Total Player Chart

Total Player Charts (or TPCs) are radar plots that assess a player’s time at 5v5, 5v4, 4v5 or EV, PP, PK, in order to depict their playing time contribution (and a glimpse at their ability).

A New Look at Aging Curves for NHL Skaters (part 1)

EvolvingWild NHL League-Wide Analysis, Total Player Chart, WAR 3 Comments

How do NHL players age? When do they peak? How quickly do they decline? Questions about player aging in the NHL have been debated for years, and an incredible amount of research has already been done trying to answer these questions. Within the past 3 years, however, it seems a general consensus has been reached. Rob Vollman summarizes this quite well in his book Stat Shot: The Ultimate Guide to Hockey Analytics: “Most players hit their peak age by age 24 or 25 then decline gradually until age 30, at which point their performance can begin to tumble more noticeably with the risk of absolute collapse by age 34 or 35.”

The vast majority of this work has been done looking at points, goals, shot attempts, special teams, etc., but the release of Dawson Sprigings’ WAR (Wins Above Replacement) model gives us a new statistic from which we can derive value and, possibly, a new way to look at how NHL skaters age. It seems only natural that we’d revisit the NHL player aging question using this new model. If you’re unfamiliar with his WAR model, you can read all about it here.

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Friday Quick Graphs: Total Player Charts, Revived

Benjamin Wendorf Friday Quick Graphs, NHL League-Wide Analysis, Total Player Chart Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Bringing back an older concept…a few years ago, I was spurred by Tom Awad’s “Good Player” series to put together these radar charts of player ice-time. I’d always felt, for fantasy hockey purposes, it is important to know the boxcars (goals, assists, points) come from the ice-time as much as anything, and so the initial creation of what I called “Total Player Charts,” or TPCs, was to portray precisely that. It ended up that they gave intriguing portrayals of players that we felt had strong seasons. See Jamie Benn’s above; an Art Ross Trophy, sure, and much of it came from near the top share of playing time at evens and on the powerplay, league-wide. You can also get a sense of just how valuable a defenseman like T.J. Brodie is:

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Friday Quick Graph: The Evolution of an NHL Forward’s Time On-Ice

Benjamin Wendorf Friday Quick Graphs, Total Player Chart Tags: , , , , , , , , 1 Comment

Friday Quick Graphs are (initially) intended to revisit some of the better, potentially more-significant work I’ve posted over the past year on my Tumblr page (if you want to beat me to some of them, take a look at benwendorf.tumblr.com).

I did a similar GIF one week ago, using defensemen, in an effort to understand how a player’s playing time evolves over their career. Taking NHL player data from 2007-08 through 2011-12 and identifying year-t0-year change, I’m able to create a hypothetical forward that plays from age 18 to age 40, and how that player’s ice time would change.

For frame of reference, the hypothetical player is the dark blue triangle, the light, dotted triangle is the league average across the player population, and the light blue triangle is the league high in each situation.

There are some similarities to the defensemen GIF, primarily that player’s are given powerplay minutes early, but grow into penalty kill minutes. Unlike defensemen, though, forward TOI decreases uniformly at all strengths, whereas defensemen tend to retain some of their penalty kill time.

As with the previous post, it’s worth pointing out that a player playing from age 18 to age 40 would be a pretty unique, talented player, so this model is really just to demonstrate change.

Friday Quick Graph: The Evolution of an NHL Defenseman’s Time On-Ice

Benjamin Wendorf Friday Quick Graphs, Total Player Chart Tags: , , , , , , , , 1 Comment

Age progression TPCs for a hypothetical defenseman who has played from age 18 through 40. The progression is built on year-to-year age trends across the entire NHL defenseman population from 2007-08 through 2011-12.

Friday Quick Graphs are (initially) intended to revisit some of the better, potentially more-significant work I’ve posted over the past year on my Tumblr page (if you want to beat me to some of them, take a look at benwendorf.tumblr.com).

What you see above is a “Total Player Chart,” or TPC, a chart I developed about a year ago to visualize a player’s time on-ice (TOI) deployment. Using that chart, I took the NHL player population from 2007-08 through 2011-12 and recorded the year-to-year change in player’s TOI relative to their age and age +1 seasons. I took those trends and placed them upon an average 18-year old defenseman’s ice time, and tracked how that hypothetical player’s TOI would evolve if they played to the age of 40. The result is the GIF above.

For frame of reference, the hypothetical player is the dark blue triangle, the light, dotted triangle is the league average across the player population, and the light blue triangle is the league high in each situation.

As you can see, the trend is that young player’s tend to receive 5v4 minutes, and as they age they become more trusted with 4v5; as they get older, the 4v5 minutes stick around, but the 5v4 minutes fade.

It’s worth pointing out that this hypothetical defenseman, overall, is likely to be a decent player, by virtue of the fact that they would be getting NHL minutes at age 18 in the first place (and playing until 40).