Thursday, September 22, 2011

On Semin, Boudreau, and Understanding

Alexander Semin possesses a unique set of characteristics that often cause extreme polarization among hockey fans and pundits: he is supremely skilled, particularly in areas that are easily observable (FN1), and he seems to operate in a different space from the dominant North American hockey culture, both on the ice – whereas certain preferences exist for those players that appear to skate hard and fast into corners and up and down the ice (FN2), Semin and other such players "let the game come to them" without continually chasing the play/puck so aggressively – and off it – Semin is extremely shy, introverted, and does not speak English well. (FN3) While Semin’s patently high skill level does create expectations that are difficult to meet, what actually fuels the vitriol is subtler: an ingrained preference against a distinct playing style due to a hockey-cultural dissonance, i.e. because a player doesn’t skate around the rink like a madman, combined with an inability or unwillingness to share person and personality with teammates and/or fans, i.e. that there is no connection to the subject, not only poisons any objective evaluation of play but also foments unsupported and ad hominal attacks, such as that Semin “just doesn’t care,” to explain perceived failings. (FN4) Such attacks, long the domain of message board and blog pabulum, were finally levied by actual ex-teammates, first by Matt Bradley and then echoed by David Steckel. Capitals coach Bruce Boudreau and owner Ted Leonsis sort of lukewarmly, or at least inarticulately, responded to the criticisms and defended the player without really explaining why the attacks were without basis. GM George McPhee, however, supplied a brief but appropriate response, noting that Semin is a proven playoff performer, that Bradley got the facts wrong, and perhaps most succinctly and accurately, “[t]his kid’s been productive.”

FN1 – These skills being predominantly stick-handling and shooting, as distinct from other skills that are not always so obvious, e.g., screening the goalie, winning puck battles, etc.

FN2 – Those that play the game this way are not exclusively from North America, see, e.g., Semin’scountryman and good friend, Alexander Ovechkin. Also note the important distinction between appearing to skate hard and fast and actually skating hard and fast. Effortlessly smooth skaters, such as Paul Coffey and Phil Housely, were brutally criticized at various points in their careers for appearing to not work hard enough. Ditto for those players whose games involved patiently waiting in the weeds rather than relentless puck pursuit. Before reaching statistical heights which made them largely criticism-proof, Mario Lemieux and Brett Hull faced criticisms regarding work-ethic that were born more from their style of play than any actual substantive flaw.

FN3 – In over six seasons with the Capitals, he’s given two English language interviews, and both occurred this week. The first was kinda heartbreaking, and the second was awkwardly charming.

FN4 – Another player who is similarly divorced from the predominant North American hockey culture is Nikolai Zherdev. Like Semin, Zherdev plays a passive game that is more read and react than pursue and attack. Zherdev also speaks very little English and in unconcerned with bonding with players or reporters. He is a very good hockey player though, who has no problem scoring or domintating possession at even strength (I’ve written about him before but others have done more). Despite this objective success, Zherdev is one of the more maligned players of his generation by fans, coaches, and reporters.

Notwithstanding the incomplete statistical picture he offered, McPhee is basically correct. Neil Greenberg provides a fuller analysis and concludes with what should have been long obvious to any objective viewer unbiased by a culturally-derived aesthetic preference of the game: Alexander Semin is an extremely effective hockey player who drives possession against tough competition and who is an effective penalty killer. (FN5)

FN5 – An effective but criminally underused penalty-killer. Semin finished the 2010-11 season with .96 TOI/60, 7th highest among Washington forwards. He did not spend a single second killing penalties in the playoffs. See infra.

McPhee basically nails the point about Semin’s playoff success, but I’d like to delve into Semin’s most recent playoff performance a little deeper with specific reference to how he was utilized.

2011 Playoffs

Power Play

Perhaps the most egregious example of the misuse of Semin came on the PP. The Capitals’ PP was mostly woeful during the season, but Semin was its most productive player:

Semin had the highest scoring rate and received the third most minutes (behind Ovechkin and Backstrom). This is consistent with Semin's PP utilization and production throughout his career, that is, he's played and scored a bunch (scoring rate rank among Capitals’ forwards is in parenthesis):

Those scoring rates are comparable with other elite scorers (Datsyuk’s PP scoring rates are 5.68, 5.38, 7.03, and 5.74 over the same period; Crosby’s are 4.80, 4.62, 5.38 and 5.02). Semin’s proven track record on the PP suggests that he should be used similarly in the playoffs. However, not only did Semin’s PP ice time decrease in the playoffs, relative to the other Capitals’ forwards, it decreased significantly:

