Fancy Stats

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.

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Why NHL Stats and Scouting Must Work Together

Benjamin Wendorf Theory Tags: , , , , , , , Leave a comment

File:2006nhldraft-stage.jpg

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.
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A Nice Tool to Have: BehindtheNet.ca Player Name Converter, plus Age and Position, 07-08 through 13-14

Benjamin Wendorf Resources Tags: , , , , , , , Leave a comment

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!