Yakupov is Flourishing

I would like to thank Dave Gordon for inviting me to blog for The Oilers Rig. I was surprised and honoured. Hopefully, my analytics perspective will add value to their tradition of informative and interesting writing.

Toward the end of last season, I blogged about how Yakupov’s improvement with 2nd line center, Derek Roy, and under interim coach, Todd Nelson, was one of few bright spots for the Oilers. Although Yakupov’s goal production was low, I noted he had some pretty bad puck luck and that his scoring rate would eventually improve due to the statistical phenomenon called “regression to the mean.” This means that Yakupov’s scoring rate was below his “true” ability last season, but that over time his scoring rate (i.e., shooting percentage) should return to his career average, which looks to be about 9%.

Important to scoring more goals is getting more shots. When it came to even-strength shooting rates in the 2nd half of last season, Yakupov was generating shots comparable to a solid 2nd line forward. I suggested that if Yakupov continued at this pace this season, along with his shot generation and offensive contribution on the power-play, 25 goals and 50 points was not out of the question. How has Yakupov done so far?

Before being paired with McDavid (& Pouliot), Yakupov was not doing too much in terms of shots on net. He was also playing 3rd line minutes. I was very disappointed and puzzled. Hadn’t the coaching and management learned last season that Yakupov doesn’t excel as a bottom-6 forward? Then again, both management and coaching changed. Still, I was not a happy Oilers fan.

WOWY (With-or-Without-You) Shot Attempt Metrics

Part way through the game against Nashville, coach Todd McLellan decided to pair up McDavid and Yakupov, and just like that, good things were happening; more offense from each of them, better shot metrics for the team, and perhaps even better defense. Thanks to David Johnson’s Super-WOWY (With-or-Without-You) tables, analytics geeks like myself can search for all sorts of player combinations to assess their respective team’s shot attempt metrics.

Based on these WOWY tables, when Yakupov and McDavid are playing apart (at 5v5), the Oilers’ shot attempt differential (SAT%) is underwhelming: McDavid’s SAT% = 46.4% and Yakupov’s SAT%=37.2%. However, when together, the Oilers’ SAT% improves dramatically to 53.5% (61 Shot Attempts For; 53 Shot Attempts Against). Interesting to note, though, that the duo’s shot attempt differential varies depending on who is on the blue-line. With Sekera and Fayne (20:04 shared ice-time) supporting them, the team’s SAT% is an incredibly strong 64% (SAT For = 26, SAT Against = 15). 64% is the kind of number you’d expect from top lines on elite teams. However, with Schultz & Klefbom (15:32 shared ice-time), the team’s SAT% falters a bit: 45.4% (SAT For = 10, SAT Against = 12). Simply put, the team is much better at generating more shots than their opponents when Yakupov and McDavid are together than apart, especially when supported with Sekera and Fayne.

Offense: Individual Shot & Production Metrics

How about Yakupov’s individual production? To be a successful sniper, he needs to shoot; a lot! After the Detroit game (Oct. 21, 2015), Yakupov’s 5v5 shooting rate is 11.25 / 60 min., which ranks him 32nd among 370 forwards. That’s not only an excellent shooting rate for a 2nd line forward, that’s among the top 10% of all forwards! At this shooting rate, if Yakupov scores at his career scoring rate of 9% (which is also league average), he would net 16 goals. With McDavid, though, who is an exceptional passer, Yakupov’s rate may be boosted to 10% or 11%, resulting in as many as 20 goals.

On the power-play, Yakupov is shooting at a rate of 11.25 shots per 60 minutes. A good percentage of these are high-danger scoring chances (i.e., shot attempts from the slot). Assuming he plays about 190 minutes of PP time with a 15% scoring rate (league average), he should net about 5 PP goals. Combining his production at 5v5 and PP, that’s 21 to 25 goals. If there is more McDavid magic than what we expected from his rookie campaign (e.g., analyst Stephen Burtch predicted 78 points), I could see Yakupov scoring closer to 30 goals.

Defense: Shot Metrics Against Relative-to-Team

How about his defensive play? To the eye, Yakupov appears to hustle hard to backcheck. I don’t know how effective he is in anticipating a player’s movement, but he is making an effort to play a 200-foot game (as they say). Measuring defense in hockey is still somewhat vague. There is no single reliable metric. However, we can take reasonable guesses. One way is to measure the team’s shot attempts against (per 60 minutes) when the player is on the ice, relative to the team average (i.e., SAT-Against RelTM). That is, how many shot attempts, compared to the team average, are the Oilers allowing when Yakupov is on the ice? So far, relative to team average, the Oilers have allowed 3 fewer shot attempts per 60 minutes. This ranks Yakupov as 5th best on the team and 3rd best among forwards.

How does this compare to last season? When Yakupov was on the ice, the team was allowing almost 5 more shot attempts per 60. Only Aulie and Ference were worse. In other words, with Yakupov on the ice, this season’s Oilers are allowing 8 fewer shot attempts per 60 minutes compared to last season. Don’t know how stable this difference will be, but if by season’s end, Yakupov’s shot attempts against even improves half as much, it’s an improvement worth noting.

The McDavid Factor

I don’t want to place too much emphasis on the SAT-Against RelTM metric because the reasons for the team’s defensive improvement may not be due directly to Yakupov. Our first hint is McDavid’s SAT-Against RelTM, which is -6.8 (per 60) and the team’s best. Our 2nd hint comes from David Staples’ (Edmonton Journal) tracking of errors on scoring chances against. Staples observes that McDavid is performing above expectations, namely, his error rate is 4.8 per 60 minutes, which is tied for 2nd best among the Oilers. Yakupov’s error rate is 7.2/60, which is one of the lowest among the forwards. Given these hints, it’s quite possible (or to be less charitable, likely) that Yakupov’s SAT-Against metric is being significantly driven by McDavid’s defense. This also suggests that McDavid may be a more complete player than we expected. (I’m thinking of McDavid as a potential Toews-like 2-way player, except with better offensive talent.)

But back to Yakupov, obviously this is only 7 games into the season and line combinations may change, injuries could happen, and statistical sample sizes are small. So far, though, Yakupov is flourishing and demonstrating the productive promise of what I expected based on the 2nd-half of last season. Derek Roy’s investment into mentoring Yakupov seems to have paid dividends for Yakupov, the Oilers, and us, the long-suffering fans.

Thanks for reading. I welcome comments and questions below. Question to readers: What have you noticed about Yakupov’s play?

Notes. Data courtesy of war-on-ice and puckalytics.