NHL

Islander’s coach no fan of stats

Jack Capuano is an old-school coach in many ways, one of them being his considering statistics an unreliable determinant of a team’s play.

The Islanders coach’s approach goes back to 2009, when someone handed him a stat he doesn’t remember which said the Penguins did not possess the puck very much compared to other teams. The Penguins, of course, won the Stanley Cup that year, and Capuano had his mind made up.

“There are a few stats I look at,” he said before Saturday night’s match against the Hurricanes at Nassau Coliseum. “On the road, what line is giving up more chances, and how to distribute minutes. How you put your lines together and [defense] pairings.

“There is a certain way we have to play. Maybe I should look at them to see what other teams are doing.”

The reason the conversation was brought up to Capuano is because his team had played two games in a row in which they got 40 or more shots, which makes the most popular advanced stats go berserk. Yet the two games before that, the Islanders had 35 shots combined, so where they stand in the overall ratings is still near the bottom.

“It’s not only shots, it’s a lot of things that go into it,” Capuano said. “There are times to shoot, there are times to chip, there are times to make plays. But when you’re most effective, you can see the style that we want to play is when we have that shot mentality.”

The two stats that have become most popular are called Corsi and Fenwick. They both rate teams based on the amount of shots they attempt and the amount they give up, thus determining how much a team has the puck.

The Islanders went into Saturday night ranked 24th in the league in Corsi and 22nd in Fenwick, which doesn’t include blocked shots. The good news is they were ranked fifth in shot percentage (11.01 percent of shots go in), thus muddying the waters by bringing into the equation the messy idea of ambiguous shot quality.

There are numerous examples of teams that were winning games with bad ratings, and after a period of time, they faltered, just as the stats would predict. This year’s Maple Leafs are finding ways to win with bad stats — making most of Toronto shake with the feeling of impending doom — yet most teams win games at a pace that correlates with how they’re rated by Corsi and Fenwick.

For the Islanders, that means they need to keep getting shots to the net and keep trying to stop other teams from getting to theirs — which, really, is the same equation for winning that has been around since the game’s inception.

“I think the best recipe for a good defense is a good offense,” said forward Josh Bailey, who has received ample praise from the coaching staff while scoring three goals in the first seven games. “I think if we’re controlling the play in their zone for lengthy trips and getting those opportunities and getting shots on goal, that’s less time we’re spending in our zone. That’s a good way to go about things.”

Hulking defenseman Matt Carkner rejoined the lineup after being a healthy scratch for Thursday’s 3-2 win over the Oilers, replacing rookie Matt Donovan.

Goalie Evgeni Nabokov, 38, made his fourth straight start and his seventh in the first eight games.