Using Data to Understand Hockey
David Johnson So, there is some strange stuff happening in the NHL in recent years and I am not quite sure what to make of it. Let me explain. This first chart shows the percentage of shot attempts that were blocked, missed the net or were on net. This is 5v5 regular season data only, as will … Read more
Back in January I posted on Bluesky that I thought that Travis Green deserved consideration for coach of the year. I was hoping to write a more in depth blog post about this I think Travis Green deserves consideration for coach of the year but won’t get to it this week. Ottawa has a very … Read more
The off-season rumours are now picking up steam and one going around the past couple days is that the Buffalo Sabres might buy out the remaining three years of Jeff Skinners contract. This I think would be a mistake and be an act of desperation on the part of Sabres management that would hinder their … Read more
Recently, Kent Wilson wrote about how the Calgary Flames should rebuild their team into a Stanley Cup contender. He dismissed the Dallas model of rebuilding and instead promoted the Edmonton model. I’ve heard a lot about the “Dallas model” since the Stars were mentioned during a year-end press conference. Of course, nobody should pretend that … Read more
I saw a Twitter post discussing how in Game 3 of the Panthers-Rangers series the Panthers dominated in terms of shot attempts and high danger shot attempts however they didn’t dominate near as much in terms of high danger shots on goal. In short, a lot of the high danger shot attempts the Panthers took … Read more
In November I wrote a couple of articles on whether teams with taller and heavier forwards or defensemen see more success in the playoffs. The conclusion was, over the past 5 or so years teams with bigger defensemen (taller and/or heavier) have gone deeper in the playoffs. Teams that have an average defenseman height 0.5″ … Read more
With today’s rumours that the Arizona Coyotes may soon be on the the move to Utah, the most interesting thing to me is how quickly they could become a contending team. The Coyotes have added a lot of good young talent over the past several drafts however they have been unable to spend on good … Read more
Last week I wrote about SportLogiq and its Expected Goals model and how it compared to public expected goal models. I just wanted to expand on that a little by comparing four public expected goal models and how they performed over the past 5 seasons. The most rudimentary method to evaluate an expected goals model … Read more
This post on Twitter the other day really sent me down a rabbit hole for a good portion of the past two days. I think evaluating and comparing models is both interesting and valuable. Where do models differ? Where are they the same? Do the differences expose potential biases in one or both models? However … Read more
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 … Read more