2010 Playoff Matchup Odds

vs. 100% vs. 100% vs. 100% vs. 100% vs. 100% vs. 100% vs. 100% vs. 100% vs. 100% vs. 100% vs. 100% vs. 100% vs. 100% vs. 100% vs. 100% vs. 100%

Head Shots

I wrote a few years ago about diving & player's incentives.

It appears like it would be a good idea to branch these concepts out the hits to the head.

Many people were calling for a suspension after Cooke's hit on Savard. It all happens so fast, so it's hard to tell if Cooke was trying to hit his head or hit his shoulder and missed. I doubt Cooke wanted to concuss Savard. Even if they suspended Cooke it wouldn't effect the Penguin's all that much. Management would not be punished for using the player. The team is not punished for not discouraging this activity. A depth player is kept off the roster for a week. Easily replaceable. Suspensions do next to nothing to prevent hits to the head.

Many people would agree that it is often best to create rules and design systems that encourage self enforcement (encourage people to "tattle - tale" or reprimand their equals). In systems like these there are far more eyes keeping watch over the player's actions. Lets say a player hits another player in the head and doesn't get caught (minor incident, no injuries). The coach isn't going to bench the player. It's quite possible he will be praised for finishing his check.

Now lets set up some new rules:
- If any part of a player's arm or shoulder contacts a opposing team member in the head a automatic 5 minute major penalty will be assessed.
- Subsequently, if determined by a referee, a intent to injure 5 minute penalty can be added.
- This penalty can be called after video review if a player is injured.

Some adjustments would have to be made for face washes etc, but you get the point...

In terms of marginal goals a 5 minute major is worth about -0.5 goals and would cost the team about 10% of a win (or about $100,000). A 2 game suspension would've cost Cooke $30,000 personally.

With these rules, an undetected hit would result in the coach benching the player for fear that they could get caught next time. Team mates would not be happy if they lose the game because of this penalty.

You could still suspend the player if you like. And of course the NHL prefers their system of dice justice.

Playoff Races

It looks there will be a decent race in both conferences this year, which is always nice. I've generated a graphical table that summarizes the important statistics in these races. These tables should automatically update on a regular basis (every 3 days or so) as I update my database.

Pts = Points; PO? = Playoff probability; GB = Games Back from 8th;
BH = Back-2-Back Road games
BA = Games vs. a team playing a Back-2-Back Road game
H = Home games; A = Away games;
esy = non-playoff opponents; med = playoff-race opponents; hrd = playoff opponents.

Price vs. Halak

Two years ago, in response to an e-mail from someone at Faceoff-Factor about M-A Fleury's poor start, I stated that:
There are very few 19-22 year old goal tenders (or players for that matter). For the most part players hit a sort of peak at the age of 24 (players still get better each year until 30, but at a much slower rate). Most young goalies cannot compete with the back-ups that are currently in the league so they are relegated to the AHL until they are older. Here are a few of the young goalies I found. Pay attention to the development as opposed to comparing statistics (In Roy’s days 0.900 was great goaltending).Things have changed a little since then with:Mason, Backstrom, Rask, Pavelec and Varlamov also taking the #1 (or close) spots on the roster. Some are doing well others are getting by.

I write this because Price continues to receive substantial amount of critism from the Montreal media [archived version]. This isn't new in Montreal, they have been complaining about Price since he started. Prior to the 2009 playoffs these comments were quite common: "Will somebody please tell Bob Gainey to put Halak in nets before we are swept by Boston". I'm not sure if Montreal fans expects every goalie they draft to be the next Roy, but you cannot expect the same performance from a 22 year Price as 25 year old Price (or 24 year old Halak). Further to that here's the data for Price and Halak.As a result of management's insistence, Price has 126 games experience vs. Halak's 80.

One important part of developing a NHL player is experience. Halak and Price are at near equal performance levels (despite the age gap) and it would be wise to invest the player you have for another 4 years rather than the one you'll lose in two (or sooner). Giving games to Price is a wise choice because he is and will be your number one for a while. Halak does not want to be a number two and will move on as soon as he can. Why Montreal is holding onto two young goalies doesn't make sense to me. They really should choose one trade the other and get an experienced goalie to help Carey out.

