Analytics, so hot right now. But how do you get started? People from all sorts of background and levels of expertise have contributed valuable work to hockey analytics, but the journey can feel daunting.
In this post, I want to lay out my personal advice for what knowledge and skills are needed and how to get them. Your mileage will vary, but I think much of this will be useful to anyone who is interested in starting to do their own analytics research or writing.
I was born into a family of Islander fans, so I never had a chance to avoid the sadness that comes with that fandom. While Islander fans are sad for a lot of reasons, one constant complaint over the past several years has been their inability to protect a lead.
However, this is not a unique complaint of Islander fans alone. Fans of other teams have similar gripes. For example, the Leafs have been criticized this season on the same grounds. And here’s fellow Hockey Graphs write Asmae when I suggested doing some research on blown leads:
So, are some teams particularly bad at holding leads? Asked another way, is keeping a lead a skill distinct from the rest of the team’s performance, or is it just a function of the team’s overall skill and luck?
*This post is co-authored by DTMAboutHeart and Ryan Stimson*
Recently, the topic of Quality of Competition has been at the forefront of Hockey Twitter. This post hopes to articulate some of the nuance associated with Quality of Competition, as well as Quality of Teammate, metrics and how impactful they are. To do that, we will revisit methods outlined here by Eric Tulsky, namely splitting the competition and teammate quality by position and measuring the impact of each split. Ryan recently wrote about this at the NCAA level, but it has not been looked at with much rigor at the NHL level.
Both Quality of Competition and Quality of Teammates matter. They also don’t matter. It depends on the position and metric you’re looking at. All TOI data is 5v5 and from Corsica. Ryan had the game files of who was on the ice during each 5v5 shot from Micah Blake McCurdy, so that data was used as well. Also, thanks to Muneeb for feedback during this process. Thanks to all!
Jack Han is the Video & Analytics Coordinator for the McGill Martlet Hockey team (not his full-time job). He also writes occasionally about the NHL for Habs Eyes on the Prize. You can find him on Twitter or on the ice at McConnell Arena.
One of the things I am trying to work on this summer is to be more self-critical about the way I treat and act on information. Frederik Andersen’s trade from the Anaheim Ducks to the Toronto Maple Leafs, and his subsequent signing of a five-year, $25 million contract proved to be a good opportunity in that sense.
Hearing Frederik Andersen’s deal with the Leafs is $5.5-million a season. That’s a big commitment for a goalie with 125 games played.
— James Mirtle (@mirtle) June 20, 2016
Initially, I cringed a bit at the term and cap commitment Toronto made to Andersen. Five years is a long time and $5M per year is a big money for a guy who is not guaranteed to play all that well.
But I could be very wrong on that.
“The Pittsburgh Penguins won.” “The San Jose Sharks lost.”
Do those statements have the same meaning? The answer depends entirely on what you mean by meaning.
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Following the suggestion of my friend Arik Parnass, I’ve began re-reading the book Thinking Fast And Slow, which explores many ideas that can be applied to hockey.
One of the chapters in the book deals with the concept of framing – how people can be influenced to think about a certain situation depending on the words used to describe it. Going back to our initial example, did the Penguins win the Stanley Cup (because of their superior tactics, teamwork and talent level)? Or did the Sharks lose the Stanley Cup (because of their reliance on defensemen who are slow and can’t make a pass)?
There is no right or wrong answer, but we can see how a simple difference in phrasing can lead us down different avenues.
By any predictive metric, the Pittsburgh Penguins have generated a staggering amount of offense against the San Jose Sharks in the Stanley Cup Finals. Earlier this week, we looked at how the Penguins are able to create possessions with good defensive habits in the neutral zone. Today, we’ll examine how they create a volume of offensive chances via positional switches.
To fully understand the ideas behind the Penguins’ offensive zone play, it is necessary to study the “Total Football” philosophy:
The line of thinking lends itself well to the speed and teamwork-oriented nature of hockey as well. While the Penguins are by no means the first team to apply these ideas, they are a good example of how they can be used effectively at the highest level of the game.
Here are some clips from Game 3 and Game 5 of the Stanley Cup Final illustrating the tactical benefits of fluidity and positional switches.
This post is not really about Genie Bouchard, or even tennis in general, but let’s start with her.
On Thursday, Bouchard, the top-ranked Canadian player on the WTA Tour, lost 6-4, 6-4 to No. 8 seed Timea Bacsinszky at Roland Garros. The loss could be interpreted as another setback for Bouchard, who ranked as high as No. 5 in the world in October 2014. Since then, she has slumped, going 12-18 in 2015 after winning 39 and 43 matches in the previous two years. What’s gone wrong?
Possibly, the answer is nothing at all.
Something I set time aside for during the off-season is reading non-hockey books in an attempt to gain a better perspective on hockey. The work of Michael Lewis (Liar’s Poker, The Big Short, Boomrang) and Nassim Taleb (The Black Swan, Fooled By Randomness) were of particular inspiration.
Below are some assorted thoughts based on recent readings and events. Tweet me (@ML_Han) if you’d like to disagree and tell me why. Eventually I hope to spend some time talking about this or a tangential at the second edition of RITHAC this September.
In my experience, using analytics to influence coaching decisions is a profoundly weird and incredibly interesting exercise, which is why I was very excited to read a book called The Only Rule Is It Has To Work, a newly released book written by Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller, two Sabermetricians who took over a pro baseball team for a season.
Being a fast reader, I blasted through the pages in about two days. I’m happy to say that got a lot out of this book. If you’re here, you probably would too.
While I don’t know or care much about baseball, Ben and Sam are my kindred spirits. There are not many people who have had the opportunity to use analytics to directly impact how a sports team is run on a day-to-day basis. As I found myself leafing through the pages, I saw a lot of my own hockey experiences in the authors’ words.
Whether it was gaining the trust of the coaching staff, overcoming teething IT issues, or occasionally falling prey to heuristics and losing “objectivity,” I identified a great deal with Ben and Sam’s trials and tribulations. So much so, that I began tweeting at Ben before I even finished the book.
Hockey Graphs 