Tag Archives: Fancy Stats

Beer League Hero, Edmonton Oilers, Fancy Stats, NHL

Review: @robvollmanNHL’s Hockey Abstract 2018 Update

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Earlier this week advanced analytics guru Rob Vollman released the 2018 update for his world famous Hockey Abstract and I decided to pick up a copy for $13 CDN and take a gander as I do with every release of Mr.Vollman’s.

You can pick up your copy here. Get the bundle by the way, it’s the best value for the price.

Now, you’re probably wondering why I, BLH, would be reading up on the fancies given what you may have read either on the blog here or on Twitter and I’d like to clear that up for you right now.

I’m not anti-fancy stats. There are personalities in the hockey analytics community that I don’t particularly like and get the brunt of my vitriol but the advanced stats I find particularly useful when it comes time to figuring out who is performing well despite the traditional stats looking poor (Lucic last year comes to mind as well as Puljujarvi) and who is performing poorly even though they might be producing on the scoresheet.

Rob Vollman is a guy I have a lot of time for because he can do what so many analytics personalities cannot. Explain things in terms that I can understand and in a manner that doesn’t feel condescending or that he’s talking down to you in any way. I respect that.

Another reason I’m doing this review is that last season Rob gave me a copy of his Hockey Abstract 2017 Update for free and I said I’d write a review and didn’t. That made me feel like a dick.

So, I give you…

The Hockey Abstract 2018 Update Review

Before we jump in, let’s take a brief look at what this year’s update is going to bring us straight from the Horse’s mouth.

Just like the updates in 2015 and 2016, the Hockey Abstract 2018 Update not only serves as an excellent companion to previous editions, and includes updates on previously introduced and sometimes hard-to-find statistical data. For those new to the series, it’s also a great stand-alone guide for team-by-team analysis.

This year’s edition is in full colour, and presents the information in a number of all-new charts and graphs courtesy of RJ Weise. It also includes 25 “stat of the day” popups by venerable long-time hockey statistician Stan Nieradka.
This year’s Hockey Abstract 2018 Update contains over 170 pages of fresh analysis, including new player usage charts and analysis for all 31 NHL teams, and updates to most of the statistics and studies that were introduced earlier in the Hockey Abstract series like:
  • Goaltending statistics, like quality starts, relief goaltending, saves above expectations (SAX), Goals saved above average (GSAA), and expected goals
  • Shot-based metrics, like SAT/Corsi, USAT/Fenwick, and expected goals, in all manpower situations
  • Player and team contract value, and aging curves
  • Coaching data
  • Real-time scoring statistics, like hitting, blocked shots, faceoffs, and drawing penalties
  • Setup passes
  • NHL Translation factors (NHLe)
  • The do-it-all index and the team accolade index
  • Disciplined aggression proxy
  • Presence and Individual Points Percentage (IPP)
  • Cap Hit of Injured Players (CHIP)

What I love from the Hockey Abstract year-in and year-out is the team-by-team analysis and previews going into the upcoming seasons. When reading them I get the feeling I’m just talking to a buddy (who happens to know a lot about analytics) who’s giving me a fair and balanced opinion on his team.

Here’s a snippet from this year’s Edmonton Oilers section:

It must sting for Oilers fans to see Taylor Hall lead the New Jersey Devils back into the playoffs and win the Hart Trophy in just his second season away from Edmonton.

It must also sting to see the Maple Leafs lock down John Tavares without having to sacrifice Auston Matthews, Mitch Marner, or William Nylander, while the Oilers shed solid players like Jordan Eberle and still run out of cap space. Plus, it must be hard to patiently wait for those they got in return, like Adam Larsson and Ryan Strome, to reach expectations. But each of these concerns are small potatoes compared to what the Oilers can achieve with a player like Connor McDavid, which could include a Stanley Cup that would heal all wounds.

The player usage charts that have been made famous by Vollman and his team are always educational and very useful in getting a good view of how your team and its players did the previous year. Check them out here.

This year’s version is in color and while I think that’s a cool feature, I don’t really feel like its potential was met. The colors were simply okay in my opinion and hopefully, in future updates, this feature can be a bit more dynamic.

The difference between the 2017 (left) and 2018 (right) Updates.

I will say this about the player usage charts though, I liked that the defensemen and forwards were different shapes this year. Forwards being circles and dmen being diamonds.

Something that I’m missing from previous versions of the update is the Coles notes rundown of each team. Basically, Vollman went over the following categories and gave a checkmark, a star, or nothing to grade them.

