Faceoffs

[billingtons ghost]

Has anyone posted a good discussion about the value of winning faceoffs? Specifically, I am interested in the criticality of the faceoff event.

I know FO% are close enough to meaningless bc losing a faceoff at center ice to start a game is next to meaningless, while losing one in your own zone on the PK with a minute left might decide a hockey game.

I'm looking for the statistical terms to better describe and discuss such a phenomena, wherein an event we are keeping track of might vary widely in importance because of the situation.

How can this be addressed to create a meaningful face off statistic? I mean guys like Bergeron and Jarrod Staal's skills in the dot in a playoff game have to be better accounted for than just FO%. Thanks

Click to read more...

 

[morehockeystats]

The PBP HTML report from the NHL has a lot of data for faceoffs:
* Participants and winner
* Zone location
* Strength (including EN)
You can thus figure out who had to put the stick first.
The player data has the handedness factor. Together with the event coordinates in the play-by-play JSON report it allows you to conclude who has that advantage in the faceoff.

In addition, since the faceoff is a zero-sum game, you can apply Elo to it, but the volatility coefficient should be extremely low due to the high frequency of the event.

I am trying to do something along these lines in my Faceoff Leaders page.

 

[billingtons ghost]

The PBP HTML report from the NHL has a lot of data for faceoffs:
* Participants and winner
* Zone location
* Strength (including EN)
You can thus figure out who had to put the stick first.
The player data has the handedness factor. Together with the event coordinates in the play-by-play JSON report it allows you to conclude who has that advantage in the faceoff.

In addition, since the faceoff is a zero-sum game, you can apply Elo to it, but the volatility coefficient should be extremely low due to the high frequency of the event.

I am trying to do something along these lines in my Faceoff Leaders page.

Excellent, thank you. Do you have a git repo? I'm a developer in search of a project...


Edit: and I didn't mean to overstep. I'm a long time C programmer but I've been teaching AP Java in high school. I'm just thinking of getting into hacking away on different hockey stats... So I'm starting to read more of this sub's threads and seeing what resources and code I can borrow to get a running start.

 

[morehockeystats]

Excellent, thank you. Do you have a git repo? I'm a developer in search of a project...


Edit: and I didn't mean to overstep. I'm a long time C programmer but I've been teaching AP Java in high school. I'm just thinking of getting into hacking away on different hockey stats... So I'm starting to read more of this sub's threads and seeing what resources and code I can borrow to get a running start.

I haven't a public reliable git repo. I am working on it. If I release it, it's going to be under GPL Affero v3.
The project is in Perl.

 

[billingtons ghost]

I haven't a public reliable git repo. I am working on it. If I release it, it's going to be under GPL Affero v3.
The project is in Perl.

Very cool. Thanks for your efforts and info.

 

[Fourier]

Has anyone posted a good discussion about the value of winning faceoffs? Specifically, I am interested in the criticality of the faceoff event.

I know FO% are close enough to meaningless bc losing a faceoff at center ice to start a game is next to meaningless, while losing one in your own zone on the PK with a minute left might decide a hockey game.

I'm looking for the statistical terms to better describe and discuss such a phenomena, wherein an event we are keeping track of might vary widely in importance because of the situation.

How can this be addressed to create a meaningful face off statistic? I mean guys like Bergeron and Jarrod Staal's skills in the dot in a playoff game have to be better accounted for than just FO%. Thanks

This paper is interesting reading:

https://www.statsportsconsulting.com/wp-content/uploads/FaceoffAnalysis12-12.pdf

This one might be very relevant to your question:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/330955747_Winning_Is_Not_Everything_A_contextual_analysis_of_hockey_face-offs

 

[morehockeystats]

Very cool. Thanks for your efforts and info.

I can send you a dump of the faceoffs I have. But it's without the deduced stick first/last data, you'll have to figure out that stuff yourself.

It's from Mongodb, so it will be a JSON.

> db.FAC.count({season: {$gte: 2007}});
1106405

 

[billingtons ghost]

This paper is interesting reading:

https://www.statsportsconsulting.com/wp-content/uploads/FaceoffAnalysis12-12.pdf

This one might be very relevant to your question:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/330955747_Winning_Is_Not_Everything_A_contextual_analysis_of_hockey_face-offs

Thanks! This is really interesting - particularly the second article breaking down the importance of 'clean' wins. I'd be curious if there's also a time-dependence (overtime, last minutes of a period etc) that leads to a change in strategy in the DZ faceoffs - looking for tie ups - and I wonder if that impacts Clean Win%.

Good stuff.