Blue Jackets Coach Todd Richards’ Firing, & Why the History Doesn’t Agree With Mike Harrington

October 21, 2015October 21, 2015Benjamin Wendorf History, NHL Topical Analysis Tags: Bryan Murray, Buffalo Sabres, Chicago Blackhawks, Columbus Blue Jackets, Craig Hartsburg, Doug Carpenter, Fancy Stats, Lindy Ruff, Mike Harrington, NHL Coaches, NHL Coaching Changes, NHL History, Todd Richards, Toronto Maple Leafs, Washington Capitals Leave a comment

Photo by user “Arnold C,” via Wikimedia Commons; altered by author

The Columbus Blue Jackets made a bold move today, firing their coach of 3 1/2 seasons Todd Richards in favor of noted firebrand and Brandon Dubinsky fan John Tortorella. The move, riding the coattails of a 0-7 start for the Jackets, was done unusually early in the season, so unusually I decided to spill a little ink on it.

Around the same time I was rounding up the data, the esteemed (Buffalo Baseball Hall of Fame!) Sabres writer and analytics pot-shotter Mike Harrington decided now was the time to defend a decision that made little sense, about a team he doesn’t write about. It started with a reasonable tweet from Friend of the Blog Micah Blake McCurdy:

So at 5v5 Columbus have faced 96% goaltending and their own goalies have posted 86%. Fire the coach.

— Micah Blake McCurdy (@IneffectiveMath) October 21, 2015

At which point Harrington followed:

Yes. They’re 0-7. Those are the numbers that count. You fire the coach. https://t.co/fj68KvufO2 — Mike Harrington (@BNHarrington) October 21, 2015

Alright, Mike, let’s take a look at the “numbers that count,” according to you. There’s a fun history here.

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NHL Analytic Teams’ State of the Union

September 9, 2015September 9, 2015Josh W NHL League-Wide Analysis Tags: Anaheim Ducks, Arizona Coyotes, Boston Bruins, Buffalo Sabres, Calgary Flames, Carolina Hurricanes, Chicago Blackhawks, Colorado Avalanche, Columbus Blue Jackets, Detroit Red Wings, Minnesota Wild, Montreal Canadiens, Nashville Predators, New Jersey Devils, New York Islanders, New York Rangers, Ottawa Senators, Philadelphia Flyers, Pittsburgh Penguins, San Jose Sharks, St. Louis Blues, Tampa Bay Lightning, Toronto Maple Leafs, Vancouver Canucks, Washington Capitals, Winnipeg Jets Leave a comment

Fandom means a lot of different things to different people. But one thing unites us all: we hope our favorite team will win, and spend a great deal of time thinking how they can.

For those of us who dig a little deeper on the “how” side and use analytics, we hope that our work will eventually make its way to a front office. In some ways, it already has: numerous “hockey bloggers” hirings have been made recently.

But how many and for which teams?

With some research, I’ve culled a working document on all analytics hires for NHL teams and how they may be using analytics. The following descriptions comes from a variety of sources including Craig Custance’s Great Analytics Rankings [Paywall], fellow bloggers from across the internet, media reports, word of mouth and anonymous insiders.

It should be noted that just because a team has made an “analytics hiring”, it doesn’t necessarily mean that they value their input or use the analysis provided properly. In fact, hires can be made simply for PR reasons, and some teams may even give analytics tasks as secondary duties to staff members who do not posses any formal background in the subject. Teams may also have hired private firms providing proprietary data, which in reality may not provide any tangible, verifiable value than what is free and readily available online.

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The NHL Systems Argument: Comparing Bruce Boudreau, Alain Vigneault, & Lindy Ruff

May 5, 2015May 6, 2015Benjamin Wendorf NHL League-Wide Analysis, Theory Tags: Alain Vigneault, Alex Ovechkin, Anaheim Ducks, Bruce Boudreau, Buffalo Sabres, Dallas Stars, Mike Green, New York Rangers, NHL Defensemen, NHL Forwards, NHL Powerplay, NHL Shooting Graphs, NHL Shot Graphs, NHL Shot Location, NHL Systems, NHL Systems Analysis, Nicklas Backstrom, Shot Quality, Vancouver Canucks, Washington Capitals Leave a comment

“Bruce-Alain Ruff. Looks like the ghost of Gene Hackman. You’re welcome for the nightmares.” Composite of images by “DSCF1837” (Vigneault), Michael Miller (Boudreau), and Arnold C. (Ruff), via Wikimedia Commons*

Systems are without question the most elusive, yet most important, part of our understanding of hockey and the application of analytics. What works and what doesn’t? To what degree can a coach or team apply a strategy?

