2009-10 NHL man games lost to injury

by James Mirtle on Nov 20, 2009 12:53 AM CST Comment 50 comments

All right, all right, I cave. I've been asked for these figures so often that I pulled them together while watching the Leafs cough up a hairball against the 'Canes to gain the title of worst in the league.

These figures come from individual teams' game notes and are from prior to their latest game:

	Team	GP	MGLI	Proj.
1	Vancouver	20	109	447
2	Edmonton	21	105	410
3	Colorado	21	83	324
4	Chicago	18	66	301
5	Pittsburgh	20	73	299
6	New Jersey	18	63	287
7	Columbus	18	61	278
8	St. Louis	17	57	275
9	Montreal	20	64	262
10	Carolina	19	58	250
11	Washington	20	60	246
12	Detroit	18	52	237
13	San Jose	22	62	231
14	Atlanta	16	45	231
15	Minnesota	20	55	226
16	Nashville	18	48	219
17	NY Islanders	20	49	201
18	Dallas	19	46	199
19	Florida	18	42	191
20	Philadelphia	17	38	183
21	Phoenix	20	41	168
22	Boston	19	37	160
23	Ottawa	17	33	159
24	Buffalo	17	32	154
25	Toronto	18	33	150
26	Los Angeles	22	31	116
27	Anaheim	18	22	100
28	NY Rangers	20	21	86
29	Calgary	18	15	68
30	Tampa Bay	17	8	39
	Totals	566	1,509	6,497
	Per team	18.9	50.3	217

So, how do these figures compare so far?

Yes, 6,497 sure sounds high, but the average NHL team has lost about 230 man games to injury over the past three seasons. We're not there yet — but keep in mind that I'm comparing apples and oranges. Because most players begin the season healthy, projected injury totals are lower toward the start of the year and before many of the season-ending hurts start to kick in.

I think it's fair to say we'll surpass the postlockout record of about 7,000 man games lost this season, but we'll have to wait and see. Perhaps the Olympic break helps players recover and get back into action? Or maybe it hurts by condensing the schedule and keeping 120 or so NHLers playing over those two weeks (about 15 per cent of the league will be at the Games).

The worst injury totals recorded by a single team postlockout were last year's Islanders, who were in the 550 range by season's end and finished dead last with 61 points. The Canucks and Oilers have some work to do on that front.

The Kings, I believe, have the record, with 629 man games lost in 2003-04.

The healthiest five teams over the past four years have been the Sens, Rangers, Ducks, Devils and Canadiens, but the luck has run out for the latter two apparently. The Isles, Flyers and Blues have been the NHL's most injury prone teams over this stretch, averaging 350+ man games lost a season.

I'll make sure to have another look at these figures come midseason (and I'm sure someone will remind me).

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Yes, but we all know the caps are a one man team, so losing ovechkin should count as 5 games each ;)

(Shamelessly stolen from someone of japers’)

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by Ovechwin on Nov 20, 2009 12:58 AM CST reply actions 0 recs

Wisniewski is sort of a poster child for frequent injuries — thanks for doing this, James.

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by Earl Sleek on Nov 20, 2009 12:58 AM CST reply actions 0 recs

I’m actually surprised that Anaheim ranks so low. It just seems like they’ve always had at least one regular out of the lineup since the beginning of the season, first Wisniewski, then Giguere and now Koivu and Carter

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by kforbes on Nov 20, 2009 9:04 AM CST up reply actions 0 recs

The Habs have had a regular miss every game this year so far (Game 1 was Hamrlik, then from then on it was at least Markov and usually more). And Montreal is only 9th on this list. So 1 regular per game doesn’t count much, apparently.

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by saskhab on Nov 20, 2009 9:55 AM CST up reply actions 0 recs

Great work James.

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by Mr. Plank on Nov 20, 2009 1:18 AM CST reply actions 0 recs

Top 3

all from the same divison.

Most likely an accident, but it explains why the Flame-outs (29th on the IR list) are doing so well in the NW.

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by Tommelot on Nov 20, 2009 2:17 AM CST reply actions 0 recs

The fact that the Wild and Oilers just aren’t very good might also explain it.

Vancouver’s team is built around injury prone players, so no surprise there.

by Resolute on Nov 20, 2009 11:12 AM CST up reply actions 0 recs

Care to provide any justification for this?

by Jevant on Nov 20, 2009 11:18 AM CST up reply actions 0 recs

Given the first statement is self-evident, I presume you are wondering about the Canucks?

