The last two pieces of mine focused on passing network analysis for both the Erie Otters and Oshawa Generals from their 2015 OHL Final. The point of this short series was to look at how and why teams are successful over a playoff series. Generally, five-game samples aren’t large enough to give much credence to, and yet a sound game plan and tactical preparation can influence an upcoming playoff series. With the type of data collected and analyzed through passing networks, it provides a baseline of how influential the Otters and Generals players were in their series. From there, naturally, any good analyst will go to the video to find evidence of how these numbers occurred, to augment their conclusions. These first two series served as a opportunity to present new ways of analysis with our data this season, something that, come playoff time, will be given a test run in terms of series predictions.
This final piece in this series will focus on the production for each player and team in a more traditional sense. What does that mean? Lots of numbers and charts. For starters, Erie generated far more passing offense in this series than Oshawa. At 5v5, here were the Otters possession numbers for shot sequences from single, multiple, and scoring chance passes.