Spread of NHL Team Shooting Performances, Year-to-Year 1952-53 through 2013-14

March 24, 2015March 24, 2015Benjamin Wendorf Exploring Context, Friday Quick Graphs, NHL League-Wide Analysis, Theory Tags: NHL History, Shooting Percentage, Shooting Talent, Shot Quality Leave a comment

Sort of a mid-week quick graph…I’ve been compiling data for a different project and curiosity got the best of me to see what the spread in team shooting percentages was in NHL history. We all know that shooting percentage in the NHL went up substantially during the 1980s, but what you’re seeing above is one of the reasons why we theorize that shot quality and team shooting talent might have figured more greatly in outcomes in the 1980s than it does today. With some exceptions, the standard deviation seems to have settled from about 1996-97 to the present at just under 1%, which suggests our expectations from one year to the next should only allow a team that much of a bump above or below league-average. It’s worth noting that sample will affect this measure, hence why our line is so spiky during the Original Six era, and why 1994-95 and 2012-13 might have not been as characteristic of a trend. Incidentally, this is shooting percentage for all situations.

Note: As mentioned by a reader, increased scoring is going to work together with this standard deviation to accentuate the differences between teams. League-wide, the shooting percentage and standard deviation move well enough together to cause this effect, usually portrayed by coefficient of variance, to regress heavily from 1965 to the present. The exceptions, though muted, would be the early 1980s and the more recent years of Dead Puck, so the standard deviation fairly accurately represents our variance above. CoV data:
Continue reading →

Friday Quick Graph: Player Career Charting by Percentage of Team Shots, 1967-68 to 2012-13

March 6, 2015March 20, 2015Benjamin Wendorf Career Chart, Friday Quick Graphs, NHL League-Wide Analysis Tags: %TSh, Aging, Aging Curve, Bobby Orr, Mario Lemieux, NHL, NHL Defensemen, NHL Forwards, NHL History, Percentage of Team Shots, Player Development, Sidney Crosby, Wayne Gretzky Leave a comment

Embedding interactive graphs into blog posts, especially blogs with a narrow runner like ours, is frequently an awkward process. Just about the time things look good, you tinker with it and it looks bad. Nevertheless, I had a bunch of old data I put together, once upon a time, and I wanted to get it out there in a form that you could tinker with. Basically, in the past I have used the percentage of team shots in the games a player participated (%TSh; explanation here) as a way to capture a player’s contribution to the shot load; I also think it strongly implies a player’s involvement and contribution to team offense overall.

In the case of today’s graph, I took %TSh and looked at aging curves with a multitude of players from 1967-68 through 2012-13 (like I said, the data is a little old). I prepared this with a selected group of players available for the filter, the majority of whom are stronger, more familiar players of the years covered. I also included some players that struggled by the metric, for the sake of comparison. To filter, click on the “Name” bar, click on “Filter,” and let your imaginations run wild. Feel free to download if you wish.

Note: I believe I set the cut-off at 20 GP before I would record the point of data. It’s old. I’m old. We’re all getting older.

NHL Forwards vs. Defensemen Height & Weight, 1917-18 to 2014-15

March 5, 2015March 9, 2015Benjamin Wendorf NHL League-Wide Analysis Tags: NHL, NHL Defensemen, NHL Forwards, NHL History, Player Development Leave a comment

Photo by Eric Kilby, via Wikimedia Commons

Building on my post from last week on overall skater height going back to 1917-18, I wanted to dig a little further into the the complexity of the data to see if there were any interesting takeaways. This included breaking the data into forward and defense data, to see if there was every any substantial increase in defenseman size or any other allusions to an attitude change in terms of size trends and preferences. While there are some slight differences, most interesting to me was, for as many changes as the NHL has undergone, there seems to be a uniform attitude about size when looking at forwards and defensemen.
Continue reading →

NHL Player Size From 1917-18 to 2014-15: A Brief Look

February 19, 2015March 5, 2015Benjamin Wendorf Friday Quick Graphs, NHL League-Wide Analysis Tags: Aging, Aging Curve, NHL History 5 Comments

Image by Erich Schutt, via Wikimedia Commons

As any person interested in hockey stats should do, I’ve been gradually building my own personal database of player information that I can use when Y3K robs my future post-human self of cloud data for 3 seconds. To that end, player size wasn’t a huge priority but I knew eventually I’d want to have it, if only to think about how normal-sized I’d be in the 1920s NHL. In the process of bringing in all that data, I decided to do a little demographic work on player height and weight. We all know the players are bigger now than they were before, but by how much? And is there greater variance in size now or in the past?
Continue reading →

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.
Continue reading →

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:
Continue reading →

Where NHL Coaching Changes Did, and Didn’t, Help Their Teams

September 22, 2014March 5, 2015Benjamin Wendorf NHL League-Wide Analysis Tags: Al MacNeil, Alain Vigneault, Claude Julien, Claude Ruel, Dan Bylsma, Ed Olczyk, Jacques Lemaire, Jacques Martin, Jim Schoenfeld, John MacLean, Michel Therrien, Montreal Canadiens, NHL Coaches, NHL Coaching Changes, NHL History, Pittsburgh Penguins, Randy Cunneyworth, Terry Murray 1 Comment

