The contrasting left side of Växjö | Measuring player performance [1:2]

In this weeks game analysis, we are going to touch base with two players who have already played big roles during game analysis, and compare them to eachother. André Andersson – who was a big part in Växjö's successful zone entries and offense against Linköping. And Eemeli Akola – who was one of the driving factors to the Finnish team coming back to win the WFC in Malmö.

They make up two thirds of the left defense position of Växjö, and when talking to people with a lot of knowledge about the SSL – they make up one of the most polarizing spots on any roster, just by the fact that they play the game so differently.

Andersson is a wizard with the ball, who can be a one-man entry machine, and also is a great sneaky player in between the opponent's zones in the offense.

Akola is an intense defender with great physical attributes, who takes pride in working hard and making life even harder on the opponents.

Let us use game three of the Falun-Växjö series, to paint the picture of what they mean to their teams, what results they drove in this particular game, and of course also how they do it by breaking down film of them.

All clips in the article are from SportExpressen.

In the 1950s, Montreal Canadiens in the NHL started tracking plus/minus for their players. The goal of course, was to see what players helped the team with the ultimate goal of team sports – outscoring the opponent!

I have touched on this before, but plus/minus is a heavily discussed statistic, with obvious flaws. Rob Vollman goes further than that, making a reference to politics.

My personal opinion is that plus/minus is very much like communism: extremely elegant in theory but not very good in practice.

Vollman, R. (2015). Stat shot: A fan’s guide to hockey analytics. ECW Press.

In this week's game analysis, we want to dig deeper when analyzing Andersson and Akola. Step one will be done in this article, and step two will be done in a follow-up later down the road, when a new author will present himself on the platform.

There are a lot of flaws with plus/minus as a player evaluation tool, and several of them also affect shot share analysis. So they are in no way unique problems to plus/minus.

Like team effects (playing on a good team will help a lot) and competition effects (how good is the line you are facing?). But when looking at how plus/minus is used in the floorball world, I would want to say that the biggest flaws are two and connected to eachother.

a) Problems with small sample size...

Therefore we will in typical xProgress fashion also look at shot share and scoring chances, to increase the sample size and quicker be able to see what results the players drive on court – alongside the scored goals. Shot attempts and scoring chances will of course always be of higher number than actual goals.

b) ...which almost turns it into a line statistic instead of player evaluation

At small sample sizes, the risk is pretty obvious, that it turns into more of a line statistic than actual player evaluation. Therefore, we will also look at offensive and defensive participation of the two players and how they influence their line. Offensive participation in this article, and for defensive participation we will turn to a friend of the site for a follow-up article coming down the road.

Two clips from the game to illustrate plus/minus problems

In this game, they will both have a chance of showing what they are and the results they can drive. Falun is not going for the full court press very often, meaning that both Akola and Andersson will have enough controlled possessions with zone entries, for us to get a feeling for what they are.

Defensively, the Växjö system funnels balls down the left side, since their steering forward normally has a starting point to the right. Meaning that there should be more than enough situations without ball too.

What does the tape say about their tendencies?

So let us look at how Växjö did during the Andersson, Akola and non-Andersson and non-Akola minutes of this game.

For those of you who did not watch the game, or remember the result, let me remind you that Falun won the game 7-4 and that Växjö scored two of their goals in the last minute, when the game was already dead.

From a quality of competition standpoint, the Akola line was mostly matched up against the Emil Johansson line from Falun, and the Andersson line's most common opponent was the Casper Backby line from Falun.

Andersson on court

There was an advantage for Falun during the Andersson minutes of this game. The shot share statistics (Corsi and Fenwick) are for Falun, and so are the big scoring chances. I would certainly have expected a higher total of offensive scoring chances for Växjö, but it did not happen in this game. This for sure had an impact of them only scoring two goals for the first 59 minutes of the game.

Andersson is also on court for Faluns 6-2 goal in the 54th minute, but at that time playing as a forward. That goal is excluded from this stat sheet, because of him not playing as a defender any more.

Akola on court

Växjö won the Akola minutes in this game, despite the losing effort of the team in the game, and despite losing the shot share battle in his minutes. And also facing the toughest possible opponents in the Lundmark-Johansson-Ruud line.

We also see that Växjö was efficient in turning their shots into scoring chances with this line on the court, with almost every single shot turning into a scoring chance. This is by no means sustainable for them, which makes me hesitate on this line keeping this type of offensive result up during the series.

None of them on the court

Here we might see the biggest reason to the Växjö struggles in this game though.

The third line of Växjö had a really tough time in this game. Falun tilted the court completely to their favour, while Växjö had their third line on the court. Forcing Korsman of Växjö to shorten his bench in the third period.

I had the third line of Växjö down for only three shot attempts and zero unblocked shot attempts during the entire game. This while being hammered with shot attempts against, and losing the scoring chance battle 8-1.

Rember, these are all "on court" statistics, meaning it only measures what happened when a player is on the court and playing. It says nothing about the participation of the individual player. For what we know, the player could be tying his or her shoe laces in one corner of the court, while the action happens.

Like I mentioned before, I will dig deeper into the individual offensive participation in this article. And push the defensive participation down the road for an article devoted only to that later on.

Offensive participation of Andersson

Andersson was contributing to his line in this game, being in on half of the scoring chances. Though like I mentioned before, I think the total numbers just must be higher for Växjö to be competitive. But his participation in what they actually do produce is fine, it is just not enough created chances from having a top offensive defender on the court.

Offensive participation of Akola

This is a bit surprising to me, and I do not think it is sustainable for Akola to keep up this participation rate on the big scoring chances. But he really drove the bus in this game! He is directly responsible for two of three scoring chances off of high danger shots, and he is also in on two of three chances coming off of mid-high danger shots.

How did they do it?

Let us look at tape of the two players and their participation.

I just wanted to show this for the sake of completion, even though this was not the main take of this analysis. This game was won deservedly by Falun. The green background color to all of the Falun numbers tell the story on this one.

But Växjö does not have to wait long for a chance to get back to even. Game four of the series is tonight (Monday 14th of April). We will be watching!

Pretty soon, I will get some help from another author on the xProgress platform. A former great of Swedish floorball will help bring his perspective on the defensive side of the game. Stay updated, and I will update every one through the newsletter when the follow-up article is posted.

Thanks for reading!

/David