Owen Michaels has beaten the odds already.
The Edmonton Oilers rookie was never drafted. He played college hockey at Western Michigan. He signed with the Oilers as an undrafted player and has had to prove himself just to be in the NHL.
And in the early goings of this, his debut season, Michaels has had one of the more fascinating outputs of any player in the NHL. It’s worth breaking it down further.
Worst in NHL in This Stat
There’s a stat called CF% — Corsi For Percentage — that measures the percentage of shot attempts when a player is on the ice that go toward his team.
So if a player has a 50% CF%, it means the chances are exactly even when that player is on the ice. A player with a 75% CF% is part of some dominant units, and the inverse works the other way.
In that stat, Michaels ranks the worst in the NHL in the early going for any player who has appeared in multiple games.
His CF% is just 26.50%, meaning that nearly three-quarters of the shot attempts when Michaels is on the ice happen for Edmonton’s opponents.
And on the surface, that seems absolutely terrible, but hold on. There’s more to this story.
Context Matters
That statistic can’t tell the whole story, because players have different roles. They start at different ends of the ice or at different points in the game.
Michaels has an offensive zone faceoff percentage of 26.3% so far this season. That means that of the times he starts a shift with a faceoff, it happens in the defensive zone approximately three-quarters of the time.
And as makes sense when you really think about it, that aligns nearly identically to the chances opponents get when Michaels is on the ice.
The Oilers are using him in the defensive zone. He’s out there to get stops and to let the Oilers’ stars get a breather. And so it’s not that Michaels is getting outclassed beyond belief. It’s that he’s performing about how you’d expect given the circumstance — which for an undrafted rookie isn’t a bad thing.
Some Positives
Michaels has done some good things for the Oilers, too.
On Oct. 1 and 3, he scored a goal in consecutive games. Those are his only two points so far, with both coming at even strength.
He has also won 52.6% of his faceoffs, which is a good trait given how often he starts in the defensive zone.
Michaels is never going to grab headlines in Edmonton, at least not the way the team is currently set up and the way they’re specifically using him.
But he’s a player with some ability who has worked his tail off just to reach this point. Don’t expect him to stop working hard now.
Inside Owen Michaels’ Confusing Start to Oilers Rookie Season