How does performance as of Dec. 1 relate to making the playoffs?

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Every year right around December 1, NHL analysts and fans alike start thinking a little more seriously about playoff chances. Although in many ways this is an arbitrary point in time, particularly when linking it to US Thanksgiving, there’s also some logic to it as well.

By the end of November, we are two months in and most teams have played 20-25 games, or a quarter of the season. And from an analytics perspective, that’s about the point when you can start making use of most of the early season data.

So while most of the traditional playoff discussion at this time of the year tends to focus on points or even where teams are in the standings, let’s take a look at how early-season shot-based metrics relate to whether a team ultimately makes the playoffs.

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Shea Weber, Norris Voting, and the Role of the Modern Defender

Carolyn NHL Topical Analysis 4 Comments

So on Thursday, I went on a bit of a rant about the role of defensemen in the NHL. Well, rant is probably the wrong word, as it wasn’t particularly emotional, so let’s call it instead a “tweetstorm”. This piece will expound upon those tweets in greater depth, as I think it’s a topic that deserves a little more than what 140 characters and snark can provide.

Though I can’t promise this won’t also include some snark.

The entire discussion was kick started by this tweet:

Now, you’re probably thinking “oh man, a Shea Weber analytics take. Let me go get my popcorn for the inevitable scathing fallout.”

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Behind the Numbers: Scoring first and conditional probability

Garret Hohl Behind the Numbers 8 Comments

Every once-in-a-while I will rant on the concepts and ideas behind what numbers suggest in a series called Behind the Numbers, as a tip of the hat to the website that brought me into hockey analytics: Behind the Net.

Not long ago Jason Gregor tweeted about the value of scoring first.

It may be a bit controversial and difficult to get right away, but the value of scoring first is not special. Long ago, Mr. Eric Tulsky, now of the Carolina Hurricanes, showed that the value of scoring first equals the value of any other goal.

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Have you even used a calculator, jock?

petbugs CBA, NHL Topical Analysis 3 Comments

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There has been quite a lot of talk over the last couple of days about how unhappy NHL players are with the escrow hit they take on every paycheque.

Unfortunately, when you have a collective bargaining agreement that specifies how hockey related revenues are to be split between owners and players, an escrow account is a necessary evil. Because the players’ share is paid out under the provisions of 700 or so individual player contracts throughout the season, there needs to be a mechanism to reconcile those payments with the total share following completion of the season, when all hockey related revenues have been accounted for.

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Predicting Shot Differentials for NCAA Players

Ryan Stimson Uncategorized Leave a comment

While there has been an increase in the type of data that’s available to us on prospects, we are still lacking across all developmental leagues. More importantly, and this is particularly true for the NCAA, player-level data still eludes us, even when there is team-level data present. To get at the context with which a player performs and the factors governing his or her environment, we are left with estimates of things like ice time and quality of competition/teammates.

While this hasn’t stopped us from making advances to enhance traditional scouting and prospect analysis, having player-level shot metrics would be a wonderful piece of data to have when evaluating their performance. This article will look at a method to predict those numbers.

Special thanks to DTMAboutHeart and Matt Cane for their feedback and guidance at certain steps in this process.

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League Wide Report for Weeks 1-4

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As a person who learns best by looking at visual representations of data, I have a couple of statistics that I check on a regular basis to hep me calibrate my interpretation of what’s happening around the NHL. I’m going to start sharing them in a regular series that I hope will give a quick overview of how teams are performing around the league. The goal is for this to be a high level view of the basic trends for all 30 teams that will draw attention to specific areas that might need to be explored further. The charts in this article are up to date through last night’s games. All data is via corsica.hockey.

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Behind the Numbers: Why Plus/Minus is the worst statistic in hockey and should be abolished

Garret Hohl Behind the Numbers 11 Comments
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Every once-in-a-while I will rant on the concepts and ideas behind what numbers suggest in a series called Behind the Numbers, as a tip of the hat to the website that brought me into hockey analytics: Behind the Net.

Hockey’s plus/minus may be the worst statistic in hockey, although there is some debate with goalie statistics not based off of save percentage (like GAA or Win% that just adds a team component to a goalie’s save percentage). It could even be in contention for just the worst statistic in sport.

Now, some people may read that and think I’m simply saying this because I value shot metrics over goal metrics in player evaluations. While I do feel that way, it is only one of a few reasons that that plus/minus fails in being useful.

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Hockey Graphs and Vancouver Canucks Co-Host Vancouver Hockey Analytics Conference 2017

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Hockey Graphs is excited to announce that we will be co-hosting the Vancouver Hockey Analytics Conference (#VanHAC) with the Vancouver Canucks along with HockeyData and Canucks Army.

Date: Saturday, March 11th, 2017

Location: Rogers Arena, Vancouver, Canada

Website: HockeyGraphs.com/VanHAC

The call for speakers is currently open with a deadline of January 10th, 2017.  See the website for more details or go here to submit your submission.  

Registration has yet to open as we tabulate the final costs to host the venue, among other factors. Check back here or on Twitter for more information when it will open. (Note: Expect participants to be capped at around 100 people.)

Watch the VanHAC page for updates as they are released!

Introducing the 2016 – 2017 Forechecking Project

Ryan Stimson Forechecking Data Leave a comment

Passing and Zone Entries are so last year.

When Corey Sznajder decided to track microstats for the upcoming season and began incorporating my passing concepts into his work on last season’s playoffs, I wondered if we really needed to track this season. Instead, Corey and I chatted a bit and decided the best use of everyone’s time would be if myself and the other passing project volunteers continued to work on last season*, with the hope that we can build a solid sample by the time Corey finishes the 2016 – 2017 season. Having two (nearly) full seasons of data would be excellent to have.

However, this also gave another idea to explore something we really haven’t done a lot of: forechecking.

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