Practical Concerns: On Randomness, Risk-Taking And Coaching

May 24, 2016May 24, 2016Jack.Han Practical Concerns, Uncategorized Tags: #RITHAC, coaching, Detroit Red Wings, media, Montreal Canadiens, NHL, Pittsburgh Penguins, randomess, risk, uncertainty Leave a comment

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Something I set time aside for during the off-season is reading non-hockey books in an attempt to gain a better perspective on hockey. The work of Michael Lewis (Liar’s Poker, The Big Short, Boomrang) and Nassim Taleb (The Black Swan, Fooled By Randomness) were of particular inspiration.

Below are some assorted thoughts based on recent readings and events. Tweet me (@ML_Han) if you’d like to disagree and tell me why. Eventually I hope to spend some time talking about this or a tangential at the second edition of RITHAC this September.

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Hockey Graphs Podcast Episode 27 – Why goalies should be shrunk for scoring.

November 13, 2015November 13, 2015Garret Hohl Podcast Tags: Detroit Red Wings, Goalies 2 Comments

We’re back at it again!

Rhys and Garret update you on what’s going on at Hockey-Graphs.com while also talking about Justin Abdelkader’s new contract and the NHL’s scoring problem.

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Practical Concerns: How I do video

October 5, 2015October 5, 2015Jack.Han Practical Concerns Tags: Anaheim Ducks, coaching, Detroit Red Wings, Powerplay, Tampa Bay Lightning, video, Washington Capitals 1 Comment

Video is the best teaching tool there is.

Preparing and organizing game footage is one of my main responsibilities working for the McGill Martlet hockey team, and has become something that I enjoy quite a bit over the course of the past two seasons. Having played for coaches who use video analysis to various degrees in both hockey and tennis growing up, I think seeing one’s self play sports on video is the best way to correct deficiencies and identify areas for growth.

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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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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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Gordie Howe vs. Bobby Orr vs. Wayne Gretzky vs. Sidney Crosby: Not Your Typical WOWY

September 29, 2014March 5, 2015Benjamin Wendorf NHL League-Wide Analysis Tags: 2pS%, Bobby Orr, Boston Bruins, Chicago Blackhawks, Corsi, Detroit Red Wings, Edmonton Oilers, Gordie Howe, Los Angeles Kings, New York Rangers, NHL History, Possession, Shooting Percentage, Shooting Talent, Sidney Crosby, Wayne Gretzky, WOWY 6 Comments

Photo by “Djcz”, via Wikimedia Commons

With or Without You analysis, often referred to as WOWY, frequently involves either comparing the performance of a team or particular players when a single player is and isn’t playing. While the approach is a risky one (sample size is a pretty big issue), it can actually be quite telling when you collect enough data.

The value of modern WOWY is that you can definitely get data from precisely the seconds a player played apart from the seconds they weren’t on the ice. Historical WOWY, on the other hand, cannot do much better than taking data from games a player played versus games they didn’t. To this end, then, I wanted to see if historical WOWY can tell us much of anything, and the best way to do that is to focus on players that are undisputed in their value. In this case, I went for WOWYs of the big guns, four of the best players across the eras of NHL history: Gordie Howe, Bobby Orr, Wayne Gretzky, Sidney Crosby.
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NHL Career Charting: The Pre-BTN Era and What We Can Still Do With Historical Data

January 9, 2014January 9, 2014Benjamin Wendorf Career Chart, NHL League-Wide Analysis Tags: %TSh, Adam Graves, Brendan Shanahan, Brett Hull, Buffalo Sabres, Calgary Flames, Career Chart, Colorado Avalanche, Dallas Stars, Detroit Red Wings, Edmonton Oilers, New Jersey Devils, New York Islanders, New York Rangers, NHL History, Phoenix Coyotes, Pierre Turgeon, San Jose Sharks, St. Louis Blues 4 Comments

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Photo by “IrisKawling”, via Wikimedia Commons

Hockey statistics have always been fairly historically limited; most of the so-called “fancy stats” have only been tracked (and easily track-able league-wide) back through the 2007-08 season. The prior years have a veil of fog over them, though there is fairly decent shot data going all the way back to the 1952-53 season (thanks to the Hockey Summary Project; I’ve been able to bring the data together), good game-by-game individual player data going back to 1987-88 (thanks to Hockey Reference via Dan Diamond & Associates), and gradually-improving TOI data going back to 1997-98 (thanks to NHL.com and Hockey Reference). Unfortunately, this has lead to a relative dearth of research into the years of the “Pre-BTN” Era, so-called because 2007-08 was the first year we received in-depth, league-wide data from Gabe Desjardins’ Behind the Net stats site and Vic Ferrari’s timeonice.com.

Having a background in history, and also having grown up as a fan of the league in this grey statistical era, I have spent the last couple years trying to compile and present statistics from the Pre-BTN Era in ways that can help provide a window into those years (and possibly inform our understanding of the present-day game). I’m somewhat indebted to Iain Fyffe, a guy who’s been doing similar yeoman’s work much longer than myself at Hockey Prospectus, though more recently he’s been sharing his work at his own site, Hockey Historysis.

The fact of the matter is that there is actually an enormous amount of information out there, and more importantly with graph work we can really do some interesting things. First case in-point is what I call “career charting;” essentially, charting a player’s shots in a game relative to their team’s shots in those same games. Using the metric %TSh, or percentage of team shots, this provides an interesting glimpse into player contributions, workload, and development in the Pre-BTN Era. Adding some artistic (and informational flourish), I present to you Pierre Turgeon:

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