Is there an equivalent of a "Moneyball" for the NHL?

[bluemandan]

You ever watch Michael Handzus on the PK? As a Flyers fan, I'd cheer because it broke up cross ice passes for a clean breakaway constantly, then cry when I realized it was the mud monster, and he would be caught before he hit the red line. Takeaways aren't always the best hahaha.

As for Moneyball, it'd never work in the NHL, but the closest I think we see to the concept is the Predators. They continuously ice a competitive team every year, on a budget. They get the most out of the players, and when someone prices out, they manufacture a replacement. Baseball is a stat sport because it's X vs. Y, there are so many more variables in hockey and so much left to uncertainty. You smack one out of the park in baseball, it's a homerun. No matter how perfect of a shot you take, goalie can always interject.

Nailed it. "Moneyball" concepts in hockey are currently shown by teams like Nashville, Phoenix, and St. Louis. They roll three decent scoring lines that can play defense without having super-star forwards. For every one Brad Richards or Zach Parise, teams like St. Louis or Nashville sign three Alex Steen's or Mike Fisher's. Also having a solid pipeline of player's contributing on their ELC's helps keep costs down.

 

[Shrimper]

There's too many variables in hockey for this to work.

 

[ColdSteel2]

The trap. You could take a team of average players and they can outperform their talent in the standings. Generally, a good defensive player who doesn't put up a lot of offense in underpaid in relation to his contributions to the team winning.

 

[Missionhockey]

There's too many variables in hockey for this to work.

Are there not variables in baseball in consider as well? Instead of having a hot goalie, having a hot pitcher that can't be hit? Or the weather?

 

[Talks to Goalposts]

You ever watch Michael Handzus on the PK? As a Flyers fan, I'd cheer because it broke up cross ice passes for a clean breakaway constantly, then cry when I realized it was the mud monster, and he would be caught before he hit the red line. Takeaways aren't always the best hahaha.

As for Moneyball, it'd never work in the NHL, but the closest I think we see to the concept is the Predators. They continuously ice a competitive team every year, on a budget. They get the most out of the players, and when someone prices out, they manufacture a replacement. Baseball is a stat sport because it's X vs. Y, there are so many more variables in hockey and so much left to uncertainty. You smack one out of the park in baseball, it's a homerun. No matter how perfect of a shot you take, goalie can always interject.

Your making a huge leap from, "its harder than baseball because of X" to "it will never work." That doesn't follow at all.


All it actually means is the methods must be more sophisticated for them to work.


One of the real lessons of "Moneyball" was that you're understanding doesn't need to be perfect to be successful, it just has to be better than your competitors. You don't need a "Grand Unified Theory of Hockey" to have a leg up on other teams, just a better idea of what to value.


If you want to see an actual "Moneypuck" team, it was last year's Kings, who were built exactly the way modern hockey statistical theory said they should, especially on the acquisitions of Penner, Richards and Carter.

 

[Ronk]

I don't think you can quite follow a statistical method as you can in baseball. Hockey involves more team chemistry & structured systems.
Baseball players are far more independent & consistent with offensive statistics. Barring RBI, a player's teammates have no impact for their at-bat.

The bolded is debatable. As a Dodger fan, watching the pitches Matt Kemp got before and after the acquisition of Adrian Gonzalez was night and day. He just didn't hit them as often with his brain still being splattered on the outfield wall and all.

 

[Finlandia WOAT]

Baseball can broken down into multiple 1 on 1 battles between the batter and the pitcher. The analysis of these battles in statistics are what we know as sabremetrics. For this reason alone, it is hard to apply sabremetrics to hockey.

The concept of "Moneyball" was Billy Beane taking players who excelled in this 1 on 1 battle, but had been cast aside by the Major League's due to perceived deficiencies (or actual deficiencies) in their game ("No, but he gets on base.") It meant that, through a new way of looking at baseball, he was able to get players who vastly outperformed their contracts.

For the concept to work in hockey, all we would need is someone who is ahead of the curve and builds a team a completely new way, the likes of which no one has ever seen. We kind of saw this with the 'Canes in 2006, where the forwards were built for speed and success on the powerplay rather than for grit and excellence at even strength. The defense was defense by committee rather than one super defensemen leading the pack like we have seen before and since. But such a concept would be "Moneyball" in name only.

 

[Shrimper]

Are there not variables in baseball in consider as well? Instead of having a hot goalie, having a hot pitcher that can't be hit? Or the weather?

A lot more comes into play in hockey though.

 

[Missionhockey]

A lot more comes into play in hockey though.

The same does with soccer, yet there are Europeam leagues that are considering sabremetrics now too. My point is not to follow the movie to a tee, but have a different, unbiased way to evaluate players other than "he's a hard worker" or "he's a great two-way player" which seem to be subjective IMO.

 

[Elvs]

I think a method that could be tried is to build a pp/pk team. Meaning that, you only bring in players that are usually good on special teams. But then on the other hand, you could have five players who are historically strong on the power play, and your PP could still end up not clicking at all...

 

[PumpkinBombX]

My opinion of baseball is it really isn't a team sport. It's an individual sport played by a team. Thus individual stats are fairly important. In Hockey team stats are more important.

 

[Pentothal]

The same does with soccer, yet there are Europeam leagues that are considering sabremetrics now too. My point is not to follow the movie to a tee, but have a different, unbiased way to evaluate players other than "he's a hard worker" or "he's a great two-way player" which seem to be subjective IMO.

Well, Liverpool tried.. and it was a disaster.

