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juke · 02-17-2020, 12:51 PM

(2971 words)

In case you need to reference previous explanations of the graphs, here are the links to them.

First media post

Second media post

Hey guys, back with my graphs. As always, you can read about what the graphs show from my previous pieces. The only change from last time, is that on the shot chart graph, the size of the dots now corresponds to a team’s powerplay percentage + penalty kill percentage, and color corresponds to PDO. For those of you who don’t know, PDO is a team’s combined shooting percentage + save percentage, and in the NHL it typically regresses to 100%. It’s commonly used as a pseudo read-out for a team’s luck (more than 100 is lucky, below is unlucky), but for a hockey simulation who knows! I also talk a lot about the ‘5 important stats,’ which as skating, passing, defense, puck handling, and scoring, and in my first media post you can see the stats behind why those are considered the important ones. As a final note, I made these graphs before yesterday’s games, so now they might be slightly outdated in the time the write-up took. For this piece, I opted to just show the graphs without getting into them, and then using them to breakdown what each team is good and bad at. So here’s all the graphs at once, and the team breakdowns are below.

[Image: team_standings.png?width=720&height=599]

[Image: team_standings.png?width=720&height=599]

[Image: goals_relative_to_average.png?width=720&height=599]

[Image: goal_diff.png?width=720&height=599]

[Image: scoring_breakdown.png?width=720&height=599]

[Image: shot_chart.png?width=720&height=599]

Anaheim:
The Outlaws have been one of the most consistent and better performing teams in the league this season. They haven’t suffered many losing streaks, and have continuously found themselves around the top 3 of the standings at any given point throughout the season. They seem to win a much larger portion of one goal games than the rest of the teams by far, which could either be a good or bad thing. On one hand, the ability to keep every game close and come away with tight wins will be a huge benefit once the competition tightens up in the playoffs, however you have to wonder if these one goal victories will continue to be sustainable, and they certain aren’t really ever blowing teams out. They have one of the best special teams units in the league, both in terms of powerplay percentage and penalty kill percentage, but they score during even strength at the lowest rate in the league, so their success is somewhat dependent on drawing penalties. They also have of the best shot for/against ratios, scoring above league average in both. And they’re not even getting ‘lucky’ as a team, coming away with the second lowest PDO. If their shooting percentage or save percentage can normalize, they might become favorites to win it all. Their success has been more remarkable considering the ratings of their team as an average. They don’t lead the league in rating value for any of the 5 most important attributes, but despite that, they’ve built a very balanced roster and any of their ratings in the 5 attributes are similar to the rest of the league.

Anchorage:
The Armada have had a rough second half to the season. They were never the top team in the league, but they started off the season competing in the top 5, but sometime around game 20 they inexplicably started struggling. The losses started piling up, and most of those losses were by 2 or more goals. As an average, they have one of the highest upgraded defenses and scoring, but it hasn’t shown on the scoresheet. They’ve given up the most shots against by a considerable margin, are basically average in shots for, and their PDO is in the bottom half of the league as well. Their powerplay and penalty kill compare with the rest of the league, and it’s respectable but not stealing them any games. At the end of the day, with every team making playoffs, losing streaks in the regular season don’t mean anything. The Armada proved in the first half of the season that they can win games, and overall have some of the highest rated attribute values in the league, so I wouldn’t be surprised if they became a dark horse competitor in the playoffs.

Carolina:
We can look at the graphs and stats all we want, but they won’t tell you anything that you don’t already know: Kraken good. This is a team that started the season by winning, kept winning, and now looks to be ending the season by winning. Looking at the trends of their wins and points over time, they haven’t even had a period of struggle throughout the season. In fact, on first glance it looks like their longest losing streak is two games, which seems to be the lowest in the league. The Kraken boast one of the highest rated defensive skills in the league, and interestingly enough, they seem to prioritize puck handling more than scoring on offense. They have the highest puck handling rating, and one of the lowest scoring ratings in the league, but I’m sure they aren’t complaining with how it’s worked out. They’re another team who’s benefitting from great special teams play on both ends. The only concern for Carolina heading into the playoffs is that they’re not dominating the shot and possession game. They find themselves dead average in both shots for and against, and are sporting one of the highest PDOs in the league. A minor cold streak for their goalie could be the end of this juggernaut in the playoffs.

