“Jordan Eberle – Edmonton Oilers” by Lisa Gansky from New York, NY, USA – IMG_1468. Licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0 via Commons.
Hockey Talk is a (hopefully) weekly series where you will get to view the dialogue amongst a few of the Hockey-Graphs’ contributors on a particular subject, with some fun tangents.
This week we look at whether or not players should care about their advance statistics (with a tangent on talent distributions impact on hockey):
Recently, I’ve received some unsolicited emails from some very smart young people about working in analytics for a hockey team. There are definitely people more qualified that they could’ve tracked down, but most of them are not allowed to talk about their jobs, so I guess they were stuck with me.
It felt a little bit strange corresponding with these mathematics or engineering students, because theoretically, their backgrounds are a lot more suited to this line of work than mine (I graduated in Marketing). I apparently passed Calculus II 10 years ago (I barely remember taking it). I’m a mediocre programmer. And I don’t even work in the NHL.
But there are still a few thoughts I could share.
Welcome to the second episode of the Hockey Graphs podcast, where Rhys Jessop (of Canucks Army and That’s Offside) and Garret Hohl continue talking about hockey while learning how to podcast. Join us as we discuss the CSS rankings, Vancouver Canucks, Winnipeg Jets, Toronto Maple Leafs, the NHL’s disciplinary practices, and the up coming All-Star game. Continue reading
Welcome to the inaugural episode of the Hockey Graphs podcast, where Rhys Jessop (of Canucks Army and That’s Offside) and Garret Hohl navigate the wonderful world of podcasting for the first time ever. Join us as we discuss Vancouver Canucks and Winnipeg Jets prospects, what the hell is up with the Anaheim Ducks, and, of course, a healthy dose of fancystats. Continue reading
Photo by Arnold C, via Wikimedia Commons
I think it’s fair to say that people familiar with hockey scouting and stats analysis know that there is a bit of a rift between the two (not unlike what exists in baseball). The former, as in baseball, has a long history as the standard in hockey analysis, being at-or-near the forefront of drafting, trading, and free agency decisions for teams. The latter is expanding its reach exponentially into league offices, and has many a pro-stats person questioning the abilities of scouts to analyze players (and vice versa). There are at least preliminary attempts to reach out, on the part of Corey Pronman at Hockey Prospectus (and ESPN), but scouting and stats analysis both have a lexicon, methods, and best practices, and devotees of one probably don’t have much time to develop proficiency in the other.
Yet, therein lies a problem and a solution. There is a common thread between these two groups, the desire to usefully analyze hockey players. They each have their own approach, but neither necessarily contain such complicated concepts that they cannot be read by a conscientious analyst. But most importantly, they have something to offer one another that could improve both areas of analysis.
Those of you who have worked with Behind the Net data would be the first to say it’s a great, important site. I feel the same way, but I also know that anybody that’s worked with it close enough knows that there is a bit of a pain-in-the-ass there, with the different name spellings. Also, there are some position discrepancies and, for those that like to look into that sort of thing, player ages aren’t on there. Well, because I just brought the data together for something else I’m working on, I decided to share what I had for those problems. This link is to a Google doc that has the Season, regular Player Name, their age and position that season, and their BTN name for that season.
The players include all players that played a season from 2007-08 up to last week Thursday, 2013-14. Let me know if the link below doesn’t work:
BehindtheNet.ca Player Name Converter, plus Age and Position, 2007-08 through 2013-14
Hope this helps, happy researching!
Hockey Graphs 