As an example of this, the variables contained in the player cards are weighed year-to-year based on how three year samples have predicted the fourth year in the past (so for example EV Offence might end up as 0.15*Y1+0.25*Y2+0.6*Y3 to predict Y4). All of them have an intuitive weighting ranging from relatively flat for things like shooting to very recent-weighted.
For goalies, there is simply no way to weigh things like WAR or GSAx or save percentage or GSAA or any of it in a meaningful way. If you conduct the same tests on historical data, the results come out essentially random and things happen like Y2 being weighed more heavily than Y3 for example.
I think we can be somewhat confident that some goalies are better than others or more specifically that some goalies are more technically skilled than others, but in terms of predicting actual performance it's a dartboard.
Encouraging bounce-back, all the microstats were there last season but the results were awful so if Boudreau has opened things up a bit it will go a long way towards getting him up to the elite level we know he has in him.
On-ice and individual shooting percentage. If every hockey fan understood those stats and could apply them then 70% of stupid discourse would vanish overnight.
The samples are too small to say for sure but so far this season at least
OEL: Looks good, much better than I expected. I downplayed the "psychological factors" that people were talking about in the offseason just because of how vague it was but he seems to have pulled things together.
Jones: Looks fine, specifically defensively. I think it's safe to say he's back to his old self, so we can have those conversations instead of the "is he actually bad" ones from last year.
Ristolainen: I think Philly has allowed him to do more offensively but his defence has been ugly. At least now he looks more like he was "supposed" to
I don't know about phenomenal, they've certainly been better. He's been much better than he was last season, as I think it was fair to expect, but his offence driving has been just as meagre as it was in Columbus. We'll see how things look by the end of the season.
Nico Hischier and Jesper Bratt. What is their long-term potential? I have both in fantasy and am leaning on keeping Bratt but not Nico. Will either ever flirt with a point-per-game over a full season? Thanks!
I'd be a little more excited about Bratt than Nico, who seems to have stalled out a bit at least in terms of production. Although selling high on Bratt might not be the worst idea if he's near-PPG by the spring
I mean most of the time it's not worth it to tell you the truth, but if they actually do want to engage in good faith then the simplest answer is just that our brains aren't powerful enough to notice every single thing about a player and recognize meaningful patterns and compare them to other players around the league who we barely see, and that the eye test in practice usually is just a little bit of decoration on point totals and time on ice.
How good of a chance do you think Igor shesterkin and Adam Fox have to win the Norris and Vezina respectively and who would you award the trophies to at this point
What would you say is Travis Dermott’s potential on a team that doesn’t heavily underutilize him? He’s one of the best puckmovers in the league and the leafs have him as their 7th dman 😐.
are you going to post an updated rankings of your point total projections from pre season? You posted the bottom 10 a while ago and I was #555. Just wanting to know if I’m tanking hard enough or im an idiot for thinking the blackhawks would be back
I know that WoWys have fallen out of favor in the last 3-4 years because they don't account for who players are playing with when they're apart. But do you have any thoughts on Draisaitl away from McDavid? In the last 2 years he's been caved in, in terms of XGF% away from McDavid. He outperforms that due to talent but it seems to me the on ice Save% bubble he's been riding is finally deflating and he's headed back to his Hart season where he scored a lot and got scored on even more.
The meat of the WoWYs is captured in the RAPM and of course it says exactly what you're saying - that Draisaitl is a mess defensively who gives back a lot. If indeed the weird oiSv% bubble is bursting then the Oilers are in big trouble.
Tbh, I don't think McDavid can be good defensively with Draisaitl. They just have to play end-to-end run and gun and that has its consequences. We know McDavid can be good defensively without him (as with 93 and 13 last season) but that line struggled to produce. So it might be an impossible tradeoff.
That's why I always wanted Hyman with Draisaitl, to extend 29's offensive zone possessions and tidy things up. Not sure if that's been happening, would have to check the stats.
Tbh with all of the covid crap and injuries I have so little idea what's happening or what's gonna happen. My projection updates assume mostly healthy lineups and, well...
