NHL man-games lost and CHIP analysis - 30-game report

This is my third look for the 2014/15 regular season at which teams have been hit hardest by injury/illness by trying to place a value on the games missed by players.

The concept again - multiply each game missed by a player by his 2014/15 cap charge (including bonuses), then take the aggregate of these figures for each team and divide by 82. This indicator of value lost to a team by injury/illness is called CHIP (Cap Hit of Injured Players).

This analysis covers every team up to its 30th game only. (Following from the 20-game analysis.)

For a more regular snapshot (i.e. weekly updates beyond the 10-game interval retrospectives), follow my critically acclaimed Twitter feed (@LW3H). CHIP rankings are also again being fed into Rob Vollman's Team Luck calculator on a weekly basis.

Alternatively...
Again, for a different indicator of player "value", I've also illustrated a similar metric based on TOI/G alongside the CHIP numbers.  Clearly, neither cap charge nor TOI/G are perfect measures of player value (whatever Anton Strawman might claim), since each have a number of limitations and inconsistencies, but they provide a decent comparison and the results do vary somewhat.

A quick summary of the alternative metric:

• TOI/G replaces cap charge as the measure of value in the calculation
• For goalies, TOI/G has been worked out as Total Minutes Played / Games Dressed For* - i.e. a goalie playing every minute of 75% of the games, zero in the rest, would end up with a TOI/G of 45 minutes (or close to it, once you factor in OT and so on).  [*Actually, "Games Played by Team - Games Missed by Goalie" - I'm not inclined to disentangle any three-goalie systems or minor-league conditioning stints.]
• This arguably overstates the worth of starting goalies somewhat, but it's simple and you could equally argue that a workhorse goalie is the hardest position to replace, so it's fair for them to have a much higher TOI/G figure
• Where a player hasn't played all year or where a player fairly clearly has a reduced TOI/G figure due to getting injured in their only game or one of very few games, I've used TOI/G from last season (or further back if necessary)
• For each player, multiply games missed by TOI/G to get (for a more palatable name) Cumulative Minutes of Injured Player (CMIP)
• Take the aggregate of CMIP for the team and divide by games played by the team to arrive at AMIP (Average Minutes of Injured Players) - it feels more understandable expressing this metric as an average per game (whereas CHIP is a running total)

[Click to enlarge any image]

The figures...
The table below shows:

• Total CHIP for each team over the first 30 games of the regular season, as well as the distribution of CHIP by position
• The player who has contributed most to the team's CHIP figure
• The number of players with a CHIP contribution of over $250,000 (think of it as being equivalent to a $1m player missing 20 games or a $4m player missing five games)
• AMIP for each team over the same period (e.g. an AMIP of 40:00 could be seen as the team missing two 20-minute per game players for every game this season)

CHIP figures in graphical form:

The same for AMIP (teams in the same order as the CHIP chart for ease of comparison):

The following is a ranking of teams by CHIP over Games 21-30 only, to further illustrate some of the biggest movers since last time:

10 second analysis...

• The Blue Jackets were actually slightly healthier in this 10-game stretch than they were in games 11-20, which isn't saying a whole lot
• The Canadiens were actually a lot less healthier in this 10-game stretch than they were in games 11-20, which also isn't saying a whole lot (with apologies to the Bournival household)
• A full time gig at the Denver Post for anyone who can name more than four of the 12 Avalanche players who missed time in the most recent 10-game period
• Anton Volchenkov's first puck bruise of the year means the Sharks are now the last team standing without a single injury on defense (Spoiler alert: this fact did not last much beyond game 30)

The next lists are the top 30 individual CHIP and CMIP contributions:

Where does it hurt?
This is another update of the crude injury-by-location analysis. Again, I’ve just used the descriptions found in the player profiles on tsn.ca, so the figures will encompass all the inaccuracies and vagueness within them. It should give a broad indication, if nothing else, though.

Despite the expertly handled mumpademic, illness absences still not a huge proportion of the total.

The crude rate of injuries (instances / total games played) remains at 0.88. This compares to 0.80 per game last year (0.80 in 2012/13, 0.78 in 2011/12 and 0.76 in 2010/11).

Finally, a first look for this year at the Evasiveness Index.  This is basically the proportion of injury instances for each team that have been described as either "Undisclosed" or the helpfully pointless "Upper/Lower Body" in the same TSN profiles.  I have made no judgement about whether the many instances of "Illness" (i.e. concussion) or "Flu" (i.e. concussion) other than those contracted directly from Corey Perry should also be included,

Despite repeated claims in the New York Post, the NHL and Coyotes ownership still assure everybody that they are not hiding anything.

Notes/Disclaimers

• Figures exclude a few minor-leaguers / marginal NHLers (usually an arbitrary judgement on my part) who had been on the NHL club’s IR since pre-season. Generally, if a minor-leaguer gets called up and then injured in an NHL game, his games missed will then count towards the CHIP though.  Minor-league conditioning stints immediately after/during a period on IR tend to be included in the man-games lost figures (but can't guarantee TSN's figures are always consistent on this)
• For the avoidance of doubt, suspensions and absences due to "personal reasons" are not included in the figures.  However, as per previous seasons, any "retired" player still under contract (Savard, Pronger, Ohlund) is still included. There are also one or two slightly less "retired" players not separately identified in the bar chart above (e.g. Souray, Timonen).
• There are undoubtedly a few inaccuracies and inconsistencies in there - I do the best I can with the information out there. Corrections might well be picked up in subsequent updates
• The cap figure obviously doesn't really correlate very well to the "worth" of a player in some cases, e.g. where players are seeing out an old (underpaid or rookie) contract or where players are horrendously overpaid and/or were signed by Paul Holmgren, Dave Nonis, Jay Feaster, Dave Nonis, Glen Sather, Dave Nonis...
• Also, for any player traded where cap hit is retained by his old team, the cap hit used will only reflect that for his current team
• Click HERE if you want a full team-by-team listing of games missed and CHIP/CMIP numbers by each player
• Injury/games/TOI info courtesy of tsn.ca and nhl.com - man-games lost info more than likely does not exactly match up with the "official" figures released by individual teams
• Cap info courtesy of capgeek.com

NHL man-games lost and CHIP analysis - 20-game report

This is my second look for the 2014/15 regular season at which teams have been hit hardest by injury/illness by trying to place a value on the games missed by players.

