Mike Chen's Hockey Blog
Entries with the tag: Statistics
Calculating The Worst Player
by Mike Chen on 01/21/09 at 12:37 PM ET
Comments (1)
On XM Home Ice this morning, there was a discussion about the league’s worst player. People called and emailed in, and one of the common themes was being the guy who turned over the puck most. There were also discussions of wasted talent (Maxim Afinogenov was tossed around).
What makes up the worst player in the league? Is it something you could tackle statistically? I got to thinking about this and I came up with a little formula. The key statistics here are ice time, giveaways, and +/-, but there’s a little bit of math involved. First, some explanations.
It’s important to note that statistics are relative. Wayne Gretzky was always near the top of the giveaway column, but that’s cause he had the puck so damn much and he tried to set up so many plays. There’s a difference between a soft defenseman turning over the puck and The Great One behind the opponent’s net sending out a pass that was intercepted. With +/-, it’s a reasonable tracker of effectiveness but it’s kind of tainted by overall team abilities. A guy on a kick-ass team will simply have a better +/- through roster osmosis.
So what can we do to break this down? I think you can look put some statistics in a different context to get a better sense of their weight. I only took one stats class in college so I don’t know all the technical terms for this, but it seems reasonably logical to me. Here are some breakdowns:
Filed in: NHL | Mike Chen's Hockey Blog | Permalink
Tags: Statistics, Worst+Player,
Worst of the Best
by Mike Chen on 11/10/08 at 12:25 PM ET
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Goals are up by about 1/3 of a goal per game, but does that translate into so many good goalies having bad years (at least statistically)? There was a time about 20 years ago when having a .900 save percentage was the benchmark for having a pretty good season. Now if you’re below .900, you’re having a bad year, and so far many notable goalies are falling into this category:
Filed in: NHL | Mike Chen's Hockey Blog | Permalink
Tags: Goaltending, Statistics,
Why Is The Game Better?
by Mike Chen on 11/03/08 at 01:00 PM ET
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If you took a random sampling of hockey fans, there’d probably be a pretty strong consensus saying that the games early in the season have been more entertaining and dynamic than the games generally seen last season. Goals are up so far this season—5.93 goals-per-game vs. last year’s 5.57 goals-per-game (+0.37)—but where are those goals coming from?
A quick statistical breakdown shows two things:
Filed in: NHL | Mike Chen's Hockey Blog | Permalink
Tags: Statistics,