  • Possession
  • The Shootout
  • Goaltending
  • Penalty Kill
  • Power Play
  • Scoring Line
  • Shutdown Line
  • Forward Depth
  • Top Pairing
  • Second Pairing
  • Defensive Depth
  • Coaching
  • Prospects

I would’ve preferred this in the 2018 Update instead of color but as my old man used to say, beggars can’t be choosers.

After each team profile there’s an analytics-based article tailored to each team. In Edmonton’s case, Blocking shots. Why is Kris Russell the best shot-blocker in the NHL and is that really helping the Oilers?

Other articles include,

  • Passing (ANH) – Why Ryan Getzlaf is a better passer than Connor McDavid.
  • The Best Goalie (CLB) – Is Phillip Grubauer as good as Sergei Bobrovsky?
  • The Best Goalie of All-Time (MTL) – Is it Ken Dryden or Dominik Hasek?
  • Individual Power Play (NYR) – Who is the NHL’s best dman/fwd on the PP?
  • Contractual Value (TB) – Which teams are managing their cap room the best?
  • Coaching (VGK) – Is a coaching staff loaded with a track record of past success better than one without?

The 2018 Update is a good 110 pages fewer this time around because there aren’t as many general articles like:

  • Who’s the best clutch scorer?
  • Why does Washington always lose in the playoffs?
  • How much cap space would a team like the 83/84 Oilers need today?
  • Can we predict injuries?
  • Why do rebuilds fail?

There are way more than that but I really enjoy those types of articles and am a tad disappointed that the 2018 Update doesn’t have them but there are only so many hours in the day.

Also, I imagine that Vollman will make up for it with his new book coming out in September called, “Stat Shot: Fan’s Guide to Analytics”.

You can pre-order that book here.

If you’re on the fence about advanced analytics or just a little curious, I recommend you pick up the Hockey Abstract Bundle here. It’s severely underpriced, I can almost guarantee that you won’t be disappointed, and you’ll be thoroughly entertained and educated.

All-in-all, I might prefer last year’s format to this year’s but that doesn’t take away from the quality of this year’s Update one iota. It’s a must buy going into the 2018/19 NHL season for any fan!

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Edmonton Oilers, Fancy Stats, G Money, NHL

Assessing the Western Conference Playoff Landscape by @Oilersnerdalert

Who’s the favourite? We know the Oilers are going to play San Jose first, but in the big picture, who should the Oilers want to play most/least? Enquiring minds want to know!

There is no magical way to ‘know’ what’s going to happen in the various series, but we can look at how the season has shaped up and make some decent guesses about who to favour.  I’m going to walk through a few different methods and we’ll see what we see.

Don’t Use Standings

First, one thing that I’ll start with is to stay you can generally throw the regular season standings (or points) out the window.  There is a fairly weak relationship between points and post-season success (though it may surprise you to learn that the PresCup winner, far from being ‘cursed’, actually tends to do quite well in the post-season).

Head to Head Score Adjusted Corsi

Our first data stop will look at how the various West teams fared head to head in 5v5 score adjusted Corsi. Since the refs tend to put away their whistles in the post season, the importance of 5v5 is magnified, so this gives us a sense of how the ‘playoff’ part of their games went.

http://i.imgur.com/diHK3SO.png – source @OilersNerdAlert

From an Oilers perspective, MIN and ANA look like good matchups, while the others, especially CGY, CHI, and S.J look like tougher matches. But wait! Didn’t we go undefeated against CGY?? Not to mention STL? How is this possible?

Actually, this is the weakness of any statistical look – small sample size. In the case of CGY vs EDM, the Oilers blew out the Flames early in several games. For example, the first game of the season, the gameflow looks like this:

http://i.imgur.com/rbbg7Cn.png – source @OilersNerdAlert

The Oilers basically ran up the score early, dominated for most of the game, and then went into a defensive shell – which allowed the Flames to run up the fancystat counters, even as their loss was already written. Same story in the last game of the season, where the Oilers ran up a 5-0 edge and then coasted.

Now you might ask, isn’t score adjustment supposed to take care of that? Well – yes, sort of. It takes care of that at a statistical level. The score adjustment is done based on league wide averages.  So it works really well when you get at least 10 to 20 games of data, enough where the averages start to apply in a meaningful way.

But a score adjustment at a game level, or even at a season series of 4 or 5 games, while it will almost always push the fancystats in the right direction, won’t necessarily be reflective of that game or games. Especially if there were blowouts, as there were twice in this series.

