Statistics

Before I get into this, I will prelude with - due to lack of time (writing this at work) and overall laziness in wanting to go too deep, I have decided to do a quick 'analysis' based on some stats. I am very aware (and had made the conscious decision) that I did not explore every possible variable. This is just a quick and dirty analysis... just don't show this to my old stats professors, they may yell at me. =)

I was looking at our player stats this morning, and compared them with the rest of the league. Here are some things I took note of:

TOTAL POINTS
Team
7: Clowe
5: Thornton
4: Marleau, Pavelski

League
8: Crosby (PIT)
7: Clowe (SJS), Malkin (PIT), Ribeiro (DAL)

GOALS
Team
4: Clowe
1: Pavelski, Marleau, Cheechoo, Thornton, Murray, Mitchell

League
4: Clowe (SJS), Brier (PHI), Koivu (MIN)
3: Datsyuk (DET), Elias (NJD), Morrow (DAL), Phaneuf (CGY), Green (WSH), Avery (NYR), Sykora (PIT)

ASSISTS
Team
4: Thornton
3: Marleau, Clowe, Pavelski

League
6: Crosby (PIT), Ribeiro (DAL)
5: Malkin (PIT)
4: Prospal (PHI), Gomez (NYR), Iginla (CGY), Thornton (SJS), Jagr (NYR), Hossa (PIT), Robidas (DAL)

POWER PLAY GOALS
Team
2: Clowe
1: Mitchell

League
3: Morrow (DAL)
2: Green (WSH), Pronger (ANA), Elias (NJD), Hejduk (COL), Clowe (SJS), Lehtinen (DAL), Briere (PHI)

Naturally, no one's surprised to see Joe leading the team in assists, but who would've thought a month ago that Clowe would represent the Sharks (within the team and in the league) in points, goals and power play goals? However, we can't solely depend on the consistency of Clowe to carry us to the finals. If you look closely at the league stats, several teams have multiple players appearing high up in the stats lists. I'd like to see that happen for the Sharks within the next few games.

Now I know you're probably thinking: even though our top scorers haven't scored much, they've still been contributing a lot to the game (hitting, shots, etc.). Don't get me wrong, I think it's great and extremely important that those responsibilities have been picked up by more players. I would just like to see the same thing (eventually) happen in the area of scoring.

An additional thought, we really need to step it up in the area of special teams. Both our power plays and penalty kills have been on the lower end:

POWER PLAY
Series
23.1%: Calgary
14.3%: San Jose

League
40.0%: Dallas
26.1%: Pittsburgh
23.1%: Anaheim, Calgary

PENALTY KILL
Series
85.7%: Calgary
76.9%: San Jose

League
94.1%: Montreal
92.3%: Pittsburgh
90.5%: Boston
88.2%: Detroit, Colorado