This led me to think about where we might most convincingly see evidence of a system at work. In the past, we here at HG have had a lot of skepticism about a number of elements of a “system.” For example, Garik’s pieces on competition-matching lines (here and here) and the use of the “defensive shell” to protect a lead, neither of which presented themselves as particularly effective ways of looking at or implementing systems. I have shown in the past that attempts to use extreme deployment in terms of zone starts doesn’t move the needle beyond a 60-40 range of possession, the range of shooting shares for forwards and defensemen haven’t seemed to change much over the last 20-25 years, and a plotting of even-strength shots-for with top and bottom possession teams do not suggest a major difference in shot location.

So where to go from there? Eventually, I decided that we need to get to an extreme enough situation, with robust enough data, where a team might have the best opportunity to dictate a system — in other words, we need to look at the powerplay. The most ideal opportunity for comparison, given the workable data for me, comes from the coaching careers since 2008-09 of Bruce Boudreau, Lindy Ruff, and Alain Vigneault. They all provide at least a couple of seasons with different teams, in addition to a robust set of coaching data from 2008 to the present. Let’s see what we can see…

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A Tank Battle in Pictures: Toronto Maple Leafs, Edmonton Oilers, Arizona Coyotes, & Buffalo Sabres in 2014-15

April 13, 2015April 13, 2015Benjamin Wendorf NHL League-Wide Analysis Tags: 2pS%, Arizona Coyotes, Buffalo Sabres, Connor McDavid, Edmonton Oilers, Mario Lemieux, NHL Draft, NHL History, NHL Tank Battle, Pittsburgh Penguins, Possession, Toronto Maple Leafs Leave a comment

Having just added the 2014-15 season to our historical comparison charts, now was a good time to revisit (as I promised in my posts here and here on Pittsburgh’s 1983-84 tank battle) this season’s battle between Arizona, Toronto, Edmonton, and Buffalo. To do this, I tracked the progression of each teams shots-for percentage across two periods (or 2pS%), a possession proxy I developed for historical data that can help us compare teams back to 1952. As you can see above, the perception of the tank battle among these four teams wasn’t quite accurate to their results; Edmonton and Buffalo did not seem to have a marked drop-off in the final quarter-season.

Arizona and Toronto, on the other hand, did noticeably drop, and in Arizona’s case to a level below the hapless Sabres. Ultimately, the fight was more to maintain their improved odds, because Buffalo managed to hold at rock bottom. As I asked when I wrote about the topic with Pittsburgh in mind, it still gives rise to an interesting question: is it more wrong to tank than to maintain a low level all year? In some cases, a team that’s already laid low doesn’t need to tank deliberately…but on the flip side, I suppose that team also assumes risk in losing support and fans by not appearing competitive all season.

How did the Coyotes and Maple Leafs compare to what I’ve christened the “gold standard” for tanks, the 1983-84 Pittsburgh Penguins’ tank for Mario Lemieux? Well, the nice thing is that the plus- and minus-one standard deviations in 2pS% were virtually identical in 1983-84 and 2014-15, so I didn’t have to tinker with them:

While Pittsburgh had probably the starkest, earliest drop-off, both Arizona and Toronto were able to reach the same kinds of lows by the end of the season. To their credit, while the Coyotes and Leafs were, at best, in the lower half of the league in possession, they certainly did their best in the race to the bottom. You could question the wisdom of this kind of thing, since Pittsburgh was guaranteed the top pick if they reached the cellar, while this year’s tanks were struggling for a higher probability.

The Greatest Tank Battle: Penguins vs. Devils, 1983-84

April 6, 2015April 6, 2015Benjamin Wendorf NHL League-Wide Analysis, NHL Topical Analysis Tags: Arizona Coyotes, Buffalo Sabres, Chico Resch, Chris Terreri, Craig Billington, Denis Herron, Doug Shedden, Eddie Johnston, Edmonton Oilers, John MacLean, Ken Daneyko, Kirk McLean, Kirk Muller, Lou Angotti, Mario Lemieux, Martin Brodeur, Michel Dion, Mike Bullard, Mike Dunham, New Jersey Devils, NHL Draft, NHL History, Pat Verbeek, Pittsburgh Penguins, Randy Carlyle, Rick Kehoe, Roberto Romano, Ron Low, Sean Burke, Sidney Crosby, Toronto Maple Leafs, Vincent Tremblay, Wayne Gretzky 1 Comment