If you or anyone you know have seen this man behind your player, contact the front office immediately. (Photo by "Dan4th Nicholas", via Wikimedia Commons; altered by author)

Photo by “Dan4th Nicholas”, via Wikimedia Commons; altered by author

Michel Therrien has an interesting distinction in the research I’ve been doing about NHL coaching changes: he’s given me 4 instances where he and his replacement have coached 20+ games within the same season. He’s also replaced or been replaced in three of those instances by legit coaching talent – he replaced Alain Vigneault for the Montreal Canadiens in 2000-01, was replaced two years later by Claude Julien, and lastly was fired in favor of Dan Bylsma for Pittsburgh in 2008-09. What’s incredible about these three cases is that, in every single one of them, there was a drastic change in outcomes for the teams involved. Using 2pS%, or possession measured by two-period shots-for divided by two-period shots-for and against together, the numbers tell a story:
Continue reading →

What to Expect When You’re Expecting: Does Switching NHL Head Coaches Make a Difference?

September 16, 2014March 5, 2015Benjamin Wendorf NHL League-Wide Analysis, Theory Tags: 2pS%, Bruce Boudreau, Claude Noel, Dale Hunter, NHL Coaches, NHL History, NHL New Coach, Paul Maurice, PDO, Washington Capitals, Winnipeg Jets 2 Comments

Photo by Matthew Miller, via Wikimedia Commons; altered by author

How good do you feel because your team has a new coach? I mean, really…it’s almost like a new-car smell. So many possibilities – This time, things will be different. With the exception of coaching changes due to disastrous, unexpected things, the typical hockey fan was ready for that moment, and were happy to see the coach go. But is that eagerness for change based on real results?

Continue reading →

NHL Defensemen and Shooting Contributions back to 1967-68

February 18, 2014May 14, 2015Benjamin Wendorf NHL League-Wide Analysis, Theory Tags: %TSh, 2-Period Shot Percentage, 2pS%, Al Iafrate, Boston Bruins, Colorado Avalanche, Defensemen Shooting, Edmonton Oilers, Kevin Hatcher, NHL History, Paul Coffey, Percentage of Team Shots, Possession, Ray Bourque, Shooting Percentage, Washington Capitals Leave a comment

Photo by Dave Stanley via Wikimedia Commons

I have kicked around this data in the past, most prominently in my theoretical post on offensive systems, but I really wanted to get further into the intricacies of defensemen and their historical place in team shooting (among other offensive contributions). By looking at how much a defenseman contributes to a team’s shot generation (expressed as a percentage of team shots in the games a player played, or %TSh), we can draw some interesting comparisons across NHL eras, but I haven’t yet explored how the role of the defenseman has (or hasn’t) evolved from the Expansion Era to the present, nor have I taken a look at some of the more exceptional defense shooting teams. Let me correct that now.

Continue reading →

Wayne Gretzky vs. Bobby Clarke, December 1981: A Micro-Analysis

February 17, 2014September 30, 2014Benjamin Wendorf NHL Topical Analysis, Theory Tags: 2-Period Shot Percentage, 2pS%, Bobby Clarke, Dave Semenko, Edmonton Oilers, Glen Sather, NHL History, Philadelphia Flyers, Possession, Wayne Gretzky 8 Comments

Left image by “Centpacrr“, Right image by “Hakandahlstrom” via Wikimedia Commons, both altered by author

On December 30th, 1981, Wayne Gretzky’s Edmonton Oilers and Bobby Clarke’s Philadelphia Flyers met in a Wednesday night tilt rich with symbolism. Clarke, 32, was a couple of years away from retirement; two of his three remaining teammates from the Cup years, Reggie Leach and Bill Barber (defenseman Jimmy Watson was the third), were themselves out of the league in two years (Leach due to talent drop-off, Barber due to injury). Ironically, there was little indication in 1981 that this was going to happen – all were around 30, all were near point-per-game scorers playing all minutes. Whatever the case, they were the last of the Broad Street Bullies, and were now mentoring a new generation of “Bullies” like Ken Linseman, Tim Kerr, and Brian Propp, who seemed at times more annoying than dangerous. Though in transition, Philadelphia was still a great possession team (4th in the league in 2pS%, an historical possession metric), but fought the percentages all year to squeak into the playoffs. Edmonton, on the other hand, was romping through the league at record pace, and by December 30th held a comfortable lead over 2nd place Minnesota in the old Campbell Conference. Gretzky, of course, was at the heart of this surge, and by game 39 he had 45 goals.

The 1980s Oilers were the next step in NHL offense, really a Canadian version of the 1970s Soviet style of hockey. They didn’t need to bully their way to victories – they let the other team take the penalties, and skated all over them. I should say, that’s what Edmonton would eventually do; on this night they lined Gretzky up with Dave Lumley and Dave Semenko, as they had done most of the year. More on that later.

As I said before, though, the Flyers were a great possession team, as they always had been when Clarke and Barber were in their prime (they averaged, averaged, 55% 2pS% in the years 1973-74 through 1981-82, placing them consistently among the top 5 in the NHL). They were fast and calculating with their puck movement; the grit was just extra work – and who knows, maybe it contributed to Clarke, Barber, and Leach’s early retirement. The Bully when met with the Oilers, though, learned that the box was the bigger enemy.