When you go deeper into the analytics, the Senators actually look more like a good defensive team with a poor offence.
The Senators have had an up-and-down season, floundering from winning streak to losing streak. Despite their bumpy play, their record through 15 games is 8-7-0. The Senators are the fourth-best scoring team in the NHL, with 3.73 goals a game. But they allow 3.27 goals a game, ranking them 19th in the league.
Paradoxically, though, when you go deeper into the analytics, the Senators actually look more like a good defensive team with a poor offence – the exact opposite of what most fans might think.
A statistic many analysts use to gauge team success is expected goals: “The chance of an unblocked shot attempt being a goal."
The Senators have 2.9 expected goals per game, which is 25th in the NHL. They have the third-highest goals-above-expected differential at 11.5, meaning they have 56 goals this year but would have been expected to have just 44.5.
Meanwhile, the team is seventh in expected goals-against-per-game with 2.84, but they've actually given up 3.27 goals a game. The Senators have allowed 49 goals but would have been expected to give up just 43.6.
These statistics expose a discrepancy between what seems to be a relatively good Sens defence in terms of expected goals against, even though they are giving up the 19th most goals per game in the league.
All in all, the Senators’ analytics suggest very good defensive play so far and poor offensive play. But their raw output has been the opposite: a team that scores but cannot keep the puck out of their own net.
Why is that? The answer lies partly in the goaltending. But once again, all is not as it appears.
Based on the surface stats, both goalies’ have been poor-to-mediocre this year. Joonas Korpisalo has a .906 save percentage, while Anton Forsberg has an atrocious .860. Yet the Senators are 22nd in the league in team save percentage, which suggests not great but not awful goaltending.
Korpisalo has been good but, weirdly, has almost the identical save percentage on medium-danger chances (.808) as high-danger chances (.806). His medium-danger save percentage is the sixth-worst in the NHL, but his high-danger save percentage is 18th. Korpisalo saves more of the great chances than the medium ones, which is quite confounding.
There is some positive news in that Korpisalo has been increasingly consistent as the season has unfolded. He has posted above a .900 save percentage in six of his last seven games. Korpisalo's saves-above-expected differential is only -0.6 which means, recently, he is mostly saving what he should.
Meanwhile, despite Saturday's win, Forsberg hasn't been good. He has the third worst low-danger save percentage in the NHL at .938. He's ninth last in goals-saved-above-expected, plotting a -4.8, meaning he has given up almost five goals more than he should have this season.
Many fans have focused their frustration on the Senators’ defensive play and their high goals-against. The analytics give a glimpse into why the Senators look so fragile defensively, even if many of their underlying numbers suggest otherwise.
The Senators currently have the third-worst percentage in the league when they give up a high-danger opportunity, despite Korpisalo’s success in that area. Why might that be the case?
The Senators have been giving up many more high-danger chances against than they get themselves. They've had 112 high-danger chances while giving up 149.
To add insult into injury, the Sens are tied for the third most chances given up when defending the cycle, according to analytics guru Meghan Chayka. The reason fans have been upset about the structure of the Senators play is because their mistakes are so glaring, and they have been punished for their big mistakes.
The Senators have a CORSI% of 50.28%, which is 17th in the NHL, meaning the Senators essentially are even in their games, in terms of the shots they generate compared to shots given up. In addition, their expected goals differential is 16th at 0.89, meaning they should be scoring as many goals as they are giving up.
In the end, the idea that the Senators have been playing a run-and-gun style is not showing up in the analytics. The analytics do make the case for the Senators to be an average team, which is reflected in the Senators record of 8-7-0.
No better and no worse.