Though there’s no NHL hockey right now, we’re hoping that the two sides come to a compromise soon that will cut losses for all three sides: the owners, the players, and most importantly, all the rest of us. In the meantime, we’ve got a Halloween treat for you, a sample chapter from our upcoming Hockey Prospectus 2012-13.

In the Pittsburgh Penguins chapter, you’ll see more than our usual advanced stats breakdown for the team and its players, including our famed VUKOTA projections. This year, we’ve added Rob Vollman’s Player Usage Charts for each team, giving you a visual depiction of the role of each player by level of competition and zone start percentage, plus their success or failure in the critical puck possession game (big colored circles are good, big white circles are bad).

We’re putting the finishing touches on this year’s annual, and should have the .pdf version ready for download within two weeks*.

Renowned sabermetrics guru Gabriel Desjardins provides the Foreword this year, and you’ll want to check out Eric Tulsky’s essay on Zone Entries. I’ve got a couple in there as well.

*We’ve got the product page up, but you won’t be able to order it yet.