The concept again - multiply each game missed by a player by his 2014/15 cap charge (including bonuses), then take the aggregate of these figures for each team and divide by 82. This indicator of value lost to a team by injury/illness is called CHIP (Cap Hit of Injured Players).

This analysis covers every team up to its 20th game only. (Following from the 10-game analysis.)

For a more regular snapshot (i.e. weekly updates beyond the 10-game interval retrospectives), follow my critically acclaimed Twitter feed (@LW3H). CHIP rankings are also again being fed into Rob Vollman's Team Luck calculator on a weekly basis.

Alternatively...
Again, for a different indicator of player "value", I've also illustrated a similar metric based on TOI/G alongside the CHIP numbers.  Clearly, neither cap charge nor TOI/G are perfect measures of player value (whatever Anton Strawman might claim), since each have a number of limitations and inconsistencies, but they provide a decent comparison and the results do vary somewhat.

A quick summary of the alternative metric:

• TOI/G replaces cap charge as the measure of value in the calculation
• For goalies, TOI/G has been worked out as Total Minutes Played / Games Dressed For* - i.e. a goalie playing every minute of 75% of the games, zero in the rest, would end up with a TOI/G of 45 minutes (or close to it, once you factor in OT and so on).  [*Actually, "Games Played by Team - Games Missed by Goalie" - I'm not inclined to disentangle any three-goalie systems or minor-league conditioning stints.]
• This arguably overstates the worth of starting goalies somewhat, but it's simple and you could equally argue that a workhorse goalie is the hardest position to replace, so it's fair for them to have a much higher TOI/G figure
• Where a player hasn't played all year or where a player fairly clearly has a reduced TOI/G figure due to getting injured in their only game or one of very few games, I've used TOI/G from last season (or further back if necessary)
• For each player, multiply games missed by TOI/G to get (for a more palatable name) Cumulative Minutes of Injured Player (CMIP)
• Take the aggregate of CMIP for the team and divide by games played by the team to arrive at AMIP (Average Minutes of Injured Players) - it feels more understandable expressing this metric as an average per game (whereas CHIP is a running total)

[Click to enlarge any image]

The figures...
The table below shows:

• Total CHIP for each team over the first 20 games of the regular season, as well as the distribution of CHIP by position
• The player who has contributed most to the team's CHIP figure
• The number of players with a CHIP contribution of over $250,000 (think of it as being equivalent to a $1m player missing 20 games or a $4m player missing five games)
• AMIP for each team over the same period (e.g. an AMIP of 40:00 could be seen as the team missing two 20-minute per game players for every game this season)

CHIP figures in graphical form:

The same for AMIP (teams in the same order as the CHIP chart for ease of comparison):

10 second analysis...

• The Blue Jackets running limping away with this so far, while the goon-laden Canadiens have been extremely healthy
• It goes without saying that the CHIP contribution from 16 games missed by Dave Bolland completely undervalues his true worth
• Note that I've gone back to include injuries to a few players (Patrick Kaleta, Barclay Goodrow, Bo Horvat) that extended from pre-season, as they ended up not being returned to the AHL/CHL after coming off IR, so have been classed NHLers (Kaleta has obviously also glassed NHLers for several years already)
• The AMIP comparison remains a bit volatile over the small sample size to date, tending to give more weight to defensemen and goalies. Josh Harding and the average minutes he played last year still skew the Wild number, given he looks unlikely to get any minutes at all from them this year.

The next lists are the top 30 individual CHIP and CMIP contributions:

Tough to see how teams can replace all those lost minutes from guys like Jesse Winchester, Matt Carkner and John Erskine.

Where does it hurt?
This is another update of the crude injury-by-location analysis. Again, I’ve just used the descriptions found in the player profiles on tsn.ca, so the figures will encompass all the inaccuracies and vagueness within them. It should give a broad indication, if nothing else, though.

The crude rate of injuries (instances / total games played) now stands at 0.88, as perhaps expected falling from 0.99 after 10 games, even allowing for the adjustments referred to above. This compares to 0.80 per game last year (0.80 in 2012/13, 0.78 in 2011/12 and 0.76 in 2010/11).

Finally, a first look for this year at the Evasiveness Index.  This is basically the proportion of injury instances for each team that have been described as either "Undisclosed" or the helpfully pointless "Upper/Lower Body" in the same TSN profiles.  I have made no judgement about whether the many instances of "Illness" (i.e. concussion) or "Flu" (i.e. concussion) other than those contracted directly from Corey Perry should also be included,

Arizona and Carolina at the top and the four teams at the bottom where they always tend to be. Still early, but the new regime in Vancouver seems to have led to a shift in their position. That'll change once Mark Messier takes over.