So I wouldn’t take these numbers too seriously. That’s why I put this look first – it’s actually not that reliable IMO. It’s more for interest.

And as we’ll see later, if the Oilers face the Flames, take the Oilers all the way!

Head to Head Records

I don’t actually know if anyone has tested to see if head to head records have any predictive power for the post-season (my gut says probably not), BUT I sure do like this!

https://twitter.com/humantorch/status/851498850430976000

Goal Differential

I mentioned earlier that points are not that great a way to assess post-season chances. A much better a predictor is goal differential. (Read the detailed analysis here: https://www.stats.com/insights/nhl/debunking-myth-playoff-vs-regular-season-hockey/)

When we look at the teams sorted by goal differential, it gets pretty interesting:

http://i.imgur.com/KPObkSA.png – source NHL.com

Now Edmonton is starting to look more like a powerhouse than a weak sister, yes?  If Talbot Talbots and McDavid McDavids, the Oilers can beat anyone.

And of course, the weak sister in the West is in fact … Da Flames.

By the way, you might be wondering – isn’t this basically PLUS MINUS, and isn’t PLUS MINUS the pariah of the fancystats world?

Indeed, it is – at the player level. That’s for two reasons – the assignation of plus minus at the player level is extremely noisy, and because goals are such rare events, it takes multiple seasons to generate enough player sample size to overcome that noise – and by that time, your player has usually changed (situation, or even age!)

We don’t have as much noise, or as much of a sample size problem at the team level though, which is why goal differential works pretty well.

Score and Venue Adjusted [Corsi, Fenwick, Expected Goals]

Now let’s get on to some actual fancystats. I’m using Corsi, Fenwick, and corsica’s xGF.  Corsi has historically been something of a gold standard for predicting the future.  What’s interesting though is there’s an argument to be made that this relationship may be weakening as more teams pay attention to shots/possession and the resulting ‘market efficiency in action’ takes away some of the advantage historically measured by shot metrics.

We’re going to take the full seasons 5v5 measures and rank teams that way. So we’ll roll all three together to get a sense of where the teams fit:

http://i.imgur.com/OZPNHdY.png – source corsica.hockey

Ooh, that’s a bit ugly, isn’t it?  The Oilers are much weaker by this measure – ranking 7th, 2nd, and 6th out of 8.  So why such a big difference from goal differential?

Well, the easiest way to way outperform (or underperform) your underlying shot metrics is through the quality of goalering (you can also do it through special teams but I’d say that’s ‘harder’ in some sense).  So I think this really reflects the fact that Cam Talbot this season has been incredible – arguably a Top 4 or Top 5 goalie league-wide.

If the Oilers are to have success in the post-season, he’s going to have to continue his strong play. No surprise there.

San Jose looks a lot like the powerhouse that made it to the Cup Finals last year. Not going to be an easy series!

I guess the saving grace is that the Flames are still weak at 5, 8, and 8.

Tweaking the Fancystats

There’s an interesting tweak we can make to these numbers to increase their assessment/prediction capability. One of the things we know is that shot metrics in-season have their peak predictivity around 20 to 25 games, after which there is a slow decline in predictivity. Some of that is due to increasing randomness as games predicted declines.

But I think a significant part of it is also that teams change over the course of the season. Key players get hurt (or come back from injury).  Sometimes coaches change.  Teams get into a groove or fall out of one.

So we have this balance to find – we want the maximum amount of data possible, but if we use data that’s too old, it isn’t actually reflective of the team right now.

As it turns out, using the last 25 games gives adequate data volume and yet doesn’t get overloaded with games from early in the season that aren’t really indicative of a team now, producing a fairly high level of predictivity. (see for example Micah Blake McCurdy’s work on his Oscar prediction model).

So let’s look at two things – how a team did over the last 25 games of the season, and also the trend of that data, as a bit of a projection as to the direction of the teams level of play.  (Note: out of laziness, I’ve taken data for the Oilers from Feb 15th, which equates to 25 games. Other teams may be a bit more or less – ha ha, too bad for them! More seriously, it shouldn’t change the results much, if at all)

Let’s take a look.

