Fancy Stats

Fancy Stats is a colloquial term used in hockey to refer to advanced statistics such as Corsi, Fenwick, Zone Starts, and more.

1. Corsi Rating. Corsi rating is the most fundamental advanced stat. Over the course of large samples, shot differential predicts team success better than goal differential. Like Fielding Independent Pitching stats in baseball, the usefulness of a Corsi rating relies on an empirical assumption that many fans find counterintuitive. In sabermetrics, that controversial breakthrough idea was that pitchers have little influence on whether balls are fielded once put in play. For hockey, the equivalent idea is that teams have little influence on the quality of their shots over large sample sizes.
2. Fenwick Rating. The same stuff as Corsi. The trade-off here is that you give teams and individuals credit for blocking shots, but you reduce the sample size of the applicable shots. For that reason, Fenwick is often used for comparing teams, not players, that necessarily produce larger samples.
3. Zone Start Percentage. Zone start percentage adds context to other stats. Players who start most of their shifts in the offensive zone (55-70%) tend to score more points and have better Corsi/Fenwick ratings than those who do not.
4. PDO attempts to quantify a player’s good or bad luck. A score of over 1000 tends to indicate “good luck”, under 1000, the opposite. If a player has a bad Corsi rating but a great plus/minus, he’s probably being overrated thanks in part to his teammates’ scoring abilities and/or his goalie’s performance.
5. QualComp (aka Corsi QoC). QualComp is the other half of the deployment puzzle with zone starts. Whether a player faces the other team’s top talent adds perspective to the numbers.