Notes/Disclaimers

• Figures exclude a few minor-leaguers / marginal NHLers (usually an arbitrary judgement on my part) who had been on the NHL club’s IR since pre-season. Generally, if a minor-leaguer gets called up and then injured in an NHL game, his games missed will then count towards the CHIP though.  Minor-league conditioning stints immediately after/during a period on IR tend to be included in the man-games lost figures (but can't guarantee TSN's figures are always consistent on this)
• For the avoidance of doubt, suspensions and absences due to "personal reasons" are not included in the figures.  However, as per previous seasons, any "retired" player still under contract (Savard, Pronger, Ohlund) is still included. There are also one or two slightly less "retired" players not separately identified in the bar chart above (e.g. Souray, Timonen).
• There are undoubtedly a few inaccuracies and inconsistencies in there - I do the best I can with the information out there. Corrections might well be picked up in subsequent updates
• The cap figure obviously doesn't really correlate very well to the "worth" of a player in some cases, e.g. where players are seeing out an old (underpaid or rookie) contract or where players are horrendously overpaid and/or were signed by Paul Holmgren, Dave Nonis, Jay Feaster, Dave Nonis, Glen Sather, Dave Nonis...
• Also, for any player traded where cap hit is retained by his old team, the cap hit used will only reflect that for his current team
• Click HERE if you want a full team-by-team listing of games missed and CHIP/CMIP numbers by each player
• Injury/games/TOI info courtesy of tsn.ca and nhl.com - man-games lost info more than likely does not exactly match up with the "official" figures released by individual teams
• Cap info courtesy of capgeek.com

NHL man-games lost and CHIP analysis - 10-game report

This is my first look for the 2014/15 regular season at which teams have been hit hardest by injury/illness by trying to place a value on the games missed by players.

The concept again - multiply each game missed by a player by his 2014/15 cap charge (including bonuses), then take the aggregate of these figures for each team and divide by 82. This indicator of value lost to a team by injury/illness is called CHIP (Cap Hit of Injured Players).

For these analyses, I'll again be cutting the season into 10-game chunks for ease of comparability.  So this analysis covers every team up to its 10th game only.

For a more regular snapshot (i.e. weekly updates beyond the 10-game interval retrospectives), follow my critically acclaimed Twitter feed (@LW3H). CHIP rankings are also again being fed into Rob Vollman's Team Luck calculator on a weekly basis.

Alternatively...
Again, for a different indicator of player "value", I've also illustrated a similar metric based on TOI/G alongside the CHIP numbers.  Clearly, neither cap charge nor TOI/G are perfect measures of player value (whatever Anton Strawman might claim), since each have a number of limitations and inconsistencies, but they provide a decent comparison and the results do vary somewhat.

A quick summary of the alternative metric:

• TOI/G replaces cap charge as the measure of value in the calculation
• For goalies, TOI/G has been worked out as Total Minutes Played / Games Dressed For* - i.e. a goalie playing every minute of 75% of the games, zero in the rest, would end up with a TOI/G of 45 minutes (or close to it, once you factor in OT and so on).  [*Actually, "Games Played by Team - Games Missed by Goalie" - I'm not inclined to disentangle any three-goalie systems or minor-league conditioning stints.]
• This arguably overstates the worth of starting goalies somewhat, but it's simple and you could equally argue that a workhorse goalie is the hardest position to replace, so it's fair for them to have a much higher TOI/G figure
• Where a player hasn't played all year or where a player fairly clearly has a reduced TOI/G figure due to getting injured in their only game or one of very few games, I've used TOI/G from last season (or further back if necessary)
• For each player, multiply games missed by TOI/G to get (for a more palatable name) Cumulative Minutes of Injured Player (CMIP)
• Take the aggregate of CMIP for the team and divide by games played by the team to arrive at AMIP (Average Minutes of Injured Players) - it feels more understandable expressing this metric as an average per game (whereas CHIP is a running total)

[Click to enlarge any image]

The figures...
The table below shows:

• Total CHIP for each team over the first 10 games of the regular season, as well as the distribution of CHIP by position
• The player who has contributed most to the team's CHIP figure
• The number of players with a CHIP contribution of over $250,000 (think of it as being equivalent to a $1m player missing 20 games or a $4m player missing five games)
• AMIP for each team over the same period (e.g. an AMIP of 40:00 could be seen as the team missing two 20-minute per game players for every game this season)

CHIP figures in graphical form:

The same for AMIP (teams in the same order as the CHIP chart for ease of comparison):

10 second analysis...

• As usual, if you discount the large contribution to the Flyers' CHIP figure from employees of the NHL they don't appear quite so banged up. Excluding the known absence of Kimmo Timonen as well puts them more toward the middle of the pack.
• The Blue Jackets number has already jumped even more significantly beyond the 10-game mark
• The Sabres obviously performing remarkably well in part due to good health, players avoiding being hit by a tank etc. (Though the margin between the active roster and their bubble players/AHLers is imperceptible, I've not included injuries carrying over from pre-season to Patrick Kaleta, Matt Hackett, Jake McCabe, Johan Larsson and Mark Pysyk - see notes below)
• One other area of subjective inclusion/exclusion is (new) rookies injured in pre-season, e.g. I've included Jonathan Drouin but excluded Sam Bennett based on expectation of staying on the roster when healthy
• AMIP comparison is a bit volatile over the small sample size to date - still tends to give more weight to defensemen and goalies (e.g. the Wild spike due to Josh Harding, who I've included despite technically being a non-roster suspension)

The next lists are the top 30 individual CHIP and CMIP contributions:

As you'd expect, most of these players missed all or almost all of the first 10 games.

Where does it hurt?
This is another update of the crude injury-by-location analysis. Again, I’ve just used the descriptions found in the player profiles on tsn.ca, so the figures will encompass all the inaccuracies and vagueness within them. It should give a broad indication, if nothing else, though.

