Columbus Blue Jackets

How good is Columbus? A Bayesian approach

muneebalam7 Uncategorized Tags: , , 5 Comments

Columbus has been surprisingly good this year. As of this writing, the Blue Jackets are first in the league in points and goal differential with games in hand. Remember: Columbus, in terms of preseason predictions, was pegged as more like a 5-8 finisher in the Metropolitan division (e.g. see here, here, here, here, and here).

That said, it’s still early. If it might take 70 games for skill to overtake randomness in terms of contribution to the standings, and if teams like the 2013-14 Avalanche and 2013 Maple Leafs (to name two prominent examples) can fool us for so many games, it doesn’t seem so unbelievable that a team could do it over just 32. (And the Blue Jackets aren’t the only example this year, either–Minnesota is under 48% possession and has a 103+ PDO right now.)

Continue reading →

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

Benjamin Wendorf History, NHL Topical Analysis Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Photo by user

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:

At which point Harrington followed:

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

Continue reading →

NHL Analytic Teams’ State of the Union

Josh W NHL League-Wide Analysis Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Pure-mathematics-formulæ-blackboard

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.

Continue reading →

2014-2015 Season Preview: The Metro Division

garik16 NHL League-Wide Analysis Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 5 Comments

Image from Michael Miller via Wikimedia Commons

Last year, in preseason, the Metro Division, was considered by far the strongest division in the East and the likely bet to take both Wild Cards.  The whole division, minus the Pens, promptly started the season by getting hammered, only recovering later in the season to grab one of the two wild cards.

This year again, the top 5 of the division looks strong enough to take two wild cards.  The bottom 3, particularly the bottom 2, are very weak, but the top 5 is strong and near evenly matched such that they could wind up in any order.  But, given the requirement to project the division, these are how I believe the division should finish up, from worst to first:

Continue reading →

The Hartnell for Umberger + 4th Rounder Swap, and the Places a Bad Contract Puts You

Benjamin Wendorf NHL Topical Analysis Tags: , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

File:Scott Hartnell 2010-10-30a.jpg

Photo by “Rhys A.” via Wikimedia Commons

I had a great question from a good friend of mine, a Flyers fan, after the fervor died down from yesterday’s Scott Hartnell for R.J. Umberger and 4th round pick swap. He asked me:

“From what I’m getting from the advanced stats guys, it appears that the Blue Jackets robbed the Flyers blind yesterday by getting Hartnell for Umberger (a guy they were going to compliance buyout anyhow).

Is Umberger really this bad?”

The short answer is that Umberger is not very good; his With-or-Without-Yous (or WOWYs; where you compare Corsi when a player is with and without a teammate on the ice) suggest that nobody plays better with him than others, outside of maybe Ryan Johansen. Now, some of that is due to zone starts, as Umberger has been saddled with a lot of time in his own zone. Even so, three years of possession in your end 55%+ of the time is a little too consistent in its futility. I’d expect at least one year there where that figure lowered to 51 or 52% if he was showing some defensive abilities. He’s still an average player in the faceoff dot, but his offensive contributions are shrinking, and at 32 it’s hard to see them recovering much. Blue Jackets beat reporter Aaron Portzline noted the Jackets were contemplating buying him out of his $4.6m/year cap hit contract, which was moving into modified no-trade clause (NTC; player can specify a list of teams he’d be willing to be traded to) years.

The longer answer is that yes, Umberger is not good, but this trade is much more complicated than a player-for-player, or player-for-player-and-a-pick swap. A trade presumably always looks good enough from both sides’ perspectives in order to happen, so what were the incentives for Ron Hextall? Jarmo Kekalainen?

Continue reading →

A Tale of Two Riverboat Gamblers: Analytically Comparing Jack Johnson and Dustin Byfuglien

Garret Hohl NHL Topical Analysis Tags: , , , , , , , 1 Comment

Source: Harry How/Getty Images North America

There are probably enough fan bias tendencies in sports to fuel psychology graduate theses for years to come. Sometimes these biases even creep into the minds of hockey’s brain-trusts, including GMs, coaches, and national team selection committees.

One such bias is the propensity against players who are strong offensively but can be a risk defensively. Whether these offensive players are a net-positive to the team depends on whether their offensive output outweighs their defensive lapses. Period. You win the game by out-scoring, not by just increasing your own scoring or limiting your opponents. However, if you were to survey most fanbases, you would probably find very few defensive risk-type defenders that are considered a net-positive.

When it comes to the traditional plus/minus statistic, there are great intentions of evaluating a player’s net contribution, but the statistic ultimately fails at achieving this. There are a few issues with plus/minus, one of them being sample size; another fault to the statistic is its low repeatability, which is its ultimate failure. This unreliability in plus/minus relative to most other statistics can be seen here:

Using analytics, we can demonstrate how numbers help differentiate two gambling defensemen who have been the butt-end of scrutiny from their fanbase.

Continue reading →