Wings are old? Lack depth?
http://redwingsguy.wordpress.com/201...ost-to-injury/
The Wings had the fourth most man-games-lost-to-injury (MGLI) in 2009-2010 at 307. Only Minnesota (316), Colorado (340), and Edmonton (494) had more.
That got me to thinking: how did Detroit’s depth compare to other teams with significant injuries?
To quantify that comparison, let’s look at how many points these teams earned despite MGLIs. We need to turn MGLI into a positive statistic. That’s right, I’m creating a new stat called man-games-NOT-lost-to-injury (MGNLI). MGNLI is exactly what it sounds like: the total number of healthy player games. Based on a 23 man roster in an 82 game season, there are 1886 healthy games to be had. This is a hypothetical number to be sure, but it just serves a measuring stick. Subtract the man-games-lost-to-injury and you have the MGNLI.
I’m no math wizard, but the formula looks like this:
MGNLI = (23 players * 82 games) – MGLI
Got it? Good.
Here’s a graph depicting the top (bottom?) ten teams in man-games-lost-to-injury and their season point record (W-L-OTL) to MGNLI ratio:
What does this graph mean? It could be looked at a couple ways:
A) The higher the number, the more season points teams earned per healthy game.
B) The higher the number, the more season points teams squeezed out of their scrubs.
Either way, it points to the quality of depth.
No surprise to us Wings fans that Detroit is at the top. Also no surprise other playoff teams Vancouver, New Jersey, and Colorado stand out on this graph, too.
There are other factors to a team’s record of course, but for the purposes of this analysis, I’m only looking at injuries. Are all injuries created as equal? Of course not.
This is just a general sense of depth a team has. But even if one wants to include the “value” of the injured player, consider that two of Detroit’s top three forwards Franzen and Zetterberg combined for a total of 63 games lost, while in Vancouver all those named Sedin missed only 19.
Not that you needed it, but there’s the mathematical proof of the Red Wings’ depth. Howard deserves credit, of course. But so does Bert for carrying the team offensively for a while. And it’s no wonder Kenny is keeping Eaves, Miller, Abby, and Helmer around.
Detroit suffered 307 man-games-lost-to-injury and still amassed 102 points. They’re bringing back virtually the same team next season, injury-free. How do you feel about their chances?