Clearly very early days, but the crude rate of injuries (instances / total games played) stands at 0.99, compared to 0.80 per game last year (0.80 in 2012/13, 0.78 in 2011/12 and 0.76 in 2010/11). This figure tends to fall over time as the effect of injuries pre-dating the season starting dissipates though, so I'm sceptical that this can be taken to indicate any unusually large spate of injuries (plus small sample size etc...)

Notes/Disclaimers

• Figures exclude a few minor-leaguers / marginal NHLers (usually an arbitrary judgement on my part) who had been on the NHL club’s IR since pre-season. Generally, if a minor-leaguer gets called up and then injured in an NHL game, his games missed will then count towards the CHIP though.  Minor-league conditioning stints immediately after/during a period on IR tend to be included in the man-games lost figures (but can't guarantee TSN's figures are always consistent on this)
• For the avoidance of doubt, suspensions and absences due to "personal reasons" are not included in the figures.  However, as per previous seasons, any "retired" player still under contract (Savard, Pronger, Ohlund) is still included. There are also one or two slightly less "retired" players not separately identified in the bar chart above (e.g. Souray, Timonen).
• There are undoubtedly a few inaccuracies and inconsistencies in there - I do the best I can with the information out there. Corrections might well be picked up in subsequent updates
• The cap figure obviously doesn't really correlate very well to the "worth" of a player in some cases, e.g. where players are seeing out an old (underpaid or rookie) contract or where players are horrendously overpaid and/or were signed by Paul Holmgren, Dave Nonis, Jay Feaster, Dave Nonis, Glen Sather, Dave Nonis...
• Also, for any player traded where cap hit is retained by his old team, the cap hit used will only reflect that for his current team
• Click HERE if you want a full team-by-team listing of games missed and CHIP/CMIP numbers by each player
• Injury/games/TOI info courtesy of tsn.ca and nhl.com - man-games lost info more than likely does not exactly match up with the "official" figures released by individual teams
• Cap info courtesy of capgeek.com

NHL Awards 2013/14 - meet the contenders

As the saying goes: "What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas until yet another lockout delays the end of the season enough to make it a logistical and public relations nightmare, meaning it goes away from Vegas for a year before it comes back and maybe then stays in Vegas."

2013 saw the Balding Captain and Power Forward Traded By Alberta Team For Bag of Pucks Trophy awarded for the first time in several years

Here is the usual quick rundown of the main awards (those that are voted on) and those in contention:

Hart Memorial Trophy

Voted on by: Members of the Professional Hockey Writers' Association
Supposed to be awarded to: The player adjudged most valuable to his team
In practice, normally awarded to: LeBron James, due to often liberal interpretation of guidance issued by the PHWA to its attentive voters

Sidney Crosby (Pittsburgh Penguins)
Finally receiving some well-deserved individual recognition as something more than just an average player with points totals inflated due to being a regular linemate of Chris Kunitz.

Ryan Getzlaf (Anaheim Ducks)
Sometimes compared to Mark Messier, given his combination of scoring ability and physical play, his size and his Western Canadian origins, although with the parity in today's NHL, his chances of matching #11's number of Cup wins are heavily receding.

Claude Giroux (Philadelphia Flyers)
After opening the season without a goal in 15 games, led the Flyers' recovery the rest of the way by hitting the back of the net 28 times, joining the back of Braden Holtby's head as something hit 28 times to turnaround the Flyers' season.

Ted Lindsay Award

Voted on by: Members of the National Hockey League Players' Association
Supposed to be awarded to: The most outstanding player in the NHL
In practice, normally awarded to: The player voted for by everybody in the NHLPA except Roman Hamrlík

Sidney Crosby (Pittsburgh Penguins)
His 17-point margin of victory over Getzlaf in the scoring race was the largest since the 1998/99 season, when Jaromír Jágr beat Teemu Selänne by 20 points, predictive analysis therefore suggesting that the 2028/29 season will see a Penguin win the scoring race over a Duck by a large margin again and Jágr outscoring Selänne by 60 points.

Ryan Getzlaf (Anaheim Ducks)
If not for Rangers superstars, Pavel Brendl and Hugh Jessiman, would surely be recognised as both the most successful graduate of the Calgary Hitmen and the best power forward to come out of the stacked 2003 entry draft.

Claude Giroux (Philadelphia Flyers)
After a unsuccessful 2012/13 campaign, suffered an off-season golfing injury, believed to be the most apt Flyers-related accident since Kate Smith was fatally crushed by a goon dropped from the Spectrum rafters by a terrible goaltender.

James Norris Memorial Trophy

Voted on by: Members of the Professional Hockey Writers' Association   
Supposed to be awarded to: The defense player who demonstrates throughout the season the greatest all-round ability in the position
In practice, normally awarded to: Nicklas Lidström

Zdeno Chára (Boston Bruins)
His booming slapshot has been officially recorded at 108.8 mph, putting it in a similar speed bracket as a David Ortiz home run ball and a character assassination written by a member of the local press following the trade of a scoring forward by the Bruins.

Duncan Keith (Chicago Blackhawks)
The Manitoban All-Star calibre player with missing front teeth and a cavalier attitude to concussions is nicknamed "Clarkey" by his Blackhawks teammates for reasons that nobody has yet divulged.

Shea Weber (Nashville Predators)
After a 12-month period without addition, has a chance of joining the select list of players signed to a contract by Paul Holmgren winning something while not playing for the Los Angeles Kings.