Sami Salo, Pavol Demitra would be exhibits a and b. Even Luongo seems to be good for an injury a year lately.

by Resolute on Nov 20, 2009 11:59 AM CST up reply actions 0 recs

Yes, the Canucks. Worst injury was to Daniel Sedin. Fluke. Injury to Luongo: fluke. A good number of their other injuries have been flukes as well (Grabner playing soccer?) I’ll give you Salo and Demitra, I guess, but I don’t think the Canucks “built their team around injury-prone players”.

by Jevant on Nov 20, 2009 12:25 PM CST up reply actions 0 recs

“built around” might have been a bad choice of words, but those two especially are worth 100 games a year, so the Canucks will always be higher on this list.

by Resolute on Nov 20, 2009 12:28 PM CST up reply actions 0 recs

Since 2002-03 (six full seasons) when Salo joined the Canucks Salo and Demitra have never combined for 100 games lost to injury. They’ve also never combined for 50 games lost to injury. They have been over 20 for 5 out of 6 seasons though. Three cheers for overstating your point!

by Scott Reynolds on Nov 20, 2009 1:22 PM CST up reply actions 0 recs

All injuries are flukes. That doesn’t change the fact that some are more prone to them than others.

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by Jibblescribbits on Nov 20, 2009 12:48 PM CST up reply actions 0 recs

Does that mean Briere is a lot of flukes?

by Hansmoleman on Nov 20, 2009 5:48 PM CST up reply actions 0 recs

Yes, 629 seems to be the agreed upon record. A possible previous record-holder would be the Boston Bruins of 1972-73 who are said to have had 573 games lost that year. The best candidate I can find for the lowest would be Tampa Bay in 03-04 with only 20 games lost to injury.

The last Olympic year was 05-06 and the per team average that year was 219 games lost to injury, the lowest post-lockout. But that year was probably more heavily influenced by being post-lockout (new rules, heavy influx of younger players etc) than by the Olympics. Its interesting that a scientiific study of the incidence of concussions showed that 05-06 had far and away the lowest incidence, more than 70% lower than the peak year in 98-99. Again probably had something to do with post-lockout uncertainy about hitting under the new rules.

by Big Picture Guy on Nov 20, 2009 6:55 AM CST reply actions 0 recs

James,

This has been said before, but what we really need is a stat that combines MGLI and the significance of the players who are out. Maybe comparing it to avg ice time or points or corsi or something.

Do you know if anyone has tried something like this? Maybe Willis?

by OilW30 on Nov 20, 2009 8:16 AM CST reply actions 0 recs

He posted something earlier in the year, and no one responded to that thread. It combined their cap hit with injuries. James isn’t doing that, though, and the guy who is seems only to be doing it monthly.

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by saskhab on Nov 20, 2009 8:28 AM CST up reply actions 0 recs

I actually floated this to the SBN email group last night, and the hope is that we can all chip in with analysis on our individual teams so the workload isn’t too much to handle— if James undertook that on his own it would be extremely time consuming.

I’m thinking points/game from the previous season would be a good place to start, and average ice time would be illuminating as well.

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by Mr. Plank on Nov 20, 2009 9:00 AM CST up reply actions 0 recs

There is a cap-based number created this year – CHIP

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by Derek Zona on Nov 20, 2009 10:18 AM CST up reply actions 0 recs

Wish it was based more on TOI than Cap number. This assumes that people with high salaries play the best.

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by Jibblescribbits on Nov 20, 2009 10:48 AM CST up reply actions 0 recs

It’s too tough to do: every goalie would be 60 minutes, every player that hasn’t played at all (i.e. Hossa) wouldn’t be counted, and guys that played 1 game and got hurt would have terribly skewed numbers (Markov got hurt in the second period of game 1, for example).

Cap hit is more reliable. It’s not perfect, but it gives a sense of the value of the player league wide, and to the team.

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by saskhab on Nov 20, 2009 11:01 AM CST up reply actions 0 recs

See

I think TOI/game would be more useful. Losing your starting goalie is certainly a huge loss, while losing a backup probably isn’t that bad.

Of course, it would be better if it was an average of TOI/game last year and this year.

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by Jibblescribbits on Nov 20, 2009 11:26 AM CST up reply actions 0 recs

I have to agree. Time on ice is probably more correlated with a player’s value to his team than salary is, especially since salary is skewed by guys on their first and second contracts.

by David M. Getz on Nov 20, 2009 11:38 AM CST up reply actions 0 recs

The question is, how do you measure TOI for the sorts of guys saskhab mentioned. What is Hossa’s TOI this year?

by J. Michael Neal on Nov 20, 2009 12:08 PM CST up reply actions 0 recs

Again, it’s certainly not perfect. But are we really going to say that a players salary is more indicative than his TOI?

