Will Advanced Stats Have a Significant Impact On Future Scoring?

[Randomtask68]

Advanced stats are still in their infancy in the game of hockey, but as time goes there is an ever growing focus on things like Corsi, Fenwick, Zone Starts and Quality of Competition, along with other unorthodox statistics. These stats attempt to measure possession and which team is doing a better job in driving the play. My question is with more and more players and coaches growing up and developing with advanced stats, will this have any impact on scoring to a significant degree whether it be positive or negative? Will it change the ways teams are constructed in a similar fashion to how the 4th line pure enforcer is going extinct?

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[Patman]

Advanced stats are still in their infancy in the game of hockey, but as time goes there is an ever growing focus on things like Corsi, Fenwick, Zone Starts and Quality of Competition, along with other unorthodox statistics. These stats attempt to measure possession and which team is doing a better job in driving the play. My question is with more and more players and coaches growing up and developing with advanced stats, will this have any impact on scoring to a significant degree whether it be positive or negative? Will it change the ways teams are constructed in a similar fashion to how the 4th line pure enforcer is going extinct?

It'll be as used and as useful as those who deal in them feel they are.

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As for the enforcer bit, if that element is fading and the need for such a player changes then, yeah, you're looking at teams rolling the best 4 lines they can assemble in terms of scoring. What it basically says is that the emotional balance of the fight does not outweigh the loss in ability, both offensive and defensive, that is provided by the presence of the enforcer/agitator/fighter.

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Discussion of stats often leads to discussion of principles by those who don't have a stake in the old ways. Numerical proof is great when you can get it... empiricism can quickly ground false theories... but lacking data it doesn't mean we can't think about likely impacts... and that leads to situations that may be influenced by information and data.

 

[TieClark]

Maybe if they ever become actually advanced

 

[wgknestrick]

I think so. At this moment, they seem to only be used in evaluating players, not "coaching" them. Once the advanced stat, coaching techniques start to trickle down to the younger leagues (like baseball now), I think we will start to see more effective players that have been developed on advanced stat techniques.......ie rarely dumping the puck in, hardly hitting players, generating many shots on goal, shooting from in front of the net, never icing the puck, maintaining possession along the boards, etc.

Finding people who can apply a certain technology to their benefit is always a challenge. Advance stats are just a technique to identify/measure micro-goals for players to strive for that help them accomplish the team's macro-goal of outscoring the other team. Before advance stats, there were 1000x of different opinions as to what those micro-goals were and we also had little clue on how to weight them.

The NHL still needs a revolution in the stat department before this is to happen though. They are the "leaders" of hockey for better or worse. If they embrace advance stats, the feeder leagues will too, and everything starts to trickle down.