Fascinating advanced statistics on Wild's Zucker, Vanek and others

As you've noticed in the past couple weeks, we're getting more and more interested in advanced hockey stats. We're not entirely sure why, since we've only dipped toes into other more widely accepted advanced stats in baseball and basketball. Maybe it's the hipster in us; we only want to like something if we're in on the ground floor.

In any event, Own The Puck put together a great tool and posted it Thursday. Basically, it compares the 390 forwards starting in 2012-13 and running through now (so about 2 1/2 seasons) who have played at least 500 minutes of 5-on-5 action in the NHL, taking a look at two main areas: puck possession and production.

Possession is where we get into the real advanced stats — one called "usage adjusted Corsi percentage." If you want a long explanation of what it is, this is a good primer. The short version, as explained to us by @BobaFenwick on Twitter, is that UAC% "measures how much a player drives possession based on deployment, linemates, and competition." It's kind of like WAR in baseball. You're attempting to strip out all other factors to determine, in a vacuum, how well a player drives puck possession, obviously a valuable asset in hockey.

Production is easier to measure: Own the Puck takes a look at goals, assists, points and scoring chances, all per 60 minutes played.

The particularly nice thing about the new tool is that it creates bar graphs for each metric, showing where each player ranks among the 390 forwards in each category and separating them out in to 1st-through-4th liners in each category in terms of production.

Of particular interest are four Wild forwards: Jason Zucker, Thomas Vanek, Jason Pominville and Zach Parise. Here is what stood out to us in each case (we can't link to the individual bar graphs because it's a drop-down menu, but we'll show Zucker's to illustrate):

*Zucker: His numbers are all over the map. In terms of UAC%, which again is essentially driving puck possession when all other factors are stripped away, Zucker is barely a third-liner and ranks in the bottom third of forwards.

Basically he's a guy who doesn't drive possession well, but when he gets the puck he's extremely dangerous as a goal-scorer and a chance-producer but not as a set-up man for others. He an interesting mix of marginal and elite.

*Vanek: Much like Zucker, Vanek is a high-end producer, but a low-end puck possessor. His UAC% is in the bottom 50 out of the 390 forwards (not bottom 50 percent, bottom 50). But he's top-10 in assists and top 25 in points (again, overall numbers and not percentages). In production, he's a first-line forward (from 2012-present, remember). In possession, he's a fourth-line forward.

*Parise: His numbers are strong across the board, as one would expect. But what's nice is that the numbers reflect exactly the kind of player he is. In terms of possession and scoring chances he's elite — top 40 in both cases. In terms of production (goals, assists, points), he dips down to a borderline first-liner/top-end second-liner.

*Pominville: He's interesting in that the numbers show he's a clear first-line forward when it comes to possession, goals, assists and points. But scoring chances? He's below average, ranking around 250th of the 390 forwards. That could indicate Pominville gets a lot of second assists to boost his totals — and that he's good at making the most of his scoring chances.