Taylor Hall vs. Jordan Eberle

A lot of talk about Jordan Eberle today and what the Oilers should do about signing him. A bunch of guys looked into his season and found a percentage driven total. Of course, in the comments section, a question was brought up. Who's better, Hall or Eberle? I say Taylor Hall, but let's look at some numbers to see.


Points

Eberle is scoring with the elite of the elite in the NHL, 54 points in 50 games has Eberle tied for 9th in NHL scoring. Jordan is 7th in PPG and averages 3.62 P/60, that total is insane. Jordan Eberle has the best P/60 rate in the NHL.

Jordan Eberle, by eye, has hands of a goddess. He can snipe with the best of them, he can dangle in a phone booth and he can pass pretty damn good, too. That toe-drag is a trade-mark of his and I love seeing him do it, it's what fans pay to see. Eberle, in the offensive zone, with a little space, can create magic.

Taylor Hall has a respectable 40 points in 44 games, 0.91 PPG. Taylor Hall's P/60 is 2.22, third on the team, behind Eberle and Sam Gretzky/Wayne Gagner. Hall's P/60 is 60th in the NHL.

Taylor Hall is what an Oiler should be. Hall doesn't take nights off, he leaves it all on the ice. What he does with the puck, going top speed is pretty damn good. Only a select few can do what he does, at the speed he does it at. Nothing is more exciting to me, in a game, than when Taylor gets the puck in full stride along the wing, he pushes the defense back like no other and if he learns to change up speed he would be more deadly.

Percentages

The difference between Eberle and Hall become evident here, Jordan Eberle, like what the bloggers are telling us, has very favorable percentages.

Eberle has a S% of 20.5%, and a team S% of 14.43 when he's on the ice. As mentioned in the above linked articles, Eberle has a PDO of 104.6, that is higher than usual.

Hall has a S% of 12.8%, and a team S% of  9.75% when he's on the ice. Taylor has a PDO of 100.3, which is significantly lower than Eberle's, mostly due to shooting percentage.

Another huge difference here is zone-starts. When Hall and Eberle aren't playing together, Hall faces the toughs and Eberle is still on easy street. The Off-zone start of Hall is 56.0% and Eberle's is 62.5%. That is almost Sedin like for Eberle. We can also look at how they're doing with puck possession, their Off-zone finish gives us a pretty good idea of who's getting the puck and dictating play. Hall's Off-zone finish is 54.0%, Eberle's is 56.4%.

Here we can see that Taylor Hall is winning more battles, in terms of puck possession than Eberle. Eberle is looking better than he is because of shooting percentages.

Corsi and Qual comp

Jordan Eberle has a Relative Corsi of 4.2, his actual Corsi is -4.92. So when Eberle is on the ice, the Oilers still lose the shot battle, even with the beautiful zone starts. But having Eberle on the ice is better for the Oilers than when he's not, says Relative Corsi. Jordan Eberle is 8th in Quality of Competition (min. 30 GP) playing with the best the Oilers have to offer (3rd in Quality of Teammates). This tells us that when Eberle, playing on the top line, plays 2nd or 3rd liners it's a battle for possession. He is losing.

Taylor Hall has the 5th best Relative Corsi in the NHL, 19.3. That means when he's on the ice he helps the Oilers tremendously, and when he's off the ice the Oilers are not nearly as good. His actual Corsi is 7.24, and for the Oilers, that is damn good. Hall plays 1st - 2nd liners with some of the best Edmonton has to offer (2nd in quality of teammates, min. 30 GP), he is winning the battle. These numbers tell us very good things about Hall, he is already able to do the power vs power matchup with competent teammates without getting killed.

Only Hall and Hemsky have positive Corsi's, that tells us that the Oilers are losing the shot and possession battle, by a lot. Lennert Petrell has a disgusting Corsi (-25.6), he cannot play in the NHL at even strength. Shawn Horcoff loves the Corsi Rel QoC stat.

All advanced stats found here, I took these numbers only at 5v5.

Comparing these two young studs gives us a pretty clear conclusion. Once Eberle regresses to the norm he will still be good, but not like he's doing now. Taylor Hall is sublime, he drives the bus on the ice and his play is great. Looking at the numbers shows that Taylor Hall is more valuable to the Oilers than Eberle, and as of today, he's the better hockey player at even strength. You could go more in-depth, looking at PP too, but this is still a pretty solid indicator, looking at a variety of tools to gauge where they're at.

Agree, disagree?