We are very fortunate a paper that I wrote with a former student, Jim Curro, accepted to the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference Research Paper Competition.  The paper presents a  new ratings system which we think is an improvement over the current approaches.  It creates a two-way (offense and defense combined) rating that isolates the impact of an individual player by adjusting for home ice, the quality of competition, the quality of teammates and where a player starts their shifts.  We assess the impact of a player  [...]

With the end of the NHL lockout and the impending return of hockey, we thought we would take another look at NHL shootouts.  (The last time around we looked at the ability of goalies and shooters and found that there was nothing but randomness.  That post is HERE.)   Our focus this time around is to look at whether or not a team goes first matters.  As most readers of this post will know, the home team has the choice of going first or second  [...]

This past Spring, two students of Schuckers did undergraduate honors theses at St. Lawrence analyzing NHL data.  Tom Pasquali who is now a graduate student in Statistics at Villanova University focused on faceoffs while another student, Jim Curro (now a graduate student in Statistics at Iowa State), did some work on player ratings.  In the NHL faceoff analysis that is linked below, we used primarily Tom’s work but also a portion of Jim’s work.  We analyzed over 200,000 faceoffs over three NHL regular seasons (2008-9,  [...]

Video of my appearance at the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference Hockey Panel is now available.  Another panelists include Brian Burke, (GM for the Toronto Maple Leafs), Peter Chiarelli (GM for the Boston Bruins), Mike Milbury (NHL TV Analyst), Kathryn Tappen (TV host) and Tony Amonte (former NHL All-Star).     http://www.sloansportsconference.com/?p=4550 Here is the first of my postscripts on that panel.  

I attended the 2012 MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference last weekend in Boston. Additionally, I gave a poster and was invited to be part of the Hockey Analytics panel with Mike Milbury, Tony Amonte, Peter Chiarell and Brian Burke. NHL.com had a write-up of the panel here. I’m going to put together some posts/comments on that panel and some of the topics that came up. The first of these is the topic of faceoffs. I said in the panel that it takes an additional 100  [...]

We did an analysis of the ‘extra point’ gained by NHL teams that lose in overtime (OT) or via the shootout (SO) for The Hockey News.  It has appeared in a recent issue under the heading “Just Win, Baby”.  I’ve uploaded a more complete document with the fuller analysis.  That document can be found here.   In this paper we analyze how the past six NHL Stanley Cup Playoff Races would have played out under a couple of alternative scoring systems.  The motivation for the  [...]

Statistical Sports Consulting Founder Michael Schuckers had a research paper selected as a finalist for presentation at the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference. The paper develops a new methodology for evaluation of NHL goalies called the Defense Independent Goalie Rating or DIGR. The paper can be found here. The poster from the conference can be found here. Video of the presentation from the conference can be found here.