Here’s the West teams from best to worst in SACF% over the last 25 games:

http://i.imgur.com/7ocNV8l.png – source corsica.hockey

Oooh.  Still sucks to be the Oilers on that basis though, doesn’t it?  But we also know that those 25 games started with a fairly poor stretch for the Oilers, but they’ve been coming on strong of late. And the opposite is true for the Flames. So let’s look at the trend over those games too.

http://i.imgur.com/2HcmCVp.png – source corsica.hockey (chart by @OilersNerdAlert)

Hmm, that’s encouraging, right? Despite the rather soft numbers the Oilers put up in the second half, in fact (as the eyes would suggest), the Oilers appear to be improving in a big way as they head towards the post-season. Yeah!

Cowtown on the other hand – again, as the eyes would suggest – are sliding back to Earth after the unsustainable hot streak that pulled them into the playoffs.

San Jose has solid numbers, but is neither hot nor cold.

I’ll leave you to mull over the rest of the trends.

Putting it All Together

We’ve taken a few different looks at how teams did in the regular season to get a sense of how they might fare in the playoffs.  Now, has this work given you the definitive guide to who’s going to win the West?

Ha, of course not! Statistics give you a sense of which way the probabilities lean, they are most certainly not fait accompli.

Rather, what we’ve got is some sturdy data to suggest which teams are leaning positive and which are leaning negative.

You still have to understand context though. Statistically, Anaheim is looking pretty good – but if Lindholm, Vatanen, and Fowler are out or not 100%, that’s a huge hit. Ditto San Hoser and Jumbo Joe. (In fact, one of the defining characteristics of Cup champions is that they are good and healthy when they hit the playoffs, and are still mostly healthy, or at least healthier than their opponents, by the time they get to the finals).

The Oilers meanwhile actually look pretty good, my friend!  Probably not to win it all, but I’d say we’ll be a tough out even for a legit contender.

And with McDavid and Dadbot on our side, anything can happen.

Bring it on!

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Beer League Hero, Edmonton Oilers, Fancy Stats, NHL

Analytics Vs. Culture: Why Can’t It Be Both?

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Most of you know famed Edmonton Oilers vlogger Ryan Robinson but if you don’t know who he is, I suggest you head to his Youtube Channel and get to know him quick before he’s snapped up by a major media outlet.

I don’t know how he does it but he manages to capture my thoughts exactly how they SHOULD be and how I want them to come out. He can be a bit of quirk at times but I dig his brand of humor.

Robinson’s latest vlog has him going off on fans and bloggers of the Oilers regarding how they are STILL arguing about the Taylor Hall trade and analytics versus hockey culture. Check it out below. I’ll give my comments under the clip.

  • FYI: I’m going to be tossing out #fireableoffense all year long

“The thing is, after struggling early in the season, when did the A’s start winning? It was after Billy (Beane) came into the dressing room and realized that something needed to change.”

  • How many times do you think that happened in the last 2-3 seasons with the Oilers but the GMs were handcuffed either by the market or by ownership?

“He had been treating these guys like numbers on a spreadsheet and forgetting they’re human beings.”

  • Bingo! I won’t say that there’s a be-all end-all answer to winning in sports or life for that matter but I will say that numbers can take you anywhere YOU want to go. Now whether that’s the right destination or not, therein lies the debate.

“He (Billy Beane) changed the culture of the team”

  • After championing for Giambi for his numbers regardless of the “attitude” or “character flaws” he was warned about by his scouts, Beane realized his mistake (wouldn’t admit to it) and set him on his way.
  • In the movie we see Beane go into the locker room after a loss and catch Giambi and a few other teammates having a bit too much “fun”.
  • In the book, author Michael Lewis offers up a couple of tidbits (p.200-201) that you might be keen to hold close to the vest for future reference when Larrson starts paying dividends for Edmonton,

    “In a silent rage, Billy called around the league to see who would take Jeremy off his hands. He didn’t care what he got in return.”

    “When Billy (Beane) traded Jeremy Giambi, the A’s were 20-25; they’d lost 14 of their previous 17 games. Two months later, they were 60-46. Everyone now said what a genius Billy Beane was to have seen the talent hidden inside John Mabry. Shooting Old Yeller had paid off.”

  • Taylor Hall is no Jeremy Giambi (at least to my knowledge), let’s get that straight but it does speak to the inner workings of a locker room and how one change can set the tone.

“There shouldn’t be an analytics vs. culture debate! You need both to be successful!”

  • This is something that many come to forget, myself included. I tend to fall on the culture side of things and rely on the numbers when need be. But Robinson hit’s the nail on the head here.

“It doesn’t matter if you have a group of highly skilled players if there’s no chemistry and cohesion and everyone pulling in the same direction. Likewise, it doesn’t matter if you’ve got a great group of guys, really tight-knit group, if they all skate on their ankles. You need both, you need a balance.”

