NHL Corsi Stats: 5v5 Shot Attempt Share

What is Corsi in hockey

Corsi counts every shot attempt a team takes at 5 on 5: goals, shots on goal, missed shots and blocked shots. It is the broadest measure of puck possession because it captures every time a team tries to put the puck on net, not just the attempts that reach the goalie.

Corsi for percentage, or CF%, is the share of all 5v5 shot attempts that belong to one team. The formula is CF / (CF + CA), where CF is the team's own shot attempts and CA is the opponent's. A CF% above 50 means the team is generating more attempts than it allows, and a CF% below 50 means it is losing the possession battle.

Because Corsi uses a large sample of events rather than just goals, it is a more stable and predictive measure of how a team is actually playing than raw goal differential, especially early in a season when a few lucky bounces can swing goal totals.

Corsi vs Fenwick

Fenwick is a close cousin of Corsi that leaves out blocked shots. It counts only shots on goal and missed shots, on the theory that blocking a shot is a defensive skill and should not be counted against the team that blocked it.

Fenwick for percentage (FF%) is therefore slightly less noisy than CF% when it comes to measuring true talent, because it removes the variance from how many shots a team gets in front of. Both metrics are shown on this page so you can compare them: when a team's CF% and FF% disagree, the gap is usually driven by how many shots the defense blocks.

Relative Corsi and zone starts

Relative Corsi, or Rel CF%, measures a single skater's impact. It is the player's on-ice CF% minus the team's CF% when that same player is off the ice. A positive Rel CF% means the team controls shot attempts better with the player on the ice than without him.

Zone starts matter because a player who starts a large share of his shifts in the offensive zone will naturally post a higher CF%. The zone start percentage (ZS%) column shows how often each skater begins his shift in the offensive zone relative to the defensive zone. A high ZS% inflates raw CF%, so a strong Rel CF% from a player with a low ZS% is the most impressive result.

How to use Corsi for NHL DFS

High-CF% teams generate more shot attempts, and more attempts turn into more shots on goal, which is what feeds the DraftKings shot bonus. A skater on a line with a strong CF% facing a weak-Corsi opponent is the cleanest stack target on the slate.

Target skaters on strong-Corsi lines against weak-Corsi teams. The line Corsi section shows the ice-time weighted CF% of each forward line and defense pair, so you can see which units are actually driving play. A top line with a CF% in the mid-50s against a bottom-five Corsi team is the matchup you want.

On the other side, a goalie facing a team with a very high CF per game is likely to see a lot of rubber, which is good for his save total but bad for his win and goals-against odds. Use the expected shot attempt numbers in the matchup cards to size the workload.

How to use Corsi for NHL betting

CF% predicts future goal share better than goals do, especially early in the season when a team's record can lag its underlying play. A team with a high CF% but a losing record is often a buy-low candidate on the moneyline or puck line, while a team winning with a poor CF% is likely to regress.

PDO is the sum of a team's shooting percentage and save percentage at 5v5, scaled to 100. A PDO near 100 is normal. A PDO far above 100 means the team is getting unsustainably good finishing or goaltending and is due to come down, and a PDO far below 100 means the opposite. Pair PDO with CF% to find teams whose record does not match their process.

Frequently asked questions