Brent Burns has been the Sharks most valuable player so far

We love Brent Burns at Fear the Fin. We love his beard, the scary noise he makes when he scores and of course the value he generates for his professional hockey club in relation to the currency given to him to provide a service. Uh, he’s really good at hockey and that’s dope? Right.

If you’re a fan of advanced statistics, you should be a fan of Domi. He created, by using a proprietary formula he shared with the world, a sort of WAR stat for hockey. This score, called a Game Score, gives player ratings for an individual game. He uses stats from corsica.hockey (and you can see scores for specific games there) but there isn’t a website (yet) that gives a season-long game score.

So I, through some backbreaking spreadsheeting, put together such a list. These numbers are accurate as of 10 a.m. on Nov. 15. So don’t well actually me if it took you until Thursday to read this, okay? That’s your loss. You should be following my content more closely.

As the headline suggests (okay, explicitly states, whatever) Brent Burns has generated the most value for the Sharks this season. That’s no surprise, as the formula takes into account scoring, possession stats and blocking shots — all things Burns excels in. The numbers I used have been adjusted for score, zone and venue, so if you run these numbers yourself you may get a slightly different result. Just a heads up!

If we know Burns, who has generated the fourth most value in the NHL this season, is at the top of the list, how do the other Sharks stack up? Check out the top 10 list below:

You’ll notice something right away: the absence of Marc-Edouard Vlasic. Here’s the biggest flaw I’ve found in Game Score so far: it doesn’t take into account the quality of teammate or opponent, the latter of which probably explains why Pickles isn’t on the list.

I have this list sorted by total game score and Burns also leads in average game score. Just for fun I took a look at game score per 60 minutes of ice time, as Burns obviously benefits from playing more minutes than anyone else. That doesn’t make much of a difference as he still leads Joe Pavelski by nearly 0.8. Here’s a look at the top 10 in GS60:

The biggest surprise on this list is Tommy Wingels cracking the top 10. Sure, he’s playing against fourth line competition but putting up that kind of value on the fourth line is nothing to scoff at. Wingels has found his scoring touch over the road trip, which I’m sure helps his cause.

This is a cool stat, but certainly is up for scrutiny and tweaking as we move forward. I like the concept and we’ll see where Domi takes it in the future. Also I’m into any stat that tells me Burns is the best at anything.