Standard definitions for all advanced stats?

[SaskRinkRat]

As someone who dabbles a bit in hockey analytics, but spends a lot of time dealing with data and analytics in a professional (non-hockey) setting, I feel like one of the biggest barriers to advancing the use of hockey analytics is the lack of standard definitions for the metrics we pay most attention to. Or at least a lack of access to those definitions.

Sometimes the lack of definition is in the metric calculation itself (i.e., the math that goes into coming up with a QoC percentage for a player), but often it's in the underlying event observed on the ice that eventually winds up being counted (or excluded) from a metric (i.e., what specific play counts as a scoring chance, or what counts as a "carry in" zone entry vs. a dump in).

Are any of you aware of any work going on to create a sort of meta database for analytics? Perhaps we could get a discussion going here about what definitions are available, the degree to which they are accepted and applied with consistency, and whether there are areas where standardization is still required?

Click to read more...

 

[Bear of Bad News]

I keep all of my goaltending ones here:
http://hockeygoalies.org/stats/glossary.html

(More interesting are at the bottom)

 

[SaskRinkRat]

Those are good explanations.

I'm going start updating this thread periodically with stats I see that I think need better definition. By "better definition", I don't necessarily mean that whoever is posting them isn't doing a good job of explaining them, though that is part of it. What I'm more concerned with is that the analytics community eventually comes to an agreement on what each stat means and how it's calculated, and then makes those definitions accessible to the average viewer.

I'll break them into two categories: 1) clarity required on how the stat is calculated; 2) clarity required on how the stat is tracked (i.e., what is being counted).


Calculations

- Quality of Competition
- Quality of Teammates


Tracking

- Zone entries - what counts as an attempted entry, what counts as a successful entry, what types of entries are there, how do we define each type?

- Scoring chances - where does the player need to be on the ice, does the puck need to hit the net, etc.?

 

[SaskRinkRat]

On the subject of defining scoring chances, what do we know about how that metric is defined?

Questions:

Does a play have to result in a shot on goal (or even a shot attempt) to be considered a scoring chance?

What area does the play have to originate from in order to be considered a scoring chance?