Justin Williams hoping for a Stanley Cup three-peat with LA Kings

Justin Williams, the reigning Conn Smythe Trophy holder and three-time Stanley Cup champion, possesses a sort of serene confidence. Dressed in gray shorts, matching shirt and flip flops the day after the Los Angeles Kings first win of the new season, he seems totally at ease in what is now his fifth year in Southern California. He is by turns funny, self-deprecating, humble and thoughtful. It’s only when he finishes answering a question and fixes his hazel eyes on you in a look of almost baleful intensity that you catch a glimpse of what makes Williams one of the best right wings in the game.

“One of the special things in hockey is the handshake line at the end of a playoff series. I’ve been a part of a lot of wins in those lines but I’ve also been a part of some losses as well. When you look that guy in the eye and you shake his hand and you know they got the better of you it’s very frustrating for me. I never like knowing someone got the better of me.

“You know we won in 2012. We lost in 2013 you kind of felt cheated or slighted that you see someone else raise the Stanley Cup. I guess it’s kind of like seeing someone else with your wife. You get jealous. You know, why is he holding the Stanley Cup? That should be mine.”

Williams came dangerously close to that feeling last spring when Los Angeles faced a 3-0 deficit in their opening round matchup with the San Jose Sharks. The Kings rebounded to win the series in seven games but two more Game 7s followed including an overtime win at Chicago in the Western Conference Finals in which Williams scored once and assisted on the series-winning goal. His success earned him the nickname “Mr Game 7” (he’s 7-0 in such games over his career), a moniker he doesn’t especially like. “When people start calling you something, whatever it is, it means more eyes on me. I don’t want that.”

And yet attention is just what Williams got when he deservedly hoisted the Conn Smythe following the Kings’ second Stanley Cup victory in three years. Williams’s nine goals and 15 assists, including points in all three Game 7s, etched his name on the playoff MVP trophy alongside past winners such as Orr, LaFleur, Gretzky and Lemieux. “I checked out all those names,” he says. “It feels like it’s going to be a trivia question twenty years from now. You know, what name doesn’t seem to fit.” But Williams does fit and not just with the Kings. In large part, his tenacious play is the personification of how the NHL is evolving.

Many teams are loathe to admit it and fewer still openly address it, but the NHL is now dominated by puck-possession stats, metrics with amusing names like Corsi, Fenwick and PDO. What started out as former goaltender turned assistant coach Jim Corsi’s attempt to quantify a goalie’s value has morphed into a formula for possession: more shots equals more goals equals more wins. It sounds simple. But you know what, it works. And you know what else, by the well regarded stat known as Corsi Tied the NHL’s best player over the past five years – since Williams’ move to the Kings – isn’t Sydney Crosby or Alex Ovechkin. It’s Justin Williams.

Jim Corsi, a former WHL and NHL goalie and current goaltending coach for the St Louis Blues, was skiing in the Alps when he first imagined what would eventually become the Corsi stat. Corsi felt that Shots on Goal was not indicative enough of how well or poorly a goalie played since it only took into account goals and saves. What if, he thought, one totaled shots on goal plus missed shots plus blocked shots and compared it to the opposition’s total. That number, the difference between the number of all shots taken by your team and the number of all shots by the opposition while you’re on the ice and expressed as a percentage, became Corsi, a stat named and championed by an Edmonton Oilers fan blogger who wrote under the alias Vic Ferrari.

Like On-base Percentage in baseball, it took a while for Corsi to take off. But the stat made sense as an indicator of success. The teams with good possession players were annual Cup contenders. But more importantly, the teams that scoffed at Corsi were not. The final proof came this past season when stat heads staked their reputation on the performance of one team, the Toronto Maple Leafs.

Last in several possession metrics the previous season, the 2013-14 Leafs got out of the gate fast. They were 10-4 after October and 30-21-6 as of 1 February while publicly thumbing their noses at “fancy stats”. Then the roof caved in. Two and 14 down the stretch, they failed to make the playoffs while again finishing near bottom in several possession metrics. They were in 29^th (out of 30 teams) in both Corsi Close and Fenwick Close (Fenwick is the same stat as Corsi minus blocked shots) and their Shooting Percentage (the percentage of shots that result in goals) fell a full two percent to 8.28.