The timing of their primes is very strange and the main thing holding them back. If Lafreniere, Kakko, Chytil, uh Kravstov I guess could turn into a proper young core to go with Fox/Shesterkin/Lindgren it'd be great but they've prioritized the older guys at forward and if they properly start declining this team could get trapped in purgatory quick.
What can be done to save Laine's career trajectory, read your piece about the concerning underlying numbers but the talent just seems too high for him to continue like this
All he needs to do is just keep scoring goals. He will always be bad defensively I think it's safe to say; even his best efforts couldn't stop that from being the case. And he'll always drive offence from the perimeter and not the inside. So if he can score 30 goals a season, then that will be that.
What is the one book you would recommend for me to catch up on hockey "sabermetrics"? I was all in on Bill James and his annual Baseball Abstracts but I've not really kept up with hockey stats. I purchased "Stat Shot" by Rob Vollman a few years ago but haven't even cracked it open yet. Is that a ok book?
Stat shot is a good read and Rob Vollman works with the Kings now so it's still relevant. I don't know if there are any other real hockey analytics books out there to tell you the truth
Heavily doubt a Selke unless the PHWA becomes 90% Athletic writers who vote how Dom tells them to. But he's having an excellent season in proper grown-up minutes.
Probably both. They really fumbled this summer, turning a one-in-a-window pile of cap space into Zach Hyman and nothing, and now they have almost the exact same strengths and weaknesses they did last year. But they're a playoff team and they'll get there.
Are there analytics to explain why a player underperforms in a particular team's scheme when he has performed well in other schemes, e.g. fast schemes vs heavy schemes. In particular, I'm trying to figure out why Zucker hasn't performed with the Penguins after being so consistent with the Wild. In a similar vein, how about players whose performance varies significantly from game to game, e.g. Kapanen.
That's where you have to either identify microstats that can fill in those blanks (e.g. rush chances, transition numbers) or just use some old-fashioned eye test interpretation. In Zucker's case he's a speedy player who's gotten older and his finishing has been miserable. In terms of game to game variation, you could theoretically use game score to track that but for a player like that I think you just have to file it away in the back of your mind.
How do you persuade people in casual discussion who are skeptical about analytics with the relevance of on-ice shooting percentage being a factor in point production, xG being a reasonable measure of play quality, etc.?
I think you can just get rid of the jargon and it's all pretty intuitive. The game is played with a three-inch diameter piece of frozen rubber flying around an ice surface at 100 miles an hour. Pucks go off legs and butts and skates all the time. If your team is getting the random bounces when you're on the ice, you're probably gonna get more points, and there's evidence that those bounces don't stay in your favour forever. As for xGoals, some shots are better than others and the players who create the best scoring chances are usually the best offensive players and the ones who prevent the most scoring chances against are the best defensive ones. It makes sense if you strip away the fancy stats language
I think Laf is not in a good situation right now in terms of the Rangers' depth chart. David St. Louis and I did a deep dive on his game for EP Rinkside a few months back and saw some encouraging things and less encouraging things. David's been scouting him for years and still saw the fundamental talent there. The issues right now are awful defence and a really poor deployment on the PP. The offence isn't bad at 5v5, it's just not where we expected it to be.
Yeah that’s reasonable. It’s frustrating when the reasoning behind Buchnevich (besides cap) was to open the space for the younger guys, and Laf hasn’t been deployed in the T6 for more than a few games and Kravtsov went back to Russia
What exactly is wrong with Jonathan Drouin's game? Total enigma to me. By all accounts he's a hockey nerd who watches more game tape than just about anybody. Has always expressed a desire to win. Alongside tremendous skill, he should be a great player. What gives?
I always liked Drouin in Halifax and I'm disappointed with how things have gone for him. I haven't seen him much this year but I would like to see him get it together. The stats have been not good for a while.
Naw, if it's meant to be it will happen organically. Not worth pissing away the end of Crosby/Letang/Malkin (if the latter two stick around) for a lottery ticket.
Are goalies really more volatile than players? I see this claim accepted as fact a lot but i’ve yet to see any statistical evidence for it.