That said, there's no question in my mind that Price will have a better career (assuming no injury issues) compared to Halak and that doesn't matter if you choose to measure performance based on game played, save percentage or wins etc. Sure, there are growing pains, but overall Carey Price is a great goalie, just Halak's done a little better so far.

Shots - Home vs. Away

Back in March Jilken's posted an article on "shot recording bias" for the home team. It an interesting concept. Jilken's most convincing evidence was a excel table that showed bias patterns highlighted in yellow. The table didn't give me any perspective as there were no indication of what one should expect the table to look like in a perfectly random environment. I ended up ignoring it for the time being. Sunny Mheta's recent post went into more details (along with 25 comments - which are quite detailed as well). Sunny started mostly with a subjective techniques, actually counting the shots himself. He also used some not so subjective techniques, showing the viewer of a shot that wasn't recorded.

This made me wonder, is there really a significant "home bias" effect for counting shots. Who could have thought such a simple task would be subject to such variations?

So let's start with the last 4 years of shot data. The graph below shows a "Matrix Plot" of the ratio of Shots@home / Shots@road (only first 3 periods). All four seasons have some sort of positive correlation (I didn't check significance though for each). The reader should notice quite quickly that most of the values are greater than 1. Or that shots @ home is generally greater than shots on the road. This should not be a huge surprise - home teams also get more goals.

Clicking on the image will bring up a much
bigger copy with the names of teams

Before I get too far ahead of myself I should explain the above plot. A Matrix Plot is used to compare multiple variables at the same to to see if any of them are related. In the above plot the "rows" represent a season variable and the "columns" another season variable. So for example, the graph in the first row and last column represents "Ratio 2005 vs. Ratio 2008" or is a scatter plot along with a regression for the 2005 season and the 2008 season. Similarly, if you move over one column you'd have "Ratio 2005 vs. Ratio 2007". The reason the diagonal doesn't contain any graphs is because "Ratio 2005 vs. Ratio 2005" is not a very interesting graph (just a bunch of points along the 45 degree line).

On a separate note, I did do a regression based on the average of the first 3 seasons:
Ratio in 2008 = 0.42 + 0.61 x Ratio Average (2005,2006,2007) [p-value=0.001]
or
Ratio in 2008 = 1.07 + 0.61 x (Ratio Average - 1.07)

I've also included a data summary for all the ratio observations (4 seasons x 30 teams = 120 observations) to give the reader an idea of how the data is distributed.


Conclusion:
There is obviously something going on here (sorry I'm trying to keep this short). It's worth noting that Colorado elevation provides them with a natural home advantage. However, even when you remove C0lorado from the data you get similar results.

Popular Predictions

I quickly copied all the Polls on Mirtle's site: From the Rink. And used the information to generate a simple prediction. How I got the Pts column is I took an average points for each position and multiplied by the percentage of votes for that position. So for example over the past few years the team in 8th position in the standings has average 92 points. So every 8th place vote gets 92 points. So first place votes (116 points) are worth a lot more than second place votes (110 points). It doesn't make a huge difference if you vote 7th (93.5 points) or 6th (94.5 points) as those positions are quite similar. I threw out votes for 15th or 1st depending on the team's average standings.

Heatley

"This is a straight hockey decision. I have nothing against the fans of Ottawa, or the city of Ottawa. I would like the opportunity to go somewhere where I can play to the best of my capabilities and be the player that I can be." [Heatley]

I found the story about Heatley just a little bit troubling. As you are likely aware, several months ago Heatley requested to be traded. Slightly ironically he had requested a no trade clause when he signed his extension meaning that Heatley would have to be consulted first before any trade could be made (that is to say Heatley would have to waive his no trade clause). There is a long list of comments in the article many of which are hoping that he ends up in their city.

However, I do not want him on my team: Vancouver. Or if you're a fan of any team you shouldn't want this player. I wish this article wasn't about his character as a person, but Heatley from his past and now his present his actions show he is a selfish player off the ice, I assume these tendancies are seen on the ice, but I haven't seen enough of him to know.

