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About this blog

A mirror of my main blog, capitalizing on the suggestion of hf101.

 

You are welcome to comment either here, or on the blogspot site.

Follow me on Twitter, @morehockeystats.

Entries in this blog

Talent, Skill and the NHL

Original post On Talent In General   When you want to do some useful work, you need a skill to do that work. Naturally, one doesn't need a skill to tweet, but that's not a useful work to start with. But to do stuff that actually profits you a certain level of skill is absolutely necessary.   In order to have the skill, you need to learn it, and then to improve it. And there are only two basic factors that define how well you learn and improve in the skill - the talent an

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More Hockey Stats

On The NHL Scoring System (Part I)

Original post.   There was nothing wrong with ties. The 2-1-0 point system works fine in various sports around the world. It's just ... not fitting into the mind of a North American sports fan. "Who won?" - "It was a tie." - "Who won on a tiebreak?" Basketball and baseball do not have ties, and American Football has them at a rate of 1-2 times per whole season. So more than ten years ago NHL went with the flow and abolished ties, introducing the shootout, and with a twist, where the te

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On Buchholz and Sonneborn-Berger coefficients

Original post.   The practice of chess tournaments provides two traditional metrics that are used to rank participants beyond their mere scoring. Their names are the Buchholz coefficient and the Sonneborn-Berger coefficient (often called just Berger). They are frequently used as tie-breakers in chess events, however I arrived to completely different application for them for the National Hockey League seasons.1. The Buchholz coefficientThe Buchholz coefficient is simply the sum of the p

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More Hockey Stats

The Website - A Page A Day, Part III - NHL's Yearly Tendencies

Despite all the delays we move on to League's Yearly Tendencies.PART IIIThis view shows stacked bars of various event counts per season in the NHL.All the stats are presented per game, since the amount of games played varied every season. For the first time we encounter the stat selection menu, on top of the graphs. On this page it features the following options:   Category of the stats Stage of the games (Regular or Playoff) Available stats are:  Shots Goals (ava

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On Buchholz and Sonneborn-Berger coefficients - Part II

Original post. 2. The Sonneborn-Berger coefficient.This stranger beast is a metric extensively used for tie-breaks in chess-round robins and as an auxiliary tie-break tool to the Buchholz coefficient in non-round robins. Let's start with the definition.   SB = Σn=1N f(Rn,Pn)   where Rn is the result against the n-th opponent, and Pn is the opponent's points score.The function  f(Rn, Pn) is defined as:f(Win, Pn)  = Pnf(Tie, Pn)  = Pn/2f(Loss, Pn) = 0The result value evaluates w

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On Player Evaluation Systems - Part I

Original post.   In the previous post we mentioned the Goodhart's Law and how it threatens any evaluation of an object. We said that it traps the Corsi/Fenwick approach because it substitutes the complex function of evaluation of a hockey player by a remarkably simple stat - shots.   Goodhart's law is not alone. In any research it is preceded by the two pillars: Popper's law of falsifiability and the Occam's razor. A theory willing to bear any scientific value must comply with

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On streaks and breaks

Original post.   So after remembering the Botwinnik's quote, and after publishing the stats how the teams actually play after different breaks, a new idea came to me - check whether the teams on streaks are affected positively or negatively by breaks.For the sake of the analysis, I assumed the following: A break is a period of three days at least between games. A streak is a sequence of at least three wins in a row, or at least seven points in four games. So we check

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On carrying Momentum...

Original post.   Frequently, the importance of carrying momentum over an intermission can be heard being talked about. I thought it were possible to measure this harmony with algebra, so I tried to do that. I choose to analyze a very specific question: If the regulation of a game ends in a tie, other than 0-0, how frequently would the team that tied the game with the last regulation goal win in overtime. We would define the team that tied the game as the one having the momentum. We wou

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The Website - A Page A Day - Prologue

Original Post   Hello, hockeyforums.net, from Mr. Van Winkle...This prolonged silence was caused by a lot of factors, led, naturally, by REAL LIFE™. But I also made a fundamental mistake in the infrastructure setup, and so I had to roll out a hastily patched setup when the season was starting; I then went back and worked on this infrastructure fix, the work which continued over three months and is now complete! Unfortunately, all this work will not be visible to the visitor, with possi

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Faceoff statistics

I read about this idea on HFBoards and finally got to implement it.   Faceoff stats and Elo ratings.   The available views are: * career/specific season * per zone/per stick first   Here's a sample table: By stick first on the ice, 2016 season. FW - First Stick Wins, FL - First Stick Losses, FP - First Stick Win % LW - Last Stick Wins, LL - Last Stick Losses, LP - Last Stick Win % TW - Total Faceoff Wins, TL - Total Faceoff Losses, TP - Tota

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On the NHL Scoring System - Part III

It looks like I've forgotten to translate a couple of entries. Correcting that.   Original post.   Part IPart IIOnce again, driven by idea that if you want to encourage goal scoring, you need to reward the goal scoring in standings directly, not indirectly through winning. Then, based on the idea of a fellow hockey fan and blogger, a new suggestion was born in my mind.Not so long ago I was involved in another discussion on the subject on Twitter, where an interesting alt

The Website - A Page A Day, Part I - Home Page

Original post   The main page of the website shows the summary of all its features.The site menu features the main statistical sections:   League - league-wide statistics Teams - team-based statistics Players - personal statistics Coaches - statistics for the NHL coaches Drafts - statistics for currently drafted players and the historical performance by draft Fantasy - tools to help the fantasy player On the top we have a ticker of the sco

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On Intangibles. Carpe Jugulum.