I think you could take Hossa’s TOI from last year (even with the Wings) and it would be a pretty close approximation.

This goes double with players that haven’t hit their FA contract yet. Many teams rely on young stars that make little money. Last year is a prime example. Stastny salary last season was pretty minor, however losing him to injury was a huge blow to the Avs last season, and it’s not like that’s an all together rare occurrence that one of the teams best polayer is still on his first contract.

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by Jibblescribbits on Nov 20, 2009 12:51 PM CST up reply actions 0 recs

If you want to figure it out, be my guest. I’ll stick with the easier to measure metric and we can compare results. Deal? :)

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by saskhab on Nov 20, 2009 1:04 PM CST up reply actions 0 recs

I didn’t say it wasn’t harder, I said it would be better.

Even though it wouldn’t be that hard… TOI/game is a stat on NHL.com, you would simply need to compy-paste it into a spread sheet, then copy-paste the injured players in. The time consuming part would be finding which players were out the beginning part of this season and putting it over to last season.

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by Jibblescribbits on Nov 20, 2009 1:39 PM CST up reply actions 0 recs

That and TOI lost due to injury is probably a catchier stat than Salary lost due to injury. Not that catchier should have anything to do with it, but it would catch on a lot easier too.

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by Jibblescribbits on Nov 20, 2009 1:40 PM CST up reply actions 0 recs

It’s CHIP vs. TOIIP. CHIP is better. :)

Generally, having all the metrics you can is good.

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by saskhab on Nov 20, 2009 2:47 PM CST up reply actions 0 recs

true

the more info the better, as long as it’s not misleading, like +/-

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by Jibblescribbits on Nov 20, 2009 4:45 PM CST up reply actions 0 recs

Putting out the list above alone is time consuming enough. I don’t know why the league doesn’t just provide the figures.

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by James Mirtle on Nov 20, 2009 6:44 PM CST up reply actions 0 recs

Seconded

Not suprised at all to the Hawks in 4th on that list with the amount of injuries they’ve had all season to date.

I’m a little suprised that the league doesn’t provide this type of information, wonder why they wouldn’t?
Interesting data collection to say the least and thanks James again for doing this. Great work again, as always.

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by hawks61 on Nov 20, 2009 7:32 PM CST up reply actions 0 recs

Do you have the breakdown by player tucked away in some spreadsheet? I’d like to take a look at it if you have it

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by Jibblescribbits on Nov 20, 2009 8:06 PM CST up reply actions 0 recs

No. The game sheets list those numbers, but they’re not standardized and would only go into a spreadsheet manually. It’d take probly a full day’s work to do.

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by James Mirtle on Nov 20, 2009 9:30 PM CST up reply actions 0 recs

Ugghhh

damn.

Wish there was a list of injured players this year, team, and how many games they sat.

that would be useful (and you think it would be pretty easy to compile for the NHL)

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by Jibblescribbits on Nov 21, 2009 1:37 PM CST up reply actions 0 recs

For goalies, you could also include a multiplier that divides the number of games they’ve played from the total number. Actually, this would work for end-of-roster players, too. So Luongo would get a big multiplier, while someone like…I dunno, Michael Leighton, would get a small one. Ditto for [star player] vs. [intermittently played goon]. So you’d wind up with something like

TOI/60 * Player GP/Team GP

Obviously, that ratio would itself be influenced by injury, but if you take it early in the season, you could use the previous year’s (or the average of the last three years or something).

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by Doogie2K on Nov 21, 2009 10:47 AM CST up reply actions 0 recs

Thanks, that’s interesting. I thought VAN’s losses would be comparable to the Oil’s.

by OilW30 on Nov 21, 2009 10:37 AM CST up reply actions 0 recs

Very cool chart.
Something else worth noting would be seeing, but almost impossible to do, would be the Average TOI for the individuals who account for those man games lost, or the average ppg for those players. obviously missing a bunch of third and fourth liners or lower tier D is not as tough as missing top 6 forward or top pair Defenseman, not to mention starting Goalies.

by wylde4canes on Nov 20, 2009 8:42 AM CST reply actions 0 recs

For Dallas, there’s no way they can have as many as last year. Same with the Blues. That was just unreal how unlucky those two teams were when it came to injury.

