Context

Paul Bissonnette is Wrong and Right

Benjamin Wendorf Exploring Context, NHL League-Wide Analysis Tags: , , , , , , , , 5 Comments
Photo by Michael Wifall, via Wikimedia Commons; altered by author

Photo by Michael Wifall, via Wikimedia Commons; altered by author

From the outset, I want to say the Player’s Tribune, conceptually, is a wonderful thing. To have players guest post or answer questions without the emotions of a post-game presser or rigid formality of a journalist interview provides great insight to their personalities. And just like anybody we’d encounter in daily life, they say things we agree with, things we don’t agree with, or things we might’ve worded differently. Take, for instance, today’s “Mailbag” with Paul Bissonnette. A majority of the interview, which were questions from readers, were your general enforcer interview questions: best fight, worst fight, scary fight, do you like to fight, etc.

But then there was this final question, which I can only assume came from Mark Spector:

Bissonnette Players Tribune II

Bissonnette’s response, his longest of the interview, was chock full of wrong, with plenty of right on the side.

Continue reading →

What’s the deal with Andrew MacDonald: Why do the statistics suggest he’s terrible?

garik16 Exploring Context, NHL Topical Analysis Tags: , , , , , , Leave a comment

Did you really think I was going to miss the opportunity to post the AMac with chains gif again? You thought wrong.

Islander Defenseman Andrew MacDonald is one of the hot names being bounced around during the trade deadline.  On one hand, this makes sense: He’s making basically nothing on his current contract, he’s one of the time on ice leaders in the NHL this year and has handled top level competition for a few years now.

On the other hand, his conventional fancystats show a well…..massive decline:

AMacThreeYear

Yikes.  That 2013-2014 number is downright terrible, dropping MacDonald into the bottom tier of defensemen.  And no zone starts and certainly not competition (see this article for an analysis of AMac vs various levels of competition) does not account for this.  If you believed the fancystats, AMac isn’t just not a top tier DMan, but not even a 2nd or 3rd pairing guy who could help any team at all.  Yet teams seem to believe he’s worth a high pick?  So what’s going on?  Is the conventional thought completely wrong here?

Continue reading →

More on “Corsi & Context”, with some added predictive modelling

Garret Hohl NHL League-Wide Analysis Tags: , , , , , 2 Comments

Corsi

INTRODUCTION

I have always been of the opinion that Corsi is part of the larger puzzle in trying to gain greater understanding of the game and how a player can affect their team’s chance to win.  Like all statistics though, it needs appropriate sample size and context, and will never tell you everything. Teammates, opponents, luck, system, strategy and what moments a coach deploys a player will always effect results… although, there can also be times where context is overly stressed. While Corsi does tend to need less context than many other hockey statistics, there are some things that need to be kept in mind in how two players with the same Corsi% are not always created equally.

Tyler Dellow wrote a piece on context that is definitely worth a read. In the article Dellow used two tables showing how Corsi changes dependent on ice time for the 2011-12 season.

We will revisit this article using a larger sample and look at both forwards and defensemen.
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 →

Overemphasizing Context – A mistake just as poor as explaining context in the first place.

garik16 Exploring Context, NHL League-Wide Analysis, Theory Tags: , , , , , 4 Comments
AMac Context

The only context that can explain Andre MacDonald’s performance is if he’s actually wearing these chains under his uniform.

Eric Tulsky frequently points out on twitter that common critiques of analytics people (whether it be hockey or any other sports analytics) tend to act as if those involved with analytics are kind of stupid and have ignored the obvious.  For example, people tend to respond to arguments involving corsi and possession by bringing up the obvious subject of context – “Sure he has a bad corsi, but he gets tough minutes!”  And the general response of course is, yes we have, and we wouldn’t be making these assertions had we not done so.   Hockey Analytics has come up with a multitude of statistics to measure context – Behind The Net alone has 3 metrics for quality of competition and 3 metrics for quality of teammates, plus a measure of zone starts – HA has multiple different measures for the same thing and so does now Extra Skater (with Time on Ice QualComp and QualTeam).

Continue reading →