Philadelphia Flyers

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 →

Friday Quick Graph: How the Possession Battle Stabilizes

Benjamin Wendorf Friday Quick Graphs, NHL Topical Analysis, Theory Tags: , , , , , , Leave a comment

Surely you’ve been exhausted with graphs from this December 30th, 1981 Oilers-Flyers game, but allow me one more. I wanted to demonstrate both how many possessions it took for the possession battle to grant us a clear picture, and also further speak to the value of 2pS%. The chart above demonstrate what happens when I establish a rolling possession-for % (as indicated by the y-axis, possession-for % is done from the perspective of Edmonton) using the last 10 possessions, then the last 20 possessions, and so on to 60 possessions. I stop there because we then arrive at a point where we are primarily measuring (in 60-120 on the x-axis) the 1st and 2nd period in-tandem. What we see is that, by that point, our possession battle has calmed down much closer to something that resembles the final battle (a 52% to 48% victory for Philadelphia). The y-axis shows how far above or below .500 (or 50% possession) the battle went; once again, this was measured from Edmonton’s perspective, so below the line is Philadelphia winning the battle, above is Edmonton (hence the color-coding). We also see, then, that the battle doesn’t calm down to a spread below the 60-40 possession benchmark until 40 possessions…which means it doesn’t really reach the likelihood of truly reflecting demonstrated possession talent until that point. For this reason, I think we can derive confidence in the signal that two-periods provide us with regards to possession battles. Additionally, it speaks to the potential problem with focusing on single periods of data.

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

Benjamin Wendorf NHL Topical Analysis, Theory Tags: , , , , , , , , , 8 Comments

Image

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.

Continue reading →

Friday Quick Graph: Possessing the Puck in 1969, 1981, and 2013

Benjamin Wendorf Friday Quick Graphs, NHL Topical Analysis, Theory Tags: , , , , , , , , , 1 Comment
Hextall OnIce.jpg

Photo by Jim Tyron, via Wikimedia Commons

Just finished tracking possession times in a November 15th, 1969 game between the Flyers and the Leafs. This game, when compared to the games from this post, fits virtually in-between them, which is interesting because, unlike with the other two games, the Flyers and Leafs were two teams on the lower end of the spectrum in the league (8th and 9th in 2pS% in a 12-team NHL). Maybe that also contributes to their average possession time of 6.08 sec (n=349) compared to the 1981 game’s 6.15 (n=364) and 2013 game’s 6.17 (n=360). Another observation among these games: the standard deviation for the 1969 and 1981 games is right around 4 seconds, where it’s right at 5 seconds for the 2013 game. I’ll save any deeper ruminations until I have a larger sample, but it’s food for thought.

Not too long ago, I decided I wanted to try out tracking time of possession in historical games, with the hope of eventually having enough data to look into things. I realized it’s going to be a little difficult to get large enough samples of singular teams, but I also realized that we could potentially compare the game as a whole in different eras. I’ve always been of the mind that the game has evolved somewhat, but at its core there are a number of best practices that have kept it pretty much the same game from around the time that the red line was introduced in 1943. I wanted to test that as far back as I could go, though, so with this possession tracking I actually tracked each individual possession rather than just a total time of possession. For this chart, I displayed all those individual possessions as a distribution, longest possessions to the shortest. These three games, the Philadelphia Flyers vs. Toronto Maple Leafs in 1969 (Toronto won 4-2), Edmonton Oilers vs. Philadelphia Flyers in 1981 (Edmonton won 7-5), and Los Angeles Kings vs. St. Louis Blues (St. Louis won 4-2), had some surprising results when compared. As you can see above, the distribution is actually quite close, with the 1981 game seeming to have shorter possessions but then moving above the others in the middle of the line. The 1969 game actually seems like a trendline of the 2013 and 1981 games. The average possession time? 1969: 6.08 seconds, 1981: 6.15 seconds, and 2013: 6.17 seconds. Obviously, I need (and want) more data, but it is a really intriguing start.

The “possession battle” results?

All Situations Possession

  • PHI (47.1%) vs. TOR (52.9%), 1969
  • EDM (53.4%) vs. PHI (46.6%), 1981
  • LAK (51.7%) vs. STL (48.3%), 2013

Possession, Score Close

  • PHI (41.3%) vs. TOR (58.7%)
  • EDM (48.7%) vs. PHI (51.3%)
  • LAK (51.2%) vs. STL (48.8%)

NHL Team History, Possession, and Winning the Stanley Cup

Benjamin Wendorf NHL League-Wide Analysis, Theory Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , 4 Comments

Photo by “JulieAndSteve”, via Wikimedia Commons

Gabe Desjardins dropped a comment over at my Tumblr awhile ago, asking me if I could put together a graph expanding on a metric I came up with, 2-Period Shot Percentage (or 2pS%). 2pS% is an historical possession metric that takes shots-for and shots-against in just the first two periods of a game and expresses it as a percentage for the team being analyzed. The idea was that I was trying to get a rough possession measure from the period that would avoid score effects, or the tendency for teams with a lead to sit on the lead and thus give up shots late in the game. Having recently completed a database of period-by-period shot data going back to 1952-53, I have been able to test this metric a bit and the results were good for 2pS% as a possession measure. Returning to Gabe’s request, he wanted to know if I could chart the 2pS% data from year-to-year, with one line following the league leader in the metric and the other line following the Stanley Cup winner. I’d been curious about this myself; certainly there are a number of different ways to express the value of the metric, but this particular one could be interesting because it toes the line between what the Old and New Guard feel is important in this kind of analysis.

Well, I was right that it would be interesting:
Continue reading →