Penguins Update: Who’s Bad?

Back in 1987, the late King of Pop, Michael Jackson, released a song titled, “Bad,” an oxymoron if there ever was one. The flamboyant performer ended each refrain with the provocative query, “Who’s Bad?”

Given the sorry state of our favored hockey team, I thought that would make a swell title for my impromptu look at individual on-ice performances.

Since the aim of any hockey player is to be on the ice when your team scores and not on the ice when scored against, I decided to keep things simple and use goals for and against as the basis for my evaluation. I ranked the players by their corresponding goals for percentage (GF%) and also included expected goals for percentage (xGF%), along with the differential between the two. I tossed in Corsi as well.

All data is courtesy of Natural Stat Trick and based on 5v5 play. I’ve displayed two tables, one for forwards and the other for our defensemen.

In most cases, read ‘em and weep.

FORWARDS

Player
GF
GA
DIFF
GF%
xGF%
DIFF%
CORSI

Poulin
2
1
1
66.67
58.02
8.65
58.02

Rakell
17
14
3
54.84
51.48
3.36
55.70

Lizotte
2
2
0
50.00
69.14
-19.14
60.20

Beauvillier
11
12
-1
47.83
51.68
-3.85
49.52

Puljujärvi
9
10
-1
47.37
53.16
-5.79
51.66

Malkin
16
19
-3
45.71
46.20
-0.49
51.33

Crosby
15
21
-6
41.67
50.46
-8.79
52.98

Bunting
11
17
-6
39.29
49.81
-10.52
53.38

Eller
7
12
-5
36.84
45.50
-8.66
47.17

Glass
5
12
-7
29.41
67.90
-38.49
60.49

Hayes
4
12
-8
25.00
51.29
-26.29
52.55

Rust
6
19
-13
24.00
42.01
-18.01
45.09

Acciari
5
16
-11
23.81
51.99
-28.18
45.93

O’Connor
6
20
-14
23.08
48.77
-25.69
50.89

Puustinen
1
5
-4
16.67
44.88
-28.21
40.99

Nieto
0
2
-2
0.00
37.80
-37.80
39.56

McGroarty
0
1
-1
0.00
51.37
-51.37
51.67

Ponomarev
0
0
0
 
46.17
 
44.68

Tomasino
3
4
-1
42.86
53.64
-10.78
53.23

It’s somewhat ironic (and not at all unlike our Pens) that the player at the top of the forwards list, Sam Poulin, was just sent to Wilkes-Barre/Scranton.

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