While Semin’s raw decrease in power play minutes was only .15 minutes per game (a 5% reduction), the reduction is heightened by the fact that the Capitals as a team saw a 20% increase in power play time from the regular season to the playoffs (5.04 to 6.06). In fact, there were 7(!) other Capitals’ forwards who received more power play ice time than Semin. While Semin has been an elite PP scorer his entire career, none of Knuble, Fehr, or Johansson have ever approached Semin’s scoring on the power play, yet they received more PP time in the playoffs than him. The case of Brooks Laich is an interesting one. Laich received a whopping 3.58 min/game on the PP in the playoffs. That is 31% more time than Semin received. Had Laich ever done anything to suggest that he was a more effective PP player than Semin? No, quite the opposite:

Semin has been used more frequently on the PP his entire career, and he has scored at a higher rate than Laich every year (including 06/07 which is not listed) save for 07/08 when Laich scored at a higher rate but in nearly one-third the PP time. It seems clear that going into the 2011 playoffs, Semin had established himself as a great, bordering on elite, PP player, and Laich had established himself as a good or very good PP player. Yet, for some reason Boudreau opted to use Laich 31% more on the PP than Semin, and opted to use 7 different forwards more than Semin. This strikes me as completely insane, without justification, and a severe misuse of talent. (FN6)

FN6 – Critics may want to point to the fact that Semin didn’t score a single PP point in the playoffs as a justification for Boudreau to curtail his use. This argument fails because the Capitals only scored 5 PPG in the 9 games, so the sample size is too small to draw any real conclusions. Moreover, with respect to shots directed at net, the key driver of PP success, Semin was third on the team in PP Corsi (behind Knuble and Sturm). Laich was eighth.

Even Strength

At even strength during the regular season, Semin produced the second highest point scoring rate and the highest goal scoring rate on the team:

He did this while being paired up front most often with Brooks Laich (51% of the time) and to a lesser extent Nicklas Backstrom (36%) and Alexander Ovechkin (31%). He was paired with rookie Marcus Johansson not infrequently (22%) as well. This tells us that Semin played with a variety of different linemates at different times, and was with the big boys some but not all that often. Semin wasn’t exactly handed a golden key on a silver platter, but he wasn’t exactly slumming it either.

The playoffs were a far different (tragic and stupefying) story, however: Semin spent the majority of his even strength ice time with Jason Arnott (65%) and Marco Sturm (52%). These numbers are actually probably misleading because, while I’m a firm believer in the inverse correlation between shift length and effectiveness, Arnott in particular was taking ridiculously short shifts at even strength in the playoffs. It appears that it was as obvious to him as it was to me that he could barely hang on and keep up with NHL playoff pace, and he accordingly and wisely got off the ice at the earliest opportunity. Good for him, not great for his linemates if they happened to have the puck and were headed in the right direction. There doesn’t seem to be published data for even strength shift length, but we can make do with overall shift length:

The most immediately notable thing in that chart should be just how many fewer minutes Semin got than the “big 4” of Ovechkin, Backstrom, Laich, and Knuble. One of Bradley’s comments was about top players and playing time:

When you’re paying your top guys a lot of money and those
guys carry you through the whole season, and if one of them isn’t going, it’s
very hard not to play them, and I understand that that’s tough. But I think in
the end, if you want to win, sometimes you have to sit some of those guys down
and maybe send a message and try to get them going.

It’s unclear if he’s talking about Semin specifically (it seems to me that he was) or someone else like Backstrom, but he probably should have been talking about Knuble, who was on the ice over 21 minutes a game and scored a whole 2 points, despite playing nearly exclusively with Ovechkin and Backstrom. I imagine "Knoobs" and "Brads" are good friends who talked a lot, whereas it wouldn’t surprise me if Bradley and Semin have never had a conversation. So, Knuble’s a great locker room guy who helps the team win, and Semin’s a monster that doesn’t care and wants to go back to Russia.

Sturm’s shift lengths are muddied because he saw time on the penalty kill, but if you consider that Arnott took about 16% of his ice time on the PP, and if you assume those shifts averaged a minute long, then you can estimate that Arnott’s even strength shifts were about 38 seconds long. Those strike me as the shifts of a player in desperate need to get off the ice because he knew he couldn’t keep up. Although Semin having to essentially babysit Arnott and Sturm so much of the time makes it’s difficult to precisely identify who was driving the results, we can nevertheless make some inferences.

