Neutral Zone Playing Styles

[Matrim]

https://hockey-graphs.com/2016/07/06/neutral-zone-playing-styles/

Identifying neutral zone roles can serve useful purposes. General Managers can try to bolster their roster by ensuring they have the best possible mix of playing styles. Coaches can identify player tendencies and respond to deficiencies. Fans can find neutral zone play more understandable and interesting.

In this post, I try to distinguish neutral zone roles that meet two criteria: First they should provide some quick insight into what to expect of a particular player in the neutral zone. Second, the roles should not closely correlate with overall neutral zone play; if the roles just mean “good” and “bad”, there’s no need for them in the first place.

To do this, I first discuss some of the statistics we have that can shed light on neutral zone playing style. This includes individual entry share and how it may begin to quantify line chemistry. Finally, I introduce five neutral zone “roles” that serve as a shorthand to understand how a given player typically performs in the neutral zone.

Very interesting article I just found thanks to reddit. Unfourtantley the data is stirctly from the 13-14 season, and for the most part there's nothing too surprising about the results but it's an interesting concept that will hopefully be explored more.