Hockey analysis
February 27th, 2009 | Published in off topic, other sports | 2 Comments
by Myron Logan
With Baseball Prospectus’ introduction of their newest site, Puck Prospectus, I thought it would be a good time to talk a little hockey. Well, maybe not. I know very little about Hockey, but I think BP’s new site will be a good place to start, if you’re looking to get into analysis of the game, similar to what we see in baseball. Of course, it’s a vastly different sport, and hockey is nowhere near baseball, in terms of sophistication in analysis and research (at least, I don’t think it is). That said, it’s not like the game hasn’t been studied in-depth. And it’s not necessarily a bad thing in the first place, with many, many areas of the game yet to be explored.
Often times, when I find myself reading some hockey analysis, it’s like I’m entering the conversation midstream, and I’ve missed too much already to really follow along. Hopefully, PP will sort of start with the basics, while advancing the analysis of the sport at the same time. If their previous sites are any indication, I think it will definitely be something to keep an eye on (if you have any interest in hockey, of course). The stable of writers looks pretty impressive, though I’m admittedly not familiar with most of them. There’s some discussion at Tango’s blog, who I know has done lots of work in hockey, though I’m not sure how much of it has been released to the public.
By the way, here are a few of the other hockey analysis sites I know of:
Surely, there are many more ….
February 27th, 2009 at 2:23 am (#)
I love me some hockey (tied with college football for my 2nd favorite sport). Recently started blogging on the Red Wings (being from MI and all). Here’s a link to a bunch of blogs and whatnot that are some of the “sabermetric” blogs of the Hockey world.
I really recommend the Brodeur is a Fraud blog. It’s basically attempting to separate what the goalie accomplishes from the team (think DIPS work on Pitching). I JUST got into this back around the time hockey started this year (even emailed Tom since he’s worked for a ton of NHL teams and he pointed me to the link I gave with a list of blogs), and just haven’t delved that deep into things on the “sabermetric” level. The NHL is releasing real time play-by-play stats which makes things track-able that weren’t before. For instance, at each rink there’s a guy doing just about one stat each and one sits in front of computer and ‘guesstimates’ where a shot was taken from on the ice and who took that shot. He does this for every shot in the game. This is uploaded and, i’m guessing like Pitchf/x and/or hitf/x, has allowed some analysts to get Shot Neutral Quality numbers against goalies - a.k.a. sees what goalies faces the higher quality shots versus ones that may face shots more consistently from 30+ feet out.
I find it fascinating because with baseball, the math makes it easy to separate things, especially offensively, because it’s a series of acts from individuals that make up the game, where as hockey is so fluid and interconnected and a lot depends on who you’re playing, who you’re playing with, and what era you’re playing in, etc etc.
February 27th, 2009 at 2:24 pm (#)
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