Player Discussion: Hickey

[Spybot]

I read this and do not see a direct correlation to +/- at all.

If the player's goaltender saves more shots when the player is on the ice compared to his teammates, then that player is going to receive fewer minuses than his teammates and have a better +-. There's a particularly huge disparity between Hickey and the rest of the defensemen in this regard. The article explains Hickey's skill alone cannot account for this disparity.

 

[beach]

If the player's goaltender saves more shots when the player is on the ice compared to his teammates, then that player is going to receive fewer minuses than his teammates and have a better +-. There's a particularly huge disparity between Hickey and the rest of the defensemen in this regard. The article explains Hickey's skill alone cannot account for this disparity.

But it is save % that they are discussing. So, if the team allows less overall SOGs when Hickey is on the ice, but the opponent scores at the same pace per game as when other D-men are out and allow a lot more shots, then the save % will look worse for Hickey, even though he is actually doing a great job.
All I know is that Hickey is on the ice for significantly less net goals against (+/-) than most of the team. To me that is important.

 

[nystromshairstylist]

I would bet the fact that Hickeys on ice SV% is good because he gives up less breakaway/partial breakaway goals than most of our other dmen. When I think of dmen that are on ice for break away goals, I think of Nick Leddy. Can anyone find Nick Leddy's on ice SV% for me?

Also, someone called Hickey soft? He is probably the least soft player on the team. The guy will ALWAYS take the hit to make the play, and will always go into the corners when needed. I like Pulock and Leddy, but both of those guys are so much softer than Hickey its not even remotely funny.

Hickey looks like he's hitting people but is just getting thrown around like a rag doll. He's what, 5-7 145 lbs, at best? He's almost too small for the women's hockey leagues. Plus he makes dumb plays fairly frequently, it is astounding there are still supporters of his around. Shows how far the team has sunk for people to be claiming he's a viable option, or worth much.

 

[SLAPSHOT723]

I had a dream we extended him. It was awful.

 

[Spybot]

But it is save % that they are discussing. So, if the team allows less overall SOGs when Hickey is on the ice, but the opponent scores at the same pace per game as when other D-men are out and allow a lot more shots, then the save % will look worse for Hickey, even though he is actually doing a great job.
All I know is that Hickey is on the ice for significantly less net goals against (+/-) than most of the team. To me that is important.

If the opponent scores at the same pace per game (same number of goals per shot) throughout the whole game, then the on ice save percentage of all defensemen will be the same, regardless of the shots. And Hickey's on ice Sv% is not worse anyway, it's significantly better.

Hickey has also been on the ice for the third highest number of shots against. So to sum up - he allows a hefty number of shots, but the opponent is not scoring when he's on the ice. If you believe this is happening because he has the skill to make it happen, you also believe Hickey can essentially turn a terrible 0.90 goalie into an elite 0.927 one (that's how much his numbers are better compared to when he's not on ice).

It is undeniable that Hickey is on ice for fewer goals against than the rest of the defensemen, that's a fact. The most meaningful question here is whetever that's due to the fact he's a god of defense or not. He's ok, but I don't see him deserve any massive praise for his high plus minus.

 

[beach]

If the opponent scores at the same pace per game (same number of goals per shot) throughout the whole game, then the on ice save percentage of all defensemen will be the same, regardless of the shots. And Hickey's on ice Sv% is not worse anyway, it's significantly better.

Hickey has also been on the ice for the third highest number of shots against. So to sum up - he allows a hefty number of shots, but the opponent is not scoring when he's on the ice. If you believe this is happening because he has the skill to do so, you also believe Hickey can essentially turn a terrible 0.90% goalie into an elite 0.927% one (that's how much his numbers are better compared to when he's not on ice).

It is undeniable that Hickey is on ice for fewer goals against than the rest of the defensemen, that's a fact. The most meaningful question here is whetever that's due to the fact he's a god of defense or not. He's ok, but I don't see him deserve any masssive praise for his high plus minus.