The Leafs’ failure resulted in a run on stat-heavy bloggers by several teams. Ferrari, whose real name is Tim Barnes, was recently hired as an analytics consultant by the Washington Capitals. Even Toronto beefed up their analytics department by hiring ExtraSkater.com founder Darryl Metcalf (the site subsequently went dark). And it confirmed what the best teams in the league such as Boston, Pittsburgh, Chicago and, of course, Los Angeles already knew. Namely that analytics have a place in the game.

The significance of advanced stats in regards to Williams is that they help quantify the right wing’s value. Last season, Williams’ “regular” stats weren’t very impressive. His plus-minus number was a mediocre +14 and he wasn’t even in the top 125 players in overall points. But some of his advanced stats were off the charts. As a team, LA had the league’s best Fenwick Close number taking 56.48% of shots in close situations (when the score is within one goal either way). A similar stat is Williams’ personal five-year Corsi Tied number. When Williams is on the ice in tied, 5-on-5 situations the Kings are taking 61% of the shots. That’s the best for any player in the NHL from 2009-2014.

To the Kings, Williams’s role as a possession guy and facilitator is obvious. With his quick hands, he has an uncanny ability to control the half wall (the area along the dasher boards halfway between the blue line and the goal line) and dig out pucks in the corners. And he not only keeps possession but he’s able to make plays out of it and set up teammates.

“Every guy has to have some type of quality that keeps them in the league. Some guys are great penalty killers. Some guys are super fast. Some guys have great shots, great release, great goaltenders. I’ve had to work on that part of my game because I’m not the fastest skater. I don’t have a harder shot. I’m not the most physical. But I’m tenacious. I’m determined. I have to win battles with my quickness and determination. It’s what I’ve had to do to stay in the league and remain effective.”

And yet it might come as a surprise that when Williams is told that over the past two seasons, he and teammates Anze Kopitar and Jake Muzzin have been 1-2-3 in Adjusted Corsi he shrugs it off.

“I’m not at all conscious of any of those stats. It just comes with the way I play and the way I have to play to stay in this league. I’m a guy who wants the puck on my stick. I’m a guy who wants to hang on to it and try and make plays to keep the puck. Kopi is the same way. He doesn’t want to give it up and when he does he wants to give it to someone who has a great chance to score. There are little plays on the ice that you can do to keep possession but it’s not something I’ve ever looked at or worried about.”

While Williams might not be checking his Corsi numbers between periods it’s clear that his possession skills are part of what has helped him have such a long career. Now 33, the eldest Kings winger came into the NHL with Philadelphia as a first-round draft pick in 2000 out of tiny Cobourg, Ontario whose listed population of 18,000 Williams says is “probably on the high end”. Williams says he loved his time as a Flyer and the fact that at the age of 19 he was given a chance to play. “We have a lot of ex-Flyers on this team but they weren’t guys who wanted out of Philly. I wanted to stay there, [Mike] Richards wanted to stay there, [Jeff] Carter wanted to stay there. We all wanted to stay. And we all got traded.”

In 2004, Williams was traded to Carolina for defenseman Danny Markov, a move that hockey writer Alan Bass rated as the second worst trade in Flyers history behind the Eric Lindros-Quebec Nordiques trade which he notes was perhaps the worst trade in NHL history. Markov played a season in Philadelphia and was out of the league within a couple of years. Meanwhile, in Carolina, Williams’ career took off. In 2005-06, his first full year with the Hurricanes, Williams tallied a career-high 76 points and Carolina won the Stanley Cup. The following season he made the All-Star team. Two seasons later, however, Williams tore the ACL in his left knee limiting his time to just 36 games. Williams’ second ACL tear (the first occurred as a Flyer in 2003) was part of a disturbing list of injuries including a broken hand and a torn Achilles tendon that he had racked up before being traded to the Kings in 2009 for centre Patrick O’Sullivan.

