10.
Man, it's great to be back into hockey season so I can actually write posts that had something to do with games that were actually played instead of using data from games that happened months and months ago.
Today, I'm deferring to my scoring chances post from last night, if you haven't seen it. It's early in the season, so we're a little absent in some of the advanced numbers that we all know and cherish, so give that a click to see how good your favourite player was, if you haven't seen it last night.
One other thing I'm doing other than counting chances is also counting which players took the chance, and who set them up. The "chance assist" in this case refers to a little more like basketball's definition for an assist: not every scoring chance had a guy set it up. If Alex Edler chips the puck up to Daniel Sedin and he wheels through the entire team to get a shot on net, I don't consider Edler having taken part in the actual genesis of the chance.
Every chance results in either a goal, a saved shot, or a missed shot. Blocked shots will counted as saved shots since the only time a block will qualify is if a defenseman sprawls into the path of the shot with the goalie horribly out of position. I am keeping track of which shooters do the best with the puck in certain situations.
Daniel Sedin against the Pittsburgh Penguins last night, had six scoring chances. One went in, three were saved shots and two more missed. That led the team, along with his four "chance assists", twice to Alex Edler, and twice to Alex Burrows. Neither of those players scored on the chances set up by Daniel, but that is something well out of his control. He was the best player on the ice last night for all three periods, except in maybe the eyes of Ben Kuzma, who was probably inventing storylines for the game in his head and only turned his focus to what was actually going on when somebody scored a goal.
So, today's "10" refers to the number of scoring chances Daniel Sedin took part in last night. He was positively buzzing the net and his play resulted in the tying goal that got the Canucks the single point last night. They lost in the shootout, but that wasn't anything Sedin could control, so I have no issue with congratulating the man for a well-earned first star selection.