AWA: The Danger of Scoring Chances off the Rush

When things on the ice aren't going the way you want, it's time to identify what is happening, and whether it matters (does it have the potential to have a big impact on the game) before you decide how to address it. For the Kraken, one such point of focus has been scoring chances that come off the rush, particularly those that create an "odd-man" situation (when there are more skaters from the other team in the play than there are players from the Kraken).

"We're getting down in games, and we're not helping ourselves when we get down," captain Mark Giordano said after Friday's game against Colorado. "We're taking more chances when we get down. Against good teams, they are going to make you pay. You're giving them odd-man rushes. You're giving them a lot of zone time on their chances because we're taking way too many risks too early in the game."
The captain isn't wrong. While the Kraken rank in the top three in the league in the amount of rush chances they allow per game (4.5 per Sportlogiq in all situations), those that they allow seem to come with a cost. Two of Colorado's goals on Friday came off rush chances.

We can see with our eyes how dangerous these chances look. We don't need a ton of data to tell us that, but primarily when people think about "danger" chances, it relates to the location of the shot on the ice. But, these two chances didn't happen right in front of the net. If we really want to understand what kind of chances the Kraken allow (or shouldn't allow), are there other factors we need to consider?
Let's dig in.
Of course, shot location does matter, and it's a big piece of what we see publicly for "high danger" calculations, in no small part because shot location data is readily available to us in real time. But what kind of an impact does a "rush" or more specifically "odd-man rush" have on the degree of difficulty a defense (including the goaltender) is facing?
The data below was compiled by Sportlogiq and presented at the Ottawa Hockey Analytics Conference. The study looked at all NHL games played from the 2017-18 season to last (2020-21), and identified the variety of manpower situations that can occur on a rush chance; how frequently each occurred (total entries); what kind of finishing rate there was off each type of rush (shooting %) and how this relates to the likelihood of a goal (what level of QUALITY can be tied to this type of chance).
Blue shading indicates what occurs more frequently within each category. Red shading indicates what occurs less.

What we see here is that in addition to where a shot comes from, any kind of skater advantage in terms of number of players can make a big difference. A "normal shot" has an 8.15% likelihood of becoming a goal. The minute an opponent gets an extra skater on an attack, that likelihood almost triples - a huge increase in difficulty. Similarly, if you are on defense and have more skaters directly involved, you can cut difficulty by up to almost 50%.
And perhaps this is why Dave Hakstol has not just made stopping rush chances a priority, but why he's not going to lay responsibility for rush chances against solely at the feet of any goaltender.
"When we do have those (outnumbered) rushes we need to find a way to defend and get a stop," Hakstol said. "Getting stops is a team conversation. The forward tracking the puck can make a play, the defenseman can do a little bit better defending and a group of five before it gets to the goaltender."
A netminder definitely has a responsibility as the last line of defense, but there are steps a team can take in front of her or him to decrease the difficulty of any chance against. As the Kraken look to clean up the "mistakes" in their game, rush chances, given their degree of difficulty in terms of what we see and what the data tells us, rightly need to remain an area of focus
"We have to find a way to eliminate odd-man rushes and we have to find a way to be in more sync and play better as a team," Jordan Eberle said. "It's that simple."