2012-13 Season Projections Review
Over the last month or so, I have been posting my goal and point total projections for the Carolina Hurricanes players in the upcoming season and while these numbers may not mean much now with the lockout cutting into the year, I still believe that we will have a shortened NHL season and there is never any harm in making predictions. If you haven't been following the series, here is a refresher on how I have been making my projections;
A player's shot rate, shooting percentage and ice-time will have a direct impact on the number of goals he scores, while his teammate's shooting percentage, the number of shots they produce along with his ice-time will affect how many assists he has. Knowing that, I looked at each player's shot rate, shooting percentage, ice-time at even strength & special teams along with his teammate's shot rates and shooting percentage when "x player" was on the ice. I also looked at how many assists a player records at even strength & special teams relative to how many goals he was on-ice for at even strength & special teams to get an idea of how active offensively he typically is. I repeated this process for every player on the Hurricanes* and examined their numbers over the last five years to see if there were any patterns that I could point out concerning their shot rate, shooting percentage or anything else.
This process help me get an idea of what to expect from each player in a given year and make my projections as realistic as possible. There were some areas where I had to make an educated guess (the toughest was figuring out how many shots a player would be on-ice for and how well his teammates would shoot), but you have to do that in some areas since shooting percentage is unpredictable in general. Like I said earlier, the 82-game projections probably do not mean much at the moment, but you can always break it down by scoring rate to get a better idea of what to expect in a shortened season.
After the jump, I will give an overview of my projections along with an explanation for some of my predictions.
*Projections were not made for fringe layers such as Zac Dalpe, Zach Boychuk, Drayson Bowman, etc. due to lack of NHL experience.
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