Colorado:
Where did this team come from all of a sudden? The Raptors found themselves in the middle of the pack for most of the season, if not slightly below average. And then week 3 happened. They went on a massive 9 game winning streak, and now find themselves one point back for the top spot in the league. They play a somewhat boring game (which again, I highly doubt they care about that), with by far the lowest shots against in the league, while not putting up great shots for numbers either. They also haven’t overly benefitted from unnatural PDO or special teams percentages either, and score at 5 on 5 the best in the league. Will the Raptors continue to pull off nearly double digit winning streaks? Probably not. But is their sudden surge a statistical anomaly that they can’t keep up? Also probably not. They’re a sound defensive team that would love to play the game even strength and with low offense, because they’ll probably come out with a win that way. They also have high ratings compared to the rest of teams in many of the 5 major attributes, most notably defense, skating, and scoring. They will be one of the most interesting teams to watch down the stretch, to see if they’ll stick around the top now that they’re here, or fall back to the middle of the pack where they started.

Detroit:
As a Red Wings fan myself, usually when I look for a Detroit hockey team’s stats, my eyes instinctively jump to the ‘dumpster fire’ tier at the bottom of the graphs/lists. But not with the Falcons. In fact for most of the season, the Falcons have been in a neck and neck race for the best team in the league along with the Kraken and Outlaws. The last few games haven’t gone in their favor which resulted in a mini loss streak, but they currently still sit just 2 points off the top spot. What’s most surprising about this team’s success is what you see looking at their average attribute ratings. You can see that they have below average ratings compared to the league for pretty much every category. But they still manage to pull out win after win. Is it the coaching? Strategies? Team chemistry? Who knows, but they’re getting the job done with a ton of rookies and thus lower average ratings. I remember from my preseason analysis, along with all the rookies, they had 4 of the top 10 points per 60 players in the league, so maybe a few of their veterans are still carrying. I haven’t looked at individual numbers, just focused on team stats. Completely opposite to the Raptors, the Falcons play a high paced, suspenseful game. You can pretty much be certain that in a Detroit game, both teams are going to fire a lot of shots on net. I suspect Detroit to continue to sit as one of the best teams in the league. Despite a small slump they’re still a game away from the lead, and their wins appear to be completely sustainable, as they’re not skewed by a high PDO or loaded powerplay.

Halifax:
Not much to say about the Raiders other than it’s been a rough season. Looking at their team trend line record, it’s been a pretty consistent downhill battle pretty much since the start of the season, although to their credit, I will say that it appears they get blown out at a much lower rate of their losses than most teams. Unlike Detroit, the Raider’s position in the standings makes sense given their team ratings. I think they have the lowest average rating in the league for every category, except second lowest to the Falcons in skating. This isn’t a knock at Halifax nor is it a surprise, considering they have a huge percent of their roster being rookies, but rather an explanation for the lack of success they’ve had this year. They’re one of only two teams that find themselves below average in both shots for and against, and their special teams combined percentages is among the lowest in the league. I’ll say the same thing for Halifax that I did for Anchorage: who cares about regular season records when every team makes the playoffs. All it takes is a hot streak or a sudden on-fire goalie and they can find themselves being the next Columbus Blue Jackets, knocking out a historically good team in the first round. And regardless of how this season ends, Halifax is poised to be a great team in the future, as their massive amount of rookies keep updating for the next few seasons.

Kelowna:
Kelowna is probably the most intriguing team in the league for me. I weirdly forget they exist sometimes, probably because I had never actually heard of Kelowna before the SHL (I know I’m ignorant, but I’ve lived on the east coast of the US my whole life so my BC geography is lacking). But their stats and numbers are the main factor to the intrigue. They’ve never found themselves in the top tier of the standings, except for right now, but I think they’re sneaky good. They’re one of the streakiest teams in the league, constantly slumping in the first half of the season, and now constantly winning in the back half. When they win, they seem to blow teams out, and recently when they lose, it’s only by 1 goal. They’re a top rated team in the defense, skating, and passing categories, and scoring and puck handling are right there with the middle of the pack of team ratings too. Just like the Raptors, their games are low-paced and low shot affairs, although not quite as dramatically as the Raptors. They have one of the highest PDOs in the league, but the dead last combined special teams successes in the league, so maybe those two cancel out? For the remainder of the season as well as playoffs, they may want to experiment with juggling the special teams lines around, because if their PDO normalizes to 100 to may not live up to the potential that I think they secretly have.

