Individual Scoring Chances Through 21 Games

I took a look at individual chances over the first seven games.  Since it coincides with the quarter pole of the season, I thought it would be a good take a look at the chances after 21 games, which concluded with the game last weekend against the Minnesota Wild.  Thus far, they have recorded 381 chances, or an average of 18.14.  That's a slight increase from the 17.6 they averaged through 7 games, which shows progress.  To start, lets take a look at the forwards:

*The table is sortable by clicking the headers

Not surprisingly, Marian Gaborik is lapping the field both at even strength and overall. After him, it is the Battery Line that has been getting their share of opportunities. Now let's look at the defense:

Again, no real surprises. Matt Gilroy and Michael Del Zotto are the clear offensive minded defensement, with the rest of the unit slotting in below them. Steve Eminger has played well defensively of late, but his offensive game has obviously not come around to date.

After the jump, we'll take a look at the group over each of the 7 game blocks.  Once again, a special thanks again to Vic Ferrari for making this data so much easier to assemble.

We'll start with the Battery Line:

This line has been the best line to date, as evidenced by the fact that each member has averaged at least one chance per 15 minutes in every block thus far.  We do see that over the last 7, the groups chances have come down a bit, likely evidence that the opposing teams have begun to focus on slowing them down first and foremost.  Next up, the first line:

Everyone's favorite wraparound artist, Alex Frolov, has come on as the season progressed, increasing his chances in each group of games thus far. Some credit the reintroduction of Marian Gaborik to his line, but he was clearly moving forward anyway. Erik Christensen, on the other hand, has seen his ES production take a hit over the last 7 games, which may very well have led to the decision to move Derek Stepan back to the first line. Speaking of Stepan:

As was discussed here at times, Stepan clearly lost his game for a time in the middle, but has come back of late to put up numbers similar to his first group, an indication he has found his footing again. Sean Avery's ice time has been cut of late, and here we see a possible reason why. He was highly effective early at generating chances while generally being Sean, but lately he's been getting less chances on his own. It's been speculated that he needs the ice time to be effective, but the chicken and egg argument says if he's not effective, he won't get the time. Finally, there's Derek Boogaard. It's hard not to be happy with what we've gotten from Boog so far. He's not going to turn into Steven Stamkos tomorrow, but if he generates a chance or two here and there, he becomes less of a sideshow and more of a hockey player, and that in turn will lead to more opporunities for him to be out there at times where he needs to change the tone. Finally, let's look at the last line:

Among this group, we see some repeat patterns. Brian Boyle, like Frolov, has only gotten better over time. Brandon Prust, like Christensen, has seen his play tumble a bit over the last 7 games. Ruslan Fedotenko has, well, been all over the map thus far. His overall total hasn't been great, but his last 7 have been excellent, comparable to all of our best forwards.

For completeness, here's the defensive players:

Reality is that for the defense, it's much more important for them to prevent others from getting chances than it is for them to generate chances themselves, but it's still interesting to look at a unit not overall known for their offensive skill. Much like the overall totals, Gilroy and Del Zotto are the only one's consistently getting chances. Dan Girardi, however, has shown some consistency while on the PP time, something none of the defensemen besides MDZ has done.

So there you have it.  If there's anything else you would like to know about regarding the individuals, or questions/observations about what is already here, have at it in the comments section.