Semin spent two-thirds of his even strength playing time tied down by the grizzly Arnott, during which time they would have had the same Corsi stats, but in the one-third of the time Semin thankfully extricated himself from the Anchor, he managed to create a 13.2 differentiation in Relative Corsi. Same story viz. Sturm, and because Boudreau blessed Semin with even more non-Sturm time, Semin separated himself even further from another old-timer playing on at best one leg. One wonders what Semin and the Capitals could have done if he was paired with actual NHL caliber players more of the time. After falling down by a goal late in game 1 against the Rangers, Boudreau put Semin together with Ovechkin and Backstrom (Prayer is the last refuge of a scoundrel). Semin promptly set up the Capitals’ first and tying goal late in the third. (FN7) There were far too few shifts for the deadly trio during the playoffs, as was the case last year v. Montreal. How many playoff failures will Capitals fans have to endure before Boudreau tries uniting those three for a sustained period of time?

FN7 – Of course Boudreau went back to the old line combinations for the overtime, and Arnott made his one nice play of the entire playoffs and Semin absolutely devastated a one-timer for the win.

Penalty Kill

Semin is a very effective penalty killer:

He had the highest Corsi among Capitals forwards last season. I’ll spare you further charts but let you know that this was also the case in 2009-10 and 2008-09. It’s painfully clear at this point that Semin is really good at limiting opposition shot imbalance (and by proxy, scoring chances) on the penalty kill. It may not jive with traditional hockey narratives of skilled, soft players not playing defense, but the statistics are unmistakably unequivocal in this regard. One person who either does not understand statistic or does not care about the Capitals penalty kill happens to be their coach, unfortunately, as shown:

The player who has demonstrated the highest ability to limit opposition Corsi on the PK over the last three seasons did not receive one single second of PK time in the playoffs. It is a stunningly dumb misallocation of assets and abilities, an important microcosm explaining why the Capitals, despite having a vast collection of talent at every position, perhaps unmatched around the league, have won 2 playoff series in four years under Boudreau.

15 comments:

Triumph said...

While Semin is a better player than people think, I think using penalty killing samples that feature about 60 minutes worth of ice time can't really be that relevant to proving a player's penalty killing value. We'd have to consider the context when Semin was used as a penalty killer (being used just once at the end of a game in which the Caps were down could've skewed things considerably).

Another thing which you don't mention is Semin's propensity for bone-headedly silly penalties - these include but are not limited to hooking penalties that occur well away from his team's net. Semin took 27 minors last year, tied for tops on the team. He took 33 the year before. Jagr and Kovalev also have had this curse, and maybe it's part of an overall strategy to force turnovers or something, but a guy in his place could easily cut the number of minors he takes in half. 13 minors is probably equal to around -3 goals, so he's costing his team half a win per season right there. I think this is part of why the media has labeled him lazy - those penalties look awfully bad.

imbroglioh said...

He went from being the no. forward 4 PK'er in 08/09 to the no. 6/7 guy earlier this season. HIs effectiveness didn't really change as his time went down over 3 seasons.

Jagr always drew more penalties than he took, but yes, Semin took more penalties than he drew last year (-.5/60; Backstrom was -1./60 and Laich was even). He also led his team and was among the league leaders in takeaways. Alot of his penalties are hooks that often lead to takeaways. He's a very effective stripper of the puck; he's also great along the boards. I have another theory as to why his penalty differential isn't great, but you don't want me to get into it.

Hockeyx3 said...

So tell me house this possible development fits, from twitter:

TarikElBashir Tarik El-Bashir
#Caps Boudreau said he's experimenting with not using Backi and Semin on the PK, and instead rolling out 8-19-28 on the shift after a PK.

It seems to take with one hand, but give with the other. What's more important: that Semin play the PK (and I think he's great at that) or have more minutes with 8 and 19? Of course, he might be seeing a lot more minutes with 19 anyway.

Thanks for your blog post.

imbroglioh said...

It seems to take with one hand, but give with the other.

Yea, I think that's exactly right. He's used OV and Semin together following a PK at times before, but not generally all three of them. As a Caps fan, I think they're better off giving Semin a regular shift on the PK. As a Semin fan, I like the idea of the big three coming off right after a PK to feast on bottom 6 forwards and weaker defensemen. I think BB needs to play the big three together for sustained periods of time. We'll see though, I'm not optimistic.

Of course, he might be seeing a lot more minutes with 19 anyway.

Yea, we'll see. Again, I'm not optimistic. At least MoJo should be good enough to give Semin some support on the 2nd line. I'm convinced that BB will find away to screw it up, though.

Peter Robbio said...

Great piece. Very interesting analysis on passive vs. aggressive play. Adding you to my reader. Keep them coming please.
Peter

Triumph said...

