An Advanced Look: Teuvo Teravainen

In case you’re not sold on TeuvoTime hype, or you want to know specifically why you are falling victim to Teuvo Fever (What a way to go, we know), we’re going to take a look at how recent AHLer bring-up, forward Teuvo Teravainen, has played for the Chicago Blackhawks and how he continues to develop, as well as gain some insight into how he might fit into the roster.

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If you’re not familiar with some of these abbreviations or terms, the entirety is listed at the bottom under “Resources” with brief explanations for your convenience. All charts can be clicked on to enlarge.

So let’s take a look at how his usage has developed:

We can see from this chart that he’s getting an increase in overall TOI. But is it worth it?

Corsi For per 60 | Charts individually courtesy of war-on-ice, layered by Melissa Peterson

Corsi Against per 60 | Charts individually courtesy of war-on-ice, layered by Melissa Peterson

Note: For the CF graph, it is better to be around or above the red line, whereas for the CA graph, it is better to be around or below the red line.

What these charts shows is a per-60 rate for CHI total (All players including Teravainen), CHI minus TT (Players’ Corsis when Teravainen is not on the ice) and Teravainen’s rates per 60, which means these are not the actual event rates, but what event rates would look like if he were on the ice all 60 minutes of a game at even-strength 5-on-5 play based on the time he did have on the ice’s rate of play at that strength.

What does that mean? Well, a majority of a game is spent in even-strength style of play. There are numerous styles of play: Power-play, Penalty Kill, OT 4-on-4, Even strength 5-on-5, etcetera, all of which call for different measures to be taken. For instance, you could expect during a Penalty Kill that CA rates will be higher due to (presumably) spending a majority of that time in your defensive zone.

As his usage thus far has been significantly even-strength based (although he’s just starting to see more power-play time) it’s best to evaluate him at that style of play. By being able to compare these with CHI’s 5-on-5 rates and his teammate’s without him’s 5-on-5 event rates, we can see if the rises and falls in Teravainen’s game correspond with the rise and fall of CF/CA event rates for the team overall, or are/are not capable of generating or suppressing those opportunities if his TOI were higher.

So what do we see?

What is amazing is just how far below he is in the Corsi Against category, which suggests that Teravainen may be suppressing shots overall pretty well. He might not be at the point where he is overall driving offensive play, but defensive shot suppression is something CHI needed dearly.

So we got him on the ice more, but who is Teuvo spending that time with?

Let’s look at how his time is divided up:

Chart compiled by Melissa Peterson | Time category represents the percentage of Teravainen’s overall TOI is spent with each respective player

We can tell from this that a majority of his TOI is spent between forwards Andrew Shaw (C) and Bryan Bickell (LW), which is an overall third-line set up. In the most recent game against the New York Rangers, however, we saw Teravainen play on the second line, centered by Antoine Vermette (C) and Brandon Saad (LW).

We can take a look at how Teravainen fairs with each of the other Chicago players by looking at WOWYs (With-or-Without-You’s):

If you don’t really know what they are or what they’re used for, WOWYs are meant to examine if a player’s stats are enhanced by being on a line with another player, or if they might not be the best fit for the line they are on. Please keep in mind that these can be skewed by low TOI.

Ideally, a player will see the light green bar spike above what a player(s) is producing outside of that pairing. Andrew Shaw, Patrick Sharp, Brad Richards, Joakim Nordstrom, Marian Hossa, Jonathan Toews, Duncan Keith, David Rundblad, Michal Rozsival and Johnny Oduya all see this spike in the third category.

Obviously, if Teravainen is able to bring up a player and maintain his approximate apart levels instead of succeeding them, this isn’t a horrible pairing either. Players that he did this with were Bryan Bickell, Ben Smith, and to a lesser extent, Brent Seabrook, Niklas Hjalmarsson, and Daniel Carcillo (as well as Kimmo Timonen, who wasn’t included in the defenseman chart because of his low TOI, but apart Tervainen is 58.1% CF, Timonen is 34% CF; together they rank in at 50.0% CF).

Please note that there isn’t data yet available from Sunday’s NYR game on Puckalytics, so it is hard to make assertions about Vermette-Teravainen-Saad TOI together based on a WOWY chart. I can tell you that Vermette’s CF% for that game was 48.5%, which is higher than his three-game average of 43.47% with CHI and season average of 47.5%, and Teravainen’s was 51.5%, from his 55.28% season average.

Resources

Corsi: For those that are unsure of what Corsi even is, it is measured as Corsi For and Corsi Against (CA). Corsi is the total number of on-ice shot attempts (on goal, missed, or blocked) taken during a game/series/season. Corsi For is the amount of the total Corsi taken by one team or player on said team. Corsi Against is the amount of the total Corsi taken against one team or player on said team.
CA% : Corsi Against Percentage (of total) What this means is they’ve totaled up the Corsi Events that took place for both teams, and divided the individual team’s total by that number and multiplied it by 100 to get a percentage.
CP60 : Corsi Per 60. What this means is they’ve totaled up the Corsi events that took place for both teams and divided it by 60 to get an average Corsi Events per 60 minutes.
G+/- : Goal Differential. The total number of Goals For (GF) minus the total number of Goals Against (GA). If it is a positive number, the team is outscoring their opponents.
FO%: The percentage of Face-offs won.
OFOn%: On-Ice Unblocked Shot Attempts on Goal
OSh%: On-Ice Shooting percentage
OSv%: On-Ice Save percentage
PDO: On-Ice Save percentage + On-Ice Shooting percentage
ZSO%: The amount of Offensive Zone starts. The larger the number, the more often a team starts (with a Face-off) in their Offensive Zone

Sources

Stats and charts courtesy of war-on-ice.com and puckalytics.com

An Advanced Look: Teuvo Teravainen

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