The Usual Suspects
Five NHL skaters whose teams win the shot battle and the goal battle when they're on the ice, and who barely show up on the scoresheet. Somebody's driving this. Nobody's looking at them.
The lineup
Ranked by how much they push results the right way, discounted by how much anyone notices. Tap a suspect to step him forward and open his file. Hover one and he reads the line.
Suspect 1 is in the file below.
Kobayashi was a coffee mug
The names everyone knows. Top 15% in points per game, and their team gets outplayed when they're on the ice. Worst real record first.
Who is Keyser Söze?
The detective put it together when the cup hit the floor.
Top 25
Every skater with a positive real record, by score. Visibility is the share of regulars he outscores per game.
How the case was built
Regulars only: enough games and at least 12 minutes a night.
Real record is relative shot-attempt share (how much more of the play his team has with him on the ice than without him) plus half his even-strength goal difference. Skaters who start most shifts in the offensive zone give some of that back: 0.3 points of shot share for every point of offensive-zone starts over 50%. Starting in your own end earns nothing back.
Visibility is his points-per-game percentile among the regulars. Score is real record × (1 − visibility): a big real record only counts if he isn't piling up points.
Ghost games split his team's results since his first game for them into games he played and games he missed. Small samples; a few games can swing it either way.
On-ice numbers belong to everyone on the ice. A suspect is a skater whose team does well when he plays, not proof he did it.