Semin's penalty-drawing has little to do with his penalty-taking, though. So, yeah, he draws a lot of penalties, that's because he's an excellent player who makes defenders afraid.

And I was going to make that point about stripping pucks, but I'm not sure that forcing that number of takeaways is worth the high number of penalties he takes.

Your final point, which I'm not buying at all if it's what I think it is, has more to do with reputation and less with country of origin. Refs seem fairly equally disposed in that regard.

Anonymous said...

Great post! Very informative. As a huge Semin fan, I have always seen his upside and consider him a real asset to this team. I have been really bothered by the unfair attacks on him and its good to see him come out of his shell and do the English interviews. As a shy person myself, I am proud of him for doing this. It does show he cares.

Renan said...

While I think your post is informative and generally spot on (or as spot on as I'm in any position to judge), I do think you overstate things when you claim that Semin possesses "unique" characteristics to his personality that lead him to be so underappreciated. I actually think its a pretty common thing in sports where stars who are supremely talented but don't make those inane shows of hustling for hustling's sake become criminally underrated and the subject of scorn from both the media and fans when their team (and teammates) can't come through for them. See McGrady in the NBA and Beltran in baseball for recent examples in other sports.

I think the problem is that because these players make it seem as if the game comes easily to them, outsiders assume that the game is actually easy for them. In other words, they're not trying as hard as they could/should be and are instead squandering their talent or don't care enough. Especially when you compare them to the media darlings (who are generally, not coincidentally, white Americans) who run around like lunatics and throw their bodies around as if they have no regard for their own well being to overtly show how much they're trying (even when their trying doesn't accomplish nearly as much as what their better teammates do). This only gets exacerbated when those star level players aren't as skilled with dealing with the media and offering those banal statements about how every game is life or death and are fine with calling out their teammates for a perceived lack of effort.

imbroglioh said...

Semin's penalty-drawing has little to do with his penalty-taking, though.

Sure, but what seems to matter is the penalty differential. And Semin's not great in that regard.

And I was going to make that point about stripping pucks, but I'm not sure that forcing that number of takeaways is worth the high number of penalties he takes.

Yea I don't know either, but I know he's one of the leaders in takeaways every year, and the other players at the top of that list are some of the best players in the game (Datsyuk, Thornton, Toewes), notwithstanding the large number of Islanders up there every year (their scorer has a liberal definition of of takeaway).

Your final point, which I'm not buying at all if it's what I think it is, has more to do with reputation and less with country of origin. Refs seem fairly equally disposed in that regard.

Maybe, kinda.

imbroglioh said...

I do think you overstate things when you claim that Semin possesses "unique" characteristics to his personality that lead him to be so underappreciated.

I debated for a while on the use of "unique" before finally going with it because of my belief that in this context it connotes something like "rare but not the only ever example of" rather than "the only one person with these characteristics." There are other hockey players with a similar skill set and personality, and they are often excoriated by fans and reporters, and they are very often Russian (Semin and Zherdev are the two I pointed out, but Kovalchuk, Afinogenov, and Frolov all fit into that group).

I think the problem is that because these players make it seem as if the game comes easily to them, outsiders assume that the game is actually easy for them. In other words, they're not trying as hard as they could/should be and are instead squandering their talent or don't care enough.

I think this is exactly right. A really good example of this is Rooney and Berbatov at Manchester United. I'm not a soccer sabremetric expert, but to my eye, they both seem like effective players, but Rooney is loved like a God and Berabatov is vilified like a bloated racehorse in Kentucky. Rooney flies around the field working like a bull terrier, it's not particularly graceful but he wins the ball, while Berbatov coasts like a gazelle doing ballet. The phenomenon is even more acute in hockey because the game is played on a different sized ice sheet in North America than in Europe. The larger ice surface in Europe makes the North American practice of running around like a headless chicken hitting everything that moves and pressuring the puck at all times just not that sensible. That's just not the game that players like Semin and Zherdev (and Sushinsky, Morozov, Cherepanov, and countless others learned how to play growing up), and it has nothing to do with heart, hustle, or work ethic. That's not to say that some players raised on the big ice don't end up playing a more aggressive, pursuing, North American style (see Prucha, Artyukhin, Ovechkin, Kulemin, and others). Hockey's a weird, beautiful game.

odo said...

this conversation about demonstrations of effort vs. perceptions of effectiveness brings back sad memories of Dustin Brown and Frolov, damn you Terry Murray. Brown probably leading the league in TOI (as in, laying down on it), all hustle and grit and hitting and falling over. Frolov doing his job on the shutdown line, cycling away shifts in the o-zone with Zeus and Simmonds, then getting criticized for a lack of production and not trying. hockey is a bastion of backwards ass coaching, perhaps a product of its traditional canadian junior billet lifestyle. though russian coaches are even worse. go figure.

that being said, forechecking (as made possible by icing) is a glorious distinguishing tactical feature of hockey, a pimp sized feather in the cap of its superiority over soccer, where eg pass back + clear makes aggression from forwards without the ball a losing endeavor. though an aggro forechecking wing is well complemented by a hovering, hoovering one. hockey is the best.