Vezina Trophy

Voted on by: General Managers of all NHL clubs
Supposed to be awarded to: The goaltender who is adjudged to be the best at this position
In practice, normally awarded to: The Russian goaltender who is adjudged to be the best at owning an unsustainable high save percentage on an overachieving team

Ben Bishop (Tampa Bay Lightning)
Already arguably the second best goaltender in Lightning history behind Cup-winner Nikolai Khabibulin, this season's exploits having put him ahead of a moth-eaten curtain, Empty Net and John Grahame.

Tuukka Rask (Boston Bruins)
Although continuing to rack up impressive personal statistics, some believe he still carries the stigma of backstopping Bruins teams that have both blown a 3-0 playoff series lead and conceded two late goals within 17 seconds to lose a Stanley Cup Final elimination game, "achievements" that the goalie tandem of Andrew Raycroft and Justin Pogge have never suffered, according to the Maple Leafs' analytics department.

Semyon Varlamov (Colorado Avalanche)
Controversially acquired at the cost of a potentially high first round draft pick by the then-lowly Avalanche, so faces the pressure of having to win multiple Vezinas to match the probable Hall of Fame-level contributions the Capitals will receive over Filip Forsberg's career.

Host George Stroumboulopoulos indicates how many NHL games
in aggregate the show's celebrity guests have ever attended

Calder Memorial Trophy

Voted on by: Members of the Professional Hockey Writers' Association 
Supposed to be awarded to: The player selected as the most proficient in his first year of competition in the National Hockey League
In practice, normally awarded to: The player selected as the highest point-scoring forward in what might be his third year of competition in the National Hockey League after what might be no or several years of competition in another professional league

Tyler Johnson (Tampa Bay Lightning)
Undrafted, diminutive scoring forward for the Lightning seemingly not penalised by voters for his intention to petulantly force a trade in 15 years' time to the team closest to his off-season home, the Seattle Coyotes.

Nathan McKinnon (Colorado Avalanche)
Achieved two extremely rare feats that even Wayne Gretzky couldn't manage in his career, by having a 13-game scoring streak as an 18-year-old and by being permitted to take a shootout attempt in a game involving Patrick Roy.

Ondřej Palát (Tampa Bay Lightning)
Led all rookies in scoring in 2014 and plus-minus over the season, as well as blocking 64 shots, thus preventing the most pucks reaching the goal by any NHLer with "Ondřej Pa" in his name.

Frank J. Selke Trophy

Voted on by: Members of the Professional Hockey Writers' Association 
Supposed to be awarded to: The forward who best excels in the defensive aspects of the game
In practice, normally awarded to: The forward who is considered by PHWA members to be the best defensively, based on a balanced analysis of zone-starts, Corsi %, quality of competition, usage and shot prevention while shorthanded and penalty differential, though an insignificant minority might just look at reputation and plus-minus.

Patrice Bergeron (Boston Bruins)
Famously exhibited his toughness in last year's Stanley Cup Final by playing through a punctured lung, separated shoulder and broken nose, injuries suffered when a Chicago player collided with Brad Marchand's left knee.

Anže Kopitar (Los Angeles Kings)
Despite being ranked the top European skater, was to be found in Sweden as the 2005 Entry Draft took place, as coincidentally was a bag containing 45 lottery balls without "Pittsburgh Penguins" written on them.

Jonathan Toews (Chicago Blackhawks)
Has much in common with Bergeron, being a member of the Triple Gold Club, a previous Selke winner, fluent in English and French and having a name that sounds nothing like a word spelled T.O.E.W.S.

Bill Masterton Memorial Trophy

Voted on by: Members of the Professional Hockey Writers' Association 
Supposed to be awarded to: The player who best exemplifies the qualities of perseverance, sportsmanship and dedication to hockey
In practice, normally awarded to: The player who missed the most games through injury the season before

Jaromír Jágr (New Jersey Devils)
Has remarkably sustained an NHL career longer than each of the three 20-year-old players for whom he was traded by Pittsburgh on July 11 2001, a feat that probably stopped deserving being called remarkable around October 11 2001.

Manny Malhotra (Carolina Hurricanes)
Has made a successful return to the NHL after being let go by the Vancouver Canucks in 2011, a decision described by then-GM Mike Gillis as "the hardest thing I have done in this job", which led to Gillis resolving to avoid making any hard decisions relating to his roster for as long as possible from that point on.

Dominic Moore (New York Rangers)
As his Wikipedia bio states, has at times in his career had to cope with the unenviable handicap of playing with Jason Blake on a "scoring" line and with Ryan Hollweg on a line of any description.

Messrs Linden and Lecavalier proudly display their humanitarian awards for all their tireless work for organisations dealing with disadvantaged goaltending situations 

Lady Byng Memorial Trophy

Voted on by: Members of the Professional Hockey Writers' Association 
Supposed to be awarded to: The player adjudged to have exhibited the best type of sportsmanship and gentlemanly conduct combined with a high standard of playing ability
In practice, normally awarded to: The player adjudged to have had the fewest penalty minutes when the voters quickly skim down the list of top 20 scorers five minutes before the deadline to send in their ballot

Patrick Marleau (San Jose Sharks)
Evidence of a high level of gentlemanly conduct and self-control is shown by his tally of only 18 penalty minutes all year and being on the record as having listened to Jeremy Roenick for in excess of 10 minutes in one go.

Ryan O'Reilly (Colorado Avalanche)
Notably only called for one penalty in 80 games played, for inadvertently playing with a broken stick, an infraction considered by his coach to be too vanilla to spoil such a record.

Martin St. Louis (New York Rangers)
Achieves the unique distinction of being a finalist for this award having once signed a contract with the genuine intention of playing for a team run by Jay Feaster.

