It’s a pretty obvious statement that the Stars have been struggling to generate offense this year. One area where they seem to be struggling is capitalizing on rebounds. It seems obvious when watching the games but what does the data tell us?
The NHL doesn’t track goals generated from rebounds in its play-by-play data, but we can do some approximation by filtering the data to only look at goals that were immediately preceded by unsuccessful shots. To call a goal a rebound goal, we’ll assume that the preceding shot happened within a few seconds. To look at the data I made the rather arbitrary assumption that a rebound goal would occur within 3 seconds of the previous shot. Mileage may vary, but that seemed like a reasonable enough time to get a ball-park estimate.
Look at the truncated 2019-2020 season the Stars were somewhere in the middle of the pack when it came to generating rebound goals. They came 16th overall in the percentage of their total goals generated from rebounds. This year so far they rank 24th in percentage of goals generated from rebounds. (As a side note, the NHL has tagged all their play-by-play filed for this season as 2020, which is somewhat confusing when trying to scrape the data).
When we examine the most productive players for the Stars in terms of rebounds, we begin to see why there might be an issue. The players that generated the most goals from rebounds in 2019-2020 were Alexander Radulov, Joe Pavelski, Roope Hintz, and Tyler Seguin. Of the four, only Pavelski is currently uninjured. When we look at the shots that immediately precede rebound goals, again, Tyler Seguin and Alex Radulov are significantly more dangerous than any other Stars players.
This year so far, on the other hand, Joe Pavelski is the only Stars player who has generated anything even approaching a significant rebound offense. The most effective players in taking those shots? Pavelski again, and Radek Faksa.
xG for wrist/snap-shots from the hockeyviz.com xG model.If you have ever looked at an xG model, or even watched a decent amount of hockey you’ll know that the best scoring opportunities come in and around the crease. Without the core of the net-front offense, the Stars are lacking their most potent offensive weapon.
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