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by Brad_Richards_Rocks on Nov 20, 2009 10:26 AM CST reply actions 0 recs

same with Washington. They were right around 400 last year. Projecting them to lose “only” 246 is an improvement.

by RedBirdie on Nov 20, 2009 11:14 AM CST up reply actions 0 recs

Habs

I’ve got more games than what James has for the Habs: 78 (although I guess I’m counting 21 games, James’ total after 20 in brackets)

Markov – 20 (19)
O’Byrne – 19 (18)
Laraque – 13 (12)
D’Agostini – 8 (7)
Gill – 7 (6)
Metropolit – 6
Chipchura – 2
Gionta – 2 (1)
Hamrlik – 1

So that number is really 73 man games lost, not the 64 James posted. Injured reserve isn’t totally accurate… they don’t put players on injured reserve if they don’t have to call up a player to replace them. I used game logs on Yahoo (and NHL game reports) to help determine the more accurate total. I doubt James had Hamrlik listed as injured for 2 games, and may not have had all of Laraque’s missed games (or possibly Metropolit’s).

So, by my calculations, the Habs’ CHIP after 21 games is: $2,369,410.65. Markov leads the way is Markov, who accounts for $1,402,439.02 of that total.

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by saskhab on Nov 20, 2009 11:15 AM CST reply actions 0 recs

Er, should be Hamrlik listed as injured for 1 game, not 2, obviously.

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by saskhab on Nov 20, 2009 11:16 AM CST up reply actions 0 recs

Er, and it was 72 man games lost after 20 games (the Habs lost 6 man games on Tuesday vs. Carolina), not 73. Man, I had a hard time there.

Point is, it shouldn’t take too long if we have 30 different guys figuring out these charts. The Excel file I started was insanely simple. My columns were the player’s name, Cap hit per game (cap hit/82), Games injured, Individual CHIP (column B x column C), and then a column at the end to list the injury. At the bottom, I had a total for each numeric category.

Shouldn’t be too hard to do this 30 times to get a fully accurate picture, especially if the people doing it already know the team’s injury history pretty well.

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by saskhab on Nov 20, 2009 11:34 AM CST up reply actions 0 recs

Add Shean Donovan to the list.

http://www.silversevensens.com/2009/11/20/1166712/shean-donovan-out-indefinitely

He and Matt Cooke collided knee-on-knee last night. Didn’t look good, and now it sounds worse. Cory Clouston: “It looks pretty serious. We’re not sure what extent – whether it’s long term or real long term.”

That’ll be a significant number of man games lost to injury, I guess.

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by DarrenM on Nov 20, 2009 11:57 AM CST reply actions 0 recs

I wonder if the Leafs would be doing better if they had more injuries among their forwards…

* sigh *

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by PPP on Nov 20, 2009 2:56 PM CST reply actions 0 recs

Hard to say but if Kessel were to go down due to injury the Leafs would be in serious trouble.

Keep the faith PPP it will get better, not only throughout this season but next as kids like Khadri, Bozek, and Hanson will soon be in the fold. The present may be dark in Leafs Nation but the future is bright for this franchise.

by hawks61 on Nov 20, 2009 7:35 PM CST up reply actions 0 recs

Hard to say but if Kessel were to go down due to injury the Leafs would be in serious trouble

yeah, the Leafs need to bubble wrap him when he’s not playing.

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by PPP on Nov 23, 2009 1:04 AM CST up reply actions 0 recs

I’m a couple of days late on this, but I’m the schmuck who started putting together the CHIP numbers referred to in a couple of the comments above.

I recognise the limitations of using cap hits as a measure of player “value”, but it is the simplest comparator for players across all positions. I’m going to try and illustrate similar figures on a TOI basis next time I update the figures (end of November – too time consuming to do this more regularly, but if anyone more connected than I am wants to arrange for 30 team reps to collect the info, be my guest…)

TOI has its own problems (some of which referred to above), which would require some subjective adjustments to work around. And I’m not totally convinced it’s a great measure of value in all circumstances either; An $8m points-scoring forward, playing 20 minutes versus a $1.5m third-pair D-man playing 15 minutes – which metric shows the disparity in value better? (Obviously, it’d be nice if hockey were simple enough for a baseball-style VORP stat could work, but I’m definitely not touching that one…)

Anyway, I’ll play around with a few things and see what works best.

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by LW3H on Nov 23, 2009 8:41 AM CST reply actions 0 recs

It's no wonder about the Isles being among the typical leaders,

considering DiPietro is good for 82 annually himself.

by Mandmeisterx on Nov 23, 2009 11:04 AM CST reply actions 0 recs

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