But unless I'm missing something, the stated stats above would actually make the argument stronger that he is playing well compared to his other D-men teammates. I see the point you are making, but honestly, who knows....

I just think that for a number 6 guy, he does a very good job - and that is what he is, a number 6. He is a very heady player, and like some other posters stated, while he is small, he takes a lot of punishment to complete a pass or clear the zone.

To me that is toughness, though not in the classic sense. I don't think his board defenders are trying to tout him as Denis Potvin, but for a number 6 guy he does a good job. He is truly the least of the team's problems.

If the Isles go out and get solid number 1 and 2 guys, and push everyone else down a level, I'd be ok with Hickey leaving. But under the current roster configuration, he is a decent option and truly a better D man than several of his teammates.

 

[Spybot]

But unless I'm missing something, the stated stats above would actually make the argument stronger that he is playing well compared to his other D-men teammates. I see the point you are making, but honestly, who knows....

Only if anyone could establish that it's thanks to his efforts that the on ice sv% is boosted so much in his presence. That would also make him one of the most valuable defensemen in the league.

But no argument with the rest of your post, I wouldn't lose sleep if he was this team's number 6 next season, but I think Davidson (who hasn't been half bad either if you ask me) was acquired to be his (cheaper) replacement.

 

[Willoc94]

Hickey looks like he's hitting people but is just getting thrown around like a rag doll. He's what, 5-7 145 lbs, at best? He's almost too small for the women's hockey leagues. Plus he makes dumb plays fairly frequently, it is astounding there are still supporters of his around. Shows how far the team has sunk for people to be claiming he's a viable option, or worth much.

Thanks for reinforcing the stereotypical answer and not supplying anything valuable to show why he is not a solid 5-6 defenseman. You said he makes dumb plays...His stats would say his valuable plays are very much outweighing his dumb plays.

You're way off on his size attributes (assuming sarcastically on purpose), but once again I identified why that's not quite as relevant as you suggest. Please just tell me when he avoids making a play because he's going to get hit. Isn't that more important? Are you suggesting that Brock Nelson is some type of physical juggernaut? Boy he's a tall guy.

 

[Willoc94]

Hickey trucked Lucic tonight - SMALL!

 

[wingnutks]

Hickey looks like he's hitting people but is just getting thrown around like a rag doll. He's what, 5-7 145 lbs, at best? He's almost too small for the women's hockey leagues. Plus he makes dumb plays fairly frequently, it is astounding there are still supporters of his around. Shows how far the team has sunk for people to be claiming he's a viable option, or worth much.

As Hickey destroys Lucic...

 

[wingnutks]

Lolo lol

 

[Willoc94]

Nystrom, can you disparage Andrew Ladd and Brock Nelson before Saturday's game? Only in that case, you'd be right... but Please and thank you

 

[redbull]

I've provided plenty of material and guidance you have completely ignored. Links to sites/articles. I'm not going to be your personal stats analyst if you refuse to do even minimal work yourself.


Blatantly repeating myself here, I've already said that -

Plus minus is practically useless for this purpose (predicting future scoring).


1, There's no such thing as an eye test. An eye test is just my or your personal opinion on the player you gain by watching him. Everybody has their own "eye test".
2, I'd expect the team-tracked stats to be superior to what's publicly available. Then again they AREN'T publicly available so I don't understand what relevance this has on what we're talking about here, why are you suddenly comparing public stats to what teams have available?



Mostly because you've stopped reading my posts -
xGF is the metric that's better at predicting future scoring than corsi, better than plus minus (goal differential). That's its point, that's the reason why it's being used, worked on and further improved.
And I have no idea what causation you're talking about here. That's not a word you can just casually use in the middle of a sentence. What is supposed to cause what?