Yes. https://jfresh.substack.com/p/why-goaltending-is-basically-random
As an example of this, the variables contained in the player cards are weighed year-to-year based on how three year samples have predicted the fourth year in the past (so for example EV Offence might end up as 0.15*Y1+0.25*Y2+0.6*Y3 to predict Y4). All of them have an intuitive weighting ranging from relatively flat for things like shooting to very recent-weighted.
For goalies, there is simply no way to weigh things like WAR or GSAx or save percentage or GSAA or any of it in a meaningful way. If you conduct the same tests on historical data, the results come out essentially random and things happen like Y2 being weighed more heavily than Y3 for example.
I think we can be somewhat confident that some goalies are better than others or more specifically that some goalies are more technically skilled than others, but in terms of predicting actual performance it's a dartboard.
What’re your thoughts on Quinn Hughes this year? #brucethereitis
Encouraging bounce-back, all the microstats were there last season but the results were awful so if Boudreau has opened things up a bit it will go a long way towards getting him up to the elite level we know he has in him.
Best way to develop Caufield? Big minutes in the NHL? Sheltered role? Send him down to the AHL? Who are his ideal linemates?
I'm not a development expert but seems to me there's something to getting his confidence back up after the start he had this season.
What aspect of the game is better evaluated with the eye test than with analytics?
Physical abilities, at least considering the data that we have access to. Suitability for a given system as well for the most part.
What do you think is the #1 most important analytical stat for fans to understand?
On-ice and individual shooting percentage. If every hockey fan understood those stats and could apply them then 70% of stupid discourse would vanish overnight.
How have OEL, Seth Jones, and Ristolainen, the three biggest d-men trades this year, looked since their mid-season coaching changes?
The samples are too small to say for sure but so far this season at least
OEL: Looks good, much better than I expected. I downplayed the "psychological factors" that people were talking about in the offseason just because of how vague it was but he seems to have pulled things together.
Jones: Looks fine, specifically defensively. I think it's safe to say he's back to his old self, so we can have those conversations instead of the "is he actually bad" ones from last year.
Ristolainen: I think Philly has allowed him to do more offensively but his defence has been ugly. At least now he looks more like he was "supposed" to
Is Seth Jones trending upwards to a #1 defenseman again? His numbers under Derek King have been phenomenal.
I don't know about phenomenal, they've certainly been better. He's been much better than he was last season, as I think it was fair to expect, but his offence driving has been just as meagre as it was in Columbus. We'll see how things look by the end of the season.
Nico Hischier and Jesper Bratt. What is their long-term potential? I have both in fantasy and am leaning on keeping Bratt but not Nico. Will either ever flirt with a point-per-game over a full season? Thanks!
I'd be a little more excited about Bratt than Nico, who seems to have stalled out a bit at least in terms of production. Although selling high on Bratt might not be the worst idea if he's near-PPG by the spring
Is Lindy Ruff the problem with the Devils?
I'm not sure but he certainly isn't the solution. That team shouldn't be as bad as it is defensively.
How do you refute people who just use the eye test to evaluate a player?
I mean most of the time it's not worth it to tell you the truth, but if they actually do want to engage in good faith then the simplest answer is just that our brains aren't powerful enough to notice every single thing about a player and recognize meaningful patterns and compare them to other players around the league who we barely see, and that the eye test in practice usually is just a little bit of decoration on point totals and time on ice.
Is Jesper Bratt for real?
Ask me again in April
how do you create your excel spreadsheets with all the player stats and information?
who do you think is the most entertaining team to watch this season
How good of a chance do you think Igor shesterkin and Adam Fox have to win the Norris and Vezina respectively and who would you award the trophies to at this point
I know you’re not a prospects guy, but is there any hopeful news you could give me of Fabian Lysell?
Who will win the Calder ? As a Red Wings fan, the present and future (finally) seem bright.
Do you believe Zach Werenski can be the best defenseman on a Cup winning team?
Do you think the Bruins have a good defensive core?
What would you say is Travis Dermott’s potential on a team that doesn’t heavily underutilize him? He’s one of the best puckmovers in the league and the leafs have him as their 7th dman 😐.
are you going to post an updated rankings of your point total projections from pre season? You posted the bottom 10 a while ago and I was #555. Just wanting to know if I’m tanking hard enough or im an idiot for thinking the blackhawks would be back
I'd love to get into data analytics. What sort of programming languages do you use for your data and graphs?
