, we’ll be updating these leaderboards over every season and highlighting some notable seasons in our yearly awards, but the full season records update will be remaining a yearly tradition. As far as all-time leaders, the initial rankings will be coming in next years iteration of this post as we collect more data and as we see more players come through our doors.

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