Chris Watkins joined Adam Stringham to discuss all of this year’s biggest deadline deals. Did the Rangers get enough of a return for Ryan McDonagh? Why were the Red Wings unable to move Mike Green? Any comments are appreciated, the goal is to produce a podcast that people want to hear. Please subscribe to the podcast on iTunes!
In part 1, I described three “pen and paper” methods for evaluating players based on performance relative to their teammates. As I mentioned, there is some confusion around what differentiates the relative to team (Rel Team) and relative to teammate (Rel TM) methods (it also doesn’t help that we’re dealing with two metrics that have the same name save four letters). I thought it would be worthwhile to compare them in various ways. The following comparisons will help us explore how each one works, what each tells us, and how we can use them (or which we should use). Additionally, I’ll attempt to tie it all together as we look into some of the adjustments I covered at the end of part 1.
A quick note: WOWY is a unique approach, which limits it’s comparative potential in this regard. As a result, I won’t be evaluating/comparing the WOWY method further. However, we’ll dive into some WOWYs to explore the Rel TM metric a bit later.
Rel Team vs. Rel TM
Note: For the rest of the article, the “low TOI” adjustment will be included in the Rel TM calculation. Additionally, “unadjusted” and “adjusted” will indicate if the team adjustment is implemented. All data used from here on is from the past ten seasons (’07-08 through ’16-17), is even-strength, and includes only qualified skaters (minimum of 336 minutes for Forwards and 429 minutes for Defensemen per season as estimated by the top 390 F and 210 D per season over this timeframe).
Below, I plotted Rel Team against both the adjusted and unadjusted Rel TM numbers. I have shaded the points based on each skater’s team’s EV Corsi differential in the games that skater played in:
Relative shot metrics have been around for years. I realized this past summer, however, that I didn’t really know what differentiated them, and attempting to implement or use a metric that you don’t fully understand can be problematic. They’ve been available pretty much anywhere you could find hockey numbers forever and have often been regarded as the “best” version of whatever metric they were used for to evaluate skaters (Corsi/Fenwick/Expected Goals). So I took it upon myself to gain a better understanding of what they are and how they work. In part 1, I’ll summarize the various types of relative shot metrics and show how each is calculated. I’ll be focusing on relative to team, WOWY (with or without you), and the relative to teammate methods.
A Brief Summary
All relative shot metrics whether it be WOWY, relative to team (Rel Team), or relative to teammate (Rel TM) are essentially trying to answer the same question: how well did any given player perform relative to that player’s teammates? Let’s briefly discuss the idea behind this question and why it was asked in the first place. Corsi, and its usual form of on-ice Corsi For % (abbreviated CF%) is easily the most recognizable statistic outside of the standard NHL provided boxscore metrics. A player’s on-ice CF% accounts for all shots taken and allowed (Corsi For / (Corsi For + Corsi Against)) when that player was on the ice (if you’re unfamiliar please check out this explainer from JenLC). While this may be useful for some cursory or high-level analysis, it does not account for a player’s team or a player’s teammates.
It’s the Olympics again, which means it’s time for everyone’s favorite activity: watching Canada underperform at ice-hockey! And while Hilary Knight breaking the hearts of Canadians is fun for everybody, the only thing that’s more fun is watching Hilary Knight break the hearts of Canadians while you have a statistical model that predicts each team’s likelihood of winning a medal! That’s right, Hockey Graphs is taking on the challenge of predicting the Women’s Olympic Hockey Tournament results.[1]
Hockey Graphs 