  • In Peter Chiarelli’s press conference on July 1st of this summer he said there’d been some “attitudinal change” based on what they’d done. Off the bat that says part of trading Taylor Hall was due to attitude. Part of bringing in Milan Lucic and Adam Larsson was due to attitude.

“It’s not even hockey culture, it’s not even sports culture. It’s job culture. It’s the relationship dynamics in your working environment. It’s how people in an organization interact with one another. 

And the Oilers had a serious problem in this area. 

Contrary to what some people believe, not all fans bring this up to try to “feel better” or “justify” the Taylor Hall trade. I mentioned this being an issue way back in March.”

  • Is this where the numbers fall off a bit? Can we analyze how the dressing room culture through numbers?

“Darren Dreger, David Perron, Andrew Ference, Todd McLellan (1,2,3), Eric Belanger have all made remarks about this being an issue as well. 

These statemens are TRUE.

These guys didn’t just wake up one morning and say “Gee, I think I’m gonna fabricate a bunch of stuff about there being a problem in the Oilers dressing room and I’m going to tell the media about it””

  • We can add Oscar Klefbom and Ben Scrivens to that list now as well.
  • On Oilers Now! Mark Spector was asked about his opinion regarding the comments frmo Klefbom and Scrivens and his reply was predictable. He said Klefbom should worry about how he plays versus the best teams in the league and staying healthy, whilst Scrivens’ comments don’t hold much water because 30 NHL teams didn’t want him and now he’s a KHL goalie.
    • Yet the head coach has said as much without saying names but these two former teammates’ comments should be dismissed outright.

“Make no mistake about it, Taylor Hall’s presence on the Edmonton Oilers was negatively impacting the team.”

“I am not referring to Taylor Hall’s character as a person nor am I referring to his skill set as a player. I AM talking about what he had come to represent in the Oilers dressing room. 

He was the face of entitlement. 

And this was no fault of his own. He came in at 18 and was handed the keys to the city and anointed the saviour. Rather than being brought along by a strong leadership group, he was allowed to run amok out on the ice, doing as he pleased. And firing the coach on almost a yearly basis relieved Hall of any responsibility for the way he conducted himself.”

  • I couldn’t agree more here. Not holding the kids responsible was a huge mistake. Not bringing in the right veterans and having their back tore the team apart and caused cliques to form.

So now that we have a coaching and management team that is willing to hold players accountable and is willing to bring in the right kind of players, I am fully behind this team being able to make huge gains compared to what they’ve been doing for the past decade.

Walter Foddis is actually planning on publishing a post showing how the Oilers were actually a playoff team in the last 25 games of the season last year. I’ll be interested to read that for sure because I know their real record was 8-16-1. I wonder how much culture talk will be included though?

Let us know how you feel about Ryan Robinson’s vlog in the comments below!

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Armchair GM, Edmonton Oilers, Fancy Stats, G Money, NHL

Shot Attempts and “Crucial Habits” or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Dump and Chase

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When I look to see how a team has done or is doing, my first go-to is always even strength shot attempts, or the tried and true, venerable, misunderstood, and often loathed “Corsi”.

Like it or not, Corsi when applied to a team and with a full seasons data behind it is a very sturdy tool for filtering out the noise and looking at results that are likely to be repeatable and sustainable (or unrepeatable and unsustainable, as the Flames found out last year. Corsi told us that story. As it did with Toronto the year before that).

This years Edmonton Oilers finished 20th in the league with a CF% (Corsi For Percentage) at 48.9%. I’m rarely the guy people look to for encouraging words, but given all the injuries, I actually find this an encouraging result.

But wait! Encouraging result you say? Last years Edmonton Oilers finished 24th in CF% at 48.1%. That’s an improvement of just 0.8%.

Is that change meaningful or just noise? Is that encouraging or not?

Splitsville

One way to suss that out is to pull out the components of CF%.

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CF% is actually calculated as the balance between ‘shot attempts for’ (usually abbreviated CF, without the %) and ‘shot attempts against’ (usually abbreviated CA). We can pull out CF and CA individually and see if there is a substantive change in either.

For example, you could see a case where there is no change in CF%, but a significant improvement in CF and a significant worsening in CA, and that would indicate a notable underlying change (offense better, defense worse) even as the CF% showed no change at all.

