New York Rangers Scoring Chances for Game 1 Vs. Los Angeles

It's another season, and like last year, I'll be tracking scoring chances for the New York Rangers again. For the new Banter initiates, here's the definition of what a scoring chance actually is:

A scoring chance is defined as a clear play directed toward the opposing net from a dangerous scoring area – loosely defined as the top of the circle in and inside the faceoff dots, though sometimes slightly more generous than that depending on the amount of immediately-preceding puck movement or screens in front of the net. Blocked shots are generally not included, but missed shots are. A player is awarded a scoring chance anytime he is on the ice and someone from either team has a chance to score. He is awarded a "chance for" if someone on his team has a chance to score and a "chance against" if the opposing team has a chance to score.

The data compilation is made possible by the awesome script provided by Vic Ferrari at Irreverant Oiler Fans and timeonice.com.   This year, the project has expanded from 8 teams tracked to 15, with guys like CJ Richey at In Lou We Trust and Cam Charron at Nucks Misconduct joining the fray.

Project pimping aside, I have the data for the first game against the Los Angeles Kings, and it's located after the jump.

Some of the charts should look familiar, but you'll notice the notes section has become filled with names and strange 4 letter abbreviations.   If you recall from my playoff summaries last season, you'll remember that not only did I begin to include assists on scoring chances, but also the type and zone of the chances.  Well, that continues, only I've made it a bit easier for myself to record and analyze.  Below are the tables for each abbreviation, along with what it translates to:

Obviously, there's great value in this information. For starters, we can see that in this the game, the Rangers clearly struggled to establish a forecheck, generating just 4 chances from offensive zone pressure, compared to 9 for the Kings. We also see a continued trend from the series against Washington, where the best way to beat Henrik Lundqvist is to get in close, as all 3 Kings goals came from the area down around the net.

Finally, once again I'm bringing back the assist category for this stat.  This is not recorded in the same way as a traditional assist, but rather this is a count of only passes that directly result in scoring chances.  The totals are here, with "Plays" simply being a count of the two columns:

This shows you what watching the game certainly would've. This was a game dominated by the top 6 forwards for both teams, with Jarret Stoll being only bottom six forward for either team able to deliver a scoring opportunity. We also see that while Ryan Callahan was able to generate a ton of shots, he was mostly kept to the outside and away from dangerous areas on the ice. (of course, that didn't stop him from scoring anyway.)

Summaries for the Ducks game will be up tomorrow, or you can find the raw data at my blog data dump site, Tracking the NY Rangers. If you have any suggestions for tweaking the categories, let me know in the comments.