Login

chetib · 02-06-2023, 03:40 PM

I’d like to take a look some of the stats line from this season and see if we are able to predict if we are going to be seeing an increase in Kelowna’s success this year. Using data available from S68 and what we have seen over the course of S69 we are hopefully going to be able to see a marked increase in Kelowna’s success but also see if we are able to predict where they are going to finish and if they are going to have success in the playoffs this year. Let get into it.

The first and most obvious metric we need to jump into is point totals across both seasons. As you can see from our figure below S68 started off really slow for Kelowna. They had a slow gain of wins over the first third of the season and would plateau reaching the half-way point. It was at that point we can see they had greater success in the back side of S68 which would see them gaining a total of 54 pts on the season. Compare that against S69 and we can see that they started off even slower but with a more consistent gain across that first half of the season.

[Image: Figure01.png]

This doesn’t quite give a whole picture so let’s compare what our goals for, goals against and goal differential looks like across this same span.

[Image: Figure02.png]

We can see S69 has started in a more positive manner and appear to be trending in a more positive direction for the Knights in contrast to the first half to S68. We are seeing more sustained offence and more discipline defensively resulting in a more consistent margin in our GD. It would be unrealistic to expect a significant drop in performance like we saw in the first half of S68 but this is sports so we can’t deny the possibility of a significant drop off. What we can observe from our collected data is that from Game 44 through the remainder of s68 season a +6 GD rise between each recorded interval. When we roll over to S69 there is a dip off from the success we were seeing at the tail end of S68. This could be explained by the turn over in personnel across the entire SMJHL. I think as we continue throughout the season can expect to see more predictable results. As we see our GD across S69 at the 22 and 33 game mark they seem fairly stable compared to S68 so I don’t think we will see this team suddenly bottom out.

If we look more closely we can actually see that Kelowna’s real improvement over the course of S68 was not in its offence but within its defense. The huge Goal Differential was caused mostly by the large number of Goals Against that were scored on the team. With the second half of S68 and the first half of S69 we can see that the defensive side of the game is being much more consistent and at a level that is more sustained for winning games.

So what are our predictions? Looking at the back end of S68 we saw point gains in the range of 11-14 Pts/11 games played (GP) averaging at around 12.3 points across an entire 66 game season we could reasonably expect to see a point spread between 66-84 points. With several good rookie additions and an improved defensive structure I think we could see Kelowna in the range of about 80 pts this coming season. Also looking at these same metrics across the first half of S69 we can see we have a slightly wider range from 6-19 pts/11GP but averaging the same 12.33pts/11GP. This should land them in around the top 5 and depending on how streaky they could challenge for a top 3 in the standings.

TLDR, Kelowna is much improved since the first half of S68. Everything is trending upwards and they are on pace for around the 80pt mark. They should enjoy a successful year while remaining competitive for the first few rounds of the playoff.

Go knights go!

(703 Words)

Opera_Phantom · 02-07-2023, 06:29 AM

@chetib APPROVED! +5 TPE

Navigation

Extra Menu

About us