Jakub Voracek was, in my opinion, clearly the team MVP last season. He hit a career high 81 points, and was all over the ice. Therefore, you probably don’t need me to use any advanced stats or graphs to tell that his stat line as of Thursday of 12 games played, 0 goals, 4 assists, and -6 is not very good.
If you’ve been a paying a little bit more attention, you might have heard on the Flyers broadcasts how Voracek is getting plenty of chances. The puck just refuses to go in. Voracek, in fact, has 50 shots on goal, way more than anyone else on the roster.
If you’re inclined towards advanced stats like Corsi percentage, percentage of shot attempts for versus against while on the ice, you also may have noticed that night after night the Raffl-Giroux-Voracek line gets very high marks by that scale. While other lines are all over the place, and usually underwater at less than 50%, this line is consistently operating at 60%+. The puck just refuses to go in.
Is this all bad luck? What’s going on here?
Voracek at Even-Strength
Voracek’s play generally remains pretty strong. At 5v5 overall, he has a Corsi of 55.9 percent, which places him second overall on the team this year. This is actually slightly higher than ever before in his career as a Flyer. Additionally, he is taking more shots than ever before.
Obviously his shooting percentage this season is zero. If he were to simply be scoring at his usual shooting percentage of 9.8 percent, he would have five goals at this point, and no one would be talking about him at all. Bad luck doesn't tell his whole story, however.
The Flyers have spent an awful lot of time playing from behind this season. In fact, only five teams have spent more time trailing in games than the Flyers this season — Carolina, Buffalo, Columbus, Toronto and Calgary. Playing from behind skews the Corsi stats, as teams leading will sit back and allow shots, content to concede low-quality shots, while the trailing team plays aggressively. Having a good Corsi rating in a game where you’re trailing most of the time isn’t necessarily indicative of quality play.
Voracek’s play this season would be better judged controlling for score. Limiting his stats to 5v5 in "close" situations, within one goal in first and second periods, or tied in third period, a different picture emerges. Across the board, his stats in these situations are at all-time lows as a Flyer.
As the graphs show, his percentage of shot attempts for has dropped, and the team is having fewer total shot attempts while he is on the ice. Even more importantly, his Corsi percentage relative to his teammates is still positive, but is lagging quite a bit compared to previous season in Philadelphia.
These score-controlled Corsi statistic trends show a player that is struggling a bit. It’s not a huge dropoff, but it is noticeable. Surely some bad luck is playing into his appalling zero goal stat line, but there is evidence of actual weaker play. Voracek may even be shooting too much to overcome the slump. It’s only 12 games, so there’s plenty of time for improvement, but Voracek was playing better the previous few seasons.
Voracek on the Power Play
To consider Voracek’s play on the power play, using Fenwick instead of Corsi is a better choice. Fenwick excludes block shots from its count of shot attempts, and blocking shots while on the penalty kill is a skill and strategy.
When looking at these statistics, Voracek’s performance is generally good. The rate of team unblocked shot attempts while Voracek is on the ice is solid compared to his past performance, and team unblocked shot attempts relative to teammates when Voracek is on the ice is the highest it’s been in 4 years. By this measure, Voracek is clearly a good power play player for the Flyers this season.
There were three other noteworthy wrinkles in the power play data. One, is that Voracek’s on-ice offensive zone faceoff percentage this season is only about 71 percent, whereas the norm the last few seasons is for that number to be in the mid-80s. This may show the Flyers power play struggling to gain and keep the zone as a group, and fewer offensive zone faceoffs could account for a few less goals scored.
Two, Voracek is shooting more than ever before on the power play.
Personally I’ve never thought his shot to be one of Voracek’s strengths, so I’m not sure this is the most effective offensive strategy for Voracek.
Lastly, the Flyers team Fenwick shooting percentage when Voracek is on the ice is a shocking 1.79%. This figure had been approximately 11% each of the last 3 seasons. I have to think that is mostly bad luck.
Bottom Line
Voracek’s scoring line this season is terrible right now. It’s still early but a few trends do show.
First, Voracek is shooting more than ever. This may or may not be a good idea for his game.
Two, Voracek and his line is clearly the Flyers best by possession numbers this season, although there is evidence that he is not doing as much offensively at even strength in close score situations this season as previous seasons.
Three, team shooting percentages when Voracek is on the ice are shockingly low in all situations. They cannot continue at this rate. This may explain some, but not all, of his lack of production at even strength, and probably explain most of his lack of production on the power play.
Marc Naples is a contributor to Flyerdelphia and Sports Talk Philly. Follow him on Twitter @SuperScrub47.