My complaint with Heatley is best summarized by Murray:

"We signed [Heatley] to a long-term deal and we expect him to honour it," Murray said on Tuesday. "At this point in time he's a Senator."

I can only imagine what people would think, if they signed the best contractor to work on their house and two weeks into a 2 month project the guy comes to you and tells you that you just can't get along and he wants to have his contract traded to a different home to do the same work. You would be stuck trying to offload this crummy annoying contractor to someone else: who would want him? So my argument goes: by requesting a trade he is hurting his own value as a player, but more importantly he is hurting the value of his current contract with Ottawa and thereby hurting Ottawa the most. Certainly Ottawa would get a better trade offer if instead Heatley was traded when it best suited Ottawa not when it best suited Heatley.


Anyway to the main point. Heatley's argument: I was relegated to smaller role on the team. I want to be #1. No one is better than me! Does Heatley have a point or was Clouston re-dsitributing talent to try to balance an unbalanced team? Well lets look at the breakdown:




What I find most enlightening is the "Team minus Heatley" numbers. Clouston improves scoring efficiency by 30% at even strength and 60% for the power play by shifting Heatley around without affecting Heatley's offensive numbers (some even go up). There of course is not enough information to distinguish whether these results are correct or simply random variations. However, these results do not surprise me. A while ago I did a study that absolute offense generally doesn't change much as a result of small changes in ice time. It looks like Heatley might be a bit of a selfish player; caring about his own performance more than that of the team. That's a guy I really want.

Even if Heatley is right, who wants a player who leaves as soon as things go south?

Southeast Expecations - 2009

I tried these little tables last season with a little success (and some failures). That being said, I think these tables give a good impression (even if you don't like how the numbers line up) of what each team will look like. I've color coded this year: red = 10% below average for that category. Green = 10% above average for that category. I've excluded PK, Goaltending though.



















The little arrows indicate whether there is a substantial change in the team's expected points from last season (more than 10 difference).

Note: These include RFA's who haven't signed yet.

Northeast Expectations - 2009

I tried these little tables last season with a little success (and some failures). That being said, I think these tables give a good impression (even if you don't like how the numbers line up) of what each team will look like. I've color coded this year: red = 10% below average for that category. Green = 10% above average for that category. I've excluded PK, Goaltending though.



















The little arrows indicate whether there is a substantial change in the team's expected points from last season (more than 10 difference).

Note: These include RFA's who haven't signed yet.

Atlantic Expectations - 2009

I tried these little tables last season with a little success (and some failures). That being said, I think these tables give a good impression (even if you don't like how the numbers line up) of what each team will look like. I've color coded this year: red = 10% below average for that category. Green = 10% above average for that category. I've excluded PK, Goaltending though.



















The little arrows indicate whether there is a substantial change in the team's expected points from last season (more than 10 difference).

Note: These include RFA's who haven't signed yet.

Pacific Expectations - 2009

I tried these little tables last season with a little success (and some failures). That being said, I think these tables give a good impression (even if you don't like how the numbers line up) of what each team will look like. I've color coded this year: red = 10% below average for that category. Green = 10% above average for that category. I've excluded PK, Goaltending though.



















The little arrows indicate whether there is a substantial change in the team's expected points from last season (more than 10 difference).

Note: These include RFA's who haven't signed yet.

Northwest Expectations - 2009

I tried these little tables last season with a little success (and some failures). That being said, I think these tables give a good impression (even if you don't like how the numbers line up) of what each team will look like. I've color coded this year: red = 10% below average for that category. Green = 10% above average for that category. I've excluded PK, Goaltending though.



















The little arrows indicate whether there is a substantial change in the team's expected points from last season (more than 10 difference).

Note: These include RFA's who haven't signed yet.

Central Expectations - 2009

I tried these little tables last season with a little success (and some failures). That being said, I think these tables give a good impression (even if you don't like how the numbers line up) of what each team will look like. I've color coded this year: red = 10% below average for that category. Green = 10% above average for that category. I've excluded PK, Goaltending though.



















The little arrows indicate whether there is a substantial change in the team's expected points from last season (more than 10 difference).

Note: These include RFA's who haven't signed yet.