In the Oilers’ case (I have used the per 60 minutes numbers to isolate away changes in number of penalties called year over year), here’s what we see:

CF/60 … 2014: 24th @ 53.26 … has improved markedly to … 2015: 18th @ 55.24

CA/60 … 2014: 24th @ 57.58 … has barely changed at all to … 2015: 24th @ 57.72

So my answer to you is: yes, the small change in CF% does represent something significant.

Specifically, the team is notably better (two attempts per game, almost league average) at generating shot attempts this year. The entire jump from 24th to 18th is on the offense. Hello Connor! Half an attempt per game more would bring the team to 15th (BOS).

But … it’s hardly Nirvana is it? … because the team remains among the worst in the league at preventing shot attempts, and pretty much identical to last year. That makes sense too. Swap Petry for Sekera, and consistently terrible veterans for inconsistent rookies, roll in a crazy level of injuries, and voila – back in the defensive toilet.

Which gets back to a theme you’ll hear from me and many others: if we want to improve next year, stop worrying so much about the forwards.

Hey Peter: PLEASE FIX THE DEFENSE.

“Crucial Habits” and the Role of the Defense in the Offense

One thing you might point out is that the Oilers, while better/improved on offense, were hardly a powerhouse. Eighteenth is nothing to write home about. So why worry mostly about the defense?

What I’m going to suggest you do right now is jump to a series of articles by the extremely knowledgeable Jen Lute Costella, which she’s titled “Crucial Habits”. There are three articles so far, and the overview (which links further on to all three) is here:

Crucial Habits for Good Shot Generation & Suppression: Overview

If you’ve read these brilliant articles, though she doesn’t study the Oilers specifically, there are some interesting tiebacks to the Oiler situation.  Specifically the need for better defensemen, but also vis a vis the Todd McLellan/Oiler coaching style, which is often criticized by some Oilers fans for being too dump and chase oriented. Let’s look at those two assertions in order.

The Offensive Role of the Defense

If I told you that the Oilers need a defenseman who can be the powerplay QB and provide a big shot from the point, is there anyone who would argue with me? That seems obvious, and clearly adding that kind of player would immediately improve the ‘goals scored’ for the Oilers, even as the even strength shot counts probably wouldn’t change all that much.

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But what about even strength? Teams spend 80% or more of their time at 5v5 – it kind of matters.

I’ve been harping on this a long time, and what Costella’s articles do is provide a thorough analysis (with evidence) as to the critical role of the defense and the defensive structure in driving the offense.

The defensive structure drives puck retrieval and controlled exits from the zone. Controlled exits lead to successful entries. And successful entries lead to scoring.

In other words, part of the teams struggles on offense are symptoms of the defense.  And making the defense more competent, especially at moving the puck, is going to have a significant positive impact on the offense.

Some of you will be rolling your eyes about how obvious that statement is. But it needs to be said, because when I argue for the desperate need to improve the Oiler defense (which I do a lot, especially since so many Oiler fans are obsessed with blaming the young forward corps … #TradeTheMall), I get a lot of pushback on the idea that adding capable defensemen, even defensive defensemen (as long as they can pass), will improve the offense.

But it will.

Hey Peter: PLEASE FIX THE DEFENSE.

The Role of Dump and Chase and Why the Oilers Need It

Another tieback to Costella’s articles speaks to the methodology for entering the zone. I’ve heard a lot of people criticize Todd McLellan’s dump and chase (or rather, place and chase) system as being inappropriate and a poor fit for the Oilers.

To which I say: bullshit. I do not believe McLellan and his system are the problem.

Where this ties to JLC’s work is that she studied zone entries in detail and found some interesting things. One thing that stood out for me is that even the Hawks, the most consistently successful ‘carry it in’ team she studied, dumps and chases 50% of the time.

This contrasts with the big heavy teams like ANA and LAK, who dump and chase 75% of the time.

So are the Oilers dumping and chasing too much? Well, I may have to go back and track some actual numbers, but if I were to hazard a guess, I’d bet the “dump in ratio” was something close to 50% this season. Just like the Hawks in other words!

[Late breaking news: @WheatNOil pointed me at some work by JD Burke, which shows the Oilers at about 40% controlled entries – not quite the Hawks, less than the Kings, and above average for the league. So we can confirm that the Oilers, while dumping more, are not doing so excessively].

Or to put it another way, Toddy Mac is not making this team into the Sharks – I think he’s making them more like the Hawks. Which is exactly what he should be doing.

So why the complaints about the dump and chase? Two reasons:
1 – Because the team is doing it a lot more than last year.
2 – The team is not very good at it.

