Back To The Numbers: Spring season wrap up

Ten games played by all seven teams, and just like that the spring season has concluded, with the fall season just around the corner. If you were in any way paying attention to the CPL you will know that Calgary’s Cavalry FC ran away with the spring variety of the competition. Some will say they started to slip up at the end whilst others (myself included) would say they unintentionally took their foot off the gas.

All throughout the season I have broken down the previous weeks matchups and pulled some interesting stats from each game. In this article I will recap the spring season as a whole and have some self-indulgent fun with charts.

Point Totals

Column 10 on this chart will show you the final points tally of the spring season. It shows that since the moment Cavalry picked up their first win they had a solid grip at the top of the table, with Forge making a late run after only one point in their first two matches.

Three teams ended up on 11 points come the end of match play on Monday. Out of those three teams, Pacific FC will take the best form into the fall season this weekend, winning two of their final three matches.

Valour FC will have concerns going into the fall, dropping their final four games on the trot.

Another fascinating way to look at from the points totals is where the teams mainly found success. The above chart shows home points in blue, and away in orange.

Champions Cavalry went 4-0-1 both at their home in Spruce Meadows, and at their opposition’s territory. They were also one of just two teams to go the whole season without tying a game.

The other team without a draw, was Valour, who managed six points away from home, which uncommonly, was double the amount they achieved at home, with just one win.

Perhaps the most extraordinary stat, is that Halifax didn’t muster a single goal away from home all season, whilst conceding six.

Result Outcomes

Eight different score lines occurred over the 35 matches that took place. Three of those (2-0, 1-0, and 2-1) were more common than the rest, with the latter manifesting itself the most at nine times.

Intriguingly, no team scored four goals in a match the whole season.

A 0-0 tie happened only three times, which is exciting for the neutrals. FC Edmonton and York9 were involved in two apiece.

Goals, Goals, and Golden Boots

The above chart shows goals scored by all teams and the table below shows when in the season those goals came about. Instantly we can see that Cavalry and Force were leaps ahead of the rest of the pack. Cavalry ended up scoring double the amount of goals as Edmonton, Halifax, and Valour. Cavalry only failed to score in one match.

Edmonton should consider themselves somewhat happy with a goals total of eight after going six games without a single ball hitting the back of net. Their last three games had them averaging two a game.

Despite losing their last four games of the season, Valour managed to score in three of those. The worrying statistic for the Winnipeg team will be that they only managed to score more than one in a game once, and that was way back in the first week of the season.

A similar graphic for goals against also shows us some interesting trends. The same two teams find themselves virtually flipped as the Calgary and Hamilton outfits found themselves being the hardest teams to score against. Cavalry went a period of three games without conceding a goal between their fourth and sixth games.

Another team to conjure up a three-game shut out was York9, who didn’t concede between games six and eight. Before that first clean sheet they were the leakiest in the league, actually recording the most saves over the course of the season.

Finally let’s touch on the Golden Boot race, which ended up in a three-way tie thanks to an Oumar Diouck strike six minutes from time. Diouck netted in all of Edmonton’s last three games to take him to a total of four, alongside Cavalry’s Dominique Malonga and #ForgesBorges. Impressively, Diouck scored half of his side’s goals in league play.

The above table shows the goals in darker in green and the amount of shots taken to reach that goals total in the lighter green.

Malonga led in shots amongst the three with 23, whilst Diouck had the best conversion rate at a goal every 2.75 shots. All three of these players will be hoping to be at the top of the scoring charts come the end of the fall season, preferably by themselves.

The CPL Fall season starts this Saturday at 10:00am PT when spring runners up Forge FC host FC Edmonton. Don’t forget all matches can be seen at onesoccer.ca.