As usual this ends with you not responding to even a half of my post, even though I painstakingly make an effort to reply to everything you write. Did you mean to write "my" opinion is based on a stat that isn't proven or repeatable? Because that's plus minus. *I* haven't really made a judgement on Hickey using corsi/xGF, but they are most certainly repeatable - that's the whole point.



What does "better" mean? I'm probably asking this for the fourth time, you've ignored me every single time. If your idea of best is to have the highest plus minus, then Hickey is the best.


Your hypothesis is reliant on the premise that it's thanks to Hickey's skill alone that the Islanders have scored 14 more goals than their opponents with him on the ice and therefore he solely should get the credit. You provide no proof of this anywhere, in fact I've shown that Hickey has been the beneficiary of extraordinary goltending luck this season and then provided a link to an article where using high school statistics they show the players don't have a significant impact on the on ice save percentage. You refused to read it/understand it/react to it and called it not relevant.


Blatantly false, read from the start.


Considering how many times I've had to repeat myself, I'm starting to seriously doubt your genuine curiousity and willingness to investigate yourself.

I also started to doubt the value of this discussion about two posts back. If you're interested in continuing, read from the start, read the article (written by a person with a statistics degree), Hockey Talk: On player control over save percentage

and tell me what is wrong with it or how it doesn't help explain why Hickey has such a high +-. Otherwise I don't have any interest in having to repeat myself for the 5th time.

I read the articles on player control over save percentage. It's meaningless to me because it's a red herring, who the hell even thinks that a player can impact save percentage? not sure why I (or anyone) should address this.

I clicked and read every link you shared, they are simply to articles that argue something that doesn't apply to anything I've asked you. You keep bringing up my plus-minus single stat and please ignore that because if you don't think it's meaningful then I asked you to point out a meaningful stat to evaluate defensemen. I saw the link to Hickey's shot location heat map - doesn't do anything for me.

You point me to xGF and I found that in an article, linked to Corsica. But I don't see how that metric helps evaluate a player or team. I also don't see any way to compare individual players based on that metric, on that site.

What I'm looking for is really simple, yet you've been unable to produce it. So I'll try.

here's a link to Corsica's xGF% (descending) for the NYI this year


please help me understand, based on this table, what this means for who's good/bad, which dman is good/bad, on what metric(s)

 

[PK Cronin]

 

[buud]

a single hit proves nothing. put them both in a ring, and i KNOW who you will be betting on.

Hickey plays hard, sometimes. does things like this, which is a combination of timing and technique, mostly. used his body weight efficiently and caught a much larger opponent off guard. good for him.

but, he also gets pushed off the puck quite easily. i saw it twice in 1 shift, last night. defence is a tough position to play. mistakes are often magnified, compared to forwards, when end results are factored in. if he can't neutralise an opponent in front of the net, or effectively shield the puck form attacking forwards, the team will suffer.

fortunately for him, he has decent offensive instincts. but, his shot is weak, and his average skating does not give him the ability to get back in the play, when he gets burned on his pinches.

i give him an A+ for heart, B- for offensive instincts, and D- for defensive effectiveness.

with the emergence of a bunch of cost-controlled youth, and his salary, i am skeptical that he comes back.

 

[DarkHorse2]

I want the guy to cash in hard this summer somewhere, but at this point I want Davidson or Mayfield at the #6 spot, not Hickey.

 

[buud]

i chose NYI, and then sorted by XGF%. i gotta say, it looks about right to me, but again, i doubt it is considered completely accurate. but WTF do i know.

i would've thought Cizikas, and Boychuk were better, but i think they get the toughest assignments, and not sure if this rating factors in calibre of opponent.



still trying to figure this shit out...

 

[PK Cronin]

a single hit proves nothing. put them both in a ring, and i KNOW who you will be betting on.