Mario Lemieux with Laval of the QMJHL in 1984; photo by http://www.lhjmq.qc.ca/ via Wikimedia Commons

What do you do when a 6’4″ QMJHL forward who scored 184 points in 66 games in his last underage season scores at a 282-point pace in his draft year? You tank — you tank as hard as you can. In the latter half of the 1983-84 season, the Pittsburgh Penguins and New Jersey Devils were in an unspoken, pitched battle for the bottom of the league and everybody knew it. While the Penguins would ultimately win out, sputtering to a 16-58-6 record (“good” for 38 points in the standings) to New Jersey’s 17-56-7 (41 points), the two teams were coming from distinctly different franchise backgrounds.

Using information from our new interactive charts, we can see what set these teams apart, and led them to take different paths in what turned out to be a pretty wild race to the cellar of the NHL.

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Friday Quick Graphs: Are the 2014-15 Buffalo Sabres the Worst Team of All-Time?

March 27, 2015March 28, 2015Benjamin Wendorf Friday Quick Graphs, NHL League-Wide Analysis Tags: 2pS%, Buffalo Sabres, Corsi, Fenwick, NHL History, Possession, Washington Capitals Leave a comment

This is part-opportunity to finally explore this question, and part-opportunity to tout some existing and upcoming data visualizations for HG. Travis Yost has been following the absolutely terrible Sabres season all year, and has raised some questions about whether it’s an all-time worst team. He’s only been able to reach back to the admittedly bad early 2000s Atlanta Thrashers, but the historically bad team by which all others need to be measured is the 1974-75 Washington Capitals squad. Using an historical metric like 2pS%, or a team’s share of all on-ice shots-for in the first 2 periods (expressed as a percentage), we can bring the 2014-15 Sabres together with the 74-75 Caps to see where both teams stand. Note: I used the cumulative version of the measure below, and added lines for one standard deviation below league-average in both seasons.

For as bad as Buffalo has been, they haven’t quite matched the futility of the 74-75 Capitals…nor should they. The Capitals were an expansion team that year, and unlike in other years the NHL did not really reach out to ensure the expansion teams in 1974-75 were given a good base to build from. These were also the peak years of the World Hockey Association, which made professional level talent even more diffuse than normal. The other expansion team in 74-75, the Kansas City Scouts, lasted two years before moving to Colorado to become the Rockies (the team subsequently moved to New Jersey in 1982-83 and changed their name to the Devils).

I included the standard deviations for the leagues in 1974-75 and 2013-14 (I haven’t compiled the data for 2014-15 yet, but this should be close enough), and even by those markers the Capitals compared markedly worse to their league than did the Sabres. But once again, the Capitals had a reasonable excuse, while the Sabres have walked into this situation with eyes wide open.

For those interested, I also put together 2-period shots-for and shot-against rates (and stretched them out to per 60 minutes) to get a rough sense of offense-versus-defense for both teams.

I added a couple extra filters to the charts, league-averages and standard deviations as well as 20-game moving averages in all the measures I used, which you can select by clicking on the grey “Team” bars and clicking on “Filter.”

The Hockey Graphs Podcast (EP 5): Leafoilers

February 13, 2015February 27, 2015Garret Hohl Podcast Tags: Buffalo Sabres, Edmonton Oilers, Evander Kane, Toronto Maple Leafs, Tyler Myers, Vancouver Canucks, Winnipeg Jets, Zach Bogosian Leave a comment

Welcome to the fifth episode of the Hockey Graphs podcast, where Rhys Jessop (of Canucks Army and That’s Offside) and Garret Hohl (of Jets Nation and Hockey-Graphs) continue talking about hockey while learning how to podcast. Join us as we talk about fixing the Oilers and Leafs in one swoop, the Canucks BIG pick-up, and the Sabres-Jets trade. Continue reading →

2014-15 Season Preview: The Atlantic Division

October 6, 2014October 8, 2014Jared NHL League-Wide Analysis Tags: Anton Stralman, Atlantic Division, Boston Bruins, Buffalo Sabres, Carey Price, Detroit Red Wings, Dion Phaneuf, Erik Karlsson, Florida Panthers, Henrik Zetterberg, Jason Spezza, Johan Fransen, Jonathan Drouin, Montreal Canadiens, Ottawa Senators, P.K. Subban, Pavel Datsyuk, Randy Carlyle, Roberto Luongo, Steven Stamkos, Tampa Bay Lightning, Toronto Maple Leafs, Zdeno Chara Leave a comment

Image from Sarah Connors via Wikimedia Commons

Finishing last season with an average of 87.6 points per team, the Atlantic/Flortheast Division was the worst in the NHL. I see that gap widening, not narrowing, in 2014-15.