Jack Adams Award

Voted on by: Members of the NHL Broadcasters' Association 
Supposed to be awarded to: The coach adjudged to have contributed the most to his team's success
In practice, normally awarded to: The coach adjudged to have coached either the most injured team or the team with the best PDO/shootout-fuelled record.

Mike Babcock (Detroit Red Wings)
At one point during the filming of HBO's '24/7' series, kicked the camera crew out of his locker room between periods of one game, a controversial move given the camera crew formed the injury-hit Red Wings' second line at the time.

Jon Cooper (Tampa Bay Lightning)
A dual citizen of the United States and Canada, meaning he alternates between having no idea there is a hockey team near where he lives and wanting it to be contracted or moved to Quebec.

Patrick Roy (Colorado Avalanche)
Successful start to his professional coaching career would normally bode well for a long stay behind the bench, but his combustible personality suggests that a dramatic falling out with the vice president of hockey operations for the Avalanche at some point is almost inevitable.

General Manager of the Year Award

In a departure from previous practice, in recognition of the popularity of vague schedules and the ultimate measure of success being winning two playoff rounds, the finalists will apparently be announced "later this month on a date to be determined" and will be based on voting conducted following the second round of the playoffs.  So Doug Wilson's chances have rather swiftly evaporated.

POST-ANNOUNCEMENT EDIT:

Voted on by: General Managers of all NHL clubs and a panel of NHL executives, print and broadcast media 
Supposed to be awarded to: The top National Hockey League General Manager
In practice, normally awarded to: The National Hockey League General Manager Most Likely To Be Fired Within A Couple Of Years As A Direct Consequence Of Short-Term Moves That Led To Being A Finalist For The Award

Marc Bergevin (Montreal Canadiens)
Leading candidate to extend to two the streak of General Manager of the Year Award winners who willingly acquired Douglas Murray in the previous year, meaning the Best GM:Gritty Hitty Swedish Defenseman:Conference Finalists relationship still maintains a correlation coefficient of 1.0000, stat nerds.

Dean Lombardi (Los Angeles Kings)
Beneficiary of the maxim that acquiring a former 40-goal scorer from the Columbus Blue Jackets is a guarantee of a large quantity of playoff goals roughly two out of every three times.

Bob Murray (Anaheim Ducks)
Despite being a successor to Brian Burke in his role, appears to have the Ducks somewhat behind schedule in becoming entirely dysfunctional and based in Canada.

-----

Awards post archive (a.k.a. look at all the recycled material):

NHL Awards 2013 - meet the contenders

NHL Awards 2011/12 - meet the contenders

NHL Awards 2010/11 - meet the contenders

NHL man-games lost and CHIP analysis - end of season wrap

This is my final update for the 2013/14 regular season on which teams have been hit hardest by injuries by trying to place a value on the games missed by players due to injury/illness.

[More stuff is in a pipeline of currently indeterminate length, e.g. game-by-game breakdowns for each team, summary analysis of six years' worth of data. Can't promise when.)

The concept again - multiply each game missed by a player by his 2013/14 cap charge (including bonuses), then take the aggregate of these figures for each team and divide by 82. This indicator of value lost to a team by injury/illness is called CHIP (Cap Hit of Injured Players).

[Click to enlarge any image]

Commercial break...

• CHIP rankings are also fed into Rob Vollman's Team Luck calculator
• My weekly updates on Twitter (@LW3H) are clearly now on hiatus, but you will find a large volume of other highly acclaimed content spewing out there regardless (lie)
• Some of the extra stuff might also be used by those nice people at Hockey Prospectus

Alternatively...
Again, for a different indicator of player "value", I've also illustrated a similar metric based on TOI/G alongside the CHIP numbers.  Clearly, neither cap charge nor TOI/G are perfect measures of player value, since each have a number of limitations and inconsistencies, but they provide a decent comparison and the results do vary somewhat.

A quick summary of the alternative metric:

• TOI/G replaces cap charge as the measure of value in the calculation
• For goalies, TOI/G has been worked out as Total Minutes Played / Games Dressed For* - i.e. a goalie playing every minute of 75% of the games, zero in the rest, would end up with a TOI/G of 45 minutes (or close to it, once you factor in OT and so on).  [*Actually, "Games Played by Team - Games Missed by Goalie" - I'm not inclined to disentangle any three-goalie systems or minor-league conditioning stints.]
• This arguably overstates the worth of starting goalies somewhat, but it's simple and you could equally argue that a workhorse goalie is the hardest position to replace, so it's fair for them to have a much higher TOI/G figure
• Where a player hasn't played all year or where a player fairly clearly has a reduced TOI/G figure due to getting injured in their only game or one of very few games, I've used TOI/G from last season (or further back if necessary)
• For each player, multiply games missed by TOI/G to get (for a more palatable name) Cumulative Minutes of Injured Player (CMIP)
• Take the aggregate of CMIP for the team and divide by games played by the team to arrive at AMIP (Average Minutes of Injured Players) - it feels more understandable expressing this metric as an average per game (whereas CHIP is a running total)

The figures...
The table below (playoff teams highlighted in yellow) shows:

• Total CHIP for each team over the regular season, as well as the distribution of CHIP by position
• The player who has contributed most to the team's CHIP figure
• The number of players with a CHIP contribution of over $250,000 (think of it as being equivalent to a $1m player missing 20 games or a $4m player missing five games)
• AMIP for each team over the same period (e.g. an AMIP of 40:00 could be seen as the team missing two 20-minute per game players for every game this season)

CHIP figures in graphical form (paler bars represent the three "retired" players on LTIR noted below):

As a slight Vollman-suggested modification, the same figures but only allowing for cap hit above league minimum salary (so Cap Hit Above Replacement of Injured Players?):

The same for AMIP (teams in the same order as the CHIP chart for ease of comparison):

The following is a ranking of teams by CHIP over Games 71-82 only, to further illustrate some of the biggest movers since last time:

10 second analysis...