It doesn't seem to work nearly as well in more dynamic sports like soccer and hockey.

 

[Mathletic]

Well, Liverpool tried.. and it was a disaster.

It doesn't seem to work nearly as well in more dynamic sports like soccer and hockey.

works just fine for Machester City, Chelsea and Seattle

 

[PullHard]

You ever watch Michael Handzus on the PK? As a Flyers fan, I'd cheer because it broke up cross ice passes for a clean breakaway constantly, then cry when I realized it was the mud monster, and he would be caught before he hit the red line. Takeaways aren't always the best hahaha.

As for Moneyball, it'd never work in the NHL, but the closest I think we see to the concept is the Predators. They continuously ice a competitive team every year, on a budget. They get the most out of the players, and when someone prices out, they manufacture a replacement. Baseball is a stat sport because it's X vs. Y, there are so many more variables in hockey and so much left to uncertainty. You smack one out of the park in baseball, it's a homerun. No matter how perfect of a shot you take, goalie can always interject.

Maybe going deeper, players with the best takeaway/giveaway ratio, matched with logic (Handzus is good defensively, but as a GM, I don't expect him to be a key contributor offensively)

 

[Talks to Goalposts]

Maybe going deeper, players with the best takeaway/giveaway ratio, matched with logic (Handzus is good defensively, but as a GM, I don't expect him to be a key contributor offensively)

I'd think anything with real time stats like hits, takeaways, and giveaways are missing the point. What you need to be looking at is goals against and what leads to that. Don't get too wrapped up in what ends up being a matter of style rather than substance.

 

[PullHard]

I'd think anything with real time stats like hits, takeaways, and giveaways are missing the point. What you need to be looking at is goals against and what leads to that. Don't get too wrapped up in what ends up being a matter of style rather than substance.

Well, its all about context. And yeah, hockey is harder to narrow down than baseball, but there could be a method to it. I did a project like this in high school about best bang for your buck players. Excluding ELCs, the best players were the expensive ones. Yes, they cost a lot, but there is a reason for that. I think the only one making not much money was Parise because he was on his 2nd contract at the time IIRC. I'm a little fuzzy, it was about 5 or 6 years ago, but I'm just trying to think outside of that box with this. There has to be a somewhat accurate way to measure puck pursuit.

 

[Pentothal]

works just fine for Machester City, Chelsea and Seattle

I have no idea about Seattle, but Manchester City and Chelsea are basically doped clubs spending their sugar daddies money on the latest shiny toy, over and over again. Can't really see how their transfer strategies relate to money ball.

 

[Mathletic]

I have no idea about Seattle, but Manchester City and Chelsea are basically doped clubs spending their sugar daddies money on the latest shiny toy, over and over again. Can't really see how their transfer strategies relate to money ball.

I'm not going to pretend I'm an expert on soccer analytics ... or simply soccer ... but moneyball isn't really about not spending money. It's more about objective analysis than anything else. There's a bunch of big spending baseball teams that can't win ... i.e. Cubs and Mets ...

That said, I kept an article on soccer analytics from last summer. I read it quickly but it seemed interesting, may you'd want to take a look.

http://theshinguardian.com/2012/08/30/the-n-a-s-a-nerds-attack-soccer-analytics-roundtable/

 

[Prototype]

It would be interesting to see stats on pass attempts vs. pass completion %. This is a fairly common metric in soccer, and can shed some insight to team play success.

The more successful touches in a zone often lead to higher scoring chances.

 

[struckbyaparkedcar]

I searched Phoenix and was floored to find one result.

They supposedly got killed trading Wolski for Roszival. Roszival ended last season on the top pairing. They picked up Antoine Vermette for picks during his worst season in Columbus, and he led the team in playoff goals. Korpikoski turned into a great defensive forward. Vrbata found his game again. Klesla stayed relatively healthy. Gordon turned into a solid third liner after a decidedly meh career in Washington. Ray Whitney was an absurd value. And don't even get me started about Mike Smith.

They've also been more forthcoming about their use of advanced statistics (Gordon racked up QoC numbers with the Caps despite being used sparsely, for example) than any team I can think of.

 

[ot92s]

I would like individual puck possesion numbers.

Or you could even chain them together. Like, say chara digs the puck ou of the corner, hits bergy on the breakout, who the weaves and dishes to seguin. The posession clock would start once chara controls it and each player in the chain gets credit for the possesion until it is turned over.

 

[johnunit]

The problem with hockey is that it's not a boring enough sport to be dominated by stats

 

[Thesensation19*]

I believe hockey is missing a stat and it could be very easy to fix.

NHL (hockey) should start keeping track of primary and secondary assists rather than all any assist is just an assist.

So you would really tell the difference between guys who truly set up a player for a goal and a player who just gets the puck out of a zone. It could be done like NBA rebounds. You have a total amount of rebounds (assists) calculated but you can easily compare ones offensive to defensive rebounds (primary to secondary assists).

I wonder who would have the most

 

[Thesensation19*]

For those who mentioned the Vancouver GM and his approach with the Nucks... I never heard anything about money ball method but Vancouver has heavily focused on new sleep methods. A company that has studied sleep has come up with new methods to provide better and more sleep for anyone including pro athletes. Players are fine with it and teams are happy with the stats that show it has helped them improve their Winning % especially on the road

 

[Thesensation19*]

The closest thing to Moneyball for hockey

http://prohockeytalk.nbcsports.com/...-moneyball-style-formula-for-elite-nhl-teams/

2010