Turnshot said...

forechecking (as made possible by icing) is a glorious distinguishing tactical feature of hockey, a pimp sized feather in the cap of its superiority over soccer, where eg pass back + clear makes aggression from forwards without the ball a losing endeavor

The real difference between hockey and soccer in this regard is not the effectiveness of the forechecking endeavor, but the immediacy and obviousness of the result. A good forecheck in hockey can win the puck back in the forward’s offensive zone, creating an immediate scoring chance. But while the same thing can occur in soccer, more likely the ball will end up with the forward’s teammates behind him. The most aggressive “forechecking” soccer team is without a doubt F.C. Barcelona. They benefit as much from the immediate and relentless pressure from their forwards as they do from those forwards’ ability to finish. While Barca is the best at swarming and winning the ball in their offensive third (which does, admittedly, often lead to opportunities for Barca to score), the real effect of their “aggression” up front is that their opponents usually give away possession before they can organize to go forward. This augments Barca’s ability to maintain possession themselves and enhances their ability to gain field position, tire out opponents and create numbers advantages and scoring opportunities.

In hockey, an effective forecheck results in turnovers in the defensive or neutral zone that lead to shots on goal. In soccer, an effective “forecheck” produces advanced field position, increased possession and, ultimately, shots on goal.

The larger ice surface in Europe makes the North American practice of running around like a headless chicken hitting everything that moves and pressuring the puck at all times just not that sensible. That's just not the game that players like Semin … learned how to play growing up, and it has nothing to do with heart, hustle, or work ethic.

So is the argument that Semin is underrated/vilified because he isn’t hitting enough? It seems like he is creating more than his share of turnovers. Or is the argument that he isn’t being recognized for the turnovers he creates because his skating style makes him look less aggressive and lazy (and thus prone to take penalties on the forecheck)?

A really good example of this is Rooney and Berbatov at Manchester United. I'm not a soccer sabremetric expert, but to my eye, they both seem like effective players, but Rooney is loved like a God and Berabatov is vilified like a bloated racehorse in Kentucky. Rooney flies around the field working like a bull terrier, it's not particularly graceful but he wins the ball, while Berbatov coasts like a gazelle doing ballet.

The distinction between Rooney and Berbatov (and Hernandez) is worthy of another entire post.

imbroglioh said...

brings back sad memories of Dustin Brown and Frolov, damn you Terry Murray.

so fucking true.

though russian coaches are even worse. go figure.

so. fucking. true.

though an aggro forechecking wing is well complemented by a hovering, hoovering one.

yup. every prucha needs his semin. and vice-versa.

i love the way odo writes. it's a shame you went into physics and deprived the rest of us (particularly me) of a nearly endless stream of beautifully funny writing.

imbroglioh said...

The real difference between hockey and soccer in this regard is not the effectiveness of the forechecking endeavor, but the immediacy and obviousness of the result.

an absolutely fine and well articulated point.

So is the argument that Semin is underrated/vilified because he isn’t hitting enough?

the argument is that he doesn't try hard enough or "just doesnt care," which is allegedly evidenced by and/or subconsciously derived from the fact that he 1) doesnt hit; 2) doesnt seem to be skating hard (he's somewhere in between the fedorov-ovechkin gradient of smoothness of stride); 3) takes "lazy" penalties. it's mostly utter bullshit and, frankly, somewhat racist.

The distinction between Rooney and Berbatov (and Hernandez) is worthy of another entire post.

i cant wait to read it at http://theeswanson.blogspot.com/.

Anonymous said...

Crosby also doesn't hit is Crosby soft? Oh, Crosby plays great in the corners, well, Semin is also great in the corners. Because he doesn't deliver bone crushing hits doesn't make him bad, as long as he wins those board battles. Give Semin more icetime and see what he really has, push him to the limits (pretty sad seeing him averaging 16-18 min per game). Remember, Semin was the cornerstone of Russia's victory over way way deeper team Canada on Canada's ice. 2 goals and prim. assist in the finals. When he is the go to guy and with the linemates who can keep up with him he is the man. And please with Zherdev comparisons who is pretty bad in the corners and doesn't read the game without puck very well.