• While there are several persuasive arguments as to why the figures are somewhat overstated in value terms for both the Red Wings (Weiss contract, marginal contributions when healthy of Cleary and Samuelsson) and Penguins (known absence of Vokoun, 150+ games missed by D'Agostini, Kobasew, Glass, Ebbett, Megna, Conner, Vitale, Gibbons, Pyatt), still a clear separation from the pack.
• As expected, the Red Wings eventually sailed past the high CHIP watermark over all seasons since 2008/09 of $16.9m belonging to the 2011/12 Canadiens.
• Common with every year, plenty of injured teams made the playoffs, a good few healthy teams did not.
• Thanks to the Senators starting to get injured in a late season attempt to recreate the magic of a year ago, the Flyers actually fairly clearly became the healthiest team over the season once you discount the effect of "Chris" "Pronger" who is definitely "not" a "scout" now, OK?
• Not shown in the key, but the invisible column extending beyond the $50m mark next to Toronto is, of course, the intangible Bolland bar.

Winners of positional crowns:
Goaltenders: Predators [Pekka Rinne missing 51 games but still a creditable second in team scoring]
Defensemen: Ducks [let's hope Sheldon Souray again stayed the hell away from the Oilers' prospects]
Forwards: Red Wings [played 20-games with only Gustav Nyquist and two Gatorade bottles up front]

And the paper hats:
Goaltenders: Bruins/Sharks [sharing this award means it actually deserves to go to Jaromir Jagr]
Defensemen: Maple Leafs [good health the foundation for a famously stifling defensive game all year]
Forwards: Kings [second year in a row - dare them to re-sign Marian Gaborik and go for a third]

The next lists are the top 30 individual CHIP and CMIP contributions:

Players under contract who missed all 82 games:
Souray (Anaheim)
Savard (Boston) [third full season out]
Pitkanen (Carolina)
Pronger (Philadelphia) [second full season out]
Vokoun (Pittsburgh)
Ohlund (Tampa Bay) [third full season out]
Lee (Tampa Bay)

Where does it hurt?
This is another update of the crude injury-by-location analysis. Again, I’ve just used the descriptions found in the player profiles on tsn.ca, so the figures will encompass all the inaccuracies and vagueness within them. It should give a broad indication, if nothing else, though.

30% of all injuries were basically not disclosed, which is a notch higher than the last couple of years. However, things should improve should all coaches follow Joel Quenneville's admirable playoff efforts to identify and disclose groin injuries from the bench.

The crude rate of injuries (instances / total games played) ended up at 0.80 per game (compared to 0.80 last year, 0.78 in 2011/12 and 0.76 in 2010/11).

Finally, a look at the Evasiveness Index.  This is basically the proportion of injury instances for each team that have been described as either "Undisclosed" or the helpfully pointless "Upper/Lower Body" in the same TSN profiles.  I have made no judgement about whether the many instances of "Illness" (i.e. concussion), "Flu" (i.e. concussion) should also be included.

The bottom four teams here fairly typical based on recent years. I note the Oilers did actually achieve 100% disclosure again based on their website injury report, but there are two types of websites and I care much more about TSN's.

Notes/Disclaimers

• Figures exclude a few minor-leaguers / marginal NHLers (usually an arbitrary judgement on my part) who had been on the NHL club’s IR since pre-season. Generally, if a minor-leaguer gets called up and then injured in an NHL game, his games missed will then count towards the CHIP though.  Minor-league conditioning stints immediately after/during a period on IR might be included in the man-games lost figures (but can't guarantee I get it right every time)
• For the avoidance of doubt, suspensions and absences due to "personal reasons" are not included in the figures.  However, as per previous seasons, any "retired" player still under contract (Savard, Pronger, Ohlund) is still included.
• There are undoubtedly a few inaccuracies and inconsistencies in there - I do the best I can with the information out there. Corrections might well be picked up in subsequent updates
• The cap figure obviously doesn't really correlate very well to the "worth" of a player in some cases, e.g. where players are seeing out an old (underpaid or rookie) contract or where players are horrendously overpaid and/or were signed by Paul Holmgren
• Also, for any player traded where cap hit is retained by his old team, the cap hit used will only reflect that for his current team.
• Click HERE if you want a full team-by-team listing of games missed and CHIP/CMIP numbers by each player
• Injury/games/TOI info courtesy of tsn.ca and nhl.com - man-games lost info more than likely does not exactly match up with the "official" figures released by individual teams
• Cap info courtesy of capgeek.com

NHL man-games lost and CHIP analysis - 70-game report

This is my latest update for the 2013/14 regular season on which teams have been hit hardest by injuries by trying to place a value on the games missed by players due to injury/illness.

The concept again - multiply each game missed by a player by his 2013/14 cap charge (including bonuses), then take the aggregate of these figures for each team and divide by 82. This indicator of value lost to a team by injury/illness is called CHIP (Cap Hit of Injured Players).

This analysis covers every team up to its 70th game. (This follows on from my 60-game update.)

[Click to enlarge any image]

Commercial break...

• For a more regular snapshot, CHIP rankings are also being fed into Rob Vollman's Team Luck calculator on a weekly basis
• I'll do my best to put out the same info via Twitter (@LW3H)
• I will be hopefully also contributing on an irregular basis to Hockey Prospectus

Alternatively...
Again, for a different indicator of player "value", I've also illustrated a similar metric based on TOI/G alongside the CHIP numbers.  Clearly, neither cap charge nor TOI/G are perfect measures of player value, since each have a number of limitations and inconsistencies, but they provide a decent comparison and the results do vary somewhat.