Hickey plays hard, sometimes. does things like this, which is a combination of timing and technique, mostly. used his body weight efficiently and caught a much larger opponent off guard. good for him.

but, he also gets pushed off the puck quite easily. i saw it twice in 1 shift, last night. defence is a tough position to play. mistakes are often magnified, compared to forwards, when end results are factored in. if he can't neutralise an opponent in front of the net, or effectively shield the puck form attacking forwards, the team will suffer.

fortunately for him, he has decent offensive instincts. but, his shot is weak, and his average skating does not give him the ability to get back in the play, when he gets burned on his pinches.

i give him an A+ for heart, B- for offensive instincts, and D- for defensive effectiveness.

with the emergence of a bunch of cost-controlled youth, and his salary, i am skeptical that he comes back.

I wasn't making a statement about the player, just providing a video to a nice hit he provided in the game.

 

[MJF]

I wasn't making a statement about the player, just providing a video to a nice hit he provided in the game.

He went after Tom Wilson too. Still don’t want Hickey back next year.

 

[nystromshairstylist]

a single hit proves nothing. put them both in a ring, and i KNOW who you will be betting on.

Hickey plays hard, sometimes. does things like this, which is a combination of timing and technique, mostly. used his body weight efficiently and caught a much larger opponent off guard. good for him.

but, he also gets pushed off the puck quite easily. i saw it twice in 1 shift, last night. defence is a tough position to play. mistakes are often magnified, compared to forwards, when end results are factored in. if he can't neutralise an opponent in front of the net, or effectively shield the puck form attacking forwards, the team will suffer.

fortunately for him, he has decent offensive instincts. but, his shot is weak, and his average skating does not give him the ability to get back in the play, when he gets burned on his pinches.

i give him an A+ for heart, B- for offensive instincts, and D- for defensive effectiveness.

with the emergence of a bunch of cost-controlled youth, and his salary, i am skeptical that he comes back.

My response to the posts above questioning my earlier statement on Hickey's awfulness is very well described in this post.

 

[Willoc94]

My response to the posts above questioning my earlier statement on Hickey's awfulness is very well described in this post.

That's not at all what you said though. I give up. You see it one way, I see it another. Cheers!

 

[Willoc94]

a single hit proves nothing. put them both in a ring, and i KNOW who you will be betting on.

Hickey plays hard, sometimes. does things like this, which is a combination of timing and technique, mostly. used his body weight efficiently and caught a much larger opponent off guard. good for him.

but, he also gets pushed off the puck quite easily. i saw it twice in 1 shift, last night. defence is a tough position to play. mistakes are often magnified, compared to forwards, when end results are factored in. if he can't neutralise an opponent in front of the net, or effectively shield the puck form attacking forwards, the team will suffer.

fortunately for him, he has decent offensive instincts. but, his shot is weak, and his average skating does not give him the ability to get back in the play, when he gets burned on his pinches.

i give him an A+ for heart, B- for offensive instincts, and D- for defensive effectiveness.

with the emergence of a bunch of cost-controlled youth, and his salary, i am skeptical that he comes back.

For context, the single hit comments were more in response to a debate earlier yesterday where one side suggested Hickey could never hit anyone without coming out the loser. It was fitting that he then proceeded to deck Lucic later that night. We had to chime in with that ironic outcome.

And I actually made a similar point yesterday that anyone can hit anyone in the league with proper technique and leverage, and most importantly, the desire to throw everything you have into your hit so I agree with your point there and the A+ heart comment. This team is so heartless at times that I'd hate to lose a committed player such as him.

I'd bump his D effectiveness up to a C+ but for the most part I agree with your assessment. Interesting though that he's now top 10 in the league for Dmen in Even Strength Points per 60 (min 30 games). And really the one of the only 3rd pairing guys in the top 50.

Only thing I would respectfully disagree on. I haven't really seen any of the emerging youth referred to take a great big step except for maybe Pelech (still a bit inconsistent though) and Aho because he had absolutely no expectations. I like Pulock but he leaves me wanting more.

You are right though. Our other contractual commitments will probably resolve Hickey's fate all on its own.

