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

[Finlandia WOAT]

The closest thing to Moneyball we have seen in hockey was the Hurricanes in 2006.

 

[Phil Parent]

The 1996 Panthers need to be mentioned here. Except for Beezer, none of these guys can be considered superstars and Beezer's superstardom was a very episodic affair.

You had a bunch of broken toys together, a bunch of hard workers, but all they were really were a bunch of third liners, most of which had been rejected by their previous teams. The team had 12 third liners on offense! And it worked great! ALL these guys are moneyball players. Fitzgerald, Hull, Mellanby, Skrudland, Lowry, Lindsay, Dvorak etc... good at everything, masters of nothing, and one of my favourite teams ever.

 

[Bear of Bad News]

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

I'm not sure what you're going for here, but baseball circa 1985 had comparable statistical metrics to hockey circa 2013.

Either baseball got more boring since 1985, or hockey's a few decades behind in finding the arbitrage opportunities.

I know which conclusion I'm betting on.

 

[Archangel]

I'm not sure what you're going for here, but baseball circa 1985 had comparable statistical metrics to hockey circa 2013.

Either baseball got more boring since 1985, or hockey's a few decades behind in finding the arbitrage opportunities.

I know which conclusion I'm betting on.

As someone who loves numbers and uses everything he can when it comes to fantasy hockey, I do not think there is an equivalent way to use the moneyball idea and move it into th hockey world.

Baseball for stats are a more indivudually driven stat structure where as hockey has there stats more team or line structured. When a guy is up to bat it his him vs the pitcher, when someone is on the ice, it is not a one to one battle, there are 5 other guys on the ice who are on his team and to achieve the goal it will take joint venture. While there are some stats that can be used such as number of shots or shooting percentage, it would come down to how you view the stats.

Is a shot on goal the same as a hit or is goal the same as a hit?
Some guys get lots of shots on net but do not score becuase they have a week shot and unless you have a greater breakdown of the speed of the shot being taken by each player, it would be difficult to figure out that even though he has a lots of shots, the reason he is not scoring more may not be because the goalies are good, it is that the shots are bad

 

[Bear of Bad News]

As someone who loves numbers and uses everything he can when it comes to fantasy hockey, I do not think there is an equivalent way to use the moneyball idea and move it into th hockey world.

I agree to a point, for the simple reason that if it were straightforward, it would have been done already.

It is being done - and it will be done - differently in hockey than in baseball.

 

[Archangel]

I agree to a point, for the simple reason that if it were straightforward, it would have been done already.

It is being done - and it will be done - differently in hockey than in baseball.

One thing that would need to be brought into the topic is who was on the ice at the time of the goal, puck control time and number of passes involved. Also, like in baseball. you would weigh goals different if you were facing the number 1 goalie or the backup. LA the weighing would not be that different. However on some teams when you have a huge difference in how good the goalie is would need to be factored into it.

 

[almostawake]

As someone who loves numbers and uses everything he can when it comes to fantasy hockey, I do not think there is an equivalent way to use the moneyball idea and move it into th hockey world.

Baseball for stats are a more indivudually driven stat structure where as hockey has there stats more team or line structured. When a guy is up to bat it his him vs the pitcher, when someone is on the ice, it is not a one to one battle, there are 5 other guys on the ice who are on his team and to achieve the goal it will take joint venture. While there are some stats that can be used such as number of shots or shooting percentage, it would come down to how you view the stats.

Is a shot on goal the same as a hit or is goal the same as a hit?
Some guys get lots of shots on net but do not score becuase they have a week shot and unless you have a greater breakdown of the speed of the shot being taken by each player, it would be difficult to figure out that even though he has a lots of shots, the reason he is not scoring more may not be because the goalies are good, it is that the shots are bad

People get really trapped in this idea that it's about stats. It is not about stats. At all.

It is about data.

In baseball it turned out that a lot of the historically recorded stats are also useful data for the purposes of understanding the game.

In hockey that is much less true.

But that has little bearing on the question of whether or not the game can be understood better through data. It just means that a bigger investment will have to be made to acquire, refine, and exploit the really useful data.

Look what the guys over at STATS are doing with SportVU:

http://www.sportvu.com/basketball_data.asp

http://www.sportvu.com/americanfootball.asp

Using tracking algorithms, it would not be difficult to extract the X/Y position of every player on the ice for every second of every game. With a bit more development, it would be possible to track the puck's X/Y position, perhaps even it's Z coordinate.

I have a lot of trouble believing that that data, competently analyzed (heck, even incompetently analyzed) wouldn't produce a wealth of information exploitable in both coaching and personnel decisions.

 

[wgknestrick]

People get really trapped in this idea that it's about stats. It is not about stats. At all.

It is about data.

In baseball it turned out that a lot of the historically recorded stats are also useful data for the purposes of understanding the game.

In hockey that is much less true.

But that has little bearing on the question of whether or not the game can be understood better through data. It just means that a bigger investment will have to be made to acquire, refine, and exploit the really useful data.

Look what the guys over at STATS are doing with SportVU:

http://www.sportvu.com/basketball_data.asp

http://www.sportvu.com/americanfootball.asp

Using tracking algorithms, it would not be difficult to extract the X/Y position of every player on the ice for every second of every game. With a bit more development, it would be possible to track the puck's X/Y position, perhaps even it's Z coordinate.

I have a lot of trouble believing that that data, competently analyzed (heck, even incompetently analyzed) wouldn't produce a wealth of information exploitable in both coaching and personnel decisions.

That website is awesome. I would love something like that to come to hockey to track true location of shots, goals, who was "really" on the ice and where they "were" when a goal was scored. How fast they are with the puck, and how far they skate per shift. That kind of data would be monumental to the game and to every team that used it....and us.

We might finally see teams start utilizing their players to the best of their abilities.

This would also be huge for goaltender analysis as well. You could track where the puck was shot, where the goalie deflected it to, etc. etc.

Hockey is really in it's infancy with respect to data collection about the game.