This week, I decided to bring back an old statistic from my dad’s articles.
As I have discussed, and as many readers experienced, Canadians in the NCAA was once an email list delivered by my father Jason. As a lover of statistics, and also a lover of simplicity, my dad came up with the idea of the Impact Point. The concept is very simple, which is to measure how many times a player makes a positive contribution for their team on a per-game basis.
Impact points take into account goals, assists, loose balls, and caused turnovers. Because they are relatively less frequent than other statistics, caused turnovers count as double. So the formula is goals + assists + loose balls + (2 times) caused turnovers, all divided by the number of games played.
It’s an imperfect measure to be sure, but it does a decent job of comparing offensive and defensive players in a somewhat equal metric.
This week, the Queen of the castle was Louisville’s Nicole Perroni. The Whitby native had a week-high 11 impact points for the Cardinals. In a big conference victory over Clemson, Perroni had 3 goals, 3 caused turnovers, and 2 ground balls, good for 11 impact points. It’s worth mentioning that my dads metric does not take draw controls into account, but Perroni added 6 of those as well.
On the men’s side, the leader in the clubhouse was Ohio State faceoff man Jack Oldman. In two games for the Buckeyes, Oldman scored 1 goal and 1 assist, to go along with 17 combined loose balls in the two games. Oldman went a combined 20-30 from the faceoff X in the two games, including a dominant 17-21 in their win over Detroit Mercy. It was his first career goal.
The other notable performance this week came from Syracuse’s Owen Hiltz, who poured in 6 goals and 1 assist in the Orange win over Delaware, the highest point production of the week.
Looking down the rest of the mens results, Virginia’s Payton Cormier (Mimico, Ontario) and Loyola’s Adam Poitras (Whitby, Ontario) added nine impact points each. Each player had 3 points, 1 caused turnover, and 4 loose balls. While they’re both known as offensive dynamos, their play off the ground was impressive.
The aforementioned Hiltz and fellow Peterboroughian (is that a word? Someone from the boro reply in the comments) Carter Page of St. Joseph’s had 8 impact points each. Page had 4 goals and 1 assists to go along with 3 loose balls in their big victory over St. Johns.
Following them was a quartet of players with 7 impact points. Stony Plain, Alberta native Callin Harris had a goal, assist, caused turnover and 3 loosies for Queen’s NC. Bolton, Ontario’s Zackery Ough had the Brodie Merrill hat-trick, with 3 caused turnovers and a loosie for Lindenwood. Mercer’s Jack Parolin (Toronto, Ontario if you are from outside the GTA, or Torono, Ontario if you’re a local) filled the stat sheet with 3 goals, 1 assist, 1 caused turnover, and a ground ball. And lastly, Terrebonne, Québec native Alexis Simard caused a turnover and scooped five loosies for Canisius.
On the women’s side, following Perroni was Maddy Camm of Detroit Mercy and Elmira, Ontario. Camm had 3 goals, 3 loose balls, and a caused turnover. Matching her 8 impact points was UMass attacker Kassidy Morris who had 5 points (3 goals) to go with a caused turnover and a loose ball.
Shoutout the UDM social team for actually posting one of Camm’s takeaways!
New Westminster’s Lauren Black was big for the Denver Pioneers adding a goal, 3 loose balls, and a caused turnover for 6 points. Brantford’s Bianca Chevarie got to six a different way, with 4 loose balls and a CTO.
Princeton’s Jami MacDonald had 5 goals, 2 caused turnovers, and 2 loose balls for the Tigers, while Colorado’s Emily Dodd (Calgary) had 1 of everything for 5 impact points.
One of MacDonald’s goals came on a distinctly Canadian play, taking a check to get the extra step.
I have also updated the full season statistics, which include impact points for the whole year. They can be found here.
Thats all for this week, thanks again for reading.
I know you can’t do everything but a review of D2 would be cool. Lots of Canadian content there