 

[buud]

I wasn't making a statement about the player, just providing a video to a nice hit he provided in the game.

np. sorry if i came across as crass.

Interesting though that he's now top 10 in the league for Dmen in Even Strength Points per 60 (min 30 games). And really the one of the only 3rd pairing guys in the top 50.

Only thing I would respectfully disagree on. I haven't really seen any of the emerging youth referred to take a great big step except for maybe Pelech (still a bit inconsistent though) and Aho because he had absolutely no expectations. I like Pulock but he leaves me wanting more.

You are right though. Our other contractual commitments will probably resolve Hickey's fate all on its own.

i wasn't aware of of hickey being top 10... good point.

as far as a replacement for Hickey, i am hoping that Snow can add at least 1 top 4 D, which of course, means the addition of a top 4 salary. given that, coupled with a reasonable chance that Hickey wants $3 mil/per, and i just don't see room for him.

i think Toews has earned a long look, and i like Davidson's game.

Ladd, Boychuk, De Haan/FA/trade, Davidson, Pelech, Pulock, Mayfield, Toews.

Aho looks to be serviceable, Vande Somple looking better than i expected, and i just heard a bit on Hostra radio, about how well Wotherspoon is playing. maybe these guys need another year, but i would say that we have a good, but inexperienced pipeline.

 

[Spybot]

who the hell even thinks that a player can impact save percentage?

People in this thread. Don't make me go one page back and link you the exact posts, I think you can handle finding them yourself if you don't believe me. Also, originally I linked that article as an answer to a question from a poster that was directly asking about that. In any case, if you now agree that Hickey cannot impact save percentage and his plus minus is inflated due to factors out of his control, there's nothing to argue about anymore.

I saw the link to Hickey's shot location heat map - doesn't do anything for me.

Ok, maybe the fact that I linked to Hickey's specific player page misled you, that was just a random example, I mostly wanted to make you aware that site exists and how it can be used - which I've already explained.

What I'm looking for is really simple, yet you've been unable to produce it. So I'll try.

No. What you're looking for is about as simple as the holy grail. You're looking for a "simple" stat that could tell you who the best player is without any thinking or reading comprehension required from you. That's extremely difficult to provide, not simple. All the while you're not even able to define what you consider a good player.


In your image, we see that Eberle's expectedGF% is close to his actual GF% suggesting that playing in this system he's neither over nor under achieving at the moment as far as his GF% is concerned.

Ladd's GF% is obscenely high at 60% (guessing his time playing alongside Barzal had something to do with it) and is predicted to regress. Even so (and despite all the hate he gets), he's clearly not hurting the team on the scoreboard and is not expected to in the future. He sure isn't scoring, but at least he isn't bleeding goals against (which can't be said about everyone on this team).

Barzal's actual GF% is also much higher than his predicted GF% which would suggest he's due for some regression in this regard. Though it's reassuring to note that his xGF% is still higher than the Islanders' team xGF% which is 46.7 and one of the worst in the league. If you needed any further proof that the team and their system sucks then there you go.

Worth noting are also the 1st line's (mediocre) results - as we know it is an open secret at this point that the Isles 2nd line (whether with Ladd or with Beauvillier) has been their best most consistent line. The 1st line was riding some really high shooting percentages early in the season and has since cooled down significantly as we all noticed. If we had followed their xGF%, we could have predicted this (matter of fact people did).

That's roughly the short version - all the stat does is attempt to predict future GF% (which is many times impacted by factors out of a player's control) and identify canditates for (positive or negative) regression.
As for comparing players - as a rule of thumb the higher xGF%, the better the player has been in their particular role. Of course Tavares' shot metrics would be better if he played on the 4th line so you can't really say this stat is saying Cizikas is basically as good as Tavares.

 

[ThreeLeftSkates]

Stat guys-
Hickey's hook resulted in a PP goal. Does that show up in your stats?