Quantifying the clutchness of a goal

seventieslord

Student Of The Game
Mar 16, 2006
36,080
7,132
Regina, SK
I see .... kindly review the following thread where ETOI is used for playoff performance. My contributions seem to be appreciated.

http://hfboards.mandatory.com/showthread.php?t=2208643&highlight=black+gold+extractor

" for the playoffs, I assumed identical deployment as in the regular season unless there's an obvious switch"

translation, no extra information was used to estimate players' TOI in the playoffs, it was simply a repeat of regular season TOI. This can work as a reasonable guess. It stands to reason a team's #1-2-3-4-5-6 defensemen will still be the #1-2-3-4-5-6 in the playoffs, but that is far from a certainty.... as you mentioned with Awrey.


Yeah, see, I knew I couldn't be the first to bring this up.

What we need is a computer model developed that can scour game sheets for goals and the situations in which they occurred, and automatically calculate the win% probability they added.

No, a coin flip would be a tie game. A one goal lead in the final minute is still a favourite.

right, you are down by a goal and then you score, what do you call that? I call it a tie game.
 
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Canadiens1958

Registered User
Nov 30, 2007
20,020
2,773
Lake Memphremagog, QC.
Obviously.......

" for the playoffs, I assumed identical deployment as in the regular season unless there's an obvious switch"

translation, no extra information was used to estimate players' TOI in the playoffs, it was simply a repeat of regular season TOI. This can work as a reasonable guess. It stands to reason a team's #1-2-3-4-5-6 defensemen will still be the #1-2-3-4-5-6 in the playoffs, but that is far from a certainty.... as you mentioned with Awrey.
Post 1960 when NCAA players turned pro or participated in the WC and Olympics for Canada and the USA, it was common for some of them to jump into the NHL team line-up as a top six forward or top 4 defenceman. Short list would include Ken Morrow - 1980, Chris Chelios and Pat Lafontaine - 1984, Craig Janney - 1988, Joe Juneau - 1992. TOI, RS vs PO would not reveal this. You have to fact check.

Contributions. I provide ingredients. That some are better cooks than others is obvious. That others can take a point of interest question about back-up goalies in the O6 era, by Dr. No and build it into a serious topic is another issue.
 
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Hockey Outsider

Registered User
Jan 16, 2005
9,056
13,987
But I believe we have the data available (going back quite a few years now) to quantify the "clutchness" or "importance" of every goal scored. I think the most important thing to consider is, what was the expected number of points your team would receive in the situation it was in prior to the goal, and what was the expected number of points following it?

For example: Your team is down a goal with 1:00 left in the 3rd. There's a 3% chance your team wins the game at this point. You score a goal. That makes it a coin flip from here. It's 50%. You just made your team's likelihood of a win rise by 47% with that goal.

Another example: It's midway through the 2nd and you're up 3-0. You're 98% likely to win this game. You score again. Your chances of winning just went up to 99.5. Your goal only made the likelihood of a win go up by 1.5%. It is not a very important goal.

Of course, that late tying goal could be rendered meaningless if the other team comes back and scores with 15 seconds remaining, but that doesn't change that the tying goal was very clutch. Similarly, the team down 4-0 could in fact come back to tie it, making that 4-0 goal very important, but that doesn't change that it was very unimportant when it was scored.

I wrote a very similar post last year - http://hfboards.mandatory.com/showpost.php?p=120981629&postcount=2

The theory behind this is simple, but the mechanics of obtaining the data and creating a usable win probability formula is difficult.

I tried doing this around 10 years ago, maybe longer, and gave up. It was beyond my abilities at the time. I think I have about a 50% chance of getting this to work now (but unfortunately don't have time to take on such a large project).
 

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