So it seems like the team is doing it a lot and doing it unsuccessfully.

So the logical conclusion is they must be doing it too much!

And the logical conclusion is probably wrong.

Because without developing a basic level of competence at playing the place and chase – just like the Hawks! – the Oilers cannot successfully play the kind of rush hockey we think they should be playing.

Why?

The reason is that if you become a one-dimensional team, the other teams defense simply adjusts. People seem to forget this – there is at all times an entire group of top notch professional hockey players on the ice from the other team whose sole purpose is to score their own goals while preventing you from scoring your goals. That kind of matters.

If you subscribe to the fantasy that you can carry the puck in all the time, the other team will be more than happy to choke off the neutral zone and stand you up at the blue line, and you’re toast. And frankly, we’ve seen that a lot.

The Oilers aren’t lousy at playing dump and chase – the Oilers are lousy at entering the zone, period. (and to get back to the first point, a huge part of that is the inability to exit the defensive zone with control)

Either way, even the best teams need balance. Talent (which the Oilers have) gives you the ability to carry it in. But dump and chase is what sets up the ability to carry it in.

If you can’t dump and chase, you can’t carry either.

And I believe that’s what McLellan is trying to mold the Oilers into this year – a balanced team that can do either well, depending on what the other team makes available. Stand us up? We’ll dump it in and use our speed to make you look silly. Play to defend the dump and chase? We’ll use our speed and skill to carry it in and make you look silly. (That’s the theory. Now it’s all about practice practice practice on the chase part!)

For football fans, there is an obvious analogy here of how the run sets up the pass.

That leads to another point that JLC made in her articles, which is that regardless of what style you play, the most critical aspect to scoring is getting repeated chances through aggressive puck retrieval. You can do that with speed (like the Hawks) or with size and strength (like the Kings) – but if you don’t get the puck back, you don’t score.

If there’s one thing the Oiler forwards really need to work at, that’s it.

Now please don’t think I’m giving TMc a free pass. I do have some frustrations with the coaching this year. Specifically some of the mystifying roster decisions, and the power play. Then again, as a friend of mine noted, a lot of that may be ‘old voices from the inside hanging around and creating trouble’.  If so – they better be gone this summer.

Hey Peter

Either way, I do think the angst over ‘dump and chase’ is misguided. It needs practice, for sure. And a better instinctive sense of balance between carrying and chasing.

But adding a couple of true Top 4 defenders and getting Klefbom and Davidson back will make a world of difference to getting the puck out from the d zone under control.  And I bet if and when that happens, we’ll all suddenly be amazed at how much more effective the Oilers will be at entering the o zone too, whether by carry or by place and chase.

In other words, and you probably haven’t heard me say this before, but … Hey Peter: FIX THE DEFENSE.

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Edmonton Oilers, Fancy Stats, G Money, NHL

Analog Kid vs Digital Man

The other day, my colleague Zach Laing at BLH tweeted out the following:

Which I found really interesting, because I know for a fact (from multiple Twitter conversations) that Zach isn’t by any means an ‘anti-stats’ guy.

That got me thinking on a few statsy “controversies” that are out there, and now that I’ve got this cool new beer-soaked platform at my beck and call, this seems as good a time as any to explore!

“All these stats are really taking the fun out of the game”

Have you heard that one? I see some variation of it posted every few weeks. Putting myself in the mind of someone who posts that, I find I can both 100% agree with the sentiment and 100% disagree with it.

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I’ll talk about the 100% disagree first – my third point will look at the 100% agree side.

Now, why would I 100% disagree with the idea of stats taking the fun out of the game?

Are you a numbers person? I sure as hell am! I have a PC dedicated to hockey. I run stats between periods and after every Oiler game. I write a post game analysis based heavily on the numbers I generate.

Funny thing though – watching the Oilers play, whether on TV or live – is a 100% visceral experience for me.

I do not think of or track *any* numbers while I’m watching. My heart races, and I tend to swear and shout a lot (my kids have had the ‘driving and watching sports is a swearing exemption’ theory explained to them multiple times). I leap out of my seat and fist pump when a big goal is scored, sulk when the team loses, and curse the Hockey Gords when yet another Oiler goes down to injury.

Other than goals, I’m not thinking about numbers at all. I’ve been watching this team since they joined the NHL, long before I jumped into the hockey stats game, and that aspect hasn’t changed a bit.

So If I’m not thinking numbers during the game, why the heck are you?

Watch the game. Enjoy it. Live and die by the team – just as you always have.