Newfoundland:
Simon has not been kind to us in the second half of the season. We peaked at a tie for 4th place in the standings just last week, but have lost points at a higher rate than any other team in the league during week 3. In my last media breakdown, I had talked about how we led the league in close games and were the only team to not lose a game by more than 2 goals, and we responded by getting dumpstered in 4 of our recent games. We’ve built the most balanced talent in the league, with almost all 5 of our average attribute ratings being equal, but perhaps that’s contributed to the recent loss streak. Maybe committing more upgrades to a specific category and exceling at that is a better benefit to being balanced. I’m obviously biased, but I don’t think we’re as bad as the recent loss streak suggests. We have the best shots for/against ratio in the league, have been hindered by the worst PDO in the league, and our combined special teams is top 4, although we score less at even strength than most teams. We have a lot of active rookies that continue to upgrade, but it’s too early to write this season off just yet and look to the future. With a little luck, goalie upgrades, and the continuing amazing play from our veterans, we can still make a splash in the playoffs by continuing to dominate the possession and special teams games.

St. Louis:
St. Louis is also a team that I consider to be one of the streakiest in the league. For the first 10-15 games of the season I thought they were a favorite to be the best team. Then the next 15-20 games they lost their hot streak, and actually started to lose more games than win, so I thought they were an underdog. Now in the last 10 games, they’re back to trending up. So I’m done trying to guess if they’re favorites or underdogs, and just going to say they’re unpredictable. I would also personally like to thank them for getting annihilated so hard by the Raptors during their win streak that it ruined the y axis on the goal differential graph. The scarecrows took the opposite upgrading approach as the Berserkers, and probably have the most unbalanced skill breakdown in the league, with a massive rating in defense compared to the rest of their stats. They’re also right in the league average for special teams as well as PDO, the later being right at 100%, so typically what we see with the Scarecrows is their real level of talent. They throw more shots on net than any other team in the league, and defensively they’re not allowing an excessive amount of shots against, so I think that the winning streaks are the real Scarecrows more than the losing streaks. I wouldn’t be surprised to see St. Louis make a deep run in playoffs, but a poorly timed losing streak is always a possibility based on their regular season trends.

Vancouver:
Vancouver is probably the other team that intrigues me most aside from Kelowna. Maybe I should just move to British Columbia. They had a pretty disastrous start to the season, and were the worst team in the league for the first 15 games. Ever since then however, they’ve been steadily winning, but still only find themselves in 7th place. They’re another team with a good amount of 1 goal victories, but like I discussed with Anaheim, that could be either a good or bad thing come playoff time. Their stat ratings breakdown looks similar to the Berserkers in that it’s more balanced than most of the other teams, but it’s given them better luck than Newfoundland recently. The main reason this team is interesting to me is that I’m not 100% sure that they aren’t just on a massive lucky streak. They’re the only team other than the league worst Halifax that finds themselves below average in shots for/against, in fact they’re the worst in the league at it. Meanwhile, they have the highest PDO in the league as well, so they’re able to pull out victories with either great goaltender, or some hot shooters. Whether that PDO normalizes to 100, or if it’s just high due to great goaltending will end up being what dictates how far they go in the playoffs, because they certainly aren’t winning the possession game.

During last week’s media piece, I also got into some stats about predicting games, but I’m going to save those more for playoff matchups, where we have the same two teams facing off against each other for multiple games. However, like last week, I still used it to simulate the rest of the season, to try to predict how many points each team might walk away with (figure below).

[Image: 1_to_6_prediction.png?width=720&height=653]

How to read the figure: The x axis is a range of points that the teams got in the remainder of the season using the predicted results. The y axis is how many times the team got a certain amount of points during the predicted results, out of 100 ‘simulations.’ So a larger bar at x = 5 compared to x = 7, means a team is more likely to come away with 5 points than 7 points during the end of the season. During last week’s prediction, 8 of the 10 teams ended up getting points that was within their standard deviation of the predicted results. Two teams predicted results matched their actual results directly, while the simulations couldn’t predict the Raptors hot streak, or the Berserker’s cold streak. So the predictions aren’t amazingly accurate, but typically within a general range of how many points teams will get. There’s not many games left in the season, so most team’s predicted points are in the same range. The guess work likes the Kraken (big shock), while it doesn’t like the end of the season results for the Outlaws (an actual big shock). These aren’t super accurate so don’t read into them too much, but by the looks of it, the Kraken may hold onto their lead and finish as the best team in the regular season.