Hockey Analytics Researcher | Devils Blogger | Insufferable Pedant
New Jersey, USA
Joined March 2014
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I’ve written about hockey analytics for 15 years. In that time, I always wanted a site that dug into not only IF a player is good, but when, why, and how. Something to help writers and fans tell those stories.
3 months ago I started building it
... and today, it's live!
The Bruins's playoff probably has risen by the most by far since the start of the year. Let's look into the scope of their early dominance.
And the craziest part of they haven't even gotten their special teams going. This is all 5v5. And while their xG± doesn't look too impressive on it's face, when we adjust for their all-NHL shooting AND goaltending, they're a top 5 team in xGs as well.
CJ Turtoro retweeted
While @SunnyMehtaX is awesome and could have easily done something like this, I wrote this particular article. His article must be elsewhere.
However if Sunny wants to trade authorship of this article for his current job I'll consider it, even as a Flyers fan
For those interested, here is Sunny’s bayesian model article about goaltending from 2013
greaterthanplusminus.com/201…
The kind of work that Sunny, and @bmacGTPM, and others did on Bayesian goaltending is the predecessor to our goalie talent estimate at @PostHockeyHQ. Goalies are a mess, but this one JUST clears the threshold for predicting movers to a statistically significant degree.
My 2 questions for #NJDevils GM Sunny Mehta at his press conference today and his well thought out answers.
Called him out for bluffing. Got him talking about Bayesian hierarchical models. And allegedly stole @mikemorrealeNHL’s question 😂
Arseny Gritsyuk is one of the fastest risers in Net Rating in the leage right now. He's still working on his first skill badge but he's running the table on outcome badges -- his team is out chancing and out scoring opponents and he's involved in the goals. He's currently a borderline top line forward.
Josh Doan has lost his "Netfront" badge. After coming into the NHL on fire wrt High-Danger chances, he's been getting to those spots less each year, and has just 2 such chances in 11 games so far this year.
Been working on this one for a minute. There's lowkey a ton of different features that went into this. But I think it's now a thoroughly unique offering.
The Kraken may have lost, but Berkly Catton continued his hot start, scoring their only goal while collecting 7 shots and drawing a penalty which earned him a "Motor" badge for the first time in his career.
His estimated EOY impact is now that of an above-average NHL 2nd liner.
Batherson did all the things in his 14 minutes. He and Sanderson were a nightmare for the Rangers tonight.
At the event level, yes.
But if you want to know who tilts ice? I'd much rather a public model that I now has been adjusted for score, venue, rest, etc. than an opaque private model that may or may not incorporate tracking information responsibly.
This is one of biggest differences between the public and private xG usage. Almost all public sources have one xG model and everything is layered on top of it.
Not at @PostHockeyHQ, though! We have 4 different event-level xG models and we're working on even more!
We have xG(raw), xG(sh), xG(sv), and xG(sh+sv) if you want to adjust for the shooter, goalie, both or neither.
Then, additionally our goal page has a ton of different combinations of xG events that accumulate turns with and without rebounds, or tips/deflections/non-OZ shots, or all "contact" events, or low/mid/high danger. At the team level we have those plus with and without blocks.
Those last few aren't the kinds of things Sunny is talking about, but it goes to show that there are different ways of describing "expectation" even for the same outcome.
