Quality of Competition

The relationship between competition and observed results is real and it’s spectacular

petbugs NHL League-Wide Analysis, Theory Tags: 1 Comment

Raw Comp Impact

Abstract

There has been much work over the years looking at the impact of competition on player performance in the NHL. Prompted by Garret Hohl’s recent look at the topic, I wanted to look at little deeper at the obvious linear relationship between Quality of Competition and observed performance.

The results are a mathematical relationship between competition and observed, which could provide insight into player performance over short time frames. In the long run, the conclusions drawn by Eric Tulsky still hold. The impacts of facing normally distributed Quality of Competition (QoC) will wash out the effects over time. But this should not preclude consideration and even adjustments for QoC when looking at smaller sample sizes.

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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.

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Practical Concerns: What the US Open can tell us about where hockey is headed

Jack.Han Practical Concerns Tags: , , , , Leave a comment

2014 US Open (Tennis) - Tournament - Roberto Bautista Agut (14914449990)

I’m a big believer in looking to other sports for inspiration and ideas, whether it’s in terms of cross-training or in terms of analytics. Many smart hockey people I know are big baseball and soccer fans. I’ve never sat through an entire MLB game, and the part that fascinates me the most about soccer is the penalty shootout, so I’m not really part of that group. I think hockey has a lot to learn from Formula One in terms of how to adopt new technology, but I really wished more folks in hockey would pay closer attention to what is going on in tennis.

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How much does matching competition matter on a team level?

garik16 NHL League-Wide Analysis, Theory Tags: , 2 Comments

This is certainly a terrible matchup – Matt Martin vs Alex Ovechkin – but it’s not an example really of terrible line management.

Quite frequently in talk about lines of a hockey team, you’ll find talk about how a certain team should be matching up certain lines against certain opponents.  For example, a recent comment to me on twitter stated roughly that: “As long as the Isles match-up the Frans Nielsen line with the Canes’ Eric Staal line, they’ll be in great shape” – as the Canes basically only had one quality line (the Staal line) at the time of that comment.  But as I replied on twitter, that isn’t quite right:

Competition, on a possession level, is pretty much a zero sum game in hockey.

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How Do Teams Use Their Top Defensemen

Garret Hohl Exploring Context, NHL League-Wide Analysis Tags: , , , , Leave a comment

The following is a guest article written by Rob Vollman of Hockey Abstract and Hockey Prospectus fame. Enjoy!

Other than the goalie, a team’s top defensemen are arguably the most important players on the teams. Great ones like Nicklas Lidstrom, Scott Niedermayer and Chris Pronger can completely alter the outcome of an entire season almost single-handedly. Who were the top pairing defensemen this year, how will they used, and how effective were their teams when they were on the ice?
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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).

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