Original post.   Often the general managers, the coaches and the players talk about "intangible values". Sometimes it's about the "locker room contributions". Sometimes it's about "passion". In my opinion, these two are actually negligible and in certain cases even harmful. I remember such references, especially the latter one, made about Israeli soccer players, and that usually meant that the player doesn't have a lot of talent to go along, but contributes a lot of passion into

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On Players Evaluation - Part V (Goaltender's Elo)

Original post. The goalkeeper is half of the whole team   Soviet proverb from Lev Yashin's times. After a foray into the calmer lands of teams' evaluation using the Elo rating, it's time to turn our attention to the really juicy stuff - the evaluation of a single player. And we'll start with the most important one - the goaltender. DISCLAIMER: this evaluation concept is still a work in progress and one of several possible implementation

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A suggestion for the All-Star Game

Original post.   While the series "Website - A Page A Day" is being delayed by all kinds of things, here comes a short post on a different topic. Last year, in my opinion, the accuracy shooting competition which included shooting the pack from the goal line into a small hole was, in my opinion a total failure. Mike Smith's spectacular score across the rink did the injustice and provided a false impression this skill contest was any good. Otherwise, the competition was not exciting t

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On The NHL Scoring System (Part II)

Original post.   Goodhart's law is the bane, the safeguard and the watchdog of everyone who tries to make conclusions from sample data. The "Schroedinger Cat of Social Sciences" practically says, if you want people to do X, but you reward them for doing Y, they will be doing Y rather than X. We start seeing that in the "possession analytics", based on shots taken, that the players begin to shoot from everywhere to get their possession ratings up. But we digress - the topic is the scori

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Website A Page - A Day, Part VI - Warm Welcome

Website A Page - A Day, Part VI - Warm Welcome   Original post Prologue Part I Part II Part III Part IV Part V With nothing else to do for about half an hour, why not to resume the series? Have you wondered if it is your team, or your goalie, who always has the first career goal scored against them? Now you can check if your feeling is right. On the page 'Warm Welcome' of the League section on the website we present a look at the first goals scored against different tea

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On Leads Changes and Swings

Original post.     Wild thing, you make my heart sing You make everything groovy, wild thing   Also inspired by Twitter, and because I can, I decided to gather statistics on games with most lead changes* most lead swings** Here, for the 2016/17 season: By most lead swings: AWAY    HOME   Date        Sco LC LS CHI  vs DAL  on 2017/02/04: 5-3 7 3

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On Intangibles (a small addendum)

Original post.   One "intangible" being tossed around is "motivation" of the players. Which brings memories of an episode I was witness to.   In 2003/04, in the Israeli Top Tier Chess League (which is indeed no slouch) our club managed to assemble an outstanding team, featuring, among others, a former Champion of Russia and a former Champion of Europe. I was part of the management team, and orchestrated bringing the first of the two, who also happened to be my childhood frien

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On goalposts statistics

Why does the cat lick his balls? Because it can.   Recently I saw a request on a stats of goal posts / crossbars hit per game. While I do have that statistic per player, I haven't one for games, so - since I can - why shouldn't I produce one? About half an hour of Perl-ing created the following summary:   Irons altogether, top: AWAY    HOME                P C T OTT  vs BUF  on 2011/12/31: 8 0 8 VAN  vs FLA  on 2010/02/11: 7 0 7

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The Website - A Page A Day, Part IV - West vs. East

ProloguePart IPart IIPart IIIAnd now we're putting two in a row with West vs. East.PART IVThis page shows the results of games between Eastern and Western Conference teams. The data is available from the year 1993, when Western and Eastern Conference were formed, from the Boxscore files.Shown from left to right:  Regular West wins OT/SO West wins Ties(up to year 2005) OT/SO East wins Regular East wins Stanley Cup Winning Conference A total tally is a

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On Players Evaluation - Part III (Teams Elo)

Part I. Part II.   Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson are camping in the countryside. In the middle of the night Holmes wakes up Watson: 'Watson, what do you think these stars are telling us? 'Geez, Holmes, I don't know, maybe it's going to be a nice weather tomorrow? 'Elementary, Watson! They are telling us our tent has been stolen!   Iconic Soviet joke.   Estimating a hockey player via Elo ratings is a highly complex task. Therefore, we shall wield the d

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A rule change suggestion

whoops, got the title wrong Original post. A rule change suggestion   There's no irreplaceable people. I.V. Stalin   Rushing this one up, because this idea already came to my mind before, but I forgot about it. The age is taking its toll. Anyways. Everyone is talking these days about rule changes. I've already expressed a few thoughts on the scoring systems, but I am not original there. Now, however, I want to make a suggestion I haven'

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A Lemma Research - Penalty Box and TOI - Part II

Original post.   Part I   After completing the first part of the lemma research - penalty box - the second part was shorter, easier, but just as useful. I decided to find out the share of time teams spend on average while at even strength, on power play/shorthanded and with empty net. Then given this number, and the number of goals scored in each such situation, I was able to calculate the frequency of EVG/PPG/SHG/ENG or the reverse of it which I called the difficult of such g

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