Raw Charge, a Tampa Bay Lightning community

This article and the linked article within present some amazing discoveries by Eric of BroadStreetHockey. Eric and the Broad Street Hockey crew (Geoff Detweiler) have been tracking each zone-entry during each Flyers game this year. They've come up with two fascinating results: 1. Entering the zone via carrying the puck in instead of by Dump results in basically TWICE as many shots on goal, even AFTER you take out odd-man rush and dump-and-change situations. 2. Neutral Zone play is far more important than previously believed and is far more of an area where player skill affects performance than offensive or defensive zone play, as opposed to simple randomness. The first of these discoveries I suspect will be more interesting to the general LHHockey community though the 2nd is probably more of a landmark discovery, so I've linked in this fanshot the second dump-in vs carry-in article. (If you guys aren't going to NHLNumbers regularly at this point, you're missing out. It's filling the hole created by BehindtheNetHockey becoming ArcticIceHockey and then some.)

This topic has come up a couple of times, and I know everyone has their own taste for how they observe and enjoy the game. But as you'll occasionally see me refer/link to stats that don't appear in the NHL boxscore -- and more often than not they'll be from Behind the Net -- here is a bit about some of them. I'd never pretend that numbers define this chaotic game, but they can help us understand it better. And they certainly provide some context on a season or a player, particularly after the fact. It's hard enough to watch one player for a whole game, much less 19 guys -- usually 5 of them simultaneously -- over 82 games. So I like to use these rate stats to question my own observational biases. If you ever have questions about these, the above links are good resources to peruse. But also don't hesitate to say "more of this, please" or "less of that, please" or log any questions. ... Though my answer will usually be something akin to "The world is a confusing and chaotic place."