There are no numbers (other than the score) that should be able to sap your enjoyment.

If that’s actually happening, if the existence of hockey stats is somehow affecting your hockey experience, trust me: you’re doing it wrong.

Big Saps

You know what IS taking the enjoyment out of the game?

In no specific order, here’s my list:

Gary Bettman – for crushing so much of the spirit and competitiveness of the game in favour of fake parity;

Daryl Katz, Steve Tambellini, Kevin Lowe, and Craig MacTavish – because even today, we’re stilling watching a team struggling to dig out of years of incompetence at their hands;

grotesque reffing – let it go or call everything, refs, I don’t give a crap, just CALL A CONSISTENT AND FAIR GAME for sh*ts sake (and if you can’t, get people who can);

and a dishonourable mention to the Sportsnet panel (especially Remenda) – I swear I’ve lost five IQ points in the last year just because I couldn’t reach the mute button fast enough.

Want to blame something for taking the enjoyment out of hockey for you?

Blame them.

“Why do we need a number for everything?”

This speaks more directly to Zach’s question. His question actually has two parts:
– do we need numbers for everything?
– just because something doesn’t have numbers, should it get treated as a ‘farce’?

My general philosophy in this area (I won’t pretend it is everyone’s, but I do think it applies to a lot of the people in the hockey stats community) is summed up in this tweet:

It’s a tweet poking fun at the anti-intellectual attitude that sometimes pervades the discussion.

But it also speaks to this idea: “I enjoy the game so much, I’m going to research what factors have supporting evidence that they drive the game and differentiate good teams/players from bad teams/players.”

That’s the process. Note the word evidence highlighted. This is what it’s all about.

Evidence!

In the end, we want evidence because hockey is like so many other human endeavours:

Where does that leave Zach’s question? Frankly, the question of whether some specific aspect of the game *needs* numbers is almost a rhetorical question. Someone will either look at the topic or someone won’t. (Someone probably already has)

But understand, if there are no numbers to provide evidence around that aspect of the game – then whatever thoughts you have on that aspect are opinions. Farce?  Hell no, I sure wouldn’t use that word.  There’s nothing wrong with having an opinion. [You know the old saying…]

As a stats guy, I’m absolutely fine with that. Everyone has an opinion.  Everyone is entitled to an opinion.

It’s only when someone espouses their opinion as fact that things start to get dicey.

Which leads naturally to my last point.

Yes, for certain people, stats really do suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck

Here’s the big thing that has changed over the last decade.

Back then, you’d watch a game with your buds, then discuss serious hockey sh*t after.

Like who really won the game within a game, who was good, who was bad, who got overplayed and who got underplayed. But you’d do it all of it without a shred of evidence, and usually heaped with a liberal dose of trash talk.

Now if you try the same thing these days – if you proferr opinion as fact to someone who actually has the facts – chances are you’re going to lose that exchange.

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And dammit, who likes losing**?

If stats are not your thing, but you used to win hockey arguments based on opinions (because you’re louder, or bigger, or more sober, or have a media platform), ouch, these days have gotta hurt.

And it’s 10x as true in the modern age where instead of just arguing with a couple of co-workers at lunch over whether Mats Sundin is a perimeter player (true story from 10 years ago), you now go online and your opinion is read by hundreds or thousands of people you don’t know.

People who have no reason to preserve your feelings or ego. And are armed with reams and reams of facts.

It can get ugly fast.

I get that. So … I 100% get why those folks are so anti-stats.

But I won’t offer many words of comfort.

After all, isn’t it just a tad ironic that people can jump onto any of dozens of social media platforms, running on sophisticated computing devices, connected with millions of other devices over the technical marvel that is the internet – and complain that the nerds with computers are taking over the game of hockey?

This magic day when super-science mingles with the bright stuff of dreams.

If stats are definitely not your thing, maybe find a group of like-minded fans and have it out instead.

Science!

Meantime, even if I wasn’t personally working to move the state of the hockey stats game forward, I still would appreciate what the last 10 years have brought – which is, in the end, just basic science.  To separate fact from fiction, opinion from reality.

On that note, I will leave you with a few of my favourite “picture quotes” on science.  Just replace the word ‘nature’ with ‘hockey’ and you’re good to go. I think you’ll like them – because if you aren’t the kind to like them, I bet you stopped reading a long time ago!

 

**You know why I got into fancystats in the first place? Because I found myself losing arguments to those damn nerds.  (they just happened to be fellow nerds)  True story.