“Over time you learn what you can do and what you can’t do on the ice. What you can get away with and what you can’t get away with. I chalk it up to a little bit of bad luck. You’ve got to be confident. You go out on the ice trying not to get hurt and that’s exactly what is going to happen.”

LA fans may have been unsure if they were taking on damaged goods when Williams arrived, but Kings general manager Dean Lombardi was not. Although he doesn’t discuss the particulars of his strategy, Lombardi has long been a champion of analytics, which explains why he has stocked the team with strong possession guys such Carter, Muzzin and Williams. Lombardi knew exactly what he was getting in Williams having spent time as a Flyers scout while Williams was still in house. He liked the Canadian’s competitive nature. “I know that’s what Dean Lombardi wanted to do when he came here was to develop an identity and a culture of winning,” says Williams. “And he’s done that through drafting, player development and some trades along the way if he feels the guy will fit. He doesn’t necessarily get the best player but he always seems to get the right player for the team.”

Not that there weren’t times of doubt. Once in LA, Williams’ struggles with injuries continued culminating in the 2010 playoffs when after returning from a broken leg he was a healthy scratch for a couple of games.

“It was tough. I got hurt and came back maybe a little too early and just wasn’t myself. It was a time of reflecting and owning up to yourself and saying that I can be better. I had a couple hour chat with Dean and came out of the meeting feeling great and determined to improve. Hockey is a mental game as well and you need to be confident in your abilities and what you can do out there. That’s something that maybe I lost a little bit. But I have it back now. Realizing that you’re here for a reason. You’re good. That quiet arrogance that ‘I’m better than you’ can go a long way sometimes.”

That quiet arrogance and a fitness regimen based around core strength have resulted Williams not missing a game since 2011 with a consecutive streak well over 200 games. It also means Williams has been there for every step of LA’s two Cup wins. He says the breakthrough as a team happened in 2012 when as an eight seed the Kings drew Vancouver, the President’s Trophy winner, in the first round.

“When I got here the team had lot of personalities, a lot of young guys trying to find their way and a couple of good leaders but not really a good pedigree of winning. We really realized what we could do after we got over the hump of winning a playoff series when we beat Vancouver in five games. We looked around and said why not us. No one could have a reason otherwise. We just rolled from there.”

If their 2012 win seemed like destiny, last season’s championship was even more unbelievable considering the odds Los Angeles faced: three Game 7s, all on the road. After battling back to beat the Sharks, the Kings knocked off local rival Anaheim setting up a rematch with the Blackhawks who had eliminated the Kings in 2013. In Game 7, it was Alec Martinez’s deflected drive, off a pass from Williams, that fortuitously trickled over Hawks goalie Corey Crawford’s shoulder and into the net sending the Kings to the Finals.

“You never know. We could have not gotten a break in Game 7 with the puck going off a defenseman and we’d be writing a different story. That’s the playoffs. A break here or there can change the course of history.”

Five games later, Williams made history of his own when he was named the Conn Smythe winner after the Kings 3-2 OT win over the New York Rangers. After so much tribulation the moment was humbling for a guy from a small town. “When I got told I was getting the trophy I instantly was very emotional and started looking for my family because that’s who you want to celebrate it with. You have great moments in your life you want to celebrate it with the people who care about you and the people who have been cheering for you your whole life. The reaction I got from my teammates as well, to see how genuinely happy they were for me, was pretty special.”

As is the custom these days, each Kings player got to keep the Cup for a day and Williams decided to take it and the Conn Smythe back home to Cobourg where the town threw him a parade. “I was little bit reserved about having a parade. You’re having a parade; you just want people to show up, right? You can’t have a parade and have nobody there so I was kind of nervous about that. But at the end of the day I’m not naïve. They’re not coming to see me. They’re coming to see the trophies.”

Now back in Los Angeles for the final year of his contract Williams says he’s not worried about free agency. He thinks he has plenty of hockey left in him. The Kings made very few changes in the offseason but Williams expects a deep playoff run, maybe all the way back to June. That’s okay with Williams even if it means another short summer. “Short summers are great. I guess only when you win. It was a nice short summer for us. Not so nice for the Rangers.”