The battle at the top of the division will, in my eyes, come down to two teams: the Boston Bruins and the Tampa Bay Lightning. The Bruins have placed either first or second in their division (the Atlantic or the former Northeast) in each of the past four seasons. The 2nd place Lightning finished a full 16 points behind the Bruins in 2013-14, but a strong off-season combined with a full season of Steven Stamkos and rookie Jonathan Drouin potentially making an impact has them near even money with the Bruins.

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Using NHL Coaching Changes to Identify Historically Good and Bad Coaches

September 24, 2014March 5, 2015Benjamin Wendorf NHL League-Wide Analysis Tags: 2pS%, Alex Ovechkin, Alex Semin, Billy Reay, Bruce Boudreau, Buffalo Sabres, Darryl Sutter, Evgeni Malkin, Glen Hanlon, Hockey Hall of Fame, Jim Schoenfeld, John Tortorella, Lorne Molleken, Michel Therrien, Mike Green, Mike Keenan, New York Rangers, NHL Coaches, NHL Coaching Changes, NHL History, Nicklas Backstrom, Pat Quinn, Pittsburgh Penguins, Punch Imlach, Roger Neilson, Scotty Bowman, Sidney Crosby, Vic Ferrari, Washington Capitals Leave a comment

Photo by “Resolute”, via Wikimedia Commons; altered by author

Having now looked at the overall effect a coaching change might have on a team, and identified some outstanding examples where a coaching change had a drastic impact on a team, it’s now time to shift over to some juicier matters. For the most part, I don’t think one coaching change is necessarily sufficient to say a coach is good or bad; there is a possibility the previous coach was just that bad. But if the coach returns the same signal a couple of times or more, you are probably getting closer to a true reading on what they might bring to the table.

Across the 140 or so coaching changes these last 60 years where both coaches led the team 20+ games, there were 69 coaches who were a part of that change twice or more (which, to me, is quite a remarkable number). The full list, followed by an explanation of the measures:
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Friday Quick Graph: Season Stories Using % of Team Shots, Gretzky, Lemieux, Sheppard, and Simpson in 1987-88

January 31, 2014January 31, 2014Benjamin Wendorf Friday Quick Graphs, NHL Topical Analysis Tags: %TSh, Buffalo Sabres, Craig Simpson, Edmonton Oilers, Friday Quick Graph, Mario Lemieux, NHL History, Pittsburgh Penguins, Ray Sheppard, Wayne Gretzky Leave a comment

Part of the reason I like doing graph work is because a good graph (with a little bit of contextual knowledge) can tell a really interesting story. In the past, I’ve been a proponent of digging deeper into the historical data, and noted that even though we have less data of the pre-BTN era it doesn’t mean we can’t make some intriguing graphs. %TSh, or % of team shots (in the games a player participated), provides a great opportunity to do just that, not just in a player’s career (as I’ve done before) but also over the course of a season. In the graph above, I took two well-known players, Mario Lemieux and Wayne Gretzky, and matched them to two (to the younger readers) lesser-known players from 1987-88, Ray Sheppard and Craig Simpson; I expressed their %TSh cumulatively, game-by-game. Craig Simpson, at the tender age of 20, was having the best year of his career (56 goals on an incredible 31.6% shooting percentage), but a trade to the Oilers mid-season would alter his offensive role for that season and into the future. Ray Sheppard, like Simpson very young (21), over the course of the season earned Ted Sator’s trust and responded with a 38-goal rookie season. Sheppard would go on to be a very good offensive player for about a decade.

Yet their lines relative to Gretzky and Lemieux also remind us that, for as good as they were, neither were driving the boat to the level of those legends (and probably wouldn’t). So you do get some perspective on what some of the best-of-the-best were doing. Lemieux, who was entering his prime, was literally carrying a middling Penguins team on his shoulders, and his ability to do that would bring him, in 1988-89, to convince people that Dan Quinn and Rob Brown were really good.

For frame of reference, in the BTN Era (2007-08 to present) only Ovechkin has been able to come close to the kind of shot volume Lemieux was demonstrating in 1987-88.