A quick summary of the alternative metric:

• TOI/G replaces cap charge as the measure of value in the calculation
• For goalies, TOI/G has been worked out as Total Minutes Played / Games Dressed For* - i.e. a goalie playing every minute of 75% of the games, zero in the rest, would end up with a TOI/G of 45 minutes (or close to it, once you factor in OT and so on).  [*Actually, "Games Played by Team - Games Missed by Goalie" - I'm not inclined to disentangle any three-goalie systems or minor-league conditioning stints.]
• This arguably overstates the worth of starting goalies somewhat, but it's simple and you could equally argue that a workhorse goalie is the hardest position to replace, so it's fair for them to have a much higher TOI/G figure
• Where a player hasn't played all year or where a player fairly clearly has a reduced TOI/G figure due to getting injured in their only game or one of very few games, I've used TOI/G from last season (or further back if necessary)
• For each player, multiply games missed by TOI/G to get (for a more palatable name) Cumulative Minutes of Injured Player (CMIP)
• Take the aggregate of CMIP for the team and divide by games played by the team to arrive at AMIP (Average Minutes of Injured Players) - it feels more understandable expressing this metric as an average per game (whereas CHIP is a running total)

The figures...
The table below shows:

• Total CHIP for each team over the first 70 games of the regular season, as well as the distribution of CHIP by position
• The player who has contributed most to the team's CHIP figure
• The number of players with a CHIP contribution of over $250,000 (think of it as being equivalent to a $1m player missing 20 games or a $4m player missing five games)
• AMIP for each team over the same period (e.g. an AMIP of 40:00 could be seen as the team missing two 20-minute per game players for every game this season)

CHIP figures in graphical form (paler bars represent the three "retired" players on LTIR noted below):

The same for AMIP (teams in the same order as the CHIP chart for ease of comparison):

The following is a ranking of teams by CHIP over Games 61-70 only, to further illustrate some of the biggest movers since last time:

10 second analysis...

• Bored with missing only four players per game over the previous 10-game stretch, the Red Wings really ramped things up by basically doubling that over the next 10, with Zetterberg and Datsyuk missing throughout, plus (perhaps of marginally less importance) the warm bodies inhabiting the Cleary and Samuelsson jerseys these days.
• The high CHIP watermark over the last five years of the 2011/12 Canadiens ($16.9m) is very possibly under threat.
• Despite the continuing fly-esque player dropping instances in Michigan and a couple of other places, there were seven teams with single-digit MGL figures in the 10-game period (if you ignore Pronger from the Flyers' figures and Ohlund/Lee from the Lightning's), which again suggests the Olympic break and compressed schedule hasn't demolished the player population quite as much as you might be led to believe.
• Comparing the CHIP and AMIP figures for the Red Wings and Penguins gives a nice illustration that defensemen tend to play more minutes than forwards, which is obviously a ground-breaking discovery.

The next lists are the top 30 individual CHIP and CMIP contributions:

Yeah, Gaborik doesn't play for Columbus (still unconvinced he ever did), but the figures above represent games missed for the team the player was with at the time.  So, the smaller chunks for Fasth and Robidas accrued with their new teams are much lower down the list (not in the top 30).

Where does it hurt?
This is another update of the crude injury-by-location analysis. Again, I’ve just used the descriptions found in the player profiles on tsn.ca, so the figures will encompass all the inaccuracies and vagueness within them. It should give a broad indication, if nothing else, though.

The crude rate of injuries (instances / total games played) now stands at 0.78 per game now (compared to 0.80 last year, 0.78 in 2011/12 and 0.76 in 2010/11).

Finally, a look at the Evasiveness Index.  This is basically the proportion of injury instances for each team that have been described as either "Undisclosed" or the helpfully pointless "Upper/Lower Body" in the same TSN profiles.  I have made no judgement about whether the many instances of "Illness" (i.e. concussion), "Flu" (i.e. concussion) should also be included.

While the Coyotes might look extremely evasive, next year they have league approval to move from disclosing injuries as upper/lower body to describing them as "somewhere in Arizona".

Notes/Disclaimers

• Figures exclude a few minor-leaguers / marginal NHLers (usually an arbitrary judgement on my part) who had been on the NHL club’s IR since pre-season. Generally, if a minor-leaguer gets called up and then injured in an NHL game, his games missed will then count towards the CHIP though.  Minor-league conditioning stints immediately after/during a period on IR might be included in the man-games lost figures (but can't guarantee I get it right every time)
• For the avoidance of doubt, suspensions and absences due to "personal reasons" are not included in the figures.  However, as per previous seasons, any "retired" player still under contract (Savard, Pronger, Ohlund) is still included.
• There are undoubtedly a few inaccuracies and inconsistencies in there - I do the best I can with the information out there. Corrections might well be picked up in subsequent updates
• The cap figure obviously doesn't really correlate very well to the "worth" of a player in some cases, e.g. where players are seeing out an old (underpaid or rookie) contract or where players are horrendously overpaid and/or were signed by Paul Holmgren
• Also, for any player traded where cap hit is retained by his old team, the cap hit used will only reflect that for his current team.
• Click HERE if you want a full team-by-team listing of games missed and CHIP/CMIP numbers by each player
• Injury/games/TOI info courtesy of tsn.ca and nhl.com - man-games lost info more than likely does not exactly match up with the "official" figures released by individual teams
• Cap info courtesy of capgeek.com