So, I have just rolled out Puckalytics 2.0. I am starting small but will grow over time.
My goal with my new Puckalytics site is not to recreate what you can find on other sites like Natural Stat Trick or Evolving Hockey or what I had on my stats sites before I joined the Calgary Flames though there will certainly be some of that. My goal is to bring new data and new ideas to the table. Public Analytics hasn’t really changed much over the past 6+ years. There have been tweaks to statistical models, improved visualizations, but conceptually very little has changed. I want to change that.
To start on this mission, the first feature of the new Puckalytics.com is to present NHL Edge data in table form to make it easier to consume. The NHL Edge data site as it currently exists allows you to view a single player’s data or compare one player to another with their comparison tool however if you want to find out the top 10 fastest skaters you either have to manually load and record every players NHL Edge stats page and then figure out the top 10 players on your own. In other words, it is next to impossible. But realistically, this is the kind of thing we really want to do right? Now you can.
I have selected what I think is the most interesting NHL Edge data and created 3 reports from it. The reports are Skating, Shooting and Zone Time. So for instance you can see that the top skaters in terms of average speed are Jack Hughes, Ryan McLeod, Connor Brown, Brock Nelson and Jansen Harkins. The top 5 players in terms of top speed are Owen Tippett, Brayden Point, Nathan MacKinnon, Valeri Nichushkin and Miles Wood. It would be next to impossible to get this information from the NHL Edge site. Now it is easy.
My hope is you all find this interesting and useful and it will show the NHL that there is more interest in this data if it is presented in different ways. I also hope that the NHL will continue to release more and more player and puck tracking derived data.
As for Puckalytics, I hope to have more stuff released in the upcoming weeks. If there is anything specific you are interested in seeing or just want to provide some feedback be sure to let me know in the comments.
One requested feature: Adding Speed Bursts (18-20, 20-22, 22+) Counts and percentiles adjusted for icetime (per 60 version of these metrics).
This is the feature I have seen fans using most incorrectly as the NHL Edge side does a terrible job of contextualizing this information. I have seen fans saying player X was in 85th percentile for bursts over 22mph last season but only 70th this season so he must’ve lost a step or is playing injured not accounting for him playing 10 games less than other players due to injury and thus making percentiles that they feature so prominently practically useless
I agree. Straight speed burst counts are of limited use without proper ice time adjustments. Percentiles have their own issues too even if the underlying data is good (a drop from 90 to 80 is a bigger drop than 60 to 50 for example assuming a normal-ish distribution)
The NHL doesn’t provide ice time with their Edge data and I haven’t built out my database to pull that in from other sources yet so I can’t currently make the adjustment you suggest. I’ll look into it once I build out my database.