I know that WoWys have fallen out of favor in the last 3-4 years because they don't account for who players are playing with when they're apart. But do you have any thoughts on Draisaitl away from McDavid? In the last 2 years he's been caved in, in terms of XGF% away from McDavid. He outperforms that due to talent but it seems to me the on ice Save% bubble he's been riding is finally deflating and he's headed back to his Hart season where he scored a lot and got scored on even more.
The meat of the WoWYs is captured in the RAPM and of course it says exactly what you're saying - that Draisaitl is a mess defensively who gives back a lot. If indeed the weird oiSv% bubble is bursting then the Oilers are in big trouble.
Tbh, I don't think McDavid can be good defensively with Draisaitl. They just have to play end-to-end run and gun and that has its consequences. We know McDavid can be good defensively without him (as with 93 and 13 last season) but that line struggled to produce. So it might be an impossible tradeoff.
That's why I always wanted Hyman with Draisaitl, to extend 29's offensive zone possessions and tidy things up. Not sure if that's been happening, would have to check the stats.
Nice! I was kind of thinking the same. Thanks for the answer.
Heyyy sir, would LOVE to see a points projection, interested in how you see these teams stacking up the rest of the way! Thanks in advance!
Tbh with all of the covid crap and injuries I have so little idea what's happening or what's gonna happen. My projection updates assume mostly healthy lineups and, well...
Would you score a goal on Bedard's wing against Austria?
No but I would have taken a tripping penalty
Can the Rangers become as good a contender as they were in the 2010s? They’re playing well now but I know they still need to work on their 5v5 play
The timing of their primes is very strange and the main thing holding them back. If Lafreniere, Kakko, Chytil, uh Kravstov I guess could turn into a proper young core to go with Fox/Shesterkin/Lindgren it'd be great but they've prioritized the older guys at forward and if they properly start declining this team could get trapped in purgatory quick.
What can be done to save Laine's career trajectory, read your piece about the concerning underlying numbers but the talent just seems too high for him to continue like this
All he needs to do is just keep scoring goals. He will always be bad defensively I think it's safe to say; even his best efforts couldn't stop that from being the case. And he'll always drive offence from the perimeter and not the inside. So if he can score 30 goals a season, then that will be that.
Where would Dylan Larkin ideally fit on a championship contender? 1C, 2C, or 3C
Probably a 2C or a 1B in a 2010-11 Bruins set-up. But he has the talent to be that calibre of 1C, question is just if the WIngs can get there in time.
What is the one book you would recommend for me to catch up on hockey "sabermetrics"? I was all in on Bill James and his annual Baseball Abstracts but I've not really kept up with hockey stats. I purchased "Stat Shot" by Rob Vollman a few years ago but haven't even cracked it open yet. Is that a ok book?
Thxs,
Fritz, Costa Mesa
Stat shot is a good read and Rob Vollman works with the Kings now so it's still relevant. I don't know if there are any other real hockey analytics books out there to tell you the truth
Thx. Sorry for my ignorance but you write on Substack, right?
What plans do you have for 2022 for the patreon perks?
A website, new prospect cards, some historical team stuff, and a pile of new Tableau toys. For starters. Maybe a big update to the player cards?
why wear pants
because it's cold out jeff
What should the Devils do with Damon Severson by the time he's a UFA in Summer 2023?
Depends if the team looks like this or is actually good. I don't have a clear read on what he's even worth around the league right now.
Thoughts on Nichushkin? Think he could end up with a Selke in his career or even an elite top 6?
Heavily doubt a Selke unless the PHWA becomes 90% Athletic writers who vote how Dom tells them to. But he's having an excellent season in proper grown-up minutes.
Charlie Coyle: good, bad, or average 2C thus far
Bad but he's still a decent bottom sixer
Who's the best/most underrated bottom six forward or bottom pairing defenceman in the league in your opinion?
Who is your favourite player from any hockey video game in history and why (with specific year of game)
Paul Kariya in Backyard Hockey 2002
Kariya is one of my favourite players in NHL 06 he's so fast
Do you think the oilers are in trouble or will they start winning again soon?
Probably both. They really fumbled this summer, turning a one-in-a-window pile of cap space into Zach Hyman and nothing, and now they have almost the exact same strengths and weaknesses they did last year. But they're a playoff team and they'll get there.
Are there analytics to explain why a player underperforms in a particular team's scheme when he has performed well in other schemes, e.g. fast schemes vs heavy schemes. In particular, I'm trying to figure out why Zucker hasn't performed with the Penguins after being so consistent with the Wild. In a similar vein, how about players whose performance varies significantly from game to game, e.g. Kapanen.
That's where you have to either identify microstats that can fill in those blanks (e.g. rush chances, transition numbers) or just use some old-fashioned eye test interpretation. In Zucker's case he's a speedy player who's gotten older and his finishing has been miserable. In terms of game to game variation, you could theoretically use game score to track that but for a player like that I think you just have to file it away in the back of your mind.
What kind of return could the Sharks get for Hertl if they chose to move him at the deadline?
I would imagine a pretty massive one, Boston in particular would be knocking down their door.
Knee jerk reaction - Bedard or Michkov in 5 years time?
I haven't seen much of them but Bedard looks somewhere between McDavid, Matthews, and Crosby so I'll go with him.
Do the Kings have any shot at the playoffs with the injuries on defense this season? Our offense is already bad, but at least Quick is playing well.
Dom has them at an 18% chance and that's with Quick having played at a Vézina level after three seasons of being a liability. I wouldn't bet on it.
How do you persuade people in casual discussion who are skeptical about analytics with the relevance of on-ice shooting percentage being a factor in point production, xG being a reasonable measure of play quality, etc.?
I think you can just get rid of the jargon and it's all pretty intuitive. The game is played with a three-inch diameter piece of frozen rubber flying around an ice surface at 100 miles an hour. Pucks go off legs and butts and skates all the time. If your team is getting the random bounces when you're on the ice, you're probably gonna get more points, and there's evidence that those bounces don't stay in your favour forever. As for xGoals, some shots are better than others and the players who create the best scoring chances are usually the best offensive players and the ones who prevent the most scoring chances against are the best defensive ones. It makes sense if you strip away the fancy stats language
as a Rangers fan, when can l worry about about Lafrenière? At least with KK the defense is there, as well as noticeable physical improvement…
I think Laf is not in a good situation right now in terms of the Rangers' depth chart. David St. Louis and I did a deep dive on his game for EP Rinkside a few months back and saw some encouraging things and less encouraging things. David's been scouting him for years and still saw the fundamental talent there. The issues right now are awful defence and a really poor deployment on the PP. The offence isn't bad at 5v5, it's just not where we expected it to be.
Yeah that’s reasonable. It’s frustrating when the reasoning behind Buchnevich (besides cap) was to open the space for the younger guys, and Laf hasn’t been deployed in the T6 for more than a few games and Kravtsov went back to Russia
Is Lafrenière a bust?
See my answer above
What exactly is wrong with Jonathan Drouin's game? Total enigma to me. By all accounts he's a hockey nerd who watches more game tape than just about anybody. Has always expressed a desire to win. Alongside tremendous skill, he should be a great player. What gives?
I always liked Drouin in Halifax and I'm disappointed with how things have gone for him. I haven't seen him much this year but I would like to see him get it together. The stats have been not good for a while.
Could the Wild benefit of playing fiala and The Thrill together?
There's only one pick, maybe not.
Only one puck***
Will the Canucks make the Playoffs? 🤔
I would be shocked but it would definitely help my standings predictions so I wouldn't mind it.
Hahaha! Awesome!
Should the penguins tank for Bedard??
Naw, if it's meant to be it will happen organically. Not worth pissing away the end of Crosby/Letang/Malkin (if the latter two stick around) for a lottery ticket.
Would love to get access to the Tableau charts again like last year. How do we get those?
They're coming
What is one important thing you learned about hockey this year that you didn't know about before?
I'd have to think about that but one IRL thing I learned was to start pulling